Pro-Lifers Sharpening Skills in Battle Against Stem Cell Research and Cloning.(Mary Balch, State Legislative Director, National Right to Life Committee)(Interview)

No battle in the fight for life is ever easy, but fewer contests are more difficult than combating proposals to fund embryonic stem cell research and cloning.

There are proposals aplenty to explicitly fund human cloning as well as others that "only" authorize the lethal harvesting of stem cells from human embryos. All come wrapped in sometimes sincere rhetoric about "helping" sick people and are promoted by profit seeking biotechnology firms which employ whole teams of lobbyists.

"If you thought the pro-abortion lobby has tons of money," said NRLC State Legislative Director Mary Balch, "you haven't seen anything yet. It seems as if the biotech companies bring unlimited resources to the table."

And while the sledding isn't getting any easier, pro-lifers are learning how to respond to this legislative juggernaut. "That is because pro-lifers are getting up to speed on an issue that is at one and the same time very complicated and very simple," Balch said.

Compounding the impact of the abundant money biotech firms have at their disposal is that proponents are able to tug on the heartstrings of legislators. Not up to speed on the science, they do not understand the fact that there have been no embryonic stem cell therapies that have worked in humans or that there are ethically acceptable alternatives to scavenging stem cells from embryos and/or cloning new life on which to experiment. Proven therapies involving adult stem cells are already helping patients and have for years.

"Put yourselves in the shoes of a typical committee chairman," Balch told NRL News. "Sincere parents testify that the 'only' way their child can be saved from a life of misery is for the state to explicitly legalize - - and fund - - research that uses a 'few cells' which would be 'thrown away' anyway.

"This is a extraordinarily compelling one-two punch, made even more powerful by the fact that it is based solely on hope, not medicine, and manages to avoid an honest discussion of the grave ethical issues at stake," Balch said.