Sanford Goes out of State to Fund Embryonic Stem Cell Research

...IM11 Supporters Sure to Boycott Sanford SD Projects

South Dakota subprime lending magnate T. Denny Sanford has donated $30 million to support embryonic stem cell research. Unfortunately, such research is illegal in South Dakota (see SDCL 34-14-16 through 34-14-20), so Sanford is plunging his $30M into the economy of that other big SD, San Diego, home of the San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. (Also motivating the donation: fewer letters to change in the name: cross out Diego, insert -ford.)

Sanford's money will build a new research facility to be shared by consortium members the Burnham Institute, the University of California San Diego, the Salk Institute, and the Scripps Research Institute. The shared facility will allow researchers to interact and share ideas more easily. As South Dakota's Initiated Measure 11 supporters would maintain, Sanford's money will also go toward killing babies.

...or would they? As my lovely wife has discovered, the IM11 crowd seems unable to resolve whether destroying fertilized embryos outside the womb is the crime suggested by their "life begins at conception!" rhetoric. In vitro fertilization inevitably results in the production of surplus embryos that are not successfully implanted in the uterus. Yet the anti-abortion crowd that would make every woman a ward of the state to protect the conceived embryos in their wombs seems to recognize no crime in the production of excess embryos for the sake of in vitro fertilization. (South Dakota's embryonic protection laws also specifically except in vitro fertilization.)

Of course, IM11's supporters are too busy pushing more bad legislation to figure out their own contradictions. Maybe after the election they'll have time to work up a boycott of Sanford Medical, the Crazy Horse monument, the Children's Home Society, or any of the other projects Sanford the embryo destroyer has supported with his money.