Why Bush's Ban Could Be Reversed

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Whatever the inner impulses of members, a vote is certain to bring a backlash from right-to-life groups that constitute a major part of the Republican base. So supporters of the measure have been quietly working the House chamber in what is becoming an intensely personal effort to build a majority one vote at a time. Some lawmakers with pro-life voting records say the vote will be an agonizing choice. "The most difficult moral questions aren't between right and wrong," says New Mexico's Heather Wilson, who says she is still undecided. "They are between right and right."

Wilson has been visited by lobbyists for universities and groups who advocate for sufferers of various diseases. Fellow Republican lawmaker Charles Bass of New Hampshire gave her a chapter from Hatch's 2002 memoir Square Peg, in which the Senator explained his own conversion on the stem-cell issue. But the most compelling appeal, Wilson says, has come from a House Democrat--James Langevin of Rhode Island, an abortion foe who is also a quadriplegic as a result of an accidental gunshot wound suffered when he was a teenager. "When Jim Langevin talks to you about this," says Wilson, "he speaks with a certain understanding that the rest of us don't have."

Opponents are not without their own emotionally charged arguments, one of which is that if the bill becomes law, it would only be the beginning of a slide toward human reproduction through cloning. Foes say they also plan to point out that embryonic-stem-cell research has yet to produce a cure for anything. Researchers, they say, should first explore the potential of stem-cell research that does not require the destruction of embryos, including use of adult stem cells and stem cells from umbilical-cord blood. "This is not a debate between pro-science forces and religious zealots," says Pennsylvania Republican Joseph Pitts. "This is a debate about saving lives."

Officially, the House Republican leadership has pledged not to pressure its members on the bill, having deemed it a matter of conscience. But majority leader Tom DeLay had been quietly looking for ways to stall it or complicate its progress through the legislative machinery. House sources say he stepped back from that effort after moderate Republicans reminded Speaker Hastert that he had promised them a clean shot at passage. Meanwhile, an alternative strategy is being discussed that would give House members the opportunity to also vote on an additional piece of stem-cell legislation, possibly a bill by Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey that would establish a national bank to store and distribute stem cells from the blood of umbilical cords. The idea is to take off some of the political heat by giving both lawmakers and Bush a stem-cell bill to support, in addition to the one they have vowed to kill.

Whatever the outcome, if there's anything that politicians have learned about embryonic-stem-cell research, it is that the science has a way of always moving forward. The question now is how far Washington is ready to move with it. --With reporting by John F. Dickerson/Washington