David Weldon: “many liberals voted for the cloning ban. I thought that was one of the unique features that emerged from the debate on…”

“many liberals voted for the cloning ban. I thought that was one of the unique features that emerged from the debate on human cloning here in the House of Representatives. We had people of very, very divergent opinion. We had some Christian people, some Jewish people, Democrats, Republicans; we had liberals and conservatives. Why is that? Why did people unite around this ban on human cloning? They came at it from different perspectives, and for many liberals it was a woman's rights issue. This is an incredibly important point. It is getting inadequate discussion, in my opinion. If we are going to allow research cloning to proceed, these labs are going to need hundreds and possibly thousands of eggs. Where are they going to get these eggs? They are going to get them from women. How do you get eggs from a woman? You have to expose them to drugs. You have to give them drugs to cause something called superovulation. One of these drugs that they use has a 30 percent incidence of causing depression. Then you have to anesthetize the woman to extract the eggs. Who will do that? What woman would put themselves through that, or submit themselves to exposure to a drug that has potential side effects including depression, and then submit to a general anesthetic to extract these eggs? We know who will do that: women who are desperate; poor women, women who are desperately in need of money. It will ultimately end up in exploitation of women.”