The state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts considered the question of stem cell research in 2005 and adopted legislation declaring that the state’s policy was to be one that would “actively foster research and therapies in the life sciences and regenerative medicine by permitting research and clinical applications involving the derivation and use of human embryonic stem cells, including research and clinical applications involving somatic cell nuclear transfer, placental and umbilical cord cells and human adult stem cells and other mechanisms to create embryonic stem cells which are consistent with this chapter.” The legislation also declared that it was the state’s further policy “to prohibit human reproductive cloning.” The Massachusetts legislation took a somewhat tortuous path through both houses of the legislature, beginning as SB 25, sponsored by senate president Robert E. Travaglini (D-First Suffolk and Middlesex), Cynthia Stone Creem (D-First Middlesex and Norfolk), and Harriette L. Chandler (D-First Worcester). That bill was reported out of the senate Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies as SB 2027 and was later retitled SB 2032 (in connection with a comparable bill from the house, bill number 2792), and finally as SB 2039 after a conference committee between the two houses to resolve relatively minor differences in H 2792 and SB 2032.
SB 2039 was passed by both houses of the Massachusetts legislature, by the Senate on April 26, 2005, on a vote of 34-2, and by the House on May 4 on a vote of 119-38. Those votes set up a certain confrontation with Republican Governor Mitt Romney, who opposes stem cell research and had been threatening to veto the legislation. After the legislature defied the governor by passing SB 2039, Romney carried out on his threat, and vetoed the legislation, returning it to the legislature with four recommended changes that he said would make it acceptable to him. (Massachusetts is one of the few states in which governors can follow such a procedure.) The legislature was not convinced by the governor’s arguments, however, and both houses voted to override his veto on May 19, 2005, the House by a vote of 112-42, and the Senate by a vote of 34-2. Since the legislation had been given “emergency” status, it became law immediately upon the legislature’s vote.
