Page 1065 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 8 April 2008
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grounds. Such grounds may be a perfectly valid reason for believing something but they are not a valid means of conducting public policy debates. On the other hand, it would be rather alarming if we were to reject logic and morality on the basis that these were the exclusive preserve of religious fanatics. But it sometimes seems to be the way that we are heading.
In response to the interview with Dr Faunce and my interview on ABC radio, I received an email from a constituent. I think it is worth quoting here. He says:
It was mentioned several times that those with religious views were against therapeutic cloning.
He went on to say that I had recognised that you do not have to have some religious conviction to be opposed to society’s bully boys or bully girls acting in particular ways. He continued:
The religious card is often overplayed to put people with opposing views into the crackpot box.
He goes on to speak about himself—
MR SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, I am waiting for you to draw a connection between that and the amendments.
MRS DUNNE: I was saying why I was moving the amendments. I said that very clearly at the outset, Mr Speaker. This person, who supports my moving of these amendments, says:
The nearest I get to being religious is being an agnostic, but I do believe in the sanctity of life from its conception onwards. It is a degradation of what society should do if we do not protect those who do not have a say and who do not have the physical or mental capacity to fight back. Example: embryos, the terminally ill or the elderly.
What we are doing here today is proposing a series of eugenics experiments, essentially, or allowing for the provision of a series of eugenics experiments that allows for the creation of materials with more than two genetic precursors, two lots of genetic precursors, two lots of parents. These things, which were unconscionable only four years ago when we debated them in this place, are suddenly okay. We find that it is all right because, in the long run, after all, these things will only be allowed to survive for up to 14 days and then it will be all right and actually a legal requirement to destroy them.
For people like me, and for people like my constituent who wrote to me from quite a different world view but coming to the same conclusion, if you believe that life begins at conception, there is no way that a member of this place can support the creation of an embryo, whether or not it has one, two, three or four sets of genetic materials in it, for the purposes of research. Embryos come into being to provide for the continuation of the species, to provide for future life. That is the only reason that we should be bringing them into existence. Yes, we have some problems with dealing with what the
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