The indefatigable American Papist is providing some good coverage (here, here and here) of the Amendment 2 issue in Missouri. While I know I don’t get the kind of circulation he does, if I get even one person who can vote to read a little it’s worth the time. The long story short of it is that Amendment 2 is being portrayed as a way to fund stem cell research and sold as outlawing cloning while having specific language that codifies a state constitutional right to cloning. I love politicians. The good news is that some big names are coming to the defense of humanity, including Jim Caviezal and Jeff Suppan (pitching tonight, BTW).
Father Jonathan at Fox News also has begun posting entries on this at his blog. I’m going to lift a little from him because he explained it very well if I do say so:
Do Missourians know what they are actually voting for?
Opponents of the referendum say the lengthy 2,400-word amendment serves as a master plan of deceit to trick Missourians into legalizing human cloning. They point to two apparently contradictory sections within the Amendment.
Section 2 (1) states, “No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being”
A voter who reads this may think that he or she is voting to approve embryonic stem cell research as long as it does not permit human cloning.
Not so fast, say opponents.
Section 6 (5) defines embryonic stem cell research to include a common method of cloning. “Human embryonic stem cell research, also referred to as ‘early stem cell research’, means any scientific or medical research involving human stem cells derived from in vitro fertlization blastocysts or from somatic cell nuclear transfer.”
“Somatic cell nuclear transfer” is the scientific term for therapeutic cloning, the very same method used to clone “Dolly”.
