Washington, DC – A federal judge issued a temporary injunction on Monday blocking any Federal funds from going to life-destructive experimentation on human embryos. This ruling negates a 2009 Executive Order signed by Pres. Barack Obama that opened up the doors to tax-payer funding of human embryonic stem cell experimentation, which had been banned by President George W. Bush in 2001.
Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that the funding must stop because embryonic stem cell research “necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo.”
“We applaud this ruling that will protect innocent human beings in the very earliest stages of development from death and exploitation through unethical experimentation,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
“Without Federal tax dollars, many of these so-called ‘research’ labs will be unable to continue their live human experimentation, which shows little or no hope of developing usable cures. On the other hand, adult stem cell research has already provided effective treatments for diseases and conditions. It is our hope that the biotech industry will abandon their unethical and immoral efforts to take the lives of innocent human beings for the purposes of their ill-conceived experiments, and will instead work to advance medicine through the ethical research of adult human stem cells.
Operation Rescue was among the first pro-life groups in the nation to oppose human embryonic stem cell experimentation and conducted the first ever protest of it at Geron laboratories in Menlo Park, California, in 1999.
Operation Rescue congratulates Nightlight Christian Adoptions and the other groups who filed this suit for their victory in protecting human life.
News reports indicate that tens of millions of tax dollars that were in the process of being released for live human embryonic experimentation have been frozen and will not be distributed to biotech facilities. The Obama Administration plans to appeal the ruling.