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April 29, 2002 3:10 p.m. Hatching Clones The senior senator from Utah prepares to flip.

rrin Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is expected to declare his support for cloning human embryos for purposes of biomedical research. He could make the announcement as early as Tuesday. The Senate is evenly split on the issue right now, with 43 votes estimated on each side.

Hatch's support would be a big win for the pro-cloning side, especially because it would be a departure from his record. Hatch was the leader of pro-life forces in the Senate at the start of his career there; he sponsored a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade. In the early 1990s, he helped lead the fight against fetal-tissue research. Now he would be opposing the pro-life movement's top legislative priority for the year.

Support for research cloning would also break a pledge Hatch made during a contested primary in 2000. Hatch answered yes on a National Right to Life Committee survey asking, "Will you vote for measures to protect living human embryos from being used for medical experiments that would harm or kill them?" The survey question followed an explanatory note that said that the pledge would cover human embryos created by in vitro fertilization or by cloning. Last year, Hatch announced that he supported stem-cell research even though it would destroy embryos taken from IVF clinics. He was widely lauded: "[T]houghtful and broad-minded and humane" was the verdict of a writer for Time magazine. No doubt he would get the same reaction this time.

Last year, Hatch justified his position by arguing that "human life begins in the womb, not a petri dish or refrigerator." In some recent interviews, Hatch has suggested that a cloned human embryo not implanted in the womb would not be a human life either. He also notes that cloning embryos (although he refuses to use the term cloning in this connection) offers hope for people suffering from diabetes, spinal-cord injuries, and other diseases. "It would be terrible to say because of an ethical concept that we can't do anything for you," Hatch said.

For weeks, it has been rumored that Hatch was going to come out for cloning and would try to bring one or two senators with him. Anti-cloning activists became nervous when they heard that Arlen Specter had called a press conference for Tuesday. They expect Specter to announce some grand compromise: He may, for example, propose to modify the leading pro-cloning bill to allow state governments to ban cloning. Opponents of cloning will not be impressed.

A CRAZY LAW
State governments have piled on mandates on health insurance for years. In many states, low-cost, low-coverage policies are illegal-which is an important reason health insurance is too expensive for many employers to afford. Recently, the federal government has been getting in the act. But a bill that Congress is considering, and that President Bush has now endorsed, is foolish even by standards of existing insurance mandates. The bill concerns "parity" for mental illness. If it passes, employers who offer insurance for mental-health costs will have to do so on the same terms that they cover other health costs. Deductibles, copayments, limits on in-patient and outpatient care: All will have to be equal. Unless, that is, an employer decides not to offer any mental-health coverage at all. Or, for that matter, any health coverage. At a time when health-insurance premiums are rising at a double-digit clip, all Washington can think to do is add to the problem.