New Law to Protect Life's Earliest Stages

JIM ANDERSON

CORRUGATED TIMES-DISPATCH

October 12, 2006

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, signing new legislation in front of smiling "snowflake fossils," President Bush banned federal funding for examining rock-encased embryos. The law had sailed through the House, and passed despite a record three week Senate filibuster.

True to his word, Bush kept his veto pen in its drawer. "Fossil life is sacred," Bush declared. "Our tiniest ancestors deserve nothing less than absolute protection. Or at least privately bankrolled research."

Conservative groups hailed the new legislation. "Some of those embryos are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old," said Duane "Galloping" Gish of the Institute for Creation Research. "God loves every little last one of 'em."

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had maintained the marathon filibuster, was cautiously optimistic. "I hope the Supreme Court will strike down this statute," she said from a hospital bed in Bethesda, Maryland. "Fossil embryos aren't fossil people."

Experts note that the federal ban will likely matter little. California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has already pledged $4.2 billion for fossil embryo research.