"Since 2002, considerable resources have been devoted to just such research. A recent query of the grant database maintained by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) indicates that more than eighty research projects investigating human embryonic stem cells have been funded over the past five years. A research effort of this size represents millions of dollars in public money invested in the medical promise of embryonic stem cells. Indeed, the NIH reported to Congress in September of last year that anticipated spending on human embryonic stem cell research in 2006 was "just $24,300,000." Since 2002, approximately nine hundred research papers have been published on investigations of human embryonic stem cells, with more than a thousand additional papers investigating the properties of embryonic stem cells derived from animals. Clearly, research on embryonic stem cells has advanced considerably over the past five years, and it is therefore important to revisit the promise in light of current findings.

...The hubris of scientists in the field of embryonic stem cell research who confidently asserted "Give us a few years of unrestricted funding and we will solve these serious scientific problems and deliver miraculous stem cell cures" was evident in 2002, and it is even more evident today. For the past five years, researchers have had completely unrestricted funding to conduct research on animal embryonic stem cells, and yet the serious scientific problems remain. They have had every conceivable tool of modern molecular research available to them for use in animal models, and yet the serious scientific problems remain. Millions of dollars have been consumed, and hundreds of scientific papers published, and yet the problems still remain. The promised miraculous cures have not materialized even for mice, much less for men."

"If this legislation became law, it would compel American taxpayers for the first time in our history to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos. I made it clear to Congress and to the American people that I will not allow our nation to cross this moral line.

... "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical, and it is not the only option before us."

Was the Supreme Court defending America from future criminals when it legalized abortion in the landmark Roe v. Wade case of 1973?   Progressives who applaud this particular act of judicial tyranny have in recent years argued that it is largely because of the High Court's legalization of abortion that crime rates fell markedly in the Nineties, just when the children aborted in the Seventies would first have become potential criminals.  This line of reasoning stresses that precisely because they were unwanted, the aborted children-had they been born-would likely have received little of the care and guidance necessary to suppress criminal impulses.  Although this argument carries a grim plausibility, it receives scant support from an empirical study recently completed by researchers at Florida State and Washington State Universities.  Quite otherwise.  It appears that the unwanted children that American progressives have been so willing to execute prenatally as potential criminals would not have been particularly vulnerable to antisocial impulses had they been legally protected.

To determine whether the effects of Roe v. Wade actually did depress American crime rates in the Nineties, the authors of the new study examine nationally representative data for American adults born between 1964 and 1969, before abortion became legal.  These data allow the researchers to compare the criminal records of adults whose mothers indicated that they had wanted their pregnancy with the criminal records of adults whose mothers indicated that their pregnancy was unwanted.  The researchers reason that legal abortion prevents future crime only if the unwanted children in the study were distinctively likely to grow up to be criminals. But the evidence these researchers lay out discredits rather than supports the notion that an unwanted child is particularly likely to become a criminal adult.

To be sure, the Florida State and Washington State scholars do detect a slight elevation in the delinquency rates of young teenagers who were unwanted babies. That is, the researchers find a statistically significant but "relatively modest" linkage between being an unwanted baby and committing delinquent acts between the ages of 11 and 17.  This statistical linkage, the researchers note, accounts for "around 1 percent" of general and serious delinquency.  (Interestingly, having been born to an unmarried mother is a better predictor of serious delinquency than having been born as an unwanted child [p < 0.01 vs. p < 0.05 respectively].)  

Noting that "roughly 50 percent of mistimed and unwanted pregnancies have been aborted for much of the past two decades," the researchers assert that the abortion of half of the unwanted children born between 1964 and 1969 would have had a "fairly minimal" effect ("less than .05 standard deviation units") on overall levels of delinquency a decade or so later.  

The impossibility of justifying legal abortion as a defense against crime becomes even more apparent when the focus shifts to the criminality of young adults, ages 17 to 23.  Among this age group, the researchers discern no criminogenic effect whatever of having been born as an unwanted child.  "Pregnancy intentions [of the mother]," the researchers remark, "had no effect at all on crime reported when [children] were ages 17 to 23.  This was the case, for both general and serious crime." 

In their concluding remarks, the Florida State and Washington State researchers again concede that legal abortion may have very slightly reduced delinquency rates; however, they are surely justified in arguing that their results "generally run counter to the claim that legalized abortion has had dramatic effects on the crime rate."

Perhaps it is past time for the nation's progressives to suspend their protests against the execution of convicted murderers long enough to question the ongoing slaughter of unborn children unfairly written off as potential criminals.