NEW YORK, MARCH 8, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The U.N. General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution urging governments to adopt laws banning all forms of human cloning, including cloning of human embryos for stem cell research.
The resolution calls on governments to “prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.”
The General Assembly ratified the statement today by a vote of 84 to 34, with 37 members abstaining. The vote followed years of debate.
“The U.N.’s new declaration against all forms of human cloning is a powerful statement in favor of the dignity and inviolability of human life,” said Cathy Cleaver Ruse, spokeswoman for the U.S. bishops’ Pro-Life Secretariat.
“And it provides no support for so-called ‘therapeutic cloning’ which treats human life as a commodity to be created for experimentation,” she said.
Ruse also commended the declaration’s call to “prevent the exploitation of women.”
“Allowing human cloning for experimentation would require countless numbers of women to surrender their eggs by an extraction process that is both painful and dangerous,” said Ruse. “We commend the U.N. for recognizing in its declaration that making women into egg factories is an utterly demeaning proposition.”
For several years, efforts in the U.S. Congress to ban human cloning have been thwarted by members who favor the creation of human embryos for the purpose of experimentation that is fatal to them.
The U.N. declaration condemned all forms of human cloning without exempting this so-called therapeutic or research cloning.
