ATL Report – Atlanta News and Gossip

One of the quiet issues that hasn’t been addressed – yet – during this one-week campaign for House speaker and other leadership positions is the role of abortion and stem cell research.

Despite Glenn Richardson’s shortcomings in the marital department, the Georgia business community silently applauded the soon-to-be-former speaker’s approach to transportation and science, and thus economic development.

For the last several sessions, it has been Richardson’s House – not Casey Cagle’s Senate — that sat on legislation to ban or even criminalize embryonic stem cell research in Georgia, provoking a great deal of criticism from the Republican party’s right-to-life base.

None of the candidates for House speaker have addressed the issue, at least in public. So far, the urgency of the state budget situation has been enough to deflect inquries.

The major religious conservative organizations – Georgia Right to Life, the Georgia Christian Alliance and the Christian Coalition – …