Congressional Action Alert:
U.S. Senate May Vote Soon on Bill to Fund Killing of Human Embryos

WASHINGTON (June 12) The U.S. Senate is expected to vote soon on a bill that would authorize federal funding of research that kills human embryos.

The bill, the "Stem Cell Research Act" (S. 2015), has been proposed by pro-abortion Senators Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). The Senate is expected to vote on the bill in late June or in July.

Contact Your Senators

Please contact your two U.S. senators and urge them "to oppose Senator Specter's bill to kill human embryos, S. 2015." The address for all U.S. Senators is:

Senator __________

U.S. Senate

Washington, D.C. 20510

All senators' offices can be reached through the Capitol Switchboard, (202) 224-3121. A senator's in-state office(s) can be reached through local telephone information.

Key Points

Here are some key points on the Specter-Harkin bill: Current law [the Dickey Amendment] prohibits federal funding of any "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death." This law embodies the principle that non-consenting human beings must not be subjected to harmful medical experimentation. The Specter- Harkin bill would rupture that principle by authorizing federally sponsored researchers to obtain living embryos and dissect them thereby killing them in order to obtain their " stem cells." Under this bill, the federal government would, for the first time in history, officially approve and regulate the destruction of innocent human life for research purposes. "Stem cells" are cells that researchers believe can be manipulated to form different types of human tissue, which ultimately may prove useful for treating various diseases. Pro-life groups support, and the federal government already funds, the work of many medical researchers who are utilizing human stem cells obtained from sources that do not require the destruction of human embryos, such as umbilical cords, placenta, and adult blood. Sen. Specter has argued that his bill would not authorize "the creation of human embryos" especially for research purposes, but would merely utilize "spare" embryos who "otherwise would be discarded" by infertility clinics. In practice, this is a distinction without a difference, since in vitro fertilization practitioners are and would remain free to produce as many "spare" embryos as they wish. The Senate should reject the concept that federal law should regard some human beings as disposable " surplus," or that a human being's status under federal law should depend on whether or not he or she is "going to die anyway."

Another Way to Help

You can help NRLC's lobbying efforts against S. 2015 by sending a copy of any response received from a Senator, or any pertinent news report or editorial in your local newspaper, to:NRLCFederal Legislative Office419-Seventh Street, NorthwestSuite 500Washington, D.C. 20004Fax (202) 347-3668E-mail: Legfederal@aol.com

For Further Information
For further information, go to the NRLC web site at www.nrlc.org, the section titled "Federal Legislation: Killing Human Embryos." Also, see "Myths and Realities of Stem Cell Research" on page 8 of this issue.