Posted on 06/09/2005 10:05:06 PM PDT by Coleus
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- As both houses of the Massachusetts Legislature voted to override the governor's "partial veto" of a bill promoting embryonic stem-cell research over the strong objections of the state's Catholic bishops, Catholic leaders in Delaware and Michigan geared up for similar battles.
"For the first time in our nation's history, we will be giving government approval for the systematic destruction of innocent human beings so that their body parts can be harvested for scientific research," said Bishop Michael A. Saltarelli of Wilmington, Del., in a May 26 pastoral statement about the Delaware Regenerative Medicine Act, expected to be debated by the state's General Assembly in June.
The legislation, announced May 16, would allow researchers to use embryonic stem cells harvested in a process that kills the embryo. The embryos would come from fertility clinics after their parents donated them for scientific research.
The bill also would ban human cloning for reproductive purposes, outlaw the sale of embryos and create an 11-member Human Stem-Cell Research Advisory Committee to develop guidelines for acquiring embryonic stem cells and using them in research.
The proposal poses "an even more chilling specter" than the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision, Bishop Saltarelli said, since the bill, if passed, "will make human beings into commodities to be exchanged, manipulated and used for the benefit of other people. Even human reason unaided by religion tells us that respect for the dignity of the human person demands at a minimum that human beings should never be treated as mere means to an end."
The bishop said the proposal "fails to recognize that there is an ethical alternative to human embryonic stem-cell research," namely research on adult stem cells, which "has already yielded many medical cures (and) holds the promise for many more breakthroughs."
The Michigan Catholic Conference had similar arguments against proposed legislation in that state that would reverse the ban on human cloning to allow for the creation and mandated destruction of embryos for stem-cell research.
Proponents have said the proposal would ease Michigan's economic problems by attracting medical researchers to the state.
"The proposed legislation represents an ideology that says by spending public tax dollars to clone human beings and destroy living embryos the state will be addressing its economic concerns," said Paul A. Long, vice president for public policy at the conference, in a statement. "The Michigan Legislature should look at more reasoned and ethical approaches to bring jobs to the state rather than relying on 'clone and kill' public policy measures."
Like Bishop Saltarelli, the Michigan Catholic Conference urged more attention to adult stem-cell research.
"We encourage science to research life-threatening conditions, but it must never be exempt from moral and ethical imperatives," Long said. "Adult stem-cell research offers the promise and record of considerable success."
In Massachusetts, legislators upheld by wide margins their earlier passage of legislation endorsing cloning and embryo research, overriding Gov. Mitt Romney's "partial veto" and rejecting four amendments proposed by the governor.
The state Senate voted 35-2 to override, while the House reiterated its approval for the legislation by a 112-42 margin.
Romney had said he would sign the bill if changes were made to remove language defining life as beginning at implantation; remove a loophole allowing human embryo farming; strengthen protections against the exploitation of women as egg donors; and ban all forms of human cloning. All four amendments were rejected by both houses.
Although the bill involved no funding of stem-cell research by the commonwealth, legislative leaders indicated that the next step might be to request up to $100 million in public money for the research.
In neighboring Connecticut May 31, the House of Representatives approved legislation giving stem-cell researchers in the state $100 million over 10 years. The Senate had already passed the bill, and Gov. M. Jodi Rell has said she would sign it.
Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport had called on Connecticut Catholics to oppose the legislation, "not (only) on religious grounds, but on scientific, logical, ethical and humanitarian grounds."
"To say that embryos bear no resemblance to a human being may score political points but it is an unreasonable, unscientific statement. Nor is it logical," he said in a newspaper column earlier this year.
"The human embryo will never develop into a tree or a giraffe," he added. "It simply isn't reasonable to think of the embryo as other than human."
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Contributing to this story was Gary Morton in Wilmington.
The embryos would come from fertility clinics after their parents donated them for scientific research.>>
This is why the Catholic Church bans In-vitro fertilization. The embryos which are used for embryonic stem cell harvesting are the "by-products" of the IVF procedure where many eggs are fertilized, human life created, then discarded and sentenced to a life frozen in a Gulag at sub-zero temperatures or used to harvest their parts in a lab. Adoption is the loving option
Croatia's Catholic Bishops Warn In Vitro Fertilization is “a Serious Crime”
DONUM VITAE
Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation
Replies to Certain Questions of the Day
February 22, 1987
Bishops in Croatia assail fertility method
Embryo Adoptions. Donation. Snowflake. Embryo Adoption Information
bttt
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