ABC News calls this a “victory for the Obama administration,” but in truth it’s a major victory for US science in the struggle against the powerful forces of religious fundamentalism, as a federal appeals court strikes down a lower court’s ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

In a victory for the Obama administration, a federal appeals court has set aside a lower-court ruling that would have blocked the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research. …

The court found that the law—the Dickey-Wicker Amendment enacted in 1996—is “ambiguous” and that the NIH has “reasonably concluded” that while the law bans federal funding for the destructive act of deriving cells from an embryo “it does not prohibit funding a research project in which an hESC will be used.”

The Obama administration contends that no embryos are actually destroyed with federal funds and that the monies only pay for research conducted under strict ethical guidelines on derived stem cells.