In choosing whether to permit human cloning, society will need to consider the many ramifications of this potentially profound alteration in the ways we conduct our lives. In particular, Human cloning will forever change the composition and structure of the primary unit of society – the family.
Why would we even consider taking such a leap? We would be initiating events that will not necessarily move society forward but much more likely shift us in an as-yet-unknown sideways direction. Are we ready to take such a huge chance with our collective future? Do we have the right to strike out into uncharted territory, knowing that our decisions will affect not only ourselves but all future generations of Homo sapiens sapiens down through the ages?
It could be argued that nothing really will change. Single-parent families have been a norm for several decades. The U.S. divorce rate is approximately 50%, implying a significant proportion of America’s young people grow up in homes with only one parent. Approximately 500,000 babies are born to teenage mothers each year – the vast majority of these children grow up in single-parent homes. Although these statistics do not reflect how we wish our society was structured, the facts are the facts. Single-parent families arising from Human cloning, it is argued, will not create a previously unknown type of family arrangement.
But it seems that subtle family dynamics, those based on familiar patterns and qualities of parent-child relationships as we have known them, will be profoundly altered. We idealize that children are born out of the love parents have for each other. Children, in one sense, are the expression of that love, as well as the caring the couple has for each other and the long-term commitment they have made to each other. In another sense, children are a profound manifestation of their parents’ hopes and dreams. Hard-wired urges exist as well. Parents create children owing to the compulsion of biology and the subconscious drive to perpetuate the species by this powerful and fulfilling mechanism of sexual reproduction.
Human cloning would be distinct from much of this. For single parents of children who are clones, the urge to have a child is not an expression of love for a partner. The child does not represent the fulfillment of a couple’s complex interactions. And of course, the child is not the product of sexual union between two loving parents. The latter fact is also true for many children born in today’s society. But the child whose family includes same-sex parents – two mommies or two daddies – knows that a genetically related father or mother is out there somewhere or even a part of the child’s extended family. Also, the child whose single parent is a teenager has the knowledge that his father exists.
For the child who is a clone, none of this traditional background would be part of her existence. The long-term ramifications of these changes are completely unknown and may be cause for banning this type of assisted reproductive technique.