Pro-Lifers Say NJ's New Law Permits Human Cloning, Mandates Killing Babies
by Jenni Parker and Bill Fancher
January 14, 2004
(AgapePress) - New Jersey's cloning law is now in effect and it has no shortage of critics. Among the latest are the Christian Medical and Dental Associations and several pro-life advocates who contend that this legislation gives legal sanction to a culture of death.The CMDA and other pro-life organizations have come down hard on the bill (S1909/A2840), recently signed by New Jersey Democrat Governor Jim McGreevey. The legislation legally sanctions the destruction of human embryos for research purposes as well as lethal experimentation on cloned human babies throughout pregnancy. The politically powerful Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) lobbied for the passage of the law, which takes fatal research on cloned human beings to an alarming new level.
Political heavyweights such as California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah and paraplegic Hollywood actor-turned activist Christopher Reeve have thrown their support behind S1909, representing it to the media as -- in Reeve's words -- a move toward "ethical and responsible scientific inquiry." But many pro-life advocates feel the New Jersey cloning legislation is a bill that kills and, perhaps worse, commodifies unborn children.
CMDA Head, Dr. David Stevens, says he is shocked and appalled by the new law that purportedly bans human cloning. Although it has been touted as a benevolent "stem-cell research bill" that claims to prohibit the cloning of human beings, the legislation's fine print does allow for the cloning of human embryos -- as long as they are subsequently destroyed.
Dangers of the Cloning Bill
"This is probably the worst law that's been put on the books in this country in a long time," Stevens says. "First of all, it allows cloning while at the same time it says it's prohibiting it. It even states that people can create clones and sell the parts of the baby -- sacrifice the infants for their parts for transplantation."
The aspect of the new law that Stevens finds particularly troubling is that the legislation actually requires the killing of all cloned human embryos and newborns. "It requires the abortion of a cloned embryo. If a woman doesn't do that, she can end up in prison for 10 to 20 years," Stevens says. The doctor points out that the law even states that it "protects" clones up through the newborn stage -- which "seems to imply that people could clone and actually sacrifice the infant, after birth, for its parts."
Some opponents have been lobbying against the legislation ever since its proposal. In a letter sent to New Jersey's governor last year, members of the president's Commission on Bioethics, including a university professor from New Jersey, warned of the dangers of the bill.
National Review Online reports that Professor Robert P. George of Princeton argued against the bill in his letter and posed a scenario in which a woman might have second thoughts about aborting her developing cloned fetus. He asked whether in such a case the courts would be asked to enforce an abortion contract.
"We hope and trust that no court would do that," George said. "But then we would have what the sponsors of the legislation say they oppose: the birth of human clones."
The ethicist also noted that the bill, which purportedly bans trafficking in fetal body parts, expressly permits "reasonable payment" for "removal, processing, disposal, preservation, quality control, storage, transplantation, or implantation of embryonic or cadaveric fetal tissue."
George said the New Jersey bill, as worded, was a "virtual invitation to cloning entrepreneurs to conduct in the State of New Jersey what would amount to fetal farming for research, presumably including experimental treatments." He noted that nothing in the legislation prevented cloning speculators from paying women to gestate embryos and submit to abortions for the purpose of producing human tissues and organs for medical or research purposes.
More Pro-Lifers Voice Opposition
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is another group that is condemning the New Jersey cloning law for its pro-abortion implications. Cathy Cleaver Ruse, director of planning and information for the Pro-Life Secretariat of the USCCB, believes the legislation was designed to encourage government-sanctioned "human fetus farms" and therefore violates the sanctity of human life on multiple levels.
"This is the most extreme, inhumane pro-cloning legislation in the country," Ruse says. "It should be scorned by every American who believes in common decency and basic human rights for all."
Pro-life forces in the state have also weighed in, expressing opposition to the new cloning law. Mary Tasy of New Jersey Right to Life warns that the legislation will result in human life being treated as a commodity and "classes of lesser humans" being created and sacrificed for the so-called good of humanity. She describes "the unethical practices authorized" under New Jersey's new law as "the ultimate desecration of human life."
Tasy calls the signing of the "Clone and Kill Bill" by Governor McGreevy "a sinister, unprecedented, egregious affront to humanity." She predicts that the fallout of the law will be "the creation of a foul climate where ghoulish human experimentation and organ harvesting will be performed and human embryo and fetal farms will flourish throughout our state."
The New Jersey Right to Life spokeswoman accuses proponents of stem-cell research of shamefully misleading individuals suffering with illness and disease by making false and unsubstantiated claims about human embryonic stem cells. She says, "Unlike adult stem cells which are curing people, embryonic stem cells have never been used successfully in clinical trials in humans and carry significant risks, including immune rejection and tumor formation."
Tasy is outraged by the apparent campaign of misinformation and points out that the new cloning law does not merely limit destructive research to the human embryonic stage as Biotech mouthpiece Christopher Reeve claims, but that it in fact allows such research all the way up through the fetal and newborn stages of human development.
Biotech Industry's Agenda Exposed
Wesley J. Smith, author of the book The Culture of Death (Encounter, 2002), asserts that S-1909 "has blown the cover of the true agenda of the biotechnology industry." Smith says the industry often pretends in the media that its aim has been to restrict therapeutic cloning to the harvesting of stem cells from early embryos, but he believes BIO's enthusiastic support of the New Jersey bill "proves that [proponents of cloning] want an unlimited license to harvest cloned human life from inception through the ninth month."
Smith contends that the radical New Jersey "cloning license" must be kept before the public and the industry must be held accountable for its pretenses.
It was a year ago this month that President George W. Bush asked Congress for a total ban on human cloning. Congress has not given him one, and National Review editor Kathryn Jean Lopez feels that such a ban will not happen until there are more votes for the measure in the U.S. Senate. She suggests that those who oppose cloning would be wise not only to re-elect their "ally in the White House," but also to pay heed to the Senate race in the current election year.
