Letters to the Editor

The role of ‘international’ law

In regard to yesterday’s Page One article “Sisters stuck in diplomatic limbo”: The Preamble of the U.N. Charter says, in part: “We the Peoples of the United Nations Determined … to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the person, in the equal rights of men and women.”

It seems to me that when the Islamic countries, with their religion-based doctrine that a child’s father has primary custody from age 7, voluntarily adhere to the United Nations, its charter supersedes any domestic law that conflicts with it.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says, in part: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall bemadeinPursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”

The United States joined the United Nations by treaty, duly ratified by the Senate as the Constitution requires.

If international law can force reluctant sovereign nations to forgo “weapons of mass destruction” can’t it also resolve once and for all — with enforcing “teeth” — whether women are to be legally inferior?

ROGER D. LEONARD

Bowie, Md.

The options for cloning

Your story about the U.N. cloning debate (“U.N. to debate cloning during 2004 presidential race,” World, yesterday) is marred by a misleading description of the policy options at hand.

The article says that “all sides support a ban on cloning to create human beings” but that scientists support (and pro-life groups oppose) “cloning of human cells for medical research.” This is nonsense. Cloning of ordinary cells and tissues is not at issue here.

In fact, most (not all) sides in this debate want to prevent the use of cloning to produce newborn humans. Some (including pro-life groups and many others) want to prevent this by banning the use of the cloning procedure to create human embryos in the first place; others (including some scientific groups) want to allow the creation of the embryos by cloning, but then legally require their destruction at some point before birth. The latter approach is designed to protect the use of cloning to create and destroy human embryos for medical research.

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