From the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/24/politics/24CLON.html

January 24, 2002

Some for Abortion Rights Lean Right in Cloning Fight

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 — As co- author of the updated "Our Bodies,
Ourselves," the guidebook to women's sexual health that has been a
staple of college dormitories for decades, Judy Norsigian is
accustomed to being labeled not just a liberal, but a radical
feminist. But there is one issue on which Ms. Norsigian is comfortably
aligned with conservatives: human cloning.

Ms. Norsigian opposes cloning, either to make babies or to create
embryos that might be used to treat disease. She fears the science
will place an undue burden on the women who donate their eggs for the
experiments.

"This is very much a woman's issue," Ms. Norsigian said. "I'm trying
to get the word out to the world that there is a very strong
pro-choice liberal contingent that believes there is something wrong
with embryo cloning."

As the Senate prepares for hearings on Thursday on whether to restrict
cloning, the fight against the research is creating unlikely alliances
on Capitol Hill. Until now, the debate has been portrayed as a classic
left-right clash, pitting patients' advocates and scientists who see
cloning as a means to cure disease against religious leaders and
conservatives who oppose the research because human embryos, which
they regard as human life, are destroyed by the experiments.

But as Ms. Norsigian's views illustrate, the cloning controversy is
far more nuanced than that. Some people on the political left oppose
cloning both for research and reproduction. In so doing, they have
aligned themselves with a man many of them did not vote for, President
Bush.

They include women's health advocates, environmentalists, the writer
Norman Mailer, the sociologist Todd Gitlin and academics like
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, a scholar of women's history at Emory
University, and Benjamin Barber, a noted political theorist at the
University of Maryland.

Those interviewed said they were not opposed to embryo research per
se, but were wary of biotechnology and cautious about genetic
tinkering. Mr. Mailer called it "playing in the foothills of
Creation."

"I think a lot of people are looking for a place to stand which, in
the highest sense of conservativism, preserves some sphere of life,"
said Mr. Gitlin, a professor of culture, journalism and society at New
York University who, along with the others, signed a statement
circulated by Jeremy Rifkin, a longtime critic of biotechnology.

There is nearly universal opposition on Capitol Hill to cloning for
reproduction, so the debate that begins Thursday in a Senate
subcommittee hearing will turn primarily on whether scientists should
be permitted to clone embryos to obtain stem cells. Scientists hope
such cells can be used to treat diseases like diabetes and
Parkinson's.

In July, the House passed legislation, backed by President Bush, that
would ban cloning for any reason. In the Senate, similar legislation
has been introduced by Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas.

But Mr. Brownback's bill is about to face competition. Senator Tom
Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, is preparing to introduce legislation that
would ban only reproductive cloning. Senator Tom Daschle, Democratic
of South Dakota and the majority leader, has said the Senate will vote
on cloning in March.

So proponents and opponents are pulling together their coalitions.
Daniel Perry, who as executive director of the Alliance for Aging
Research, a patient advocacy group, is a strong proponent of research
cloning, says the issue requires "looking past simplistic liberal
versus conservative labels" to how people view biotechnology.

"If you are optimistic about the daily revelation of new tools and new
insights into biology, if you see that as an upward march toward a
release of suffering, you will" favor cloning for research, Mr. Perry
said. Opponents, he said, "see it as people losing control to
scientists and other technocrats."

Mr. Perry expects some conservatives to join his cause, just as they
did in last summer's debate over embryonic stem cell research.
Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat who is co-chairwoman
of a congressional caucus devoted to increasing awareness of diabetes,
said some of her conservative colleagues were rethinking their views
on research cloning.

"You say cloning and you have this image of people being cloned," Ms.
DeGette said. But views change, she said, "when you actually talk to
people about the scientific technique, and how this is an extension of
stem cell research."

Opponents of cloning, however, appear to be ahead in forming a
liberal- conservative coalition. When Mr. Rifkin, the biotechnology
critic, sent his letter seeking support for a cloning ban, he enlisted
the conservative journalist William Kristol to do the same.

Mr. Kristol's letter was signed by conservative notables, among them
two scholars, Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins University and Robert
P. George of Princeton University, who have since been named to
President Bush's Council on Bioethics. Mr. Rifkin characterized his
list of 68 signatories as "the who's who of the progressive and left
community."

The issue appears to have created a split in the women's movement.
Some reproductive rights advocates and the Women's Health Network, a
Washington advocacy group, support a moratorium on research cloning,
though not an outright ban.

But the Society for Women's Health Research strongly supports research
cloning. Two major groups, Planned Parenthood and the National
Organization for Women, have yet to take a position.

"It reminds me a little of the pornography debates, where you had
definitely two very strong camps within feminism," said Alice J. Dan,
director of a federally financed Center of Excellence in Women's
Health at the University of Illinois. She signed Mr. Rifkin's letter.

As for Ms. Norsigian, who has spent decades arguing for the right to
an abortion, she is now arm in arm with people like Richard
Doerflinger, an official of the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops. "I think it's great," said Mr. Doerflinger, who is opposed to
abortion.

"I had a little joke with them," Ms. Norsigian said. "I said, `You
know, this may be the only issue on the face of the earth we ever
agree on.' "

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

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