Will the real Amendment 2 please stand up?

A Letter to the Editor of the Post-Dispatch:

Why is the wording of Amendment 2 so deceptive? Are Missouri citizens entitled to know the real facts about this amendment? Are there valid reasons to view this amendment with suspicion? Is Amendment 2 really about cures? Or is it really about unfettered access to taxpayers' money – money for funding a dubious enterprise which private industry has become increasingly reluctant to support? The answers to these and other questions are fundamental to Missouri voters who loathe being duped and taken for fools. Missouri citizens need to understand why there is such a reliance on the use of inexcusably deceptive language in Amendment 2.

Despite outrageous claims to the contrary, Amendment 2 actually creates a constitutional requirement to clone human embryos, which are then to be killed and used for research. Let’s be honest, shall we? "Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer"(SCNT) is the scientific term for cloning. SCNT is the very same method used to clone Dolly the sheep. Why are Amendment 2 supporters trying to deceive the voters and claim, contrary to fact, that the amendment "bans" human cloning?

Another contemptible deception of Amendment 2 is that it actually permits poor or other vulnerable women to be paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for their eggs in order for researchers to create "egg farms." This harvesting would be done at the risk of women’s health and their future fertility. While the amendment says that women cannot be paid "valuable consideration" for their eggs, subsequent language in the amendment obliterates the definition of "valuable consideration" in such a way that women can be paid "valuable consideration" for their eggs. In Clintonesque fashion, Missouri voters are told that "valuable consideration" is not really "valuable consideration".

How many citizens are aware that Amendment 2 actually gives a "blank check" to stem cell researchers? This amendment effectively allows researchers and their accomplices to "pick the pockets" of Missouri taxpayers. Moreover, this legalized larceny will have no oversight by elected representatives and it cannot be stopped by legislation. If one looks closely at Section 5 of the amendment, one reads: "...no state or local governmental body or official shall eliminate, reduce, deny, or withhold any public funds provided or eligible to be provided... to a person that (i) lawfully conducts stem cell research". Curiously, the ballot which the voters will see on November 7th makes no mention of this important fact. Why not? Does this not make Missouri citizens subject to "Taxation without representation"?

Based upon the simple observations of what appears to be deliberately deceptive wording in the Amendment and numerous unsupported claims from its advocates, it seems obvious that someone wants to pull "Dolly’s wool" over the eyes of Missouri citizens and change Missouri’s nickname to the "Snow Me" state - all while gorging at the public trough of taxpayer dollars.