The Law:

• A prohibition on the creation (by whatever means) of any human embryo solely for research, in which the embryo will be harmed or destroyed

Why We Need Legislative Action:

• Scientists and researchers have begun routinely crossing a major moral boundary by creating, exploiting, and destroying human embryos as mere research tools or sources of human cells.
   
• Many states—including California and New Jersey—have state laws that endorse, enable, and fund the practice of creating, exploiting, and destroying human embryos.
   
• Whatever one’s view about using “spare” human embryos—embryos that are already frozen and left-over in fertility clinics, all first created solely for reproductive use—we can all agree that creating human embryos solely for research crosses a moral line.

What the Law Does:

• It enacts into law the widespread moral consensus of the American public: most Americans believe we should never create, exploit, and destroy human life solely for research.
   
• It protects women from being exploited as suppliers of human eggs, since creating embryos solely for research requires procuring human eggs solely for research.
   
• It treats IVF embryos and cloned embryos with equal dignity. The Brownback cloning bill would prohibit the creation and destruction only of cloned human embryos for research. This law would prohibit the creation and destruction of any human embryo for research, no matter how it was created.

What the Law Does Not Do:

• It does not affect, undermine, or limit research on existing embryonic stem cell lines.
   
• It does not affect, prevent, or limit the derivation of new stem cell lines from human embryos created originally for reproduction but left-over in fertility clinics.
   
• It does not change in any way the current federal policy on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell lines.
   
• It does not change in any way current federal law or policy concerning abortion.
   
• It does not affect diagnostic observations or tests to assess embryos created for possible use in reproduction.