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 places cloners completely above the law. Section 2(7) of the amendment reads as follows:
"All stem cell research and all stem cell therapies and cures must be conducted and provided in accordance with state and local laws of general applicability... to the extent that any such laws do not (i) prevent, restrict, obstruct, or discourage any stem cell research... or (ii) create disincentives for any person to engage in or otherwise associate with such research.
This is an astounding establishment of constitutional immunity for cloners. They will have to follow the law ONLY to extent that the law does not "discourage" or "create disincentives" to any stem cell research including cloning. Since almost any law could be construed to be discouraging or to create disincentives, the cloners will be totally free to pursue their deadly science without any regulation or oversight whatsoever.
Section 7 of Amendment 2 extends this immunity for cloners to all "governmental actions":
"[A]ll state and local laws, regulations, rules, charters, ordinances, and other governmental actions shall be construed in favor of the conduct of stem cell research... No state or local law, regulation, rule, charter, ordinance, or other governmental action shall (i) prevent, restrict, obstruct, or discourage any stem cell research... or (ii) create disincentives for any person to engage in or otherwise associate with such research.
No state or local governmental action, whether of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch, will be able to "discourage" or "create disincentives" to cloning in any way. This is complete constitutional immunity for cloners, an immunity whose full implications are disturbing indeed.
We saw last week that this language creates a constitutional entitlement to ever-increasing taxpayer funding of cloning and of any institution that does cloning, since any funding of cloning or of any institution that does cloning can only be increased, never reduced. And taxpayers will be unable to regulate the cloners in any way.
The courts will be constitutionally required to construe all laws and governmental actions in favor of cloning—clearly an invitation to cloners to litigate to expand their privileges. And no action or any state court or judge will be able to discourage or create disincentives to cloning in any way.
Why should Missouri grant such immunity and unfettered access to our tax dollars to any interest group, much less one that includes well-heeled private institutions with multi-billion dollar endowments?