Statement on Human
Cloning and the Brownback/Landrieu Bill
PRESBYTERIANS PRO-LIFE
P.O. BOX 11130
Burke, VA 20009
(703-569-9474)
Mrs. Terry Schlossberg
Executive Director, Presbyterians Pro-life
Presbyterians Pro-Life, a prolife educational,
witness and advocacy organization composed of clergy and lay
people, both men and women, who are members of the Presbyterian
Church (USA), stands unequivocally opposed to all forms of
human cloning and in full support of the Brownback/Landrieu
bill presently under consideration in the U. S. Senate. Presbyterians
stand with the overwhelming national consensus of virtually
90 percent of our people in calling for an immediate ban on
human cloning.
The deceptive and misleading distinction between "reproductive"
cloning and "therapeutic" or research cloning is both an artificial
distinction without a difference, and a dreadful admission
that the cloned embryos will be killed. Cloning is
reproduction at its very heart, and when advocates of so-called
"therapeutic" cloning affirm that they do not want to make
a cloned baby; that they only want to advance medical research;
they are in fact admitting that they intend to kill the cloned
embryo. This is the only way that "research" on cloned embryos
can take place. Spurred on by lobbyists for the biotechnology
industry, who hope to make billions of dollars by this new
technology, many members of the U. S. Senate have been persuaded
to sponsor what they call a "compromise" bill. But such a
"compromise" still leads to the same result: human life is
created to be killed. We affirm that embryonic life, even
in its simplest and least complex forms, is still human life.
At the heart of this issue is the question of what constitutes
a human life and under what conditions is human life NOT to
be protected. For Christians, it is a question of the application
of biblical teaching. Each human life began as a fertilized
ovum. It is the way our Creator designed us, and God assures
us in Holy Scripture that he knew us before we were in the
womb and that he ordained every one of our days before even
one of them began (Jeremiah 1:5; Psalm 139:16)
A recent statement by Princeton University Professor of Jurisprudence
Robert George elaborates on the meaning of these passages.
He said that human embryos are:
"whole, living members of the human species... capable
of directing from within their own integral organic functioning
and development into and through the fetal, infant, child
and adolescent stages of life and ultimately into adulthood
[The being that is] now you and me is the same being that
was once an adolescent and before that a toddler and before
that an infant and before that a fetus and before that an
embryo. "
This is a moral issue of gargantuan proportions, and anything
less than a total ban on all human cloning would result in
an ethical crisis that will affect the moral fiber of the
entire nation. We call on the U. S. Senate to pass the Brownback/Landrieu
bill banning cloning now.
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