Missouri
Constitutional Amendment 2
Informed Voters Must Examine and Understand Cloning Amendment!
Let’s discuss Missouri Constitutional Amendment 2.
There are times when governments do things that cause us to shake our heads and say, “There they go again! What in the world are they thinking up there in the legislature?” Sometimes it is laughable, the things they come up with. There is nothing funny about Amendment 2 that is before the voters of Missouri for approval in November.
This time, those forces in our world that are working for evil, (in the way they always do, by disguising it as something good,) are blitzing the media with promises about how embryonic stem cell research “could… might… someday offer hope for a cure” for many of our most frightening and debilitating diseases. While every Christian is called to a life of compassionate care and service for all who are in need, we are never called to sacrifice human life in order that human suffering and pain might be alleviated. That’s what is planned in Amendment 2.
Ask a lawyer or a politician to answer some of the questions relating to unclear wording as it relates to finances and the impact on many, many parts of the State Constitution that will be voided if this amendment passes. I will speak on the area I know best: the theological and moral issues that they are trying to slip past us once again.
Birth!
On Wednesday evening, the confirmation class and I were privileged to study the Lord’s Fifth Commandment together, “You shall not murder.” Luther reminds us that this commandment means “We are to fear and love God that we do not hurt nor harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.”
We studied Luke 10, the story of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus gives His most explicit teaching about how we are to behave. In answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus makes it clear that the most desperately helpless among us, regardless of whether we have any relationship with them, is our neighbor. He concludes with, “Go and do likewise!”
When God speaks about the birth of children in the Bible, one thing becomes immediately clear: conception and birth are the beginning and completion of one continuous, unstopping process, the gift of God of a human life. Some of the most obvious examples are the references to our Savior’s birth in both the Old Testament and the New.
Isaiah, in those familiar, joyous words read at Christmas, predicts the Lord’s birth when he quotes the Lord above Himself: “A virgin will conceive and bear a son…” The verbs are both emphasized and are grammatically linked as one, indicating that God’s miracle of birth begins at conception and concludes at it’s most naturally and inevitable point, the birth of a child, in this case, the Lord Jesus.
The angel spoke to Mary in the same fashion, again, “conceive and bear a child.” The predictions of John the Baptist’s birth, God’s call to Jeremiah, where he was known by God, “Even before I formed you in the womb,” and that beautiful Psalm 139, the song of wonder at God’s creation of an unborn child, all speak in the same fashion.
[Interestingly, the scientists who actually study these things, embryologists, do not make such distinctions and agree that this single cell that progresses from cell to embryo to fetus to birth is a human being in the process of formation right from the beginning.]
Science?
Many, and quite sadly, most in the scientific and medical community, are quite comfortable stating their own opinion about what God has clearly taught concerning the conception of unborn children. What God has given us as work of His wonder, the intricately linked conception and birth of a baby human being, scientists are willing to break into little pieces, drawing their own arbitrary lines about where, along this unified, continuous process, human life begins.
Christians who take God at His word are unwilling to do so.
The tragedy of abortion is simply the act of politicians siding with what used to be a minority and has now become a majority in the medical profession, and declaring that a life that is rapidly progressing toward birth may be terminated, an unborn child killed for the convenience of the mother or others.
In this world of sickness and sin, where life sometimes brings us tragic irony, in a very few, rare cases, it is sometimes necessary to terminate a pregnancy for the purpose of saving the life of a dying mother. It’s one of those horrors, like racing into a burning building and hearing two cries for help.
Amendment 2 seeks to legalize the creation of embryos, forming human lives, in order for them to be terminated and disassembled for scientific experimentation.
Your ballot will state in five short summary phrases that the Amendment will “ban human cloning or attempted human cloning.” The actual Amendment, five pages long, reads, “’Clone or attempt to clone a human being’ means to implant in a uterus or attempt to implant in a uterus anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy that could result in the creation of a human fetus, or the birth of a human being” (Section 38(d) 6(1)).
They have drawn a line at the point of implantation and said that the process of the creation of a human life does not begin until the unborn child is planted into a woman’s uterus. Read it carefully.
Amendment 2 will explicitly allow the cloning of human beings, as long as they are destroyed before being planted in a mother’s uterus. Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, the exact process used to clone Dolly the sheep, will be used to create human life. Those lives will be ended and pulled apart for research. It’s cloning, and stopping short of implantation and birth.
There are other frightful problems with the Amendment. There are no laws prohibiting Missourians from any treatment legal in Missouri. Oversight of this research by doctors and politicians seems quite similar to regulation of gambling in Missouri. Who is really watching? As long as research is conducted at our State Universities, funding will not be restricted. Look at related websites for more information on these and other concerns.
The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod has consistently taken a bold, and often unpopular stand on the moral and theological issue of life. It’s a very slippery slope, down which we as a society have already slid quite far. Here in Missouri the voters are called upon to approve or reject that continued slide by approving the cloning and termination of human embryos.
First, we are called to care for, love, encourage, support and bless in any way we can all who struggle with illness. Jesus reminded us that the poor and the suffering would always be with us until He gives perfect healing in eternity. We are our brother’s and our sister’s keeper, including our unborn sisters and brothers. And then we are called to speak to our society according to our faith and our consciences, as we vote in November.
Please be carefully informed before you vote. Thanks for your attention today. I greatly value your listening ear and your prayerful consideration of our Lord’s instruction.