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Paul Greenberg’s distinctive work has appeared in the Human Life Review since the early ’90s, after he became a convert to the pro-life cause. Mr. Greenberg, the longtime editorial-page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated columnist and author of three books, including No Surprises: Two Decades of Clinton Watching, published in 1996. Born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, Greenberg’s engaging and inimitable style is part southern gentleman, part razor-sharp gadfly. During the early ’80s, while working as editorial-page editor of the Pine Bluff Commercial, Greenberg sparred over the legality of abortion in the paper’s pages with a local pastor named Mike Huckabee; the former governor has since called his fellow Arkansan “one of the most reasoned voices in the country in favor of life.”

“What worries me are the quite respectable advocates of cloning. They come in an impressive number of models: The guys in suits and ties who appear before congressional committees and look, talk and act as if they were clones, all duly outfitted with the same techno-condescending vocabulary. The celebrity victims who seek only the good of mankind by duplicating it (mankind) for research purposes. The university administrators who explain why cloning isn’t cloning when it’s Therapeutic instead of Reproductive, lest we be confused on noticing that in both cases the technique is exactly the same.

Then there are the politicians who think they are striking some sort of solomonic compromise by proposing to create life with the assurance that it will soon be destroyed, which is supposed to be comforting instead of doubly frightening. Scary, too, are the entrepreneurs who have no doubt that, once this profitable little genie is out of the bottle, it’ll be a cinch to get him/her/it/them back in once they’ve cashed in their stock options.

On balance, I’d prefer the old-fashioned Vincent Price of the drive-in movies—somebody chortling and frothing at the mouth as he tries to outfit a fly with a human head and vice-versa. Or a vampiric Bela Lugosi rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of draining the fresh blood he desperately needs from some photogenic babe.”

—from “Here Come the Clones (Vincent Price, Where Are You?) January 6, 2003

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