Quite the contrast

This was interesting. Toward the end of the 2nd presidential debate last friday, Sarah Degenhart asked the following question:

Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?

An issue near and dear to my own thoughts. Here's what Kerry had to say to Sarah:

I would say to that person exactly what I will say to you right now. First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today. But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that. But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility. I can talk to people, as my wife Teresa does, about making other choices, and about abstinence, and about all these other things that we ought to do as a responsible society. But as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation. And I have to make that judgment.

In other words, Sarah, he can't reassure that voter, because he's going to use that voter's tax dollars to support murder. This position isn't popular enough to be worth defending, and Kerry's moral conscience, supposedly informed by his Catholic upbringing, has no part in decisions that affect the well being of the American people. One wonders how we can trust him to take a principled step in any endeavor that requires the motivation of his moral conscience.

Bush's response to Sarah Degenhart seemed much more clear:

My answer is, we're not going to spend taxpayers' money on abortion.

Kerry also stated that he wants to work to reduce the number of abortions, yet he's willing to give $100 million each year to advance research using stem-cells taken from destroyed human embryos. Am I the only one who fails to see the consistency with a position such as that? Bush's position, while insufficient, is at least more consistent. He stated what Kerry couldn't state:

Embryonic stem-cell research requires the destruction of life to create [extract] a stem cell.

Considering the pull in America today to federally fund this type of research, I'd say it isn't easy for a politician to stand up, take a principled stand for what appears to be the minority opinion: not to federally fund the destruction of human life.