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December 16, 2003, 9:36 a.m.
Trenton Plays God
A whole new world.
In New Jersey this morning, human cloning is one signature away from a statewide legal green light.
Democratic assemblyman Neil Cohen told his colleagues that Assembly Bill 2840 "is not the most significant law we'll write this session — but this century." He's right.
On Monday, during a lame-duck session, the New Jersey state assembly passed an unprecedented bill authorizing human cloning in the Garden State. Veiled as an innocuous "stem-cell" bill in most of the media and by its sponsors and supporters, not one state senator opposed it when it was first up for a vote a year ago this month.
When the assembly voted on Monday, all but one Republican (Rafael Fraguela) either voted "no" or abstained. Only Democratic Assemblyman (Alfred Steele) voted against the bill, and one Democratic assemblywoman (Mary Previte) abstained. That the vote was as close as it was is a credit to the work of the New Jersey Right to Life Committee, fighting against a muddle of disinformation fed by the biotech industry in and out of state. The roll call, too, suggests there is a learning curve on even the most heated issues involving human life: Republicans, for the most part, managed to reach a consensus to reject the bill, despite emotional ad campaigns — and the endorsement of Christopher Reeve.
As Wesley Smith, author of The Culture of Death, pointed out last week, the bill's "terms would make it legal in New Jersey to create a human cloned embryo, implant it in a willing woman's womb, gestate it through the ninth month, and only require that the cloned fetus be killed before it becomes a 'new human individual,' e.g., at the very point of birth. This means that [the] law would expressly permit implantation and gestation for any amount of time before the cloned fetus becomes a 'new human individual'!"
That's why the opponents of the bill, now passed by both houses of the New Jersey legislature, have accurately dubbed it a "clone-and-kill" bill.
Three members of the President's Council on Bioethics wrote to Democratic Governor James McGreevey last January imploring him not to sign the cloning bill into law. They warned that it "threatens to make New Jersey a haven for unethical medical practices, including the macabre practice of human fetal farming."
They wrote:
[The] legislation expressly authorizes the creation of new human beings by cloning and, perhaps unintentionally, their cultivation from the zygote stage through the newborn stage for the purpose of harvesting what the bills themselves refer to as "cadaveric" fetal tissue. Please pause to consider whose cadaver the tissue is to be derived from. It is the cadaver of a distinct member of the species homo sapiens — a human being — who would be brought into being by cloning and, presumably, implanted and permitted to develop to the desired stage of physical maturation for the purpose of being killed for the harvesting of his or her tissues.Although the legislation purports to ban trafficking in fetal body parts for "valuable consideration," it expressly permits "reasonable payment" for "removal, processing, disposal, preservation, quality control, storage, transplantation, or implantation of embryonic or cadaveric fetal tissue." This is a virtual invitation to cloning entrepreneurs to conduct in the State of New Jersey what would amount to fetal farming for research, presumably including experimental treatments. There seems to be nothing in the legislation to prevent cloning entrepreneurs from paying women a "reasonable" fee to gestate embryos and submit to abortions for the production of human bodily tissues and organs. The entrepreneurs could then charge a "reasonable" fee to their customers for "processing," "preserving," "storing," "transplanting," or "implanting" fetal cadavers and tissues.
And what if a gestating woman has second thoughts and decides not to abort the developing fetus? Would a court be asked to enforce a contract for abortion? We hope and trust that no court would do that. But then we would have what the sponsors of the legislation say they oppose: the birth of human clones.
The governor of New Jersey is about to take a giant leap into the brave new world. He and his staff would be wise to read the bill that has just been passed, read the bioethics council members' letter, and reconsider.
And another legislature, the U.S. Congress, should study this bill carefully and realize what's happening while they fiddle.
Kathryn Jean Lopez
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New Jersey's brave new world
December 15, 2003
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
The lame-duck New Jersey State Assembly is poised today to pass a bill members of President Bush's Council on Bioethics contend will permit human cloning. This manipulation plows new ground in the struggle over whether there should be moral limits on science's relentless thrust. With federal anti-cloning legislation stalled in the U.S. Senate, the Garden State takes the first step toward a brave new world.
This bill, passed a year ago by the state Senate, was set to roar through the Assembly in February. It was abruptly pulled from the floor after my column of Feb. 5 pointed out a national precedent would be established in Trenton. Legislative leaders determined to lie low until after the 2003 state elections, then bring back the bill before newly elected legislators are sworn in Jan. 8.
In pressing for this week's vote, the bill's sponsors misrepresent prominent Republicans as supporters. Mostly, they operate by stealth. The action is to be taken by a legislative body where 11 of 80 members are lame ducks who will not sit in the next session.
Just what they are voting on is garbled. The bill asserts that cloning a human being is a ''first degree'' crime, a prohibition harped on by its proponents. In fact, this only prohibits making a baby through nine months of gestation followed by childbirth.
Actually, the legislation permits ''somatic cell nuclear transfer,'' which the President's Council unanimously calls an authorization for ''creation of new human beings by cloning.'' The council's official report asserts ''the initial product'' of somatic cell nuclear transfer is ''a living (one-celled) cloned human embryo.'' The process intends ''to produce such an entity: one that is alive (rather than non-living), one that is human (rather than non-human or animal).'' In short, New Jersey is about to legalize human cloning technique that effectively is exempted from its disingenuous criminal prohibition.
Democratic Assemblyman Neil M. Cohen, deputy majority leader and principal sponsor, last week sent a ''Dear Colleague'' letter asking support for ''stem cell research legislation'' to fight any number of diseases. Cohen claimed backing from ''a wide variety of notables, including those with a conservative philosophy.'' He cited Nancy Reagan, Republican Senators Orrin Hatch and John McCain and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. The implication that any of them endorses Cohen's bill is a canard.
Cohen has distributed a letter written by Mrs. Reagan to Hatch, in which she favors ''new legislation to allow the ethical use of therapeutic cloning'' which might protect families from sharing pain inflicted on her because of Alzheimer's disease. She does not address the New Jersey bill and obviously is unfamiliar with it.
Hatch is more responsible than any other single senator for blocking Sen. Sam Brownback's federal anti-cloning legislation, but he cannot properly be called a backer of Cohen's bill. His aides told this column that Hatch would not support any bill permitting implantation of a cloned embryo or development of a clone for more than 14 days, both of which are permitted by the New Jersey bill. As for McCain, his staff told us: ''We have not endorsed any cloning bill in New Jersey.''
It is even more absurd to place Thompson in Jersey's brave new world. Asserting the president desires anti-cloning legislation, the secretary added that ''the administration could not support any measure purporting to ban 'reproductive' cloning while authorizing 'research' cloning.''
As the bill's contents and supporters are obscured, advocates have not encouraged full debate. When the Newark Star-Ledger blamed me for helping ''stir up enough criticism to keep the bill from passing,'' New Jersey Right to Life asked the paper to print a letter to Gov. James McGreevey from four members of the President's Council asserting that the bill ''threatens to make New Jersey a haven for human fetal farming.'' The editors said they would ''pass.'' The issue has not been fully explored as the lame-duck Assembly takes a fateful step.