In what has to be the most ridiculous, upside down set of circumstances in the country MA has now determined the mention of religion is illegal but the harvesting of unborn embryos (scientifically accurate statement there folks) is legal.

The state’s attorney general on Monday halted a proposed ballot referendum that sought to repeal the state’s stem cell law, saying the law’s reference to religion exempts it from the referendum process.

Opponents of the law were awaiting Attorney General Tom Reilly’s decision before gathering the roughly 33,000 signatures needed to get the referendum on the ballot in 2006. The attorney general reviews all proposed ballot referenda.

Larry Cirignano, who filed the petition about two weeks after the law was passed, said he planned to appeal Reilly’s decision. Appeals typically go to the Supreme Judicial Court.

Legislators passed the stem cell law in May over Gov. Mitt Romney’s veto. It allows scientists to create cloned embryos and extract the stem cells that researchers hope to use to cure such conditions as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injuries. It bans cloning that results in a baby.

The law contains provisions that protect nurses, doctors, and other medical employees with “sincerely held religious practices or beliefs” from being required to do stem-cell related work.

Under the state constitution, “no law that relates to religion, religious practices, or religious institutions … shall be the subject of a referendum petition,” Reilly wrote in a letter to Secretary of State William Galvin.

The fact that embryonic stem cell research is more snake oil than reality is all the more reason this is pathetic. We can create human beings to carve them up for spare parts, but we cannot create them so they can live???

Wow, when did we get here?

And they call terrorist cold hearted.