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Bruce and Helen McCallum wrote: > Dolores Gross's entry yesterday prompted me to tell of the well > written response by Senator Jesse Helms to my letter to him urging > him to be a co-sponsor of the Udall Bill. He basically said he > would like to support it but can't because it doesn't specifically > forbid funds for fetal tissue research. . . . If anyone has a good > arguement to counter Jesse's, please send it to me. I would like > to continue trying to change his mind. I agree with Jim Cordy's suggestion of making fetal tissue a separate issue in a separate bill. How about suggesting to Sen. Helms that he draft his own bill prohibiting fetal research funding across the board. Let Congress vote on just that. No sense holding up everything else over this one issue and raising it every time a research funding bill perceived to be related comes along. Jim Cordy asked: > A year ago, then Representative Flannigan, told my wife and me, > that Representative Chris Smith was about to propose separate > legislation that would ban fetal tissue research from induced > abortions across the board. Flannigan stated that he would then > immediately sign on as cosponsor of both that bill and the Udall > Bill. Why wasn't that done? Why has Parkinson's been singled out? If there is reluctance to introduce a separate bill on just fetal tissue research, then I would ask just what, specifically, is holding them back. In my more cynical moments I doubt that you would get a straight answer to this question. The problem is, there may not be enough votes to pass such a bill, and the fetal research prohibitionists must sense this. So, those who are raising this issue in opposition to the Udall bill just might be trying postpone the inevitable in any way they can, or even trying to see to it that if they can't get what they want, then no one else will get anything either. Such is political power. And/or they might simply be so committed to this cause as to feel obligated to fight for it at every opportunity, no matter what the odds and the costs are. Phil Tompkins