Press Room

Contact: Peggy Hamill, State Director
Matt Sande, Director of Legislative Affairs
(262) 796-1111, (414) 416-0489 or info@prolifewisconsin.org

Joint Committee to Hear Comprehensive Human Cloning Ban
Ban on cloning promotes ethical research, says Pro-Life Wisconsin

The Assembly Public Health Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a joint public hearing at the State Capitol on Tuesday, May 20th, highlighting legislation to ban all forms of human cloning in Wisconsin.

“A wide range of groups are coalescing in support of a comprehensive human cloning ban in this state,” said Peggy Hamill, State Director of Pro-Life Wisconsin. “As a founding member of the Coalition for Ethical Research, Pro-Life Wisconsin wants to see research progress toward the discovery of treatments for disease. And we can move forward ethically so long as we do not create life simply to kill it for the benefit of others.”

Assembly Bill 104 and Senate Bill 45, co-authored by Representative Steve Kestell (R-Elkhart Lake) and Senator Joe Leibham (R-Sheboygan), ban both “reproductive cloning” – where a cloned person is brought to birth, and “therapeutic cloning” – where a cloned person is killed in the name of scientific progress. Supporters of the human cloning ban contend that it will not hinder lifesaving medical research in Wisconsin.

“The bill does not restrict animal cloning or stem cell research,” said Matt Sande, Pro-Life Wisconsin’s legislative affairs director. “So how can it be seen as stifling research? Ethically unproblematic adult stem cells have been proven effective in treating numerous medical conditions. Wisconsinites deserve the assurance that their state can build on its lead in biotechnology without compromising its bioethics.”

Persons with disabilities across the state are also planning to testify in favor of the human cloning ban, demonstrating that there is not a consensus among the disabled that innocent human life should be sacrificed in order to cure disease.

“As a person with multiple sclerosis, I do welcome advancing medical research that may extend and improve my productive and interactive life – but not at the expense of another human life,” said Donna Arciszewski of Greenfield, speaking on behalf of the National Catholic Partnership on Disability. “Cloning must be condemned because every human life, no matter how it has come into being, deserves the same respect and dignity. We all face the possibility of disease, but that possibility is less frightening than a world in which one life can be casually eliminated in order to offer a few additional months of ‘normality’ to another.”