CLC strategy session set to address forthcoming statewide battle over embryonic stem cells
By Staff
June 14, 2005
JEFFERSON CITY – The Christian Life Commission of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) will hold a strategy session June 30 at 10 a.m. at the Baptist Building in part to discuss how to effectively counter the pro-cloning strategy of the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures (see story on page 1).
The CLC meeting will reunite the team of MBC Executive Director David Clippard, MBC Executive Board Member Cindy Province and CLC Chairman Rodney Albert who met privately with Gov. Matt Blunt April 13 in an attempt to persuade him to protect life created in embryonic stem cell research. Their work at that time did not cause the governor to back off his defense of the research, which he fails to acknowledge is human cloning, but it got the attention of state lawmakers, some of whom have acknowledged that Southern Baptists in Missouri will not remain silent on pro-life issues.
Province, a member of First Baptist Church, Harvester, a nurse ethicist and lobbyist for the St. Louis-based Center for Bioethics, and Clippard are scheduled to speak separately before CLC commissioners to encourage a fresh pro-life initiative.
“We’re trying to develop a strategy for our convention,” Albert said. “I’d like to start doing summits in regions and getting folks involved. I don’t think we have to bombard our people with technical information. I think we can truncate this issue. It all boils down to, ‘Is life a sacred gift from God or isn’t it?’”
CLC Lobbyist Kerry Messer, who will help shape the abortion bill debate before and during the Missouri General Assembly’s special session in September, is also scheduled to address the CLC June 30 on human cloning.
The pro-cloning coalition, which was formed in February, includes nearly 2,000 medical experts, patient advocates, clerical leaders, business leaders and other citizens, as well as more than 70 state and national organizations, according to the organization’s website. Albert calls the coalition “a huge freight train rolling down the tracks,” and said that a strategy is needed to counter it.
One of the more interesting strategies emerging from the early stages of the public debate over cloning is the coalition’s apparent decision not to use the word “cloning” to describe embryonic stem cell research, which results in the destruction of life (the embryo). Conversely, the CLC regularly uses the word “cloning” to describe the process while touting adult stem cell research, which does not require the killing of an embryo.
“Cloning is ugly,” Albert said. “Cloning is immoral.”
The CLC can also count on help from the pro-life lobbying community at large, with whom Messer has formed close ties. For example, Sam Lee, director of Campaign Life Missouri, is standing firmly with the MBC on a shared conviction from Scripture that life is a sacred gift of God.
“We know from Jeremiah 1 that God knew us, even before we were formed in the womb,” Lee said. “Thus the Lord knows and loves and desires to protect human embryos, even while they are in the Petri dish and not yet implanted in a woman’s uterus.”
Other pro-life groups like Missouri Right to Life,the Missouri chapters of the American Family Association and Concerned Women for America, and the Missouri Catholic Conference, are expected to join the fray to defend life. Some lawmakers have acknowledged that a combination of the MBC – the state’s largest evangelical group – and the Catholic Conference, which represents more than one million Catholics in the state, could form a formidable pro-life alliance.