Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert were the only House lawmakers to oppose a bill that would reauthorize the National Marrow Donor Program—a vital service for people who have fatal blood diseases. The bill passed 415-2.
Under the bill, the National Marrow Donor Program would be reauthorized for a further five years. The program keeps an inventory of cord blood and a database of bone marrow donors for matches with patients diagnosed with leukemia and other fatal blood diseases.
In a statement, Rep. Greene’s spokesman Nick Dyer said: “Nothing in this bill prevents the funding of aborted fetal tissue by taxpayers. It opens the door for the NIH to use this bill to research the remains of babies who were murdered in the womb.”
“This bill added hundreds of millions of dollars to the national debt, while not receiving a CBO score or going through the committee process,” Rep. Boebert added.
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.
