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After more than three years of deadlock, delegates to the United Nation’s Legal Committee, by a vote of 71 to 35, with 43 abstentions accepted a Declaration calling on all nations to enact laws prohibiting all forms of human cloning.  The UN has called on Member States to adopt urgent legislation outlawing all cloning practices saying that "they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life." The Declaration now goes to the full 191-member UN General Assembly for a vote. 

The Declaration, introduced by Honduras and supported by the United States and Australia, also calls on Member States to introduce measures to “prevent exploitation of women.”  Delegates from developing countries feared that women from poor countries would be targeted for the large number of women’s eggs that would be needed to support  “egg farms”  for experimental purposes. The procedure by which eggs are extracted from these vulnerable women is  painful and dangerous to their lives and health. 

Australia's vote for the ban on cloning  is a welcome reversal from  its previous position at the UN where Australia  supported  a so-called "moderate" position opposing "reproductive" cloning but allowing "therapeutic" cloning. [“Reproductive” cloning is actually kinder to the hapless embryo - at least it is given a chance to implant, whereas  “therapeutic” cloning is anything but therapeutic for the embryo which is killed for its stem cells].   Australia’s  support for a total ban on both kinds of cloning has predictably been criticised by embryonic stem cell researchers, e.g. the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research,  but cloning and killing  human embryos to obtain their stem cells for experimentation is unethical and unnecessary.  Adult stem cells are the only stem cells that have helped anybody, and that amounts to  thousands of patients, including those with spinal cord injuries and diseases like Parkinson's, and new clinical uses expand almost weekly. (See p. 10).  Those countries which did not support the Declaration consider it “non-binding” and  say they will continue  “therapeutic cloning”.   

The UN Legal Committee's Declaration comes in time for the meetings of  our own Council of Australian Governments (COAG)  which  this year is due to  review Australia's 2002  moratorium  legislation on cloning and embryonic stem cell research, so lobby your MPs to adopt the UN ban.

Australia’s pro-life vote on the UN Legal Committee  is only the start of the battle within Australia. 

That's the good news.  The bad news is that pro-choice feminist MPs in  the Liberal, Labor and Australian Democrats parties are trying to stifle discussion  on the  national yearly  tragedy of   100,000 abortions in this country.  Like a veritable troupe of  lady luddites, they imagine that medicine has not advanced since the 70s, and that we can do nothing more to help pregnant women.  Following the tsunami disaster, Mr. Howard   almost  immediately commendably donated a billion dollars to help reconstruction in  the Aceh province of  Indonesia.  Write and ask him for a few more billion to save Australia’s babies. The government can provide all pregnancy support services with  ultrasound machines and  the technical services  required   so women can see their babies in utero.  The government can also establish “parenting centres”  where women can access the medical, financial, educational and career help they need to enable them to  continue with their pregnancies.  

Pregnancy support services can tell many heart-warming stories of contact and  reconciliation between children and the  men and women whose actions years ago resulted in their  conception, but  who did not seek the short-sighted solution of abortion.  Many parents would love to hear the words “Thank you for having me”  from their children - and not only from  children who were given up for adoption!  Sadly, these are words a mother will never hear from the baby she chose to abort, a baby who would have loved her, given a chance at life.