Catholics urged to lead way in defeating stem-cell, cloning proposal

Published: 2006-10-09

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (CNS) -- Catholics have a moral obligation to treat the least among them the way they would treat Christ himself, Missouri's Catholic bishops said in a pastoral letter calling for defeat of a proposed state constitutional amendment on embryonic stem-cell research and cloning. The amendment, slated for the Nov. 7 ballot, would take away state and local governments' authority to regulate and ban human cloning and embryonic stem-cell research. Such research always results in the killing of innocent human life. "The stage of human life at which the killing takes place makes no difference," the bishops said in the letter, released Sept. 30 during the Missouri Catholic Conference's annual assembly at the Capitol in Jefferson City. "No matter how big or small we are, we all begin our unique journey of life as a human embryo," they said. "Killing is killing, no matter how young or old the victim. And no human life, at any stage of its development, may ever be taken for the sake of someone else's gain."

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