Rep. Diana DeGette will help give President Bush a less-than-warm welcome to her district on Friday. Just two days after Bush used his first-ever presidential veto to block her bill expanding embryonic stem-cell research, he's scheduled to be appear at a private home in Cherry Hills Village to raise money for 7th District congressional candidate Rick O'Donnell, a Republican. DeGette plans to lead a protest rally at 10:45 a.m. at First Universalist Church of Denver, 4101 E. Hampden Ave. DeGette will be joined by patients who, she says, would benefit from embryonic stem-cell research. "She is just going there because the president has refused to meet with her on this issue, and to express her disappointment and outrage that he used his first and only veto on this potentially life-saving research," DeGette spokesman Brandon MacGillis said Thursday.
The bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., would have created ethical guidelines but then expanded the number of lines of embryonic stem cells that can be used in federally funded research. Bush and other critics, including many religious conservatives, equate embryonic research to the destruction of human life, and they only want federal funds used on research into stem cells derived from sources other than embryos.