William Saletan lays into President Bush for not reconsidering his position on funding embryo-destructive stem-cell research as the facts changed. According to Saletan, Bush’s position–allowing funding on stem-cell lines derived from embryos before he announced that he would support the research, but blocking funding that would cause embryos to be destroyed going forward–never made sense as a matter of pro-life principle. Once it became clear that more stem-cell lines were needed, Bush should have relaxed his restrictions.

But Bush’s policy was never premised on how many stem-cell lines there were. It was premised on its being wrong for the federal government to encourage the destruction of human embryos. His time-bound restriction made sense on that premise. Saletan makes the valid point that it was just as wrong to destroy an embryo on August 1, 2001, as on August 30, 2001. But Bush’s policy didn’t require him to believe otherwise. Bush argued that his restriction left room for a lot of stem-cell research, but that was a kind of additional advantage to his position, not the reason he adopted it. Circumstances were not going to change the policy’s actual premise. And Bush was right about the potential for research to proceed within his restrictions: As the years have passed, it has become clearer and clearer that there are promising alternatives that don’t destroy human embryos. Saletan briefly alludes to this possibility. But he never pauses to wonder whether the real stubbornness is being displayed by the people who continue to complain about Bush’s policy.