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Stem Cells Section
Cardinal Rigali Urges House To Reject Two Federal Bills Promoting Taxpayer-Funded Destruction Of Human Embryos | USCCB Official Comments on Approval of Bill to Fund Stem Cell Research Requiring the Destruction of Human Embryos
Cardinal Rigali Urges House To Reject Two Federal Bills Promoting Taxpayer-Funded Destruction Of Human Embryos
WASHINGTON— (June 6, 2007) As the U.S. House of Representatives prepared to vote on the federal funding of stem cell research on Thursday (S. 5) and the DeGette bill on Wednesday (H.R. 2560), Cardinal Justin Rigali urged Representatives to reject legislation which would promote the destruction of human embryos. “I urge you to vote against S. 5, and against the DeGette bill allowing cloning for research purposes – on behalf of taxpayers who should not be forced to help destroy innocent life, and on behalf of genuine progress for suffering patients,” the Cardinal said.
Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia, is Chairman of the Committee for Pro-Life Activities, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
In a letter to the House of Representatives (June 6), Cardinal Rigali warned that “pursuit of this destructive research [S. 5] will almost certainly require you to embrace more and more egregious violations of moral norms in the effort to bring its ‘promise’ to fruition,” citing the DeGette bill as one such additional violation.
The Cardinal clarified the purpose of H.R. 2560: “The cloning bill…may be promoted as a ban on human cloning. But it is exactly the opposite.”
The DeGette bill “allows unlimited cloning of human embryos for research – and then makes it a crime to transfer the embryo to a womb to allow the new human to survive. What it actually prohibits is the act of becoming pregnant – a kind of law seen chiefly until now in the People's Republic of China, where women can be punished for carrying an unauthorized child,” Cardinal Rigali said.
“For the first time in U.S. law, Congress would define a new class of humans it is a crime not to destroy,” Cardinal Rigali said.
Source: http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2007/07-097.shtml
The full text of the Cardinal’s letter available at:
http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/bioethic/stemcell/s5hr2560letter.pdf
USCCB Official Comments on Approval of Bill to Fund Stem Cell Research Requiring the Destruction of Human Embryos
WASHINGTON (June 7, 2007) — Richard Doerflinger, Deputy Director of Pro-Life Activities, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), issued a statement today regarding this week’s votes on stem cell research and human cloning in the U.S. House of Representatives. Below is the text of the statement:
“Today the House of Representatives again approved a bill to fund stem cell research requiring the destruction of human embryos (S. 5), 247 to 176. The margin of support was a bit lower than in January, when a similar bill passed 253 to 174, despite the recent addition of language supporting morally noncontroversial stem cell research that was designed to invite more support. The President will veto this bill, and his veto will be sustained.
“Yesterday a related bill, designed to allow cloning of human embryos for destructive research (H.R. 2560), was defeated outright in the House. Marketed as a “prohibition” on human cloning, the bill would actually allow unlimited use of the human cloning procedure, while punishing any attempt to allow the resulting embryos to survive in a womb. H.R. 2560 would have made the federal government into the publicly funded security guards for human embryo farms, helping to ensure that none of their victims get out of the laboratory alive.
“These setbacks for the destructive embryo research campaign should lead Congress to refocus its energies toward the true common ground in this debate: enhanced support for the genuine treatments emerging from non-embryonic stem cells; full funding for the new federal program for public banking of umbilical cord blood stem cells; and support for promising new ways to produce stem cells with the versatility of embryonic stem cells but without the moral problems. Pursuing that agenda would serve ethics, science, and life-saving medical progress.”
http://www.nccbuscc.org/comm/archives/2007/07-099.shtml
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