An official of the U.S. bishops' conference urged Congress
to support the Human Cloning Prohibition Act, warning that an alternative bill
would not ban such cloning at all.
Richard Doerflinger said a similar-sounding Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell
Research Protection Act -- despite its name -- is not a ban at all.
Doerflinger, deputy director of the bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life
Activities, gave testimony last week before a Senate subcommittee on science,
technology and space. He was asked to comment on the two pending federal bills
now offered as a response to human cloning.
Alluding to numerous deficiencies in the cloning-stem cell legislation,
Doerflinger said this bill "does nothing whatever to ban the use of the
cloning procedure to ban human embryos, for any purpose -- or even to restrict
someone's ability to create them for no discernible purpose at all."
"What it does ban is ‘embryo transfer,' a distinct procedure already in
use by fertility clinics across the world for many years; and this creates
serious legal and enforcement problems," Doerflinger said.
"This bill allows cloning research that will facilitate what its sponsors
claim to oppose -- that is, cloning to produce born children," he
continued. "This is widely acknowledged by experts who support cloning for
research in general and S. 303 [the bill] in particular."
Doerflinger said S. 245 -- the so-called Brownback/Landrieu proposal -- by
contrast does ban human cloning as that is scientifically and accurately
defined. He said it also:
-- imposes its penalties on irresponsible researchers, not on vulnerable women;
-- avoids the moral, legal and constitutional problems raised by efforts to
"ban" pregnancy and birth;
-- effectively attacks the threat of "reproductive cloning" at its
root, by preventing the production of cloned human embryos;
-- bans shipping, receiving or importing of cloned human embryos for any
purpose, preventing any collusion by the U.S. government with those who wish to
violate other countries' laws against cloning.