Washington D.C., Jun 6, 2007 / 12:00 pm
Wisconsin Right to Life learned late yesterday that a bill to foster the creation of cloned human embryos, for the purpose of using them in research that will kill them, will be on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives today, Wednesday, June 6. The legislation, House Resolution 2560, is sponsored by Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Co.), who interestingly had opposed similar legislation in 2003.
"This is a blatant move on the part of the House Democratic leadership to ram the DeGette bill through the U.S. House," said Susan Armacost, Legislative Director of Wisconsin Right to Life.
According to Armacost, the bill is deceptive because it is labeled “as a "ban" on human cloning, but it is nothing of the sort! It is a bill to legitimize the use of cloning in order to create any number of human embryos for use in research that will kill them. The killing of human embryos is opposed by 75% of the public, noted Armacost.
Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), co-chairman of the Bipartisan Pro-Life Caucus, said about the bill that, “the legislation makes it a crime to allow a cloned human being to survive past a certain unspecified point. In other words, this bizarre piece of legislation would make it illegal-not to kill a cloned human being.”
In another illogical move, the legislation states that, “if a woman was to have a cloned human embryo implanted in her womb, she could go to jail for up to 10 years and/or be fined up to $10 million.”
H.R. 2560 is a "clone-and-kill" bill, which would pave the way for establishment of human embryo farms in the United States," said Wisconsin Right to Life.
The cloning vote which will occur today is only one day before the House is scheduled to take up S. 5, a bill to mandate federal funding of the kind of research that requires the killing of human embryos. The embryos utilized under S. 5 would be created by in vitro fertilization, not cloning.
To view the letter sent by the National Right to Life Committee to the House can be viewed at: http://www.nrlc.org