Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this dangerous and ill considered legislation. Rather than protecting the sanctity of human life, this legislation will needlessly sentence untold generations of innocent human beings to premature death and lifetimes of suffering. There is no disagreement that it is immoral to use cloning to create human beings and that that ought to be prohibited. The evidence from research involving cloned animals is that such efforts can result in severe deformities, premature aging and death. It is wrong to willfully inflict this kind of suffering on people and it should not be permitted. If this bill prohibited only that kind of activity, we would have no disagreement and no debate.

It is precisely because we abhor the suffering that would result from using cloning techniques for human reproduction that it is also clearly immoral to criminalize using so-called therapeutic cloning, which scientists call somatic cell nuclear transfer, for medical research and medical treatment. The fruits of this research promise cures for Parkinson's disease, chronic heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, spinal cord injuries, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, brain damage, lupus, combined immunodeficiency, Tay-Sachs, and sickle cell disease, to name just a few.

We will hear that we must make criminal the creation of human life in order to destroy that human life to produce stem cells. But that assumes that a one-celled organism or a several-celled embryo is a human being. If it is, then therapeutic cloning is immoral. If a several-celled embryo is not a human being, then therapeutic cloning is not only not immoral but is profoundly moral, as it will be used to save and prolong human lives.

So what is this bill really about? It would write into our criminal law a particular religious view that holds that a few cells in a petri dish are moral equivalents to a fully developed human being or in fact a human being, and that no benefit to those suffering and dying from terrible diseases would justify such research, would justify the destruction of a several-celled embryo.

People are certainly entitled to their religious beliefs, but they are not entitled to inflict suffering on the sick and death on the ill and enforce the imposition of their religious beliefs on others using $1 million fines and 10-year prison sentences. In fact, there are many other religious perspectives that disagree with the religious perspective that is the only justification for this bill.

As the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations and the Rabbinical Council of America put it in a letter to President Bush: ``The potential to save and heal human lives is an integral part of valuing human life from the traditional Jewish perspective. Moreover, our rabbinic authorities inform us that an isolated fertilized egg does not enjoy the full status of personhood and its attendant protections. Thus, if embryonic stem cell research can help us preserve and heal humans with greater success and does not require or encourage the destruction of life in the process, it ought to be pursued.'' This opinion comes from a religious community that does not favor legalized abortion, which should put to rest the view that this is a debate about abortion. It is not. It is rather a debate about whether anyone should be allowed to use our criminal laws to impose their particular religious view on the vast majority of Americans who may not share that moral or religious outlook.

Muslim groups, Mormons, some mainline Protestant denominations including the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA) support stem cell research. It is wrong to cause so much suffering in the name of protecting the sanctity of human life. It is especially wrong to use the criminal code to impose that narrowly held view on the innocent and the vulnerable. It is said that therapeutic cloning has nothing to do with the therapeutic use of stem cells, but it may very well be that only embryonic stem cells produced by therapeutic cloning can overcome the body's immune defenses in order to be able to cure a disease; and the same people who oppose therapeutic cloning oppose the use of embryonic stem cells for the same reason: their religious view that the several-celled embryo from which the embryonic stem cells are derived is a human being. They are entitled to their belief. They are not entitled to impose that religious belief on the entire country at the cost of who-knows-how-many lives.

It is said that allowing therapeutic cloning will inevitably lead to reproductive cloning, but research and medical practice can be regulated and can be policed. We have heard today that this is a moral question. Yes, in part. It is immoral to prohibit medical research and treatment that can save lives. It is immoral to make it criminal, as this bill would do, to import a cancer vaccine from a foreign country if that vaccine was produced through therapeutic cloning in a foreign country. And it is immorally arrogant, immorally arrogant to think that only one religious view is valid or moral and that one has the right to use political

power to impose that religious view on the rest of the American people who may hold different religious views. That is what this bill would do. That is why this is an immoral bill unless amended to apply only to reproductive cloning.

Mr. Chairman, if one is quoting from Moses, one might note that in the same five books of Moses that contain the Ten Commandments there is a passage that says if a man smites a woman and she die, he shall surely die, and if he smites her and her fetus dies, she shall pay monetary compensation, showing at least the Biblical view that a fetus at some stage of development is not a person and not subject to being murdered.

The heart of this debate is whether you are creating a human being when you are creating an embryo.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution, and I would like to thank the leadership of both sides for bringing it to the floor today.

As a sponsor of the resolution and as the Member of Congress representing the Broadway community, I appreciate the bipartisan support this resolution has received.

Madam Speaker, this resolution is in honor of a beloved member of the American theater community who passed away in his sleep this past January 20.

Throughout his long and extraordinary career, Al Hirschfeld's drawings conveyed to millions of people the excitement and glamour of live theater. Al Hirschfeld was born on June 21, 1903, in St. Louis, Missouri, and moved to New York City with his family at the age of 12. He discovered his artistic talents early on; and by age 18, he had already been hired as art director for Selznick Pictures, drawing the posters for such important movies as the Marx Brothers' ``A Night at the Opera.''

It was a night at the theater, however, that was the turning point in his life. In 1926 Hirschfeld attended a Broadway show with press agent Richard Maney, who was impressed by the sketch Hirschfeld had doodled on his program. Maney convinced him to submit the sketch to the New York Herald Tribune, which printed it on its front page. Periodic drawing assignments from the Herald Tribune lead to an invitation from the New York Times to contribute a drawing for its drama pages. Thus began one of the most fruitful partnerships in history as Al Hirschfeld's drawings became a critical element of the New York Times's drama coverage for the next 75 years.

Hirschfeld drew nearly every important figure in the American theater and popular culture from Charlie Chaplin to Jerry Seinfeld. His drawings were caricatures. They captured the essence of a performer in just a few lines. They were never mean-spirited and never meant to hurt a subject. In fact, it was a mark of respect and an honor to be captured in a Hirschfeld. Many a performer reticent to give an interview to the New York Times could be convinced when a Hirschfeld drawing was promised if he would give the interview.

No tribute to Al Hirschfeld could be complete without mention of his daughter, Nina, whose name has appeared in nearly every Hirshfeld drawing since her birth in 1945. It became a popular activity for regular readers of the Times to locate the one or many Ninas hidden throughout in his drawings.

In this Hirschfeld, for example, you will observe that the Nina is throughout the tie and that next to his signature the number 23 is put in, which is the number of times Nina's name is in the caricature.

Throughout his life, Hirschfeld gained wide recognition for his work which appeared in numerous books and museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the St. Louis Art Museum. He also earned countless honors such as receiving two special Tony awards for excellence in the theater and for being named a living New York City landmark.

Shortly before his passing he learned that he had been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was to have been presented with the National Medal of Arts by President Bush at the White House later this year. And as an ultimate tribute from the theater community to which he contributed so much, on June 21st of

this year, which would have been his 100th birthday, he will have a theater named after him.

But while all of this recognition is well deserved, Al Hirschfeld was most at home at his drawing board, sitting on the barber's chair he liked to use. He was still working until the day he died, drawing a picture of his good friends, the Marx Brothers.

We will never forget Al Hirschfeld. His work will endure for many, many generations. But there is a big hole in the Sunday Times these days with no Hirschfeld drawings to liven up the drama pages and no Ninas to search for.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote for this resolution. I hope we pass it unanimously.

Mr. Speaker, it is my very great personal pleasure to rise today to honor New York City's Congregation Beth Simchat Torah and its rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum. CBST, as it is known to thousands of friends throughout the city and around the world, is the world's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender congregation, and on February 9, 2003, we will celebrate the start of CBST's 30th year of service to the community.

In 1973, ten people gathered in the basement of the Church of Holy Apostles in response to a small classified ad placed in the Village Voice. At the time, none of the national Jewish organizations supported gay rights. No synagogues officially welcomed gay members. The fact that we are able to join together, thirty years later, to celebrate and commemorate CBST is a testament to the strength of what those first congregants established--a place where it is possible to be both ``openly gay and proudly Jewish,'' as Rabbi Kleinbaum says, a community in which all journeys are respected.

This celebration is also evidence of the special place CBST occupies in the hearts of New Yorkers of all denominations and all sexualities, as a welcoming and loving place to celebrate one's faith. Every year, for the High Holidays services, CBST moves its services to the Jacob Javits Convention Center in order to accommodate the 3,000 or more people who are a part of the extended CBST family. In 2001, just two weeks after September 11th, CBST's services for Kol Nidre, the Jewish Day of Atonement, drew 6,000 people. I don't think I could adequately describe the important place CBST has had in the lives of so many of my fellow New Yorkers, but the numbers certainly begin to tell the story. I am proud to represent Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in Congress.

There have been many heroes in the history of CBST. This year, we will thank the congregation's rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum, for ten years of visionary leadership. In the course of ten eventful years, it has been her love of the CBST community that has made CBST an ever-growing force for positive social change. CBST, like the larger gay community of New York City, has lost too many members to AIDS, and through the years, Rabbi Kleinbaum has helped many CBST members through their own sickness, and the loss of friends and loved ones. She is the leader of a new generation of young Jewish leaders, deeply committed to the Jewish tradition but innovative and progressive in her view of its celebration, and passionate in her belief in the power of faith in people's lives. Rabbi Kleinbaum occupies a truly treasured place in the gay community, the Jewish community, and in the hearts of thousands of New Yorkers, and I am also proud to call her my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the opening of an exhibit honoring Mary Baker Eddy at Pace University in downtown New York City. Today, Pace University will host a reception honoring ``This is Woman's Hour . . .,'' a nationally acclaimed exhibit that has traveled around the country educating Americans about the extraordinary life of Mary Baker Eddy, one of the 19th century's greatest women pioneers.

I am pleased to welcome this exhibit to my Congressional district. Mary Baker Eddy may not be as widely known as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but she was well known to them. As an author, religious leader, and health reformer, Mary Baker Eddy was one of the first American women to live the life envisioned by the leaders who gathered at Seneca Falls in 1848 for the First Woman's Rights Convention. Commenting on Eddy's success as a spiritual leader, Susan B. Anthony said, ``for nineteen hundred years . . . man has been much occupied establishing faiths and formulating creeds for woman to follow . . . . When woman does write her creed, it will be one of right actions, not of theological theories.'' Eddy's major work, published in 1875, was honored over a hundred years later by the Women's National Book Association as ``one of 75 books by women whose words have changed the world.'' In 1908, at the age of 87, Eddy founded The Christian Science Monitor, which is known today around the world for its commitment to excellence and journalistic integrity.

Mary Baker Eddy has been honored by the National Women's Hall of Fame and the National Foundation for Women Legislators, and the exhibit now open at Pace University has received the praise of leaders in every city and state it has visited. It is now my pleasure to welcome this exhibit to Manhattan. It is fitting that this exhibit opens just a few blocks away from where the World Trade Center once stood; as we come together to envision the kind of future we hope to create, in our city, our country, and around the world, it is wise to remember Mary Baker Eddy's words: ``The right of woman to fill the highest measure of enlightened understanding and the highest places in government is inalienable . . . This is woman's hour.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Noam Shudofsky on the occasion of his retirement as Administrator of Ramaz Day School, one of the finest religious schools in New York City. Mr. Shudofsky, a native New Yorker, was born and raised in my hometown, Brooklyn, where he attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush. He has since enjoyed a long and exemplary career as an educator in New York. It is my pleasure to honor him today.

In his role as Administrator of Ramaz, Mr. Shudofsky has helped to maintain the vision of its founder, Rabbi Joseph Lookstein. He came to Ramaz in 1962, and has served as Administrator for 40 years. As Administrator, Mr. Shudofsky has managed the day to day operations of the school, and is responsible for the operational fund raising. His career at Ramaz has helped to make it the world-renowned institution that it is today.

In addition to his role as an educator, Mr. Shudofsky was a leader in the movement to free Soviet Jews from Communist oppression and permit their emigration to Israel, and was one of the first people to travel to the Soviet Union during that period. He has three children, and multiple grandchildren.

For his commitment to Jewish education, to his community and his city, and to the freedom of the Jewish people, it is my privilege to congratulate Mr. Shudofsky on this special occasion.