Human Cloning – Do We Want to Encourage Novel Family Structures?
Human cloning (HC) would be a game-changer for the human race from many points of view. One significant concern relates to the effects of the availability of HC on the quality, characteristics, and composition of family life. During the last 25 years, family life has changed dramatically. For example, there are many more children with same-sex parents. Previously, encountering a family with two mommies or two daddies was a rare event. Now, same-sex couples live next door. But HC would bring about deeper and more substantive changes. HC would enable family units that really are significantly different. First, HC would allow a single person to become a parent. A woman could even be both the DNA source and the donor of the egg. She would literally become the mother of her identical twin. Of course, a woman could clone herself by utilizing the enucleated egg of another woman. In the latter case, she would become the mother of her almost-identical twin, the genetic difference consisting of
