Women are the ones who must donate the eggs for cloning. Each woman would be injected with super-ovulating drugs to increase the quantity of eggs she would produce. This places her at higher risk for ovarian cancer and other health hazards, as well as potentially damaging her fertility. Poor women in particular would be induced to sell their eggs to fill this massive demand. The Brownback/Landrieu ban would protect women against this unnecessary risk and exploitation.

2.  Funding cloning is irresponsible

Cloning therapies would be used with human embryonic stem cells. However, there are superior alternatives to those therapies. Adult stem cells have been shown to be extremely effective for therapy with human beings, while attempts at using embryonic stem cells have ended in miserable failure. Funds for research are limited. Responsible stewardship entails that promising research receive funds. The Brownback/Landrieu ban would ensure that funds for research would not be wasted on therapeutic cloning.

Since cloned human beings are manufactured or made, their makers own them. But to permit one human being to own another is to lapse back into treating him or her as a slave. Would it not be tragic if but a hundred and thirty five years after the abolition of slavery, the United States were to lead the way in developing a new form of high-tech slavery? The Brownback/Landrieu ban would prevent the reemergence of slavery in this country.

Cloning reduces a class of human beings to the status of objects and property, thereby denying them a place in the human community. Teaching us to view one another in such a way can only spread like a virus, poisoning human relations and society at all levels. The Brownback/Landrieu ban would preserve the integrity of the human community.

Echoing the consensus of the civilized world, the Nuremberg Code, written in condemnation of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, famously declared: "No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur." So-called "therapeutic cloning" necessitates the killing of the embryonic human being (when the stem cells are extracted). The Brownback/Landrieu ban would ban so-called therapeutic cloning and uphold the Nuremberg code.

6.  The compassionate choice is to oppose cloning.

Cloning advocates frequently try to paint opponents of cloning as uncompassionate toward the diseased and handicapped. This is false. By endorsing the already successful therapies derived from adult stem cells, cloning opponents promote cures for the suffering with no harm to anyone, including the human embryo. The Brownback/Landrieu ban would allow for genuine compassion to be extended to the sick as well as to the vulnerable human embryo.

Cloning advocates like to portray opponents of cloning as being backward and restrictively opposed to all scientific advances. This is a gross misportrayal. Quite the contrary, opponents of cloning are in fact strong proponents of scientific research, so long as the research is not immoral. Significant breakthroughs in ethically acceptable research occur almost daily. The Brownback/Landrieu ban would promote the advance of ethical science.

8.  The Brownback/Landrieu bill (S. 1899) permits the cloning of tissues, organs, and DNA.

The Brownback/Landrieu bill bans any attempt at producing a human embryo by cloning. At the same time, the bill expressly permits certain kinds of cloning, with the crucial qualification that they may not result in the creation of a human embryo. Sec. 302, (d) reads:

The Brownback/Landrieu ban would only restrict the immoral act of cloning human embryos.

Bills proposed by Specter/Harkin (S. 1893) and Feinstein/Kennedy (S. 1758) do not ban the creation of cloned human embryos to be used in research that will kill them. They only require that the human embryo not be born alive. These bills in effect mandate the killing of all cloned human embryos. The Brownback/Landrieu ban would preserve human life by preventing its illicit creation by cloning.