by
Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 11,
2008
Lincoln,
NE
(LifeNews.com) -- A leading pro-life group in Nebraska says media
outlets there are misreporting a new bill on embryonic stem cell research
as a compromise between pro-life groups and legislators who want taxpayer
dollars used on the destructive science. The organization says it can't
support the bill and is working for alternative legislation.
At the end of last week, media outlets reported that a bill the legislature’s judiciary committee approved on a 6-1 margin was supposedly a compromise between both sides.
The measure bans human cloning for reproductive purposes but appears to allow scientists to clone and kill human embryos for research.
But Julie Schmit-Albin, the executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, tells LifeNews.com that the measure, LB 606, is not a compromise on bioethics issues and her organization, and other pro-life groups, don't support it.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” she told LifeNews.com.
Schmit-Albin said neither the coalition of pro-life groups lobbying together on stem cell research issues nor Sen. Mark Christensen, the author of a bill banning human cloning were informed of the compromise until recently.
She told LifeNews.com that the pro-life groups in the coalition “met and went through the LB 606 language section by section and found at least four egregious sections which would need to be addressed before some or all of our groups could even support LB 606.”
Schmit-Albin was also concerned that the Judiciary Committee defeated Senator Christensen’s bill, LB 100, to ban both reproductive and research-based cloning. She said the panel was wrong to defeat his bill when so many lawmakers and groups have expressed support for it.
“Suffice it to say that given the way the LB 606 language was railroaded through Judiciary, without adequate give and take on the part of the pro-life coalition (not to mention Senator Christensen) we never agreed to LB 606 as a ‘compromise’ over LB 700, the true cloning ban,” Schmit-Albin told LifeNews.com.
The pro-life advocate told LifeNews.com that Nebraska Right to Life and other pro-life groups would support a pull motion by Sen. Christensen if he decides to try to have the full legislature take the cloning ban and allow a debate and vote.
LB 106 allows state funding for grants for non-embryonic stem cell research and would put scientists in prison for five years and fine them for engaging in reproductive cloning.
Related
web sites:
Nebraska Right to Life- http://www.nebraskartl.org
