Odd-couple pairing in U.S. cloning debate Abortion-rights activists join GOP conservatives
The debate over human cloning has spawned an unprecedented alliance between some pro-choice activists and anti-abortion Republicans. Both camps see human clones as the first step toward the creation of designer babies.
The parties to this strange-bedfellows alliance base their opposition on different grounds. Feminists who object to cloning fear it will turn women's eggs and wombs into commodities, while abortion opponents have religious qualms about this brave new form of reproduction.
At a time when the related debate over stem cell research has seen some anti-abortion Republicans flip-flop and support human embryo research, the odd- couple alliance over cloning dramatizes the power of biotechnology to redraw the political map.
"This is not a matter of left or right, liberal and conservative," said Claire Nader, chairwoman of the Council for Responsible Genetics in Boston and sister of the former third-party presidential candidate, Ralph Nader. "This is about people who want to draw the line versus those who want to rush ahead before we know what the risks are."
The pro-abortion rights activists, who quietly initiated their coalition at a meeting in San Francisco in February, support the criminal sanctions contained in the cloning ban that anti-abortion Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) recently pushed through the House of Representatives.
The pro-abortion rights activists also want a five-year moratorium on research and therapeutic cloning. This position is more moderate than the Weldon bill's, but more restrictive than counterproposals, backed by the biotech industry, that would let research cloning proceed.
HEADED FOR SENATE The issue is headed for the Democratic-controlled Senate. Pro-abortion rights feminists are raising their voices, hoping to persuade some Senate liberals to support a tough cloning ban -- though this means standing with conservative House Republicans.
"This may be the only issue on the face of the Earth we agree on," said author Judy Norsigian of Boston, who helped launch the women's health movement with the 1970s book "Our Bodies, Ourselves." Norsigian said pro-biotechnology sentiment was so strong that the only way feminist opponents could stop cloning would be by working with anti-abortion Republicans.
"Biotech doesn't want any regulation," Norsigian said. "A good portion of them have back-burner plans for designer babies. There's big bucks there."
An aide to Weldon, the anti-abortion lawmaker who pushed the tough cloning ban through the House, said both sides felt awkward about the alliance.
"Everyone involved knows this is a very unique coalition," said the Weldon aide, adding, "It's not about pro-life versus pro-choice, it's about eugenics and baby-manufacture."
CONTROVERSIAL MOVEMENT Eugenics is the name given to a movement that arose in the United States and elsewhere early in the 20th century. It led to the forced sterilization of criminals and people with low IQs and other undesirable traits.
Now, some pro-abortion rights liberals fear biotechnology will give rise to a form of techno-eugenics that accomplishes the same end of "improving" the human species. It was this concern that prompted genetics activists Marcy Darnovsky and Richard Hayes of San Francisco to found the pro-abortion rights, anti-cloning coalition and invite two dozen women's health activists to a meeting in San Francisco earlier this year.
"Cloning is determining the genetic makeup of a future child," Hayes said, arguing that the next step would be engineering particular traits and "the creation of a master race."
Lisa Wanzor, associate director of the San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Action network, attended the February meeting with her boss, Barbara Brenner. They later signed the anti-cloning statement on behalf of the breast cancer network. Wanzor said cloning might seem far removed from breast cancer and women's health, but she and Brenner decided cloning would be such an expensive process that only the wealthiest would be able to have clones.
'WIDENS THE GAP'
"That widens the gap as to who has access to services in our medical system, " said Wanzor, who believes broad access to health technologies is a must.
Susan Yanow, director of the Abortion Access Project in Boston and a coalition member, said cloning would expand the market for women's eggs and commercialize the womb.
"The commoditization of women's bodies is really the battleground," said Yanow, pointing out that most clones would be born to surrogate mothers. "One of the concerns many feminists have about the cloning debate is what happens to low-income women when their wombs are for sale," she said.
Nancy Stoller, a sociologist at University of California at Santa Cruz, said these broad issues got back to personal health concerns when one hears leading scientists say that animal clones display many abnormalities.
"If a basic principle of medicine is to first do no harm, we don't know that with cloning," Stoller said.
The feminist opponents have tried to separate their opposition to cloning from the debate over stem cell research. But that is a tough line to draw. Stem cell supporters want to permit the cloning of embryos in purely research settings. But the feminist opponents want a five-year halt even to that sort of nonreproductive cloning.
"Society right now needs to catch up with this technology," Nader said.
E-mail Tom Abate at tabate at sfchronicle.com.