In a Thursday night vote, the House overwhelmingly passed a reauthorization of the National Marrow Donor Program, which matches bone marrow donors and cord blood units with patients who need transplants. Overwhelmingly, that is, except for Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), reports CNN.
The two lawmakers were the only nays in a 415-2 vote, though another 12 representatives didn’t vote, including fellow freshman Republican Madison Cawthorn (N.C.), reports Newsweek.
Greene’s spokesperson Nick Dyer told Newsweek: “Nothing in this bill prevents the funding of aborted fetal tissue by taxpayers. It opens the door for the [National Institutes of Health] to use this bill to research the remains of babies who were murdered in the womb.” Meanwhile Boebert said “this bill added hundreds of millions of dollars to the national debt, while not receiving a [Congressional Budget Office] score or going through the committee process.”
As Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said on the House floor before the vote, the authorization greenlit “$23 million each year for 5 years for the cord blood side and, again, some $30 million each year for the bone marrow program.” He noted the Be The Match registry, which pairs donors with patients who have leukemia and other diseases, has facilitated more than 105,000 bone marrow transplants and more than 40,000 cord blood transplants.
Greene has continued to double down on her argument, asserting Americans “would be outraged if they knew” the details of the bill, seemingly referring to the authorization of stem cell research as detailed here.
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