Stem cell laws and policy in the United States
In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States. Five years later, the first successful human "in vitro" fertilization resulted in the birth of Louise Brown in England. These developments prompted the federal government to create regulations barring the use of federal funds for research that experimented on human embryos. In 1995, the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel advised the administration of President Bill Clinton to permit federal funding for research on embryos left over from "in vitro" fertility treatments and also recommended federal funding of research on embryos specifically created for experimentation. In response to the panel's recommendations, the Clinton administration, citing moral and ethical concerns, declined to fund research on embryos created solely for research purposes, but did agree to fund research on left-over embryos created by "in vitro" fertility treatments. At this point, the Congress intervened and passed the Dickey-Wicker Amendment in 1995 (the final bill, which included the Dickey Amendment, was signed into law by Bill Clinton) which prohibited any federal funding for the Department of Health and Human Services be used for research that resulted in the destruction of an embryo regardless of the source of that embryo. In 1998, privately funded research led to the breakthrough discovery of human Embryonic stem cells (hESC).
Political positions of Mitt Romney
When he ran for governor in 2002, Romney strongly advocated stem-cell research, and he promised to lobby then-President George W. Bush to embrace it. In 2007, Romney supported the use of stem cells obtained from "surplus embryos" for research, but opposed "the creation of new lines of human stem cells for research and vetoed a stem cell research bill as governor." During Romney's 2008 presidential campaign, he renounced his prior position and said that he agreed with Bush's decision to ban federal funding for research on excess embryos. He said that his views had been drastically altered in 2004 after discussing stem cell research with Douglas Melton, a stem cell researcher at Harvard University. The Harvard Stem Cell Institute was planning research that would have involved therapeutic cloning. According to Romney, Melton declared that the research "is not a moral issue because we kill the embryos at 14 days." "I looked over at Beth Myers, my chief of staff, and we both had exactly the same reaction, which is it just hit us hard," recalled Romney. "And as they walked out, I said, 'Beth, we have cheapened the sanctity of life by virtue of the "Roe v. Wade" mentality.'"