Congress May Consider Phony Human Cloning Ban on Wednesday 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 5, 2007
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The House of Representatives is scheduled to begin debate on a measure on Thursday to force taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research. However, pro-life leaders on Capitol Hill tell LifeNews.com that a Wednesday vote could occur on a bill that pro-life advocates consider a phony human cloning ban.
Americans strongly oppose human cloning and a new Gallup poll released today finds that 86 percent finding it morally wrong while just 11 percent say it’s alright.
While the details have not been confirmed and the Democratic leadership in the House has not affirmed that a vote will take place, one pro-life source told LifeNews.com that pro-life advocates should be on the lookout for a potential vote.
The vote, if it happens, would be on a bill that would ban the implantation of cloned embryos.
While some lawmakers would tout the bill as a ban on reproductive human cloning — because the cloned embryos would not be able to be implanted in the mother’s womb — it would have the opposition of the pro-life movement because it would allow human embryos to be cloned in the first place.
Pro-life groups have considered such provisions "clone and kill" measures because they allow human cloning for research and mandate that those days-old unborn children be killed so they can’t ever be born.
As a result, research-based cloning involves the deliberate creation and destruction of human beings for the advancement of science.
As research cloning has come up for debate in the past, pro-life advocates have also cited concerns that it would lead, like abortion, to the exploitation of women, especially poor women. This is because scientists would need a large number of human eggs to use to create the embryos for research and those eggs could only be obtained by women who donate them.
Scientists could devise methods of paying women for their eggs or reimbursing them in some other financial manner — leading poor women to subject themselves to the dangerous and painful egg extraction procedure. The procedures have led to infertility and death for some women.
Some cite the scandal in South Korea as proof and point out how Professor Hwang Woo-suk coerced women into donating their eggs for his fraudulent embryonic stem cell research and human cloning.
Polls have shown that opposition to human cloning is bipartisan.
A poll of over 4000 Americans, conducted in 2004 by the Genetics and Public Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University found that over 75% of those polled when asked: "Do you think human embryo cloning for research should be allowed at all?" said no. That included 72.5 percent of Democrats saying they oppose it.
Countries around the world such as Canada, France, Germany, and Italy have banned human cloning for both research and reproductive purposes and, in 2005, the United Nations voted 84-34 to call on nations to pass bans on human cloning.
Finally, pro-life groups say the so-called reproductive cloning ban in such a phony bill would be unenforceable because cloned human embryos are virtually indistinguishable from those who have not been cloned.
