Bishops' Official Criticizes Bar Association For Supporting Human Cloning

WASHINGTON (August 13, 2002) –- Today the American Bar Association ("ABA") at its annual convention passed a resolution opposing a ban on human cloning. The resolution, passed today by voice vote and with no member speaking against it, is aimed specifically against the Brownback/Landrieu ban on cloning now pending in the Senate, according to supporting documents.

"Once again, the ABA has decided to choose sides in a public debate of profound moral and social consequence," said Cathleen Cleaver, Esq., spokesperson for the Pro-Life Secretariat of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB. "And it has once again positioned itself against life."

"This is why so many Americans are coming to see the ABA more as a politicized lobby group than as a professional legal association," Cleaver said.

The resolution itself, Resolution 117b, avoids the plain language of cloning and adopts the euphemisms of lobbyists who have pushed a pro-cloning agenda in the Senate. The resolution supports "research involving cell nucleus transfer that is not intended to replicate a human being."

"The ABA does not recognize the child at any stage before birth as a fellow human being. The phrase, 'intended to replicate a human being' therefore seems to be shorthand for 'a human after birth'," Cleaver noted. "The ABA therefore adds its name to the cloning advocates who favor creating life in the laboratory solely to destroy it for research at the embryonic or even fetal stage."

"The ABA's official position in favor of abortion -- a vote which precipitated the exodus of thousands of lawyers from the association -- leaves no doubt that it rejects the notion of legal or human rights for children before birth," said Cleaver. "But today's vote is a vote against women as well, from whom massive numbers of eggs will have to be painfully extracted to engage in human cloning for research."




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