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FR. RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS COMMENTS ON CANADIAN STEM CELL LEGISLATION

States "It is doubtful that it ( Bill C-13) does anything to protect innocent human life"

OTTAWA, January 31, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Bill C-13, the stem cell legislation currently before the Canadian House of Commons has caused considerable debate, even among pro-life and Christian politicians. Some have suggested that because Canada has no law on the subject, our legal vacuum in which anything goes obligates all politicians to support the legislation in the final vote even though the legislation may be bad, because- as the argument goes - at least it will do something.

Yesterday, however, Archbishop Adam Exner of Vancouver, one of Canada's most admired defenders of the life of the unborn, unequivocally rejected the idea that pro-life or Catholic politicians could support the bill. "To vote for Bill C-13, a legislator would involve himself or herself in the creation of unjust law-and not in its amelioration," wrote the bishop.

Prior to Archbishop Exner's release, LifeSite sought out comment on the matter from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, an internationally respected author, thinker and the Editor in Chief of First Things magazine. Fr. Neuhaus concurs with the position of Archbishop Exner that Catholic legislators may not vote in support of Bill C-13.

Fr. Neuhaus' comments to LifeSite open up a new consideration on the stem cell debate. He said, "It is doubtful that it does anything to protect innocent human life, unless one were to argue, implausibly, that a life is more protected if it can be experimented upon only until termination at 14 days rather than at, say, 90 days."

The renowned Catholic scholar also specifically addresses the bill's supposed ban on cloning. He states, "The ban against cloning, if that indeed is what C-13 would achieve, is an issue distinct from the killing of innocent human life and should be addressed as such. Since C-13 would establish in positive law a grave injustice and would do nothing to provide protection for innocent human life threatened by abortion, but indeed would at least implicitly signal a codification of the existing abortion license, I do not see that the 'exception' of Evangelium Vitae applies in this case."

Fr. Neuhaus explained that "Cloning does not of necessity involve the killing of innocent human life."

Cloning, defined by experts as - "any action, or attempt, to a-sexually produce or reproduce one or more human beings which are genetically identical or genetically similar to a predecessor human organism(s)" is considered by many to involve a grave moral evil, but that evil is akin to in vitro fertilization, which also seeks to artificially create human life - albeit with unique genetic makeup.

Fr. Neuhaus said "the distinction between therapeutic and reproductive cloning is nonsense," since therapeutic cloning only mandates the killing of the created embryos before they are born.

See LifeSite's Stem Cell page;
http://www.lifesite.net/features/stemcellembryo/index.html

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