An ABA resolution, passed Tuesday by voice vote and with no member speaking against it, is aimed specifically at a U.S. Senate bill that would ban cloning.
«Once again, the ABA has decided to choose sides in a public debate of profound moral and social consequence,» said Cathleen Cleaver, spokeswoman for the bishops’ pro-life activities secretariat. «And it has once again positioned itself against life.»
«This is why so many Americans are coming to see the ABA more as a politicized lobby group than as a professional legal association,» Cleaver said.
The resolution itself avoids the plain language of cloning and adopts the wording of pro-cloning lobbyists at the Senate, Cleaver noted. The resolution supports «research involving cell nucleus transfer that is not intended to replicate a human being.»
«The ABA does not recognize the child at any stage before birth as a fellow human being,» Cleaver said. «The ABA therefore adds its name to the cloning advocates who favor creating life in the laboratory solely to destroy it for research at the embryonic or even fetal stage.»