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Dear Blane,Last weekend I asked you to help me enact my stem cell measure into law by calling your Senator and signing a petition to President Bush. With your hard work and the support of more than 70% of the American people we succeeded in the Senate, where a bipartisan 63 Senators voted for this life-saving proposal. For one short day millions of Americans who suffer from terrible disease and illness had hope.
Wednesday morning, I faxed President Bush a petition with more than 2,000 of your signatures, urging him to sign HR 810 into law, and to give us hope for new therapies and cures. As you know, however, President Bush went ahead and vetoed that bill.
Now it is time to fight back. We need to take our issue to the electorate. That's why I am helping to create a nationwide, grassroots effort to elect Senators and Representatives this November who will advance life-saving stem cell research and overturn the President's veto in the next Congress. I am asking you to join my stem cell research grassroots coalition and to invite everyone you know also to join.
Please help me reach others who support stem research by forwarding my letter below to your friends and loved ones, and by posting to your online communities. Lets get the word out that we will not give up.
Sincerely,
Senator Tom Harkin
www.TomHarkin.com
Tom Harkin
Dear Friend,
Six years ago, George W. Bush pledged to be "a uniter, not a divider." Now he has used his first-ever veto to kill HR 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which would have spurred life-saving research supported by more than 70 percent of the American people. His spokesman said that Mr. Bush considered this research to be "murder."
Six years ago, Mr. Bush pledged to be a "compassionate conservative." Now, he has crushed the hopes of millions of Americans suffering from diabetes, cancer, Parkinson's, spinal-cord injuries, ALS and other conditions that might be cured by embryonic stem cell research.
Repeatedly, the President says he believes in a "culture of life." On July 19, the United Nations announced that more than 14,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in just the first six months of this year.
Is there no end to this President's hypocrisy, cynicism, and cruelty?
Once again, Mr. Bush has embraced a rigid, narrow, ideological extreme a position that flies in the face of science, common sense, and compassion. Once again, he has shut out other points of view, including the pleas of former First Lady Nancy Reagan. Republican supporters of the stem cell bill requested an opportunity to talk to the President before his veto, and they were turned down.
The morning of Bush's veto, I faxed a petition to the White House with more than 2,000 of your signatures, urging him to find it in his heart to let this life-saving legislation become law. That, too, was rejected.
Let's be clear, nothing would have been more pro-life than signing this bill into law. We all know people friends and family members with diabetes, cancer, Parkinson's, ALS, and spinal-cord injuries. What could be more respectful of life than to use the scientific tools that God has given us to help and heal them?
Instead, with one arrogant stroke of his veto pen, Mr. Bush slammed the door on embryonic stem cell research. He insists that he knows better than the great majority of Americans, scores of Nobel laureates, and every director at the National Institutes of Health, all of whom support HR. 810. His spokesman says, in effect, that pro-life Republicans such as Senators Orrin Hatch and Bill Frist, who support my bill, are complicit in "murder."
My nephew, Kelly, is one of those people whose hopes have been crushed by the President's veto. He has been a quadriplegic for 27 years, since suffering a spinal cord injury in the Navy. Kelly's great hope is that embryonic stem cell research will lead to a breakthrough that might allow him to walk again.
Well, my message to Kelly and millions of others whose hopes were dashed is this: The President's veto is not the final word. Science is on our side. The American people are on our side. And, in November, the voters will be on our side.
The President has thrown down the gauntlet. Now, we need to fight back! This means demanding that every candidate for Congress tell us where they stand on embryonic stem cell research. It means working our hearts out to elect candidates who support this research plus exposing and defeating candidates who oppose it. Because I am going to reintroduce HR 810 in the new Congress next January. And, with a Democratic House and Senate, we are going to prevail!
Sincerely,
Senator Tom Harkin
Pledge today to help elect candidates who will overturn Bush's veto of embryonic stem cell research.
Paid for and authorized by Citizens for Harkin
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