WASHINGTON — Competing bills will come up in the U.S. Senate this month to regulate human cloning. Proponents of the bills all claim that their measures will ban the procedure. But some would actually allow it.

Only the Human Cloning Prohibition Act, introduced last year by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., would make cloning illegal in the United States. The other bills, introduced by Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would allow cloning for the purpose of research but outlaw the implantation of the resulting embryo into a woman's uterus. And the Brownback bill might face a tough battle to even be considered in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

The Harkin and Feinstein bills would permit the establishment of “human embryo farms,” the National Right to Life Committee warned in a statement.

That charge riled William Burton, a Harkin spokesman, who said, “This talk of ‘embryo farms’ is pretty inflammatory and doesn't help the debate.” The proposed legislation would “absolutely stop human cloning,” he said, adding that its allowance of the creation of a human embryo but prohibition of its implantation is “similar to what's legal with in vitro fertilization.”

“It's hard to be against one and for the other,” Burton said.

In fact, Catholic teaching condemns both procedures, saying every human being has the right to be conceived in marriage and from marriage (Donum Vitae, No. 6). Every child has the right to a “fully human origin through conception in conformity with the personal nature of the human being” (note 32).

Donum Vitae, the 1987 Vatican Instruction on Respect for Human Life, also said that “the human being must be respected as a person — from the very first instant of his existence” (No. 1).

Cloning for scientific research or creation of medical cures would entail the destruction of human embryos.

The Harkin bill, TITLEd the “Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act,” would ban “asexual human reproduction by implanting or attempting to implant the product of nuclear transplantation into a woman's uterus or a substitute for a woman's uterus.”

Nuclear transplantation is defined in the legislation as “introducing the nuclear material of a human somatic cell into a fertilized or unfertilized oocyte (egg) from which the nucleus has been or will be removed or inactivated.”

Richard Doerflinger, a spokesman for the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-life Activities, sees the emphasis of the Harkin bill on banning the implantation of a human embryo rather than banning cloning. He predicted that if such a bill became law, scientists would eventually be calling for millions of clones in order to find tailored cures for people suffering from diseases such as juvenile diabetes.

“And where would they get the eggs?” he asked. “Just harvesting them poses risks for women.”

He said the bishops' conference strongly supports the Brownback bill, but he predicted that it would have to be introduced on the Senate floor as a substitute to the Harkin or Feinstein bills, a procedure that would require 51 votes.

But he was encouraged last month when Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., became the first Democrat to co-sponsor the Brownback legislation. Landrieu, a self-described “abortion-rights” supporter, said in a Feb. 5 statement: “The American people insist that the work of science must be conditioned on conscience. Anything short of a complete ban creates a loophole that would allow researchers, seeking to make money or headlines, the power to decide this issue for the American people.”

Landrieu also said that “vulnerable, low income women could be used as harvest tools” if cloning were permitted.

There has also been support for at least a moratorium on all cloning from environmental groups, such as Friends of the Earth. But such groups seem more concerned about how cloning might lead to genetic modification than the status of embryos.

Manipulating Language

Most legislators voice concerns about the possibility of human reproduction from cloning, but many do not show that same moral outrage against cloning if it is done to garner stem cells. Feinstein, in a statement Feb. 5, called cloning for the purpose of producing a human being “morally unacceptable and ethically flawed.” But in speaking of “therapeutic cloning,” she referred to the procedure as “nuclear transplantation,” which might give the impression that a nascent human being is not involved in the process.

Harkin, for his part, referred to the procedure as “therapeutic cellular transfer — or TCT.”

“Human reproductive cloning is simply wrong,” he said during a hearing of the Senate Labor, HHS and Education Appropriations Subcommittee Dec. 4. “We must understand that there is a distinct line separating human reproductive cloning and the potential lifesaving research of TCT. ... My legislation would protect our values by banning reproductive cloning but protect our health by fostering research.”

Brownback, on the other hand, said in a statement last month that efforts to create human beings by cloning “mark a new and decisive step toward turning human reproduction into a manufacturing process in which children are made in laboratories to preordained specifications.”

“Science continues to prove that human cloning is unnecessary,” he continued. “We can find cures for the many diseases that plague humanity without creating human clones. There is no need for cloning technology to ever be used with humans — whether for reproductive purposes or for destructive research purposes.”

Brownback also condemned the Jan. 18 recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences that therapeutic cloning continue to be allowed. “It is deeply disturbing that the National Academy of Sciences feels they can divide humanity into two different classes and condemn one class of humans to destruction,” the senator said.

Meanwhile, President Bush's Council on Bioethics has not come to any consensus on cloning or the moral status of a human embryo. The Associated Press reported Feb. 14 that the council, which had its first meeting in January, hopes to produce a report by summer. Leon Kass, the University of Chicago ethicist who chairs the panel, has said that it won't be rushed by political considerations.

One member of the council, Stanford University biologist William Hurlbut, said in an interview last week that the country needs to stop and think about what's at stake.

“If we keep the dialogue going, we all will gain a deeper appreciation of both the meaning of developing life and the thoughtful use of our advancing medical knowledge,” he said.

Even if the Senate passes the Harkin or Feinstein bill, U.S. bishops' spokesman Doerflinger hopes there will be a chance to amend it as it goes through a conference committee. The House of Representatives last year passed a total ban on cloning, and differences with the Senate bill would have to hammered out. President Bush has expressed his opposition to all cloning.