May 8, 2009
Urgent call to oppose embryonic stem cell research
On March 9, President Barack Obama issued an Executive Or-der overturning President Bush’s stem cell research funding policies. On April 23, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published draft guidelines implementing the Obama directive. The public has until May 26 to submit comments.
In response to the NIH draft guidelines, Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Michael Castle (R-DE) said they intend to move forward with legislation that goes beyond the guidelines.
The Indiana Catholic Conference urges citizens to (1) send messages to Congress opposing any legislation promoting des-tructive embryonic stem cell research and (2) send comments to NIH on the draft guidelines.
E-mail messages can be sent to Congress and to NIH through the NCHLA (National Commit-tee for a Human Life Amend-ment) Grassroots Action Center at: www.nchla.org/stemcell.
Visitors to this site will be first directed to send e-mails to your U.S. Representative and two U.S. Senators. Visitors then will be directed to go to the NIH web form, where your name and a prepared pro-life message have already been inserted. Before submitting the comments, writers must complete a simple “Security Check” (filling in a random set of four provided numbers). Comments can be added to both messages.
The Indiana Catholic Confer-ence encourages citizens to visit the NCHLA Grassroots Action Center. For more information, please see the Action Alert at: www.nchla.org/actiondisplay.asp?ID=272.
The USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities is preparing a special stem cell page on their web site. See “Oppose Destructive Stem Cell Research,” at: www.usccb.org/stemcellcampaign. To facilitate sending e-mail messages to Con-gress and NIH, the bishops’ web site will again link to the NCHLA Grassroots Action Center.