Then the Focus on the Family folks went one step further.  They printed slick brochures appropriating language from the feminist movement - which they heartily oppose.  What did they title their brochures anti-stem cell research brochures?: "Women's voices against cloning."  

Matt Franck in the St. Louis Post Dispatch .
got the skinny from Focus on the Family:

"There may be people who are morally neutral on the issue of cloning of
embryos, but would have an issue with the exploitation of women," said
Carrie Gordon Earll, a bioethicist for Focus on the Family, a national
religious and policy group.

Earll prepared a brochure for Focus on the Family titled "Women's voices
against cloning," recently mailed to more than 90,000 voters. Thousands
more copies of the brochure are being handed out across the state by
activists.

Judy Norsigian, the head of the highly regarded "Our Bodies Ourselves," a feminist health care organization and publisher in Boston, is one of those quoted.  

... Norsigian said she is frustrated that readers of the brochure
might infer that she is against all forms of stem cell research. In fact,
she supports research using eggs left over by fertilization clinics.

Women's health care groups support the Missouri research proposal, including the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals and the Society for Women's Health Research and the National Women's Poltical Caucus of St. Louis.

But you wouldn't know that from the 16-pages of glossed-up language distributed by Focus on the Family.  The brochure uses language like "scientific violence" and insists: "women's bodies are not biological objects for scientific use."

Emily Galpern of the Center for Genetics and Society reviewed the matieral.

"One of our concerns is that conservative folks are co-opting feminist
language to suit their cause," said Galpern, of the Center for Genetics and
Society, based in California.

The brochure tries to argue that egg extraction is dangerous for women, pointing to complications from one method, somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT.  But most stem cells used in research are leftovers from babymaking couples who use in vitro fertilization, and will languish in a lab or be tossed out (aside from the rare, but highly funded religious right notion of 'embryo adoption' -- another sham.)  Missouri ballot supporters point out that the amendment would ban the sale of eggs for research and require informed consent of donors.  

Women's organizations quoted in the brochure tell ThinkProgress that Focus on the Family has misrepresented their positions and that they actually oppose the organization's aims to ban stem cell research.

The attempt to scare women into thinking that they will suffer from positive public policy isn't a new trick.  Religious conservatives use it when it suits them.  In the 1970s, Phyllis Schafly of the ultra-conservative Eagle Forum, argued that women would be harmed by an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - they would have to share bathrooms with men and lose job protections, she claimed.  The measure, as we know, lost.  

And opponents to abortion, such as the fakely-named "Feminists for Life" currently argue that abortion hurts women, and so should be outlawed, but they fail to explain why women can't make decisions for themselves, or should be made criminals for seeking reproductive health care or be forced to go underground.

But the latest Swift swipe by the anti-feminists of Focus on the Family -- the ones who oppose abortion and contraception and think women should be homemakers who are subordinate to their husbands -- might rise to a height of absurdity that even an average Joe can see through.

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