Why not ban only “reproductive” cloning?
Such a ban does not actually ban cloning. It waits until the cloning procedure is finished, then forbids live birth of the resulting clones. It would be highly ineffective even at achieving its own goal once cloned embryos are readily available in the laboratory, transfer to wombs is easily done; any effort to enforce the law once this occurs would require forced abortions, violating sound moral principles as well as the Constitution. The only effective way to ban human cloning is to ban use of cloning to initiate the development of new humans. Would a complete ban on human cloning interfere with promising medical research? No. As an avenue to human treatments, embryonic stem cell research in general is being superceded by research using stem cells from adult tissue, placentas, umbilical cord blood, etc. (see www.stemcellresearch.org). Even within the field of embryo research, the use of cloning to make human embryos for research (so-called “therapeutic cloning”) is falling out of favo
