SPUC welcomes UN General Assembly vote against all human cloning Westminster, - The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has welcomed this afternoon's vote by the United Nations General Assembly to accept a declaration supporting a total ban on all human cloning. The declaration calls upon member-states to adopt urgent legislation outlawing all cloning practices "as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life". The declaration also calls upon countries to "prevent the exploitation of women", as cloning requires harvesting eggs from women. The full General Assembly today considered the 18th February report of the UN's Legal Committee and voted to accept the report's declaration, with 84 nations voting in favour, 34 voting against and 37 abstaining. This represents an increase of 13 nations voting in favour above the number who voted in favour in the Legal Committee. Pat Buckley and Peter Smith, SPUC's representatives at the United Nations in New York and lobbying there in support of the declaration, said in a joint statement: "It is a great day, because the international community has come together to declare that the sanctity of human life cannot be sacrificed in the name of the dangerous and spurious science of destructive embryonic cloning". John Smeaton, SPUC national director, commented: "In the light of this historic decision by the United Nations, we will be calling upon Britain to halt and declare an immediate moratorium on all current human cloning experiments." John Smeaton, SPUC national director can be contacted on +44 (0)7785 325808. Anthony Ozimic, political secretary, can be contacted on +44 (0)7939 177683. They can also be contacted on +44 (0)20 7222 5845.