May 7, 2002
I am Father Peter West of Priests For Life. Approximately 40,000 priests
throughout the United States receive our newsletter. Over 100,000 people all
together receive our newsletter.
Priests For Life joins with our fellow Christians in support of the
Brownback-Landrieu Bill S-1899 that bans human cloning of any kind.
Once life is special-ordered rather than conceived human beings are treated
more as products to be manufactured than persons with rights. People are not
laboratory mice to be experimented on, nor are they pear trees to be fertilized,
grown, planted, pruned, inspected, tested and sold.
Human cloning is another terrible assault on the sanctity of life ethic on
which this nation was founded. We reject the idea that we are imposing our
morality on anyone by promoting the sanctity of life. The sanctity of life is no
more a sectarian doctrine than is the Declaration of Independence a sectarian
document. In a pluralistic society we have a right and a duty to defend this
principle by every ethical and legal means at our disposal.
Those who hold to the sanctity of life ethic believe that every human being
is of value and incalculable worth. Race, sex, ethnicity, social status, health
disability age, beauty or mental ability or stage of development do not matter.
Though we are all different we are of equal value in the eyes of God. This is
the cornerstone of Western civilization on which the concept of universal human
rights is based.
To support human cloning is to stand in opposition to this dream of equality
and is an exercise in eugenics. All human beings must be treated with dignity
and respect from the first moment of their lives. It is wrong to produce a human
being for the use of others.
Those who propose human cloning dream of a world where infertile couples can
have children and genetic abnormalities and disabilities can be eliminated.
While these are noble goals, the ends do not justify the means. The cost of
human cloning is too high. The cost is a loss of the realization that every
human life is sacred and that each of us have an inherent dignity based on the
fact that we are human beings. The consequences of human cloning may be worse
than we imagine.
Human cloning of any kind cheapens human life. Priests For Life considers it
our duty to educate the public on the duties of responsible citizenship. We will
ask people to especially take into account the vote on S-1899 when they exercise
their right and duty to right and duty to vote in November.
