Delaware

Legislative Battles

In 2005, Senate Bill 80 was introduced in the Delaware legislature. The bill, cosponsored by Representative Deborah D. Hudson, a centrist Republican, and Senator Robert L. Venables, a conservative Democrat, had been crafted with the approval of the Delaware Biotechnology Institute and the office of U.S. Representative Mike Castle, a Republican who cosponsored the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005. The bill would have banned human cloning and limited embryonic stem cells to be used for research to those considered “surplus” by fertility clinics. It proposed requiring written consent from the couple who created the embryo and making illegal the sale of embryos. It also provided for a Human Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee, charged with reviewing research projects and setting criminal and civil penalties for violations. With Venables as the lead sponsor in the Democratic-majority Senate and Hudson in the Republican-majority House, the bill was expected to pass with little difficulty.

The Senate passed the bill, but the House put it on hold. The break gave the opposition time to organize and pushed the House vote into an election year when legislators were more timorous about voting for a controversial bill. Through the efforts of the grassroots organization A Rose and a Prayer, state legislators received more than 1,500 roses with cards from individual voters asking them to vote against the bill, and an estimated 10,000 Delawareans contacted their representatives, asking them to vote against the bill. The House passed an amended bill that banned human cloning and the sale of embryos but removed all language pertaining to embryonic stem cell research. The bill as amended by the House also imposed a $1 million fine for human reproductive cloning and a $100,000 fine for sale of a human embryo.

[Page 337]In the next legislative session, Representative Hudson and Senator Venables introduced a similar bill (Senate Bill 5). A war of gimmicks was waged in the state’s legislative halls as a group of stem cell research supporters called Stem Cell Go countered the roses with packs of Life Saver candies as a reminder that embryonic stem cell research could save lives. Senate Bill 5 passed the Senate with a 13–7 vote, but it failed in the House by a vote of 30–7. Although Delaware does not proscribe or limit human cloning, destructive embryo research, fetal experimentation, or human egg harvesting, the bill’s supporters argued that silence on the issue created an uncertainty that made Delaware less attractive to biotechnology companies, particularly with nearby states such as New Jersey and Maryland offering less legally risky homes to the industry.

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