The Wisconsin State Senate will take up separate bills Tuesday that would place a complete ban on human cloning and facilitate the donation of newborn umbilical cord blood in Wisconsin.
Assembly Bill 499, authored by Representative Steve Kestell (R-Elkhart Lake) and Senator Joe Leibham (R-Sheboygan), would ban both “reproductive cloning” – where a cloned human embryo is brought to birth, and “therapeutic cloning” – where a cloned human embryo is killed by extracting its stem cells.
“We must defend the dignity of each human being by rejecting the utilitarian and dehumanizing practice of cloning,” said Peggy Hamill, state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin. “Pro-Life Wisconsin wants to see research progress toward the treatment of disease, and we can move forward ethically so long as we do not create a life simply to kill it for the benefit of another. Wisconsinites deserve the assurance that their state can build on its lead in biotechnology without compromising its bioethics,” said Hamill.
An effort to amend the bill on the Senate floor to permit “therapeutic cloning” while outlawing “reproductive cloning” is expected. Referred to as “clone to kill,” an exclusive ban on “reproductive cloning” would mandate that all cloned human embryos be killed since it would prohibit the placement of cloned embryos in wombs.
“All cloning results in the creation of a new living human embryo that, while genetically identical to another person, is a distinct human life,” said Matt Sande, Pro-Life Wisconsin’s director of legislative affairs. “Proponents of so-called ‘therapeutic cloning’ hide this reality by resorting to verbal games. They say they oppose ‘human cloning’ but support ‘somatic cell nuclear transfer’ or ‘SCNT,’ hoping no one will understand that SCNT is simply the scientific name for the cloning procedure. They even say that they support cloning only to ‘produce stem cells,’ evading the fact that they must create and then destroy fully human embryos to produce those stem cells,” said Sande.
A “clone to kill” law would effectively create a new crime: the crime of initiating a pregnancy with a cloned human embryo. “Will the law then mandate an abortion, the destruction of a born child, or imprisonment of the mother and child?” asked Sande. “The only thing that an exclusive ban on reproductive cloning would do is ban the survival of someone created by cloning. It’s worse than doing nothing at all.”
The states of Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, North and South Dakota have all passed comprehensive bans on human cloning, prohibiting both “reproductive” and “therapeutic cloning.”
Assembly Bill 270, authored by Representative Steve Wieckert (R-Appleton) and Senator Leibham, would require the principal prenatal health care provider of a pregnant woman to offer her the option to donate blood extracted from the umbilical cord of her newborn child to a blood bank. The offer of an option to donate only applies if the donation is at no monetary cost to the woman, her health insurance provider, or to the hospital in which the delivery will occur for collection or storage.
“Ethically uncontroversial, clinically proven cord blood stem cells are adult-type stem cells that do not require the destruction of human embryos,” said Sande. “Cord blood stem cells have been used to treat many life-threatening diseases, including leukemia, breast cancer and sickle-cell anemia. Assembly Bill 270 will help to increase the available inventory of cord blood units in Wisconsin and the nation. It will save lives.”
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