Kagan supported cloning of human embryos for research

During the time that Elena Kagan served as a top domestic policy advisor for President Bill Clinton (1997-1999), she played a key role in shaping and executing the President’s response to the development of new cloning technology. Memoranda and emails released by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library on Friday document Kagan’s involvement in crafting an anti-life position and legislative proposal.

In a May 29, 1997 memo to the President, Kagan and Jack Gibbons (Assistant to the President for Science and Technology) recommended: “(1) that [the President] support domestic legislation banning human cloning, and . . . announce specific legislation at the top of your June 10th press conference; and (2) that the U.S. support the gist of France's proposed cloning paragraph [in the G-8 Communiqué] while insisting on critical modifications.”[1] However, as the memo explains, Kagan’s “ban” on cloning only banned the use of cloning aimed at the live-birth of a baby, not at cloning that takes human life.

A June 3, 1997 memo to the President from Todd Stern (Staff Secretary) and Phil Caplan (Assistant to the President), which was submitted along with Kagan’s memo, clarified that the proposed ban should allow the cloning of human embryos for experimentation. With a check mark, President Clinton indicated his approval of the recommendation by “Jack/Elena . . . that you announce your support for NBAC-type[2] legislation and that you propose specific legislative language”.[3]

In a follow-up June 8, 1997 memo to the President, Kagan and Gibbons further clarified that “NBAC's proposed legislation --and, as currently drafted, your bill --would not ban the creation of cloned embryos for research purposes.”[4] On the same day, Stern drove that home once again in bold-face type, writing: “[t]he attached Kagan/Gibbons memo recommends that you follow NBAC in not banning the cloning of embryos for research.”[5]

The cloning of human embryos creates living human beings in the earliest stage of development. “Using them for research” means they will be “disaggregated” and killed as part of the research. By endorsing such practices, Kagan demonstrated her disrespect for unborn human life.

Kagan’s involvement in cloning policy was not limited to writing memos. Over the course of several months, she was in frequent dialogue with other administration officials about the content of Clinton’s legislative language, which Congressional proposals they should support or oppose, and how much they could work with Senate Republicans. While most of the emails in the file are written to Kagan, it is clear that she led an administration cloning meeting in March 1998 and was asked to provide specific advice about the President’s legislation and Statements of Administration Policy (SAP).

The Administration’s position, which Kagan was deeply involved in constructing, is unethical and would be more accurately characterized as “pseudo-science”. While Kagan and the Clinton administration tried to create a distinction between cloning humans to be used in research and cloning humans for live-birth, there are not two distinct forms of human cloning. These are simply two rationales for the same scientific procedure, known as “somatic cell nuclear transfer.”

Kagan and Gibbons stated in a memo that they saw “no moral rationale for treating embryos created through cloning differently from embryos developed through other means (e.g. in vitro fertilization) when embryos are used solely for research.”[6] While the life-affirming response to this would be to ban the destruction of all human embryos for research, they worry instead that halting such destruction might inhibit research.[7] In other words, they put pragmatism over ethics, willing to sacrifice human life in the pursuit of other goals.

Kagan’s disregard for the value of human life at its most vulnerable stage creates concerns about how she will consider common sense abortion regulations and other cases that will come before the Court. First, it shows she is deeply hostile to protecting the unborn, even when abortion is not an issue. Second, when combined with other statements and writings that reveal her judicial philosophy and her views on the constitutionality of regulations that protect unborn life, her views raise concerns about whether she believes federal restrictions on funding for embryonic stem cell research or cloning, or bans on these procedures, at the state or national level, are constitutional.

[2] Kagan and Gibbons’ cloning policy and legislative recommendations were based in part on the recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (NBAC), which was established by President Clinton.

Elena Kagan and her Socialist 'hero' Cass Sunstein

From David Horowitz's
FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org
PROFILE: ELENA KAGAN

When it was announced in 2008 that Cass Sunstein would be joining the Harvard Law School faculty, Kagan said:

"Cass Sunstein is the preeminent legal scholar of our time -- the most wide-ranging, the most prolific, the most cited, and the most influential. His work in any one of the fields he pursues -- administrative law and policy, constitutional law and theory, behavioral economics and law, environmental law, to name a non-exhaustive few -- would put him in the very front ranks of legal scholars; the combination is singular and breathtaking."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2398
_________________________________________________

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From David Horowitz's
FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org
PROFILE: CASS SUNSTEIN

Contributing editor to The New Republic and The American Prospect
Played an active role in opposing the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998
Served as an advisor for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008
Was appointed (by Barack Obama) to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in 2009
________________________________________________________________________________________
[Cass Sunstein on Socialism and "wealth redistribution"]:
________________________________________________________________________________________

Sunstein has argued in favor of bringing socialism (in the form of expanded wefare benefits and wealth redistribution) to the United States, but contends that the country's "white majority" opposes such a development because of deep-seated racism:

"The absence of a European-style social welfare state is certainly connected with the widespread perception among the white majority that the relevant programs would disproportionately benefit African Americans (and more recently Hispanics)."

Sunstein depicts socialist nations as being more committed than their capitalist counterparts to the welfare of their own citizens:

"During the Cold War, the debate about [social welfare] guarantees took the form of pervasive disagreement between the United States and its communist adversaries. Americans emphasized the importance of civil and political liberties, above all free speech and freedom of religion, while communist nations stressed the right to a job, health care, and a social minimum."

________________________________________________________________________________________
[Cass Sunstein on "Climate Change" and "distributive justice"]:
________________________________________________________________________________________

In 2007 Sunstein co-authored (with fellow attorney Eric A. Posner) a 39-page University of Chicago Law School paper titled "Climate Change Justice," which held that it was "desirable" for America to pay "justice" to poorer nations by entering into a compensation agreement that would result in a financial loss for the United States. The paper refers several times to "distributive justice."
Sunstein and Posner further speculate about the possibility of achieving this redistribution by means other than direct payments:
- "It is even possible that desirable redistribution is more likely to occur through climate change policy than otherwise, or to be accomplished more effectively through climate policy than through direct foreign aid."
- "We agree that if the United States does spend a great deal on emissions reductions as part of an international agreement, and if the agreement does give particular help to disadvantaged people, considerations of distributive justice support its action, even if better redistributive mechanisms are imaginable."
- "If the United States agrees to participate in a climate change agreement on terms that are not in the nation's interest, but that help the world as a whole, there would be no reason for complaint, certainly if such participation is more helpful to poor nations than conventional foreign-aid alternatives."
- "If we care about social welfare, we should approve of a situation in which a wealthy nation is willing to engage in a degree of self-sacrifice when the world benefits more than that nation loses."
  
  [snip]
  
  ________________________________________________________________________________________
  [Cass Sunstein on the "Fairness Doctrine" (restricting opposing political views)]:
  ________________________________________________________________________________________
  
  Also in The Partial Constitution, Sunstein promotes the notion of a "First Amendment New Deal" in the form of a new "Fairness Doctrine" that would authorize a panel of "nonpartisan experts" to ensure that a "diversity of view[s]" is presented on the airwaves.
  [snip]
  
  ________________________________________________________________________________________
  [Cass Sunstein on federally-funded abortions]:
  ________________________________________________________________________________________
  
  With regard to citizens who object to having their tax dollars finance abortions, Sunstein writes:
  
  "There would be no tension with the establishment clause if people with religious or other objections were forced to pay for that procedure (abortion). Indeed, taxpayers are often forced to pay for things - national defense, welfare, certain forms of art, and others - to which they have powerful moral and even religious objections."
  
  Lots more on Cass Sunstein here:
  http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2422

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AUL's Kagan File: The "Human Cloning" Memo