Cloning battle shifts to appeals court
JEFFERSON CITY—Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan crafted insufficient, unfair and biased ballot summary language that has resulted in yet another delay in the battle over whether a proposed constitutional amendment on preventing human cloning will go before the voters in 2008.
Carnahan’s rewrite of language submitted last fall by Cures Without Cloning (CWC) was struck down Feb. 20 by Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce under precedents established by previous judges as insufficient or unfair. Legally it means her work is “inadequate, especially lacking adequate power, capacity or competence. The word ‘unfair’ means to be marked by injustice, partiality, or deception.” In other words, according to legal precedent, she stated the consequences of the initiative “inadequately and with bias, prejudice, deception and/or favoritism.”
An appeal filed by people sympathetic to the argumentation of Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures will be heard by the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, March 26. Once all legal appeals are exhausted, it is believed that approximately 150,000 valid signatures would need to be collected by May 5, the deadline for getting it on the ballot in November. Many citizens are ready to fan out all over the state to go get the necessary signatures once elected officials and judges are finished with their work.
“We are confident the court of appeals will uphold the ballot summary written by the circuit court and are preparing for that outcome,” wrote Missourians Against Human Cloning (MAHC) Executive Director Jaci Winship in an email alert that went out to supporters in the last week of February. “We are hopeful the appeal process will move quickly so that our volunteer army that has been preparing for months will be able to move forward.”
“It is unfortunate that Ms. Carnahan’s actions have needlessly delayed the democratic process,” said Lori Buffa, a medical doctor who chairs CWC, in a statement released Feb. 20.
“We are gratified that the court recognized the blatant misconduct of the secretary of state and ruled to protect our constitutional rights as Missouri citizens,” she said.
It needs to be emphasized that Carnahan has played a major role in disrupting the initiative, according to Kerry Messer, lobbyist for the Christian Life Commission of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) and board member of MAHC.
In January, the secretary of state was similarly rebuked by another judge when her ballot language on behalf of the people of Missouri for a proposal limiting affirmative action programs was rewritten. And her second round of insufficient/unfair work, also on behalf of the people of Missouri in the CWC case, has wasted precious time and has damaged the ability of CWC to execute the signature gathering effort, Messer said.
“She has engaged in a pattern of activity that you would expect from a policy maker, not a policy follower,” he said. “She has deliberately abused her authority to thwart the rights of the citizens of the state of Missouri because she personally disagreed with the direction they were headed. This is the same Robin Carnahan who, before being elected to any public office, was a social activist. She doesn’t seem to know the difference today.”
There are many differences between the insufficient/unfair summary written by Carnahan and the one rewritten by Judge Joyce (see box). Last fall, even sympathetic op-ed columnists were wondering in print whether Carnahan, a Democrat who is for embryonic stem cell research and has accepted a $25,000 campaign contribution from one group promoting therapeutic cloning, was deliberately tilting the issue toward the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures position. Back then they took aim at phrases Carnahan wrote that Judge Joyce would ultimately reject.
For example, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch op-ed columnist scolded Carnahan for using the phrase “repeal the current ban,” writing, “That’s confusing. It would expand the ban.” He went on to criticize her for the longer phrase “criminalize and impose civil penalties for some currently allowed research,” calling that “loaded language.”
A Kansas City Star op-ed columnist acknowledged Carnahan’s role, among that of other principals, in “the semantic gamesmanship surrounding this debate.” He complained that the discourse was getting “increasingly annoying,” and he pointed out that Carnahan’s summary “seems a stretch,” a point that was later validated by Judge Joyce’s ruling.
National media outlets have noted how hard it has been for the CWC campaign to succeed even as high-ranking public officials like the Missouri secretary of state seem to be at work for the other side. The editorial boards of the state’s top two newspapers are firmly behind embryonic stem cell research/therapeutic cloning, and it is nationally known that proponents of Amendment 2, the embryonic research initiative that in 2006 opened the door to constitutionally protected human cloning, spent $30 million in a close campaign to impose their collective will on the citizenry.
Sinply put, when it comes to scientific dialogue in Missouri, it is clear to many that the very integrity of our language is in tatters.
“The pro-cloning bias among the political elite and media in Missouri make it almost impossible to get the straight information to the people of Missouri about this crucial ethical issue,” wrote Wesley J. Smith, an author and attorney from California who blogs about cloning issues.
“Pro-lifers in Missouri are battling not only the secretary of state and supporters of embryonic stem cell research, but also media members, some of whom refuse to call somatic cell nuclear transfer ‘cloning,’” Baptist Press wrote. “The Kansas City Star argued in an editorial Feb. 21 that somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) does not by itself create a cloned embryo.”
But scientifically, Baptist Press reported, SCNT is synonymous with cloning. The National Institutes of Health’s online stem cell glossary lists definitions for various research words. The glossary’s definition of cloning says simply, “See Somatic cell nuclear transfer.”
Amendment 2 contained language that said it would “ban human cloning” even as other language would allow “somatic cell nuclear transfer,” which is the scientific name for cloning and the same method used to clone Dolly the sheep, Baptist Press reported. Under Amendment 2, cloning is legal as long as the cloned embryos aren’t implanted in a woman’s womb, Baptist Press reported. Since the clones must be destroyed, this is sometimes called “clone and kill” by the MBC and other pro-life organizations and denominations in Missouri.