Disability rights activists and their allies have fought for decades for inclusion. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are the ultimate exclusion. There's some confusion in the public arena about stem cells and their potential for healing the human body. Let's try to simplify things. The ban was enacted in reaction to morally objectionable proposals for embryo research made in 1994 by the NIH's Human Embryo Research Panel.
Stem cells are available from two locations.
The other source is from umbilical cord blood at delivery time. Both are called stem cells. The cord blood stem cells can theoretically develop into only a few types of organs. These kinds of stem cells, of course, can be obtained quite ethically. The other stem cell is totipotent.