The Ballot Summary of the cloners' Amendment 2 that you will read in the voting booth on November 7
completely misrepresents the full 2000-word text of the amendment.
To correct this injustice, Missouri Roundtable For Life is publishing this weekly series
on the principal deceptions of Amendment 2.
Amendment 2 pretends to ban human cloning. Section 2(1) of the Initiative states that "No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being."
But wait... the definition section of the amendment, Section 6, reverses the plain English meaning of the apparent ban on cloning in Section 2(1). We will see this pattern of reversals again and again as we go through the amendment.
Section 6(2) defines "clone or attempt to clone" as "to implant in a uterus... anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of human female by the sperm of human male."
This is a false definition of cloning.
To clone means "to create a genetic copy of." This is accomplished by a technical procedure termed somatic cell nuclear transfer, in which the nucleus of a typical human body cell which contains the full complement of 46 DNA chromosomes, is transferred into the egg whose own nucleus has been removed. The insertion of the body cell nucleus into the egg produces a new human being who has all 46 of his or her chromosomes from a single donor, rather than 23 from the mother and 23 from the father as is the case in fertilization. The new embryo is thus a genetic clone of the donor who provided the body cell nucleus.
Thus, cloning has nothing to do with implantion in a uterus. The cloning of a human being occurs BEFORE implantation, and the cloned human being is a cloned human being whether or not he or she is implanted in a uterus. Thus the apparent on cloning in Amendment 2 is no ban at all.
In fact, Amendment 2 actually creates a constitutional right to clone human beings, since Section 6(13) specifically allows the practice of somatic cell nuclear transfer, which we have seen is technical term for cloning. Thus Amendment 2 creates a constitutional right to clone human beings while pretending to ban cloning.