New Jersey Right to Life
113 North Avenue West
Cranford, NJ 07016
For Immediate Release
Contact Marie Tasy, Public & Legislative Affairs Director
(732) 846-2000
McGREEVEY SIGNS CLONE AND KILL BILL
NJ BECOMES FIRST JURISDICTION TO LEGALIZE HUMAN
CLONING
GOV AND DEM LEADERS FULFILL COMMITMENT TO BIOTECH; SELL OUT HUMANITY
January 4, 2004—New Jersey Right to Life, the state’s largest pro-life organization, with over 125,000 household members, has issued the following statement in response to the news that Governor McGreevey has signed A2840/S1909.
“The bill signed by Governor McGreevey today is a sinister, unprecedented, egregious affront to humanity,” said Marie Tasy, Public & Legislative Affairs for New Jersey Right to Life. “This is truly a dark day for New Jersey,” she added. Commenting on McGreevey’statement that he wants to make New Jersey the nation’s leader for medical research,” Ms Tasy said, “It is extremely perverse and objectionable that his goal of making ‘New Jersey the nation’s leader for medical research’ includes the unethical practice of human cloning and the harvesting and use of body parts of cloned humans in the embryonic and fetal stages of development which is authorized under this law.” Tasy said the Governor ignored experts’ warnings about the morally disastrous consequences of the bill as well as the mounting opposition from the public urging him to veto A2840/S1909.
Recalling the December 15 vote by the Assembly, Tasy said, “Democratic leaders made threats, twisted arms, and traded favors to get the razor-thin majority of 41 votes required for passage.” She said that lawmakers and McGreevey deliberately tried to push it through before the Holidays because they believed the public would not be paying close attention to action occurring in Trenton. “The covert and strong-arm tactics employed by these lawmakers throughout the entire legislative process was reprehensible and truly an example of politics at its worst.”
“Proponents continue to shamefully mislead individuals suffering with illness and disease by making false and unsubstantiated claims about human embryonic stem cells,” said Tasy. “Unlike adult stem cells which are curing people, embryonic stem cells have never been used successfully in clinical trials in humans and carry significant risks, including immune rejection and tumor formation.” Ms. Tasy said this fact was readily admitted by scientists who testified before the NJ Legislature in favor of these bills.
Tasy said, “This bill does not just limit destructive research to the human embryonic stage as Biotech Spokesman Christopher Reeve claims, but allows it all the way up through the fetal and newborn stages. In signing this bill, the Governor and Democratic lawmakers have truly opened up a whole conundrum of legal problems which the sponsors refused to address. The law will result in the creation of a foul climate where ghoulish human experimentation and organ harvesting will be performed and human embryo and fetal farms will flourish throughout our state. The bill will allow Biotechnology companies to raise cloned babies to harvest stem cells or even body parts, and, allows ‘reasonable payment’ for embryonic or cadaveric fetal tissue production, implantation, transplantation and preservation costs. Because the prohibited conduct of cloning a human being draws the line only at the newborn stage, abortions up to the day of delivery would be authorized under this legislation,” noted Tasy.
In a January, 27, 2003 letter to Governor McGreevey concerning S1909/A2840, four members of the President’s Council on Bioethics asked, “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?” According to Gerard Bradley, Professor of Law at Notre Dame University and 7 other law professors who analyzed the bill, “To avoid the crime of ‘cloning,’ a putative defendant would have to kill the child in the first weeks (or months) after birth. But this would be murder. Since no one may be convicted for conduct avoidable only by committing murder, the crime of ‘cloning’ is therefore non-existent. By authorizing genetic replication in the first place, and by thus defining the crime of ‘cloning,’ these bills effectively authorize the creation of new people through cloning.”
http://www.njrtl.org/njgovletter.php
http://www.njrtl.org/ndlaw.php
“This law will allow human lives to be treated as a commodity, creating classes of lesser humans to be created and sacrificed for the good of humanity,” Tasy said. “The unethical practices authorized under this law constitutes the ultimate desecration of human life. The only notoriety McGreevey will gain is that he will forever be known as the unpopular Governor who signed an immoral decree in January, 2004, which opened the floodgates to unspeakable human rights violations and grisly human experimentation to satisfy the insatiable quest of Big Biotech,” said Tasy.
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