The Truth about Amendement 2 in Missouri: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

On 7 Nov the citizens of Missouri are being asked to vote on an amendment to the state constitution. The amendment is being tauted as a ban on cloning & setting limits on stem cell research, i.e. banning fetal stem cell research. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many people have been mislead into supporting in because they have been told this lie.

A group, Missourians Against Human Cloning (MAHC) has been set up to get the truth out & to prevent it from being passed. Their mission statement says: "MAHC is a coalition of individuals and organizations dedicated to promoting ethical science, advancing realistic medical treatments with adult stem cells and opposing the practice of cloning human beings for research purposes."

On their website they look at the ballot language to show what it says about the full amendment & what it means. They do have the full text of Amendment 2 available on their site so that a person can see what it really says. (Something that would raise a flag with me if I wasn't previously aware of this amendment from various news sources is the fact that the amendment is 5 pages long. That is more the length of a piece of legislation, not a constitutional amendment.) The amendment is a piece of legalese written by lawyers from the biotech companies that would benefit from the amendment (another red flag). It is over 2100 words long & affects 45 different sections of the Missouri Constitution.

1 of the most Orwellian bits of sophistry they use is to say it bans cloning when all it does is redefine it. They call it "Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer" & say it isn't cloning. The problem is that it is cloning. That is the proceedure used to clone Dolly the sheep. Talk about a wolf in sheep's clothing. This claim is a prime example of that figuratively & literally. The group 2 Tricky.org has an explanation of the deceptive wording about cloning & what it really means.

In addition to actually allowing cloning, this pernicious amendment claims to ban the buying & selling of human eggs. But it allows the women to be paid for donating them. If that isn't buying & selling? It also creates legal protection for the researchers & guarantees state funds to let them do their abominations.

I have been hearing a lot about this amendment from various sources. The latest was Fri nite's The World Over on EWTN (It will be rebroadcast Mon 23 Oct at 9:00 am & 10:00pm CDT & Tue 24 Oct at Noon CDT.) 1 of the guests was a spokesperson for MAHC, Cathy Ruse. Another guest was the Most Reverend Robert W. Finn, Bishop of the Kansas City-St. Joseph MO Diocese. The diocese is working with MAHC & has a link on their website to MAHC's.

Another outspoken critic of Amendment 2 is Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, MO. Since 22 Sept Archbisop Burke's weekly column has focused on this issue. He has also started a rosary crusade to safeguard embryonic human life and prevent human cloning. He has been joined in this by Bishop Finn as well as the other Missouri Bishops, Bishop Leibrecht of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese, and Bishop Gaydos of the Jefferson City Diocese.

As I said many have been mislead about this issue, including many pro-life people. If you are from Missouri you need to vote against Amendment 2. If you know someonf from Missouri you need to tell them why it is wrong. & we all need to pray for the truth to get out there as well as pray, esp the rosary, that it will fail.

We also need to be aware of what is going on in the elections in our own area of the countery. We need to vote for pro-life candidates. candidates who will support adult & plancental stem cell research while banning fetal stem cell research as well as cloning & abortion. We need to educate ourselves about the life issues. (The pro-life links at the right will be the best sources we can find.) Our country is at a crossroads. We are on the path of a culture of death. We can stay silent, not vote or vote for the wrong people. Then someday soon we will reap the fruit of this culture of death. Or we can pray, speak out, work for pro-life candidates, maybe even run if so called. There is still time for us to turn arround & build the Culture of Life God desires us to build. The choice is ours.