Two weeks ago I told you about the bogus “cloning ban” that Senators Dianne Feinstein and Orin Hatch introduced, the craftily worded Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Protection Act. Today Wesley Smith weighs in on the Daily Standard. This bill eerily reminds me of Amendment 2, mostly in the way that it falsely defines human cloning as the implantation of the product of SCNT rather than the process of SCNT itself. It’s just filled with junk science and is all around bad legislation.

Smith and others also weigh in on the egg donation/payment problem in the bill, which we had with Amendment 2. Interestingly, at a life issues forum yesterday for my diocese, the president of Vitae Caring Foundation and Life Communications Fund offered us some post election polling data about Amendment 2 and said that the egg problem was not a big issue when it came to changing from a yes to no vote on the amendment. The issue, as he put it, is CLONING CLONING CLONING! The more people realized that Amendment 2 expressly protected human cloning, even for research, the more they opposed it.

The key here, folks, is education. Talk to your friends, neighbors and relatives and let them know what cloning is and the tricks that are being used to change the language of the debate.

Some Resources:

Family Research Council
President’s Council on Bioethics
Mary Meets Dolly
Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics
The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity