Here is a transcript of Julie Schmit-Albin's well stated presentation today to the Nebraska Unicameral's Judiciary Committee today regarding the Human Cloning Ban. It's very good.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Julie Schmit-Albin and I am Executive Director of Nebraska Right to Life, the state affiliate to the National Right to Life Committee. Nebraska Right to Life would like to go on record in support of LB 700, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act.
Since the 2000 session we have appeared before this committee to support bans on unethical medical research. It started with a ban on aborted fetal tissue research when it was discovered in 1999 that UNMC had been conducting that research ever since 1993. Subsequent years found legislation introduced to ban expanded embryonic stem cell research and human cloning for reproductive and research purposes. As each session came and went, so did the Legislature’s opportunity to draw a line in the sand on research which reduces human beings to commodities. We have continued to ask the Legislature since 2000, where will you draw the line?
If not aborted fetal tissue; then surely at expanding the destruction of embryos in fertility labs. If not there; then surely at somatic cell nuclear transfer, also known as human cloning.
It probably never occurred to any of us back in 2000 when we were trying to stop UNMC from using aborted babies for research that we would still be here in 2007 asking the Legislature to push back. But now instead of “just” using aborted babies for research; UNMC and others want to create new human life for the express purpose of killing that life for research. How have we gone in seven years from a discussion of aborted fetal tissue research to now creating new human embryos for the sole purpose of harvesting their stem cells? Cloning creates human embryos for no other purpose than to cannibalize them. Even our adversaries on the other side of this issue seem to concur that no one approves of reproductive cloning where an embryo would be implanted in a woman’s womb and allowed to gestate to birth. But they do approve of clone and kill missions where cloned embryos would gestate for only a matter of days before their stem cells would be harvested and the embryo destroyed.
Why are we even having this discussion? For the pro-life movement, allowing human cloning for research is the new Roe v. Wade. It is a completely whole new assault on human life and a massive slide down the slippery slope to where we will all have to wonder who will be the next vulnerable class of human beings. Will it be the mentally handicapped, the infirm and elderly who are deemed unproductive members of society? Who will science tap next as its great new resource? Where are the parameters? What was macabre and unthinkable just seven short years ago is now touted as “hope” for those suffering from debilitating diseases.
Missouri’s Legislature failed to act in recent years to ban cloning. Last year an end run was done around that Legislature by bio-tech interests that had the funds to conduct an initiative petition drive to enshrine cloning for research into Missouri’s Constitution. Because they had the funds to frame the message, disinformation about an already confusing topic allowed human cloning to pass by a small margin. Nebraska had a then-University Regent publically floating a trial balloon about running a similar initiative in Nebraska. Any initiative petition on cloning done in Nebraska would come from our well-heeled opponents who would have the money to frame the issue with, what we fear, would be the same results as Missouri.
It is past time for Nebraska’s Legislature to step up to the plate on the issue of unethical research. The Legislature needs to finally draw a line in the sand with those who continue pushing the envelope. Our opponents were not forthcoming about their real desire being the ability to clone until four representatives of UNMC came to the March 10, 2005 hearing on LB 750 and LB 437 and opposed both. Those bills would have banned expanded embryonic stem cell research and cloning. In their desire to leave open the door for cloning; they publically moved beyond what is supposed to be their official policy of no cloning.
Please vote LB 700 out of committee and let the whole body debate and vote on this important issue. Thank you.
