Press Room

Contact: State Director Peggy Hamill or Director of Legislative Affairs Matt Sande
(262) 796-1111, (262) 352-0890 [Sande cell], or (414) 416-0489 [Hamill cell]

Joint Committee to Hear Comprehensive Human Cloning Ban
The Assembly Children and Families Committee and the Senate Judiciary, Corrections, and Privacy Committee will hold a joint public hearing in the State Capitol today at 1:00 p.m., highlighting legislation to ban all forms of human cloning in Wisconsin.

“Cloning is a perverse mode of generating human life that affronts the dignity, equality and freedom of human life at its very beginning,” said Peggy Hamill, state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin. “In cloning, a child is not created; a new life is simply manufactured. Alarmingly, human cloning is fast becoming reality with credentialed experts at some of the world’s most respected institutions successfully cloning human embryos,” Hamill said. “Fortunately, Representative Kestell and Senator Leibham are working hard to ban this ghoulish practice in Wisconsin.”

Assembly Bill 499 and Senate Bill 243, 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 “research cloning” – where a cloned person is killed in the name of scientific progress. The ban also extends to human parthenogenesis, a form of reproduction in which the ovum is artificially stimulated to develop into a new human individual without fertilization.

“The medical community is increasingly speaking out against the danger and immorality of research cloning,” said Matt Sande, Pro-Life Wisconsin’s legislative affairs director. “Not only does research cloning create human life for the express purpose of destroying it, but it will pave the way for reproductive cloning – thus realizing our worst fears. There will simply be no way to stop multitudes of cloned human embryos from being implanted in wombs and brought to birth.”

The Mayo Clinic Proceedings journal published an article arguing that medicine should reject all forms of human cloning, both reproductive cloning as well as cloning for research. “Why Medicine Should Reject Human Cloning," was written by leading physicians and bioethicists from The Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University and The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity based in Chicago. The authors, one of whom is former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, M.D., argue that “[U]tilitarian appeals emphasizing the alleged medical promise of research cloning are self-defeating, dangerous, and fail to warrant the cost in nascent human life.”

The states of Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, North and South Dakota have all passed comprehensive bans on human cloning, prohibiting both “reproductive cloning” and “research cloning.”

-End-