Missouri Amendment 2 Target of New Ad From St. Louis Cardinals Players
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 3, 2006
Jefferson City, MO (LifeNews.com) — Another sports star has joined the list of pro-life luminaries who have spoken out against Amendment 2, a Missouri measure that would have the state promoting human cloning and embryonic stem cell research. St. Louis Cardinals shortstop David Eckstein has added his name to a newspaper ad against it.
Eckstein, the most valuable player of the World Series, joined teammate Jeff Suppan and Kansas City Royals star Mike Sweeney in opposing the amendment.
Suppan and Sweeney have already appeared with actress Patricia Heaton in a television commercial that has run statewide.
The newspaper ad features the three baseball players in an "open letter to the people of Missouri."
They call themselves "athletes with moral convictions" and say that what Missouri voters won’t see on ballots at the polls is the "fine print" of Amendment 2, which they say promotes human cloning for research.
"Promoters of this amendment have been engaged in a campaign of deception, taking advantage of the generosity and good will of the people of Missouri," they say.
"It is not fair play to say women will not be paid for their eggs, when the fine print allows biotech special interests to pay women to harvest their eggs, which will be needed in the millions for the kind of unethical experimentation this amendment would allow," the players add. "Harvesting eggs can be extremely dangerous and has resulted in death."
"When it comes to something as important as amending the Missouri Constitution, the least the public should expect is honesty and fairness, this amendment is neither and we urge Missourians to vote ‘no’ on Amendment 2," they conclude.
Donn Rubin, chairman of the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, the Stowers research Institute backed group that is supporting the amendment, told AP the players were wrong and repeated claims that it doesn’t support cloning.
Rubin told the Post-Dispatch that Eckstein and the other athletes in the ad are either "being misled or they are purposely being misleading."
"And I prefer to believe my sports heroes are not deliberately misleading us," Rubin said.
The latest ad is set to run today in newspapers across the state, including the Post-Dispatch and others.
Eckstein, a former Anaheim Angels player, has frequently participated in the Gift for Life walk to raise funds for organ donation and is an outspoken Christian player.
His siblings Susan, Christine and Ken all experienced dialysis and have been touched by the Gift of Life through Kidney transplants.
