WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 31, 2003 (Zenit.org).- 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.
