“We did pass all of the pro-life legislation that we thought was very important whether it be fetal pain, whether it be stem cell research, whether it be human cloning,” Zellers told Minnesota Public Radio. “A lot of these things we passed. Gov. Dayton vetoed those bills.”

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) President Leo LaLonde sent a fundraising letter to supporters last week that lambasted Republican leaders for not pushing pro-life policies hard enough.

“[We] felt confident that House and Senate leaders would insist that at least some of our protective measures would be included in the final budget,” LaLonde’s letter read. “Senate Majority Leader Koch and Speaker of the House Zellers quickly struck a deal with Gov. Dayton, and in the blink of an eye all five pro-life measures that has been passed by nearly two-thirds, veto-proof margin during the legislative session were negotiated away.”

Zellers said the legislature passed the bills desired by pro-lifers, but that Dayton insisted the social issues not be included in the final bills.

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) sent a scathing fundraising letter to supporters complaining about the 2011 legislative session and blaming Republican leadership for not pressuring Gov. Mark Dayton to sign anti-abortion legislation.

Politics in Minnesota’s Paul Demko notes that MCCL President Leo LaLonde went after House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, both of whom are Republicans. The letter notes that MCCL’s finances are at an all-time low.

“I am going to be brutally honest,” LaLonde wrote. “I am devastated by the fact that not only were we unsuccessful in enacting any new pro-life laws this session, but we lost an existing pro-life policy for the first time since Roe V. Wade legalized abortion on demand!”

LaLonde criticized Republicans for the group’s legislative failures.

“[We] felt confident that House and Senate leaders would insist that at least some of our protective measures would be included in the final budget,” he said. “Senate Majority Leader Koch and Speaker of the House Zellers quickly struck a deal with Gov. Dayton, and in the blink of an eye all five pro-life measures that has been passed by nearly two-thirds, veto-proof margin during the legislative session were negotiated away.”

He added, “The Republican leaders lost sight of what is truly at stake—the lives of innocent human beings.”

The letter asked supporters for donations because MCCL is struggling financially.

“The uncertainty of the economy has not been kind to MCCL. Donations are down,” the letter reads. MCCL also said that they spent a lot of money in the 2011 legislative session: ”Our coffers are at an all-time low-will you help us?”

On Monday, Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion lobby, stepped up its efforts to get a bans on abortion and funding for certain types of stem cell research included in budget negotiations aimed at ending the state shutdown. In an email alert to supporters, the group claimed that taxpayers “will be forced to pay for cloning” and urged members to contact legislators.

MCCL has already sent a letter to Republican leaders demanding that anti-abortion measures be included in the budget talks and warned legislators in statements to the press that the group was “questioning that leadership” of Republicans on abortion policy.

On Monday the group started a pressure campaign among its members.

“In 2009, pro-lifers across the state worked tirelessly and were successful in implementing a two-year ban on taxpayer funding of human cloning. This year, if the Legislature doesn’t reauthorize the ban, taxpayers will be forced to pay for cloning,” the email said (emphasis theirs).

The actual language of that ban would prohibit taxpayer funding somatic cell nuclear transfer, a type of stem cell research that creates a a blastocyst using a patient’s own cells with the purpose of making stem cells that won’t be rejected by the patient’s body.

Contrary to MCCL’s email alert, no state-funded (or privately-funded) institution is currently engaged in such research in Minnesota and the University of Minnesota had repeatedly told the media that it has no plans to initiate such research. The ban was included in a higher education budget which was vetoed by Gov. Mark Dayton.

Perhaps noting the inaccuracy, the group changed the language of the email when it posted it to its blog Monday evening. Instead of “taxpayers will be forced,” the group changed the language to “can be forced.”

The email continued, “The Right to Life is the most important right of all — and Minnesota can’t move backwards in protecting human life. Call or email your legislators and make sure your voice is heard! Final decisions are being made now. Your message to your legislators can be very simple: no taxpayer dollars for human cloning! Be sure to remind your elected officials how important protecting human life is to you and that reauthorizing the ban on taxpayer funding of human cloning is the right thing to do!”

In addition to pressure from MCCL, the Minnesota Catholic Conference engaged in a similar pressure campaign on Monday, focusing on banning SCNT stem cell research, but failing to distinguish between “human cloning” and somatic cell nuclear transfer.

A budget agreement being hammered out by Gov. Mark Dayton and Republicans in the Minnesota Legislature aimed at ending a state government shutdown came under fire from the state’s largest anti-abortion group over the weekend. Dayton and Republicans made an agreement late last week to resolve Minnesota’s budget impasse, in part by avoiding controversial social issues such as abortion and focusing on fiscal matters. A representative for Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life told reporters that he now questions the pro-life credentials of GOP leaders and told Republican legislators to vote no on any budget agreement that does not ban abortion.

In a veiled threat to Republicans, MCCL’s Scott Fischbach told Minnesota Public Radio that his group will be taking a second look at Republican leaders.

“We had operated under the assumption that we had pro-life leadership in both the House and the Senate. I think that there are many pro-lifers that are devastated now to the point of questioning some of that leadership,” he said. “And we’re going to have to address that down the road.”

Fischbach’s wife is one of those in leadership. Sen. Michelle Fischbach, R-Paynesville, is the president of the Minnesota Senate.

MCCL has pushed for a ban on certain types of stem cell research, a ban on abortion after 20 weeks gestation and a ban on the use of state subsidized health care for abortion procedures. Those measures were included in the Republican’s budget bills but were vetoed by Dayton in May.

Politics in Minnesota reported on Saturday that MCCL had also sent a letter to Republican legislators urging them to vote against the agreement being drawn up between Dayton and Republican leadership.

Already, abortion politics has been viewed as a partial cause of the government shutdown when Republicans included the controversial policies as part of negotiations a day before talks with Dayton failed and the state began a shutdown.

The Catholic church is also insistent that any budget solution include bans on abortion and some types of stem cell research.

Republican lawmakers and anti–abortion rights group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life are pushing a ban on abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy and after conception, citing a medical and scientific “consensus” that fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks. But according to statements and research from leaders in the medical and scientific communities, no such consensus exists. In fact, researchers continue to debate whether fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks or at much later stages.

“This legislation would prohibit abortions on unborn children at the point the unborn child feels pain. The unborn feel pain specifically at 20 weeks after conception,” Andrea Rau of MCCL testified last week. “There is consensus that the unborn child at 20 weeks after conception can feel pain,” said Rau, pointing to the legislative findings portion of the bill.

Those findings contain a list of medical assertions concerning the ability of a fetus to feel pain and can be viewed in the original bill, SF649.

“And these findings have been backed up with abundant written documentation,” she said. “There are a number of facts that are not disputed in the medical community.”

But, in a March 30 letter to legislators, a team of experts in the field of gynecology and reproductive science evaluated the legislative findings promoted by MCCL and demonstrated that there is no medical or scientific consensus on fetal pain at any stage of development and that research continues to be contradictory.

“These findings are inconsistent with published science and thus should not be used to inform potential policy change,” wrote the letter’s authors, Prof. Philip Darney of the Department of Obstetrics Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California – San Francisco and Dr. Mark Rosen, who is the Director of Obstetrical Anesthesia at UCSF. Both are part of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

“[S]cientific evidence does not support the elimination of legal abortion at 20 weeks’ gestation based on concerns about the existence of fetal pain,” the letter concluded.

The letter points to two large studies of fetal pain that demonstrate that there is not agreement within the medical community. The first study, conducted in 2005, did an exhaustive review of existing research on fetal pain.

“This review concludes that based on the best available scientific evidence, a human fetus probably does not have the capacity to experience pain until the 29th week of pregnancy at the earliest.”

In 2010, another review undertaken by the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (RCOG) in the United Kingdom showed very similar results.

The letter’s authors found significant problems with the bill’s legislative findings and offered research that countered claims that a fetus at 20 weeks has the physical structures necessary to experience pain, that a fetus at 20 weeks reacts to stimuli, and that abortions at 20 weeks cause pain to a fetus.

But Rau and MCCL contend that those studies are biased.

“There have been a small handful of medical literature reviews that indicate that the unborn child may not be capable of feeling pain until later in the pregnancy, but these appear to contain biases,” said Rau. “Most, including the fetal surgeons who do these surgeries, agree with the consensus that the unborn child is capable of feeling pain by at least 20 weeks post conception.”

Rau is referring to the 2005 study that included an obstetrics researcher who performed abortions as part of her practice. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which was headed at the time by a Catholic who opposed abortion. According to the Chicago Tribune at the time:

Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, the journal’s editor-in-chief, said she wasn’t concerned by [Dr. Eleanor Drey]‘s failure to indicate she performed abortions. “That’s part of [an obstetrician's] scope of practice. They don’t have to reveal that.”

A Roman Catholic who opposes abortion, DeAngelis said she has been swamped this week with critical e-mails about the fetal-pain study from “people with no medical background, no science background, religious fanatics, people who are mean-spirited.” She stressed that the report was reviewed by several outside experts and thoroughly examined by her own staff.

“It is a peer-reviewed article,” DeAngelis said. “They are not reporting their own findings. It’s a review article based on what’s in the literature. … The references are there. Anybody who doubts the veracity can go to the original article and say they misinterpreted it.”

By MCCL’s account, its own research is biased. Of the experts the group mentions on its website about fetal pain, most are active within the anti–abortion rights movement.

For instance, Dr. Steve Calvin of the University of Minnesota has been involved with the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The late Dr. Robert J. White testified before Congress that he opposed abortion, and Dr. Paul Ranalli is a well-known anti-abortion activist.

In 2010, when Nebraska became the first state in the country to pass a fetal pain law (Idaho and Kansas have since passed such measures), Discovery News ran a feature on the debate. Stuart Derbyshire, a fetal pain expert at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, said, “Basing laws on this is really unreasonable. Abortion is not a scientific question. It is a moral and political question. To try and make science answer a moral question like that is just wrong. It’s cowardice on the part of lawmakers.”

In Minnesota, only 2 percent of all abortions are performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and in many cases those are the result of fetal abnormalities or a threat to the health of the mother. In 2009, fewer than 80 of the 12,300 abortions performed were after 20 weeks and none were later than 23 weeks.

The bill has passed committee in the House and awaits a vote in that body before being sent to Gov. Mark Dayton. In the Senate, the bill has advanced through one committee.

Here’s the letter that was sent to legislators:

A pair of anti-abortion rights bill are moving through the Minnesota House and Senate this week. On Tuesday, a Senate committee passed a bill to ban abortion at 20 weeks gestation. And in the House and Senate a bill to ban taxpayer funding for abortion was passed out of committee. It was clear from testimony on both sides of the debate that Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life and Republican lawmakers are seeking a high-profile lawsuit on the issue of abortion, and the bill to ban taxpayer funding for abortion is structured so that a challenge would go directly to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Senator Dave Thompson, R-Lakeville, introduced the bill to ban taxpayer funding for abortion.

“This bill would grant original jurisdiction to the Minnesota Supreme Court for any challenge,” he said. Thompson’s bill is aimed at challenging the 1995 Minnesota Supreme Court decision, Doe v. Gomez, which overturned a very similar law that prohibited low-income women from using state-sponsored health insurance to cover abortions. But, he said, it is not a challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade.

“It does not in any way challenge the holding or the reasoning in the 1973 court case Roe v Wade,” he said. “While I do disagree with that, it does not in any way touch the conclusion or the rationale of that decision and would not in any way alter or change a woman’s right to seek abortion services.”

He added, “It is not right for the public through their taxpayer dollars to have to fund abortions, which a large portion of Minnesotans find to be an immoral or an improper way for people to conduct themselves.”

Jordon Bauer of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life told the committee, “State tax money is used for a lot of great things, but in recent years our taxpayer dollars have been diverted to the purpose of killing unborn children.”

She cited polling data showing widespread public disapproval for taxpayer-funded abortion services. “A 2010 poll of the 8th Congressional District found that 73 percent oppose using tax dollars to pay for abortions. These results are consistent with other state and national polling,” said Bauer. “Minnesota taxpayers, a strong majority of whom don’t want their tax dollars going to abortion, have essentially helped to end the lives of 55,000 Minnesotans.”

The poll cited by Bauer was done by one of the country’s largest political groups opposed to abortion rights, the Susan B. Anthony List. The poll was conducted as part of a campaign to unseat Rep. James Oberstar, a DFLer who opposed such rights but supported President Obama’s health care reform proposal. SBA List went after Democrats in districts with a high “pro-life” bent and claimed that the Affordable Care Act would fund abortions, which it does not.

But, the SBA List polling in the 8th District is somewhat in line with national polling on taxpayer funding for abortion. The religious right group Family Research Council conducted a poll in 2008 that showed 56 percent of voters would not vote for a candidate who supported taxpayer funding for abortion, and a 2009 CNN poll found 61 percent of opposed using “public funds for abortions when the woman cannot afford it.”

Raleigh Levine of the William Mitchell College of Law testified that the bill, if it became law, would likely be ruled unconstitutional.

“SF103 bars funding for abortions even if they are the result of rape or incest, even if they are medically necessary, even if the mother’s own life would be put at risk if she continued her pregnancy or gave birth,” she said. “The bill would thus elevate potential fetal life above its mother’s own life. Even were abortion to be viewed as legally equivalent of homicide — the law has always viewed homicide as justified when in self defense — a mother need not and should not sacrifice her own life for her potential child’s.”

She added that the Minnesota Supreme Court would have to overrule its own decision in order for the law to stand.

Sen. Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, was concerned about that lawsuit. “There are some of us on this committee that don’t support this bill,” she said. “Poor women who cannot make their own choice about their health care end up relying on public assistance in other ways.”

She continued, “We have not funded subsidies for adoption, funding counties adequately to help women get off of public assistance by seeking employment. We have not funded health care for poor children who are born into poor families. So at this time to have a bill put forward that will cause a lawsuit, will cause the expenditure of state funds to defend the state constitution, is ill advised.”

That advice went unheeded, and the bill passed the committee on a voice vote.

Directly following that bill came another intended to curtail abortion rights. Sen. Gretchen Hoffman, R-Vergas, introduced a bill that would ban all abortions 20 weeks after conception based on the assumption that fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks.

MCCL’s Andrea Rau said, “There is consensus that the unborn child after 20 weeks of conception can feel pain and these findings have been backed up with abundant written documentation.”

She continued, “This legislation is not about whether or not women have a right to abortion, rather this legislation is about whether or not an unborn child that is developed to the point it can feel pain deserves the respect and dignity we offer to all members of the human family.”

“We are performing abortions on viable babies here in Minnesota,” she said, while holding up tiny diapers.

Sen. Berglin asked that the defense of the bill be provided by the legislature to the attorney general for the extra expense of defending the bill. The bill would set up an account to provide for the legal defense of the bill, including donations as well as taxpayer funds. Contradicting Rau’s claim about “consensus,” she also noted that the science behind fetal pain is not settled.

Levine of the William Mitchell College of Law also noted that the 20-week abortion ban would also be constitutionally suspect.

“SF649 violates the Minnesota Constitution’s privacy right as interpreted by the Minnesota Supreme Court and also violates the federal privacy right as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade,” she said. “The bill bars non-medically necessary abortion starting at 20 weeks, thus violates both the state and federal constitutions.”

She said those courts would have to overrule decades of their own procedural law.

Linnea House of NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota spoke in opposition to the bill. She talked about a situation in which a woman pregnant with twins had complications and if the birth was carried to term, both fetuses would die, but if one was aborted the other would live. The family chose to have the abortion and the remaining twin survived. Under the proposed bill, both fetuses would have died because the abortion would be prohibited.

She also said the bill was troubling because it lacks an exception for rape or incest.

“Women facing difficult and sometimes tragic complications in their pregnancies need to be able to make the best decision for this based on their medical condition, the recommendation of their doctor and the beliefs of their family,” House said. “I trust women to make these decisions, and you should too.”

Proposed bans on somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), a technique used in some forms of stem cell research, continue to wind their way through the legislative process as the debate over the provision has spread to the pages of newspapers statewide, mostly in opposition to the ban. Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) has vociferously defended the ban and has attacked reporters it says have not gotten the facts right.

Currently, a ban on state and federal funding for SCNT is contained in the higher education omnibus bill that passed both the Minnesota Senate and the House, and a provision to make SCNT a crime is in the health and human services omnibus bill that awaits further debate.

In the Senate, the ban is being promoted by Sen. Michelle Fischbach (R-Paynesville), whose husband Scott Fischbach runs MCCL, an affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC).

The American Council on Science and Health questioned the motives of those supporting the ban. The group cited a recent Minnesota Independent article that sorted out facts and myths surrounding the debate, particularly some assertions by MCCL that appear to muddle the facts surrounding the issue.

ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross came up with some possible reasons for Sen. Fischbach’s motivation: “Well, she may not be intentionally trying to mislead the public — she may just be ignorant,” he quips. “When I read stories like this about legislators ruling on scientific issues, I realize why we have all of these bans of safe and useful products — because these people have no idea what they’re talking about. They get hundreds of letters from card-toting members of the NRDC, EWG and who knows which other fringe groups, saying, ‘We need to ban this chemical for the sake of our children!’ and then, lo and behold, the legislature votes to ban it. In this case, the Minnesota Senate has been presented with the science, and yet the majority are making the issue into a moral one, although if they listened to the science, they would know it’s not even a moral issue. There is neither a scientific nor a moral reason why you should be against SCNT. Embryos aren’t harmed in the process, and it provides a vast potential to treat illnesses that are currently incurable.”

Minnesota’s major media outlets have covered the ban this week. MCCL called the Star Tribune’s Wednesday feature on the issue “hopelessly confused,” said the paper was “terribly at fault for publishing” the article and added, “The reporter, Jenna Ross, is uneducated and obviously not qualified to be writing about this subject.” They offered the same criticism of a Pioneer Press article on Thursday.

The University of Minnesota held a press conference on Thursday with families who have been helped by stem cell therapy, and although no SCNT stem cell treatments have yet been used, the university asserted that it could and that efforts to curtail research could prevent future treatments.

“The authors of this bill are trying to confuse people into thinking stem cell research, that can save so many lives, is human cloning. It is not,” said Sherri Gunvalson, whose son has a fatal form of muscular dystrophy. “If they succeed in passing this horrible bill, it will be another step in an effort to ban stem cell research in the misguided belief that somehow this ban is pro-life.”

Following the press conference, MCCL put out a statement defending the bil:

“The stories of young people being helped by the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute are very compelling. All Minnesotans want cures to be found. It is important to note than none of the patients who shared their stories today were helped by human cloning. The legislation that is currently under consideration would in no way affect existing adult or embryonic stem cell research. The proposed ban on human cloning does one thing — it bans human cloning. Numerous countries across the globe have done the same thing, and the United Nations has also called for a ban on all forms of human cloning. We repeat our call for research to be done at the U of M that is ethical and life affirming.”

What MCCL leaves out is that the United Nations is currently reopening the debate on whether to ban the actual cloning of human beings while allowing SCNT, also called therapeutic cloning, to continue.

MCCL and Fischbach have rejected efforts to amend legislation to clarify the difference between reproductive cloning — the creation of a new human being through SCNT — and therapeutic cloning, which creates a low number of cells, for research.

As Sen. Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park) notes in a recent press release, “Their so-called ban on cloning does nothing more than impose a very conservative religious definition of when life begins on the scope of scientific stem cell research in Minnesota.”

And the energy expended by the Legislature may be all for naught; MinnPost reported on Thursday that Gov. Mark Dayton is likely to veto any provision in the budget bills dealing with “human cloning” bans.

Sen. Michelle Fischbach, R-Paynesville, is adamant that a certain kind of stem cell research be banned. Her bill to criminalize somatic cell nuclear transfer was included in the health and human services omnibus bill currently under debate in the Senate, and she was successful in getting a weaker ban included in the higher education omnibus bill. The proposal has sparked a heated debate about whether the bill — and the testimony surrounding it — is misleading to the public on the topic of embryonic stem cell research. Republicans, however, have rejected an effort to clarify the debate.

A common refrain at a Senate Higher Education Committee hearing last week was “I’m not a scientist” as members debated Fischbach’s amendment to the higher education budget bill that would prohibit taxpayer funds for somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), a technique involved in some kinds of stem cell research. The amendment calls SCNT “human cloning,” which some members of the committee found problematic.

There are two kinds of cloning, committee members discussed. “Reproductive cloning” would involve the creation of a new human being — limbs, hair and all. “Therapeutic cloning” involves the creation of eight or so cells to be used to treat disease. The amendment, perhaps purposefully, does not make a distinction between these types:

No state funds or federal funds the state receives for state programs may be used to either support human cloning or to pay for any expenses incidental to human cloning. For purposes of this section, “cloning” means generating a genetically identical copy of an organism at any stage of development by combining an enucleated egg and the nucleus of a somatic cell to make an embryo.

Sen. Michelle Fischbach

Sen. Sandy Pappas (DFL-St. Paul) expressed the concern that it was misleading. “I think it would be helpful if we could all come to a consensus that we oppose reproductive cloning,” she said. “We can’t send the message out that we are anti-research in Minnesota, and by passing these laws that don’t have enough thoughtfulness. Why do we want to ban therapeutic cloning? The therapeutic use of cells to treat disease?”

She added, “Let’s come up with a clear definition for human cloning.”

Sen. Kathy Sheran (DFL-Mankato) tried to do that with an amendment to Fischbach’s amendment to make clear that the law would ban both therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning, but Fischbach and the panel’s Republicans were having none of it.

“I think we are really in danger of confusing the public about the difference between human cloning using stem cells for the creation of another human being and stem cells used for therapeutic purposes,” said Sheran. “They are very different and very separate, and this rolls them all in together and confuses the public into thinking this is all about human cloning when it isn’t.”

Fischbach said, “I think ‘human cloning’ is pretty clear.”

Sheran responded, “I know from your perspective it is, but we have heard testimony that there is a distinct difference between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning. It ought to be clear that your intent is to prohibit both, otherwise you will serve to create confusion in the public.”

Despite that plea, the amendment failed.

No scientists in the room

The science of SCNT was clearly an obstacle for just about everyone at the hearing. Pappas advised Fischbach, “You have to explain the biology here of what’s going on.”

But Fischbach couldn’t. “I will have to look that up. That’s beyond my scientific ability.”

Pappas shot back, “Mr. Chair, that’s our problem here today.”

Sen. Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park) complained, “If we had a scientist here, if we had proper notice, some of these questions could be answered directly.”

With that the committee turned to Jordan Bauer of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, which is pushing for the ban. “I am, unfortunately, not a scientist,” she said.

She did accurately explain the process of SCNT, however — something that didn’t happen in earlier committee hearings. In the Health and Human Services committee on Mar. 15, MCCL representative Andrea Rau discussed SCNT:

What they were trying to get at with human cloning research was to be able to create various tissues and they have new found others ways to do that without cloning. Now, what this language [in the bill] talks about, it’s very specific, it refers to only the cloning of human embryos. Once you have a human embryo, you know, if you were going to try to derive some kind of tissue, you would have to grow that embryo. If you wanted to grow a heart then, you’d have to grow the embryo and have the whole thing grow, the whole body and then harvest the heart, now I don’t think anyone here would think that was appropriate, but that’s the only thing you could do with it if you were trying to get a heart from it.

The Minnesota Independent ran that statement by several researchers, none of whom had heard of such a process, let alone of anyone attempting it.

“No one is trying to do that,” Don Gibbons, spokesman for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, told the Minnesota Independent. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. All organizations that support SCNT strongly oppose anything that would result in the implantation in a uterus,” the only way an embryo could grow large enough to harvest organs.

“SCNT is used to create new stem cells,” he added.

MCCL responded to a question by the Minnesota Independent asking for clarification. The spokesperson asked not to be quoted, but stood by the organization’s statement.

Pro-life versus science?

“The fact that it’s the MCCL that’s here testifying on this bill tells us a lot about the motivation of this bill. This is the pro-life movement trying to move the envelope based in large part on religious belief,” said Sen. Latz. “I think it’s a broader debate than we’ve had. I think we ought to be honest and candid about what’s on the table here and not pretend what’s going on here despite testimony that doesn’t specify that.”

He continued, “I respect that religious belief, but ennobling it in state statute is a different question, and doing it without notice and opportunity to be heard by everyone who might be concerned about this… that’s terrible.”

Dr. John Wagner

MCCL hasn’t been shy about its opposition to “human cloning,” but the motivation appears to be the fact that an eight-cell unfertilized embryo is created in SCNT research and that the group considers such an eight-cell embryo human life and worth protecting from destruction.

The group, which is run by Sen. Fischbach’s husband, Scott, distorted the position of leading stem cell researchers to make their case. In every committee where MCCL representatives have testified, they’ve cited world-renowned stem cell researchers Drs. Rudolf Jaenisch and Ian Wilmut.

“Leading researchers and scientists, including Ian Wilmut who cloned Dolly the sheep, and many others have turned away and against human cloning even for so called therapeutic purposes,” said MCCL’s Bauer at one committee meeting. “Ten years ago there was a lot of discussion about human cloning,” MCCL’s Rau said at another committee meeting. “They’ve tried that and, like Jaenisch and like others, they are continually turning away from that.”

But that’s not the whole story.

Dr. John Wagner of the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute talked directly to the researchers about their positions.

He told the committee, “When [Jaenisch and Wilcut] make statements that they are against cloning, they are talking about reproductive cloning not SCNT.”

“I am sure that it is no one’s intention to speak incorrectly about the science,” said Wagner. “I did call Dr. Wilmut on Saturday and Dr. Jaenisch, who was brought up, and they support my position entirely despite what you have heard. It’s misunderstanding what they are saying. They agree with the ban on reproductive cloning but not SCNT. There is certainly no question that there should be a ban on reproductive cloning.”

Sen. Fischbach and MCCL have cited a United Nations declaration numerous times in committee hearings as an example of international agreement on banning “human cloning,” but the UN declaration is nonbinding and the international body working on changing its position to allow the very research that Fischbach wants banned in Minnesota.

A bill in the Minnesota Legislature that would ban some forms of stem cell research could have unintended consequences for patients and researchers if it becomes law. The Human Cloning Prohibition Act could cost the Minnesota biotech industry millions in lost research dollars and sales, and the bill could potentially turn certain stem cell patients into criminals if they return to Minnesota after receiving certain treatments outside the state.

Dr. Hans Keirstead of the University of California Irvine is in negotiations with the Food and Drug Administration to conduct the first ever trials using embryonic stem cells to improve function in people with spinal cord injuries. While the therapy is promising, patients will also have to take anti-rejection drugs to prevent the body from attacking the stem cells. But Keirstead has another plan: Use somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) to create stem cells out of the patients’ own cells, ensuring that their bodies won’t reject them. In California such research is legal even though human cloning is expressly banned; legislators in Minnesota want to make that research a crime along with human cloning.

Keirstad and his research teams are pioneers in the field of stem cell research. They found a way several years ago to program stem cells to replicate as neural cells — the kind damaged in spinal cord injuries — at a high rate of purity. The embryonic stem cells his lab created are from existing stem cell lines which were created from discarded embryos from fertility clinics.

Those stem cells won’t match spinal cord injury patients’ own cells, and their bodies will reject the cells unless they take long-term courses of drugs to prevent their own immune system from attacking what could be an effective treatment.

Using SCNT, Keirstad hopes to create stem cells that match each individual patient. By taking cells from the patient’s skin or other part of the body and injecting them into a human egg, researchers can create stem cells that match the patient perfectly.

That’s what Minnesota’s proposed bill would criminalize, and it’s what the anti-abortion rights group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life calls “human cloning.”

But the bill goes even further as Sen. Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park) noted in Monday’s Higher Education Committee meeting.

Criminalizing patients?

“This bill makes it a crime not only to engage in that particular form of scientific conduct, but also to ship or receive or import any aggregation of cells that would meet this definition including, I suppose, if a person were to travel out of state and receive therapy that was created… created using this method of science and attempt to return to the state would be guilty of importing those cells and committing a crime simply by coming to Minnesota,” he said.

The Minnesota Independent spoke with several experts to ascertain if that would indeed be the case.

“Laws have been interpreted that way, but it’s a matter of opinion the courts will have to decide,” said Don Gibbons of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. He added that it’s hard to say for sure, since it’s up to law enforcement and the court system to determine application of the law.

Asked if the bill would criminalize travel into the state by patients participating in SCNT research, Michael Werner of the Washington, D.C.–based Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, said, “Well, it certainly could. This type of bill doesn’t account for a number of variables.”

“We don’t know where the next scientific discovery is going to come from whether it’s induced pluripotent stem cells, embryonic stem cells, umbilical cord cells or SCNT.”

He gave a scenario where a researcher might use SCNT to develop a certain kind of cell, and then that cell was altered or refined to create a treatment for a specific disease.

“Would that treatment still be a considered a product of SCNT?” Warner asked. “How many steps removed does the product stop being SCNT-derived? What if this technology led to other discoveries would treatments devired from those discoveries be available?”

He added, “The process of scientific discovery builds on itself.”

Lost research dollars

Dr. John Wagner of the University of Minnesota’s Stem Cell Institute told members of the Senate Higher Education Committee that the bill could cost the state in lost research funding.

“I think that, to be conservative, on the cheap end, would be hundreds of millions of dollars. There is a lot of work to get there, but the potential is massive,” he said.

Those numbers are in line with what market experts estimate. In one study in the publication Regenerative Medicine Cell Therapies, cell-based research alone generated millions in 2010. “We estimate from the cumulative numbers of units manufactured and patients treated as well as from discussions with senior industry experts, that the current value of the regenerative medicine cell therapy market is presently in the order of $100–200 million per annum,” the report’s authors wrote.

A 2010 memo from MaRS Advisory Services, a market research company based in Canada, stated that “2009 estimates approximate that the stem cell market (including blood cord banking and drug development tools) will achieve an annual growth of 29.2% resulting in sales of $11 billion by 2020.”

None of the organizations contacted by the Minnesota Independent would offer an estimate of how much a ban on SCNT would cost Minnesota in the long-term.

If passed into law, the ban could also mean top researchers leave the state to work at universities where such research is permitted. “I’ve been approached by Stanford,” Wagner said. “The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is putting out an RFA to recruit people from other states.”

Sen. Latz asked him if that was before or after the bill was introduced.

Wagner responded, “Both.”

Huge potential

SCNT has not yet been successful in the lab, but there’s a consensus among stem cell researchers that it has huge potential.

A working group of stem cell researchers from around the world met last summer to discuss the future of the technique and they concluded that the research is vital:

Given that our knowledge of reprogramming is in its infancy, it is still possible that hSCNT will emerge as the technology of choice for specific human stem cell therapies or for developing particular disease models. A further reason to continue hSCNT research rests in its potential to shed light on the earliest stages of human development. Even the first few events after fertilization differ among species (Haaf, 2006), and increasing evidence suggests that subtle defects in these early stages of development can have serious repercussions on health and viability (Reefhuis, et al., 2009). Although some of these events can be studied using other in vitro models, hSCNT could be particularly useful for understanding the influence of genetic background on early development and help us understand environmental and genetic contributions to developmental disorders.

Because of that potential, the Minnesota Medical Association and the University of Minnesota have come out strongly against the proposed bill.

The bill — sponsored by 31 House Republicans and three House DFLers and five Senate Republicans — passed through key committees in both chambers within the past week and currently awaits a vote on the Senate floor.

After two days of testimony, a pair of anti-abortion rights bills passed key committees in the Minnesota House this week, one to ban abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy and another to ban taxpayer funding for abortions. Religious leaders came down on both sides of the issue, while legal and medical experts said the bills were poor policy. In the Senate, yet another bill to ban abortion at 20 weeks was introduced on Thursday bringing the total bills in the legislature to curtail abortion rights to nine so far this session.

On Tuesday, the Health and Human Services Reform Committee passed a bill to ban abortion at 20 weeks on a voice vote. Andrea Rau of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life told the committee, “This legislation is not so much about stopping abortions as it is about protecting the ‘pain-capable unborn child.’”

She added, “This is mainstream common sense kind of legislation. There is a consensus that at 20 weeks an unborn child feels pain.”

Republican Rep. Mike Benson of Rochester asked, “How many babies would we be saving from this procedure?”

“In 2009, there were eight abortions that took place after this 20 week threshold. Admittedly this is a small portion of abortions in Minnesota.”

The Archdiocese of of St. Paul and Minneapolis sent a priest, Fr. Andrew Cozzins, to testify in favor of the ban.

“Abortion is too often a permanent solution, an easy solution, and not treated like it should be: a very difficult painful thing,” he said.

But for Alicia Hemple that decision was the most heartbreaking of her life.

“This past summer, I became pregnant with what would have been my second child,” she said. “My baby showed signs of a chromosome disorder. I was having a baby girl and she had Trisoma 18. Fifty percent don’t make it to full term, only 10 percent live to see their first birthday.”

She and her family decided that terminating the pregnancy was the best option.

“With this proposed bill I would have not been able to save my baby from the pain she would have endured from hours, maybe days and possibly even months until she died,” Hemple said.

Hemple’s story mirrors another mother in Nebraska — the only other state with a similar ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy — who was prevented by the law from having an abortion after complications arose in her pregnancy.

It was Hamline law professor David Schultz’s testimony that created some tense moments at the hearing.

Schultz said that the bill was unconstitutional based on precedent in Minnesota (his testimony can be read here).

Republican Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen of Glencoe asked if Schultz had a problem with a hospital performing fetal surgery in one wing and “tearing that child to pieces” in another wing.

“I’m asking you as a human being, does that not concern you?” he asked.

Schultz responded, “Whatever my personal beliefs may be, I am here speaking as a constitutional law professor.”

Gruenhagen took that answer as an excuse to slam the public education system. “If our education system is creating experts with that type of response in regard to a human being, it is a sad day for our educational system and higher educational system.”

Dr. Carrie Terrell, a gynecologist at the University of Minnesota testified that there is not a consensus on fetal pain at 20 weeks and said that that may not even matter.

“If we suspect that vaginal birth to be painful [for the fetus] would you pass a law outlawing vaginal birth and requiring c-sections?” she asked.

The bill passed the committee by a voice vote.

On Wednesday, the committee heard another bill on abortion, this time to ban taxpayer funding for abortion procedures.

Republican Rep. Peggy Scott of Andover, the chief author of the bill, said, “This bill is common sense and mainstream. It does not address the right to abortion. It seeks to protect women from gratuitous free abortions and the taxpayer from paying for free abortions.”

Jordan Bauer of MCCL testified, “State tax money is used for a lot of very good things, but in recent years our dollars have been diverted to the purpose of killing unborn children… to end the lives of Minnesotans.”

Doug Donley, pastor of University Baptist Church, testified against the bill. “The choice to have a child is a sacred one,” he said, adding that comprehensive sex education and lifting women out of poverty “are the best tools to stem the need for abortions.”

He added, “To ban abortion would lead to desperate measures by women; abortion would still occur. In a perfect world no woman would choose abortion, but we are not in a perfect world yet.”

He concluded, “As a person of faith, I am duty-bound to advocate for the health and rights of all people.”

DFL Rep. Tina Liebling of Rochester drew a comparison to war funding. “Some of us don’t like war but we pay for war through our tax dollars,” she said. “As long as abortion is legal, we should let women make those decisions whether they are wealthy or poor.”

DFL Rep. Rena Moran of St. Paul noted that the committee had already discussed cutting welfare for poor women.

“I am a mother of seven who chose to have seven children and that was my choice,” she said. “We want to turn around after we have capped benefits for poor women, and then we want to force a mother to bring life into this world — and I love babies, there’s nothing better than that, but that’s my choice — but then we don’t want to support the lives that are here.”

Republican Rep. Kathy Lohmer of Lake Elmo noted, “Jesus was an unintended pregnancy. We aren’t God and these are human beings.”

Republican Rep. Joe McDonald of Delano added, “This bill is not an attack on women. This bill is to stop the attack on babies.”

The bill passed 13-4.