Banning cloning:
Does not impose dogma, but affirms truths

		Eye on the  Capitol  John Huebscher

Once again citizens and legislators have renewed the debate over whether the law should permit or prohibit the practice of cloning human life.

In an unusual joint hearing on May 20, two legislative committees heard testimony on proposals, Senate Bill 45 and Assembly Bill 104, both of which will ban the practice if enacted.

Not imposing dogma

Like many debates of its kind, this public argument over cloning rekindles the discussion over the proper relationship between religion, morality, and law.

Some argue that adopting a ban on cloning imposes a sectarian morality on our state. Not so.

When Catholics say cloning is wrong, we do so not as a religious sect seeking to impose our dogma on the state. Rather, we do so as citizens, who wish to reaffirm a "self-evident truth" on which our state and nation were founded: that every member of the human family is endowed by our Creator with an inalienable right to life.

Right to life

The entire American experience is an affirmation of the truth that no human being belongs to another. Not to a king asserting dominion by divine right, not to a plantation owner pursuing profit, not to a scientist seeking cures, not to a wealthy individual hoping to recreate himself.

Lincoln asserted that human beings are neither beasts nor gods. We cannot rule other people as they may rule beasts or as God would rule us.

No one of us chose to be born. Nor did we choose to be born as human beings. As we were not able to choose our own humanity, neither are we free to ignore the humanity in others.

Blurring the issue

Some try to blur the issue by distinguishing between "reproductive" cloning and "research" cloning, arguing that the latter is acceptable.

The question is "Why?" If one truly believes that a cloned embryo is not due the respect of a human person, why make such a distinction? The best cloning supporters seem to offer is that research cloning promotes the public purpose of scientific knowledge that is somehow more laudable than the private purpose served by reproductive cloning.

In our debate over slavery, Lincoln asserted that the freedom of all was undermined by the denial of freedom to some, whatever the justification for doing so. Thus it is unlikely he would have accepted the argument that it was unjust to enslave a human being for the private purpose of working a plantation but acceptable to enslave another human being for the public good of building a railroad or digging a canal.

The common good is not served by denying the moral status of the most vulnerable members of our human family.

We can do better

Too many in society already deny the inherent dignity of the embryo. But permitting the wholesale creation of cloned embryos for the express purpose of destroying them for research takes us to a new ethical low, far beneath that bequeathed to us by the Founders. For we will have become a society that not only denies the rights of the voiceless, but also seeks to benefit from their destruction.

We can do better than that. We can reaffirm the self-evident truth that the right to life is inalienable. We can and should support AB 104 and SB 45.

John Huebscher is executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference.