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BATTLE LOOMING ON EMBRYONIC STEM CELL BILL

State Senator Paula Hollinger has been pulling out all the stops to get her embryonic stem cell research bill passed; but Leigh Heller is working just as hard to defeat it.

In the 2005 General Assembly session, “We had to threaten a filibuster” to prevent the Maryland Stem Cell Research Act from passing, Heller, the legislative director for Maryland Right to Life, told the MDRTL Convention November 12.

The bill which provided $25 million in state funds for embryonic stem cell research, passed in the House of Delegates but was blocked in the Senate by a threatened filibuster by 17 pro-life senators.

Hollinger, however, is pre-filing the same bill for the 2006 session.

“It will be the first bill out of her committee,” said Heller.  “I’m going to be spending a lot of time this session fighting it.”

The bill is doubly dangerous because, although it supposedly prohibits human cloning, its deceptive wording actually leaves the door wide open for cloning and subsequent “human fetal farming” – growing cloned fetuses for the harvesting of their tissues.

Its only limitation on cloning is that no cloned fetus may be born alive.

In its battle against the Stem Cell Research Act, Maryland Right to Life is:

Publishing The Stem Cell Research Report, a monthly newsletter designed to educate state legislators on stem cell research.

Conducting a letter campaign urging Gov. Robert Ehrlich to oppose ESCR and human cloning.  Heller hopes to deliver 50,000 such letters to the governor.

• Distributing “Zara” flyers at the Maryland State Fair and other functions.  The flyer features photos and the story of Zara, a winsome toddler who was a 4-cell embryo, left over from in vitro fertilization, when her parents adopted her.  “Zara actually comes to Annapolis and lobbies,” said Heller.  “She makes it difficult for Paula Hollinger to say that the embryo is not a human being.”

• Supporting the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2006, which would prohibit state funding to create and kill human embryos.

Both the Parental Notification bill, which would require a parent to be notified when a minor child seeks an abortion, and the Human Cloning Prohibition Act failed to make it out of committee in the 2005 session, said Heller.

She noted that the Parental Notification bill, first introduced in 2000, had 72 delegates as co-sponsors in the last session, enough to have passed it in the House of Delegates if it hadn’t been killed in the Health and Government Operations Committee.

“But we are gaining momentum,” said Heller.

Writing or phoning one’s state legislator is important, she said.

“With Hollinger’s stem cell research bill, one legislator told me that if he gets 1,500 phone calls in favor of it and only 200 calls against it, that makes it hard for him to oppose it,” she explained.

MDRTL President Angela Martin concurred.

“We need people to go to their churches and say, ‘We need a letter-writing campaign’ against the stem cell bill, said Martin.