Stem-cell bill faces 1st test in Mass.

After weeks of passionate debate by clergy, patients, and doctors, a bill authorizing embryonic stem-cell research in Massachusetts faces its first hurdle in the Legislature this week, amid a final furious round of lobbying by forces on both sides.

Democratic businessman Chris Gabrieli is expected to enter the fray today by airing an emotionally charged television advertisement featuring parents of two children with diabetes who argue that Governor Mitt Romney would block promising research that could cure the disease.

''How can you look at these faces and not want to find a cure?" Lyn Shea asks after her daughters, Kelsey, 7, and Rachel, 10, display their insulin pumps in the ad.

Meantime, social conservatives, including the Massachusetts Family Institute, which gained prominence in battling gay marriage last year, are lobbying lawmakers against the legislation.

''A lot of my colleagues are still on the fence; they're listening to both sides," said Representative Philip Travis, a Rehoboth Democrat who has been trying to round up opposition to the bill supported by Senate President Robert E. Travaglini.

The Senate vote, scheduled for Wednesday, will be the first test of the political viability of the bill, which would give the state's official endorsement to embryonic stem-cell research, including stem cells obtained from cloned human embryos.

But the closer battle will take place in the House, where the outcome seems less certain. Both sides will be watching to see if the House and Senate can muster the two-thirds support needed to override an almost certain veto by Romney, who supports restrictions on stem-cell research.

Battling Romney, some Democrats and Republicans, and lobbyists representing the policy arm of the Roman Catholic Church, Travaglini and House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi have vowed to approve the bill by the end of the week.

Gabrieli's ad was funded with $150,000 raised by the wealthy Democratic activist who was an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor in 2002. With the help of like-minded business executives who formed a nonprofit group, Committee for a Better Commonwealth, Gabrieli said he hoped the spot would make the point that stem-cell research is humane and can lead to a variety of medical breakthroughs. It will air at least until Wednesday.

''The governor has used the term 'ethical,' " Gabrieli said, ''and I think it's the highest of ethics to do everything we can to come up with medical solutions for illnesses."

The commercial tries to rebut ads launched by the state's four Roman Catholic bishops, who funded print, radio, and TV commercials intended to sink Travaglini's bill. ''Some Massachusetts lawmakers, using emotion and vain hope, are trying to legalize embryonic stem-cell research," one of their radio ads says. ''Science does not have to kill in order to cure."

Activists from the Massachusetts Citizens for Life plan to continue campaigning this week against the bill, and will be joined by advocates from the Family Institute, who spent last week walking the halls of the State House to meet legislators one-on-one.

Kris Mineau, president of the institute, described his side's position as ''very strong" but ''not in the bag."

The votes this week represent the first real showdown of the session between Romney and the overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature. Romney has said he supports stem-cell research, but would limit the use of embryos to those from fertility clinics that are not used and would be discarded. Scientists say the limit would cut off some of the most promising avenues of research.

''People around the world recognize that it's wrong to create life for the purpose of experimentation and destruction," Romney's spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, said, adding that the governor ''has been very involved in presenting to the Legislature [his] point of view on this issue, and I'm sure that will continue."

The legislation would allow a procedure known as therapeutic cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer. Researchers hope the technique will lead to new treatments and cures for diseases from diabetes and sickle-cell anemia to Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis.

In a sign of the tight battle, some backers have begun to modulate their rhetoric on the bill, portraying it as a way to carefully regulate the research. They stress that the bill would outlaw human reproductive cloning, impose strict research guidelines, and ban the creation of human embryos for research.

''We are trying to create responsible and ethical guidelines in order to do this kind of science more responsibly," said Senator Jack Hart, a South Boston Democrat who is expected to help shepherd the bill through the Senate. ''People expect policy makers to . . . make sure these moral and ethical guidelines are built into this [bill]."

Business also is at stake. Massachusetts is trying to compete in the biotechnology sector with other states, including California, whose voters last fall decided to pump $3 billion into stem-cell research. Travis said he hoped restrictions on stem-cell research in the Bay State would send biotechnology firms in a different direction.

''I'm all for the industry growing in Massachusetts, but why the industry took this route, I don't understand," he said.

Representative John H. Rogers, a Norwood Democrat, said House leaders are polling their members to gauge support, but that DiMasi has told Democrats to vote their conscience on the bill. That means lawmakers won't face the sort of arm-twisting and cajoling customary on close votes.

''He agrees that it's an issue of fundamental beliefs, akin to the death penalty and physician-assisted suicide," Rogers said.

Senator Cynthia Creem said compromise would be impossible, to some degree, on an issue of such volatility. ''Those people who want to ban embryonic stem-cell research -- the governor and others -- are not going to be pleased by this bill," Creem said.

''I think it will pass in the Senate," she added. ''But there seems to be a greater number of religious concerns voiced by House members. I don't know that it won't pass there, the question is the two-thirds."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.