The Party of Death plans its return

The Washington Post reports:

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team. ...

Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases, such as Parkinson's.

Bush's August 2001 decision pleased religious conservatives who have moral objections to the use of cells from days-old human embryos, which are destroyed in the process. ...

The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City policy, but Bush reimposed it.

I thought this was just golden: "Bush's August 2001 decision pleased religious conservatives who have moral objections to the use of cells from days-old human embryos, which are destroyed in the process."

You need not be a "religious conservative" to object to federal funding for life-destroying research. Any libertarian or economic conservative worthy of his name would also object to it as an unnecessary government intrusion into the free market. Likewise, any fiscal conservative would likely object to it as a pork-barrel expenditure that doesn't lie at the core of the federal government's responsibilities.

And what about the "personally opposed" crowd? Under certain extreme circumstances, they are willing to condone the taking of human life. Are they also willing to provide the funds to endorse and encourage it?

If it's politically impossible for government to be pro-life, is it too much to ask that it at least be neutral?