More "Common Ground" From the Obama Administration

As Jack Smith wrote: "'Common Ground' keeps bustin' out everywhere."

From the webpage of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:

"Following President Obama’s March 9 executive order, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has proposed guidelines for federally funded embryonic stem cell research. The guidelines would – for the first time – use taxpayer funds to encourage the killing of embryonic human beings for their stem cells.

This marks a new chapter in divorcing biomedical research from its necessary ethical foundation, respect for human life at all stages."

The bishops then provided a link from their page to the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment (NCHLA). The NHCLA page allowed visitors to send a message to the National Institute of Health expressing their oppositon (or, for that matter, support) of the new NIH guidelines.

Well, today's Catholic News Service reports:

"Although 30,000 of the approximately 49,000 comments on the National Institutes of Health's draft guidelines on human embryonic stem-cell research opposed any federal funding of such research, those responses were "deemed not responsive to the question put forth," according to the acting director of NIH.

"We did not ask them whether to fund such funding, but how it should be funded," said Dr. Raynard S. Kington in a telephone briefing with the media July 6.

But Richard M. Doerflinger, associate director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said it was "disingenuous (for Kington) to say that comments criticizing the guidelines overall were to be ignored."

h/t The Catholic Key