Senate Bill 5594—the deceptive bill pending before the Washington State Legislature that falsely claims to outlaw human cloning—but in fact in fact permits cloning in alarmingly expansive terms—has caught more national attention. Charles Colson weighed in on the legislation in a commentary yesterday entitled “Snake Oil Legislation.”

Says Colson:

Unlike Procter & Gamble…politicians are legally free to mislead consumers, that is, voters, about what their products, that is, legislation, will do. An example is a bill pending in the Washington state legislature, Senate Bill 5594.

In his commentary, Colson cites Wesley J. Smith’s National Review Online article “Stealth Cloning,” from two weeks ago—which also discusses SB 5594. (I’ve blogged about it here and here.) Colson goes on to discuss the kinds of activities that would be legally condoned by the bill:

You could clone human embryos and harvest stem cells, or you could grow fetuses for medical experiments, or let embryos gestate for nine months, abort them, and harvest the organs. Smith gives these moral horrors a fitting name: “fetal farming.” People in the state of Washingtonhave been misled into thinking that the bill would prevent the advent of a “Brave New World.” Instead, as Smith says, it ushers it in.

As of this blog post, SB 5594 is still before the Senate Committee on Labor, Commerce, Research & Development. It had a February 8 hearing, but has not yet been voted on by the Committee.

(Cross-blogged at Seth Cooper’s personal blog.)