I'll never forget a woman I met last fall at a town hall meeting on stem-cell research. She stood up, her frail body shaking, and pleaded for her government to embrace stem-cell research. It was the moral clarity of her message that will stay with me forever.

``It's too late for me,'' she said, ``but we need to do this for those who still have hope.''

It's not too late for 13-year- old Garrett Burgess of Chelmsford, paralyzed at the age of 5, who traveled to all 50 states with his father to make the case for stem-cell research his doctors believe hold the promise that he can one day walk again.

In Massachusetts, we need to think of this moral challenge as Gov. Mitt Romney decides whether to sign or veto landmark legislation to allow research that holds out hope for millions. It's a question of our values as a state and a people, and these questions should never be answered lightly - but they must be answered.

More than 100 million Americans suffer from illnesses that one day might be wiped away with stem-cell therapy. Stem cells could replace damaged heart cells or cells destroyed by cancer, offering a new lease on life to those with a diagnosis that once came with a death sentence. Stem cells have the power to slow the loss of a grandmother's memory, calm the hand of an uncle with Parkinson's, save a child from a lifetime of daily insulin shots or permanently lift a best friend from a wheelchair.

Some of the most pioneering cures and treatments are now right at our fingertips, but because of politics they could remain beyond reach.

Nationally, America has been losing its lead in science. Our share of industrial patents is down, our share of Nobel prizes is down, our published research is down and the number of doctorates in the sciences is down.

This is not the way we do things in Massachusetts. We're a state of discovery - a place where innovators and optimists are free to dream and explore. Where government encourages creativity and entrepreneurship instead of stifling it. Where we're always pushing the boundaries of knowledge.

This hasn't just been a story of scientific imagination, but of political imagination - from leaders at every step who recognized the hope and possibilities of science to save lives.

And that's why this groundbreaking legislation on stem-cell research must become law. Every day that we wait, more than 3,000 Americans die from diseases that may someday be treatable because of stem-cell research.

We must make funding for this research a priority. Above all, we must look to the future not with fear, but with the hope and the faith that advances in science will advance our highest ideals.

Progress has always brought with it the worry that we have gone too far. Some questioned the morality of heart transplants. We heard the same kind of arguments against biotech research that now saves stroke victims and leukemia patients.

The question is no different on stem-cell research. People of good will and good sense can resolve the ethical issues without stopping lifesaving research. There's already bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate to ban human cloning and allow therapeutic cloning to advance. This issue transcends political labels. That's why Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Nancy Reagan refuse to tie the hands of doctors and oppose restrictions on lifesaving research.

It should be no different in our state. Massachusetts has long led the country in great discoveries, always upholding the highest standards, ensuring our breakthroughs and our beliefs go hand-in-hand. And when it comes to stem-cell research, policymakers have worked to find common ground and draw strict and appropriate ethical guidelines, and they've succeeded.

I hope that Romney signs this bill and makes it clear that in Massachusetts, we say yes to knowledge, yes to discovery and yes to leading a new era of hope for all.