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Monitoring Stem Cell Research 
a citizenry that is at home in, and capable of taking advantage of, 
freedom. Legislation designed to encourage biomedical research can 
be seen as creating circumstances in wrhich we are better able to 
enjoy the blessings of freedom. The same can be said of laws 
designed to respect, and encourage respect, for nascent human life, 
which can reasonably be understood as contributing to the 
conditions under which individuals learn to respect humanity in 
others and in themselves. 
To be sure, even v\hthin the limits provided by law, government’s 
encouragement of informed and responsible choice can easily 
become a tool for the ill-conceived circumscribing of choice. Even 
well meaning government efforts to help prepare citizens for liberty 
and toleration can undermine both. Government funded education 
can be dogmatic and ideological; government funded research may 
be biased and unaccountable; government supported arts may 
disseminate tawdry or jingoistic sentiments and images; government 
funded programs directed at the family may fail to adapt to changing 
times. Of course, these familiar abuses are not arguments against 
government promoting the conditions that enable citizens to take 
advantage of freedom. Rather, they are reasons for proceeding with 
care, and with an appreciation of the complexities of contemporary 
moral and political life. 
IV. American Dilemmas 
The president’s policy on stem cells is not the only funding 
decision in contemporary American politics that has generated 
controversy. Brief discussion of others sheds light on what is 
common to all and what is distinctive to the stem cell debate. 
Consider first the battle over abortion, which involves a long 
standing struggle over the question of government funding for lawful 
conduct. Shortly after entering office. President Bush ordered the 
withholding of funding from international organizations that 
performed abortions, a decision that was neither required of him nor 
forbidden to him but within his discretion. The principle behind this 
policy is common to his position on stem cell research: government 
funds should not be used to destroy nascent human life. 
At home, a line of Supreme Court decisions stretching from 1977 
to 1991 dealing with abortion and government funding established 
the principle that the constitution does not require government to 
fund activities that the Constitution protects. In Maher v. Roe 432 
U.S.464 (1977), the Court held 6-3 that Connecticut could provide 
Medicaid benefits for childbirth while withholding benefits from 
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