Donohue conscientiously challenged

What ails Bill Donohue? Here's his reaction to the new ethics guidelines for stem cell research.

President Obama and other supporters of embryonic stem cell research hide behind ethical requirements to justify using tax dollars for destroying nascent human life. Such guidelines beg the question: if there is no moral dimension to destroying human embryos, why is there a need for ethics rules? While the answer is obvious to people who understand that life begins at conception, advocates of embryo destruction give lip service to ethics while simultaneously pretending that there is no moral issue. The fact of the matter is these requirements are a distraction from the larger issue of the legal destruction of innocent human life.

Simply put, the ethics guidelines establish a "conscience clause" for stem cell donors. If the donors--parents, if you will--don't want the embryos that they have created to  be used in stem cell research, then the federal government will not fund research on them. The ethical issue that the Obama administration felt the need to address is precisely the importance of respecting the conscientious concerns of the donors.

Over the years, Donohue has issued a couple of hundred pronunciamentos supporting one or another species of conscience clause. And no doubt, if the new guidelines ignored donors' religious scruples, he'd now be screaming at the Obama administration for that.