WASHINGTON (CNS): A leading US cardinal has hailed as an important advance for humanity the country’s House of Representatives vote on July 31 to ban all cloning of human embryos in the United States.
The house passed the Human Cloning Prohibition Act by a vote of 265-162. Violators could face minimum fines of $1 million and up to 10 years in prison.
Representatives first defeated by a margin of 249-178 a rival bill that would have allowed cloning of human embryos to obtain stem cells for research and clinical use. The substitute bill would have banned the implanting of cloned embryos in a womb to produce human babies for the next 10 years.
Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore, who is chairman of the US Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, called the vote “an important first step on ‘the path to a truly humane future, in which man remains the master, not the product of his technology'”. He was quoting from Pope John Paul II’s address to President George W. Bush when the two met in Italy on July 23.
Cardinal Keeler said such a law “will send a clear signal that we are not merely the victims of technical advance, that we can limit and direct our technological powers to serve and not demean human dignity”.
