It is a popular belief that women love and want to have children more
than men. Although this may be true, there are some men that strongly desire
children as well, but are, in the absence of a mate, unable to have them
(while it is much easier for women to have a child on their own if they
choose to). Allowing human cloning will slightly alleviate this inequality.
Ideally, one prefers to have both parents, but there is no guarantee that
children from these families
experience more love and attention than in one parent families. One
parent families exist today
already, so bringing up a child produced through cloning would not
be any different. Legal or ethical issues have been quite overblown - in
the case of a single cloning to exercise individual
reproductive right, parenthood and child rights would be as currently
defined. Today we have surrogate mothers that are providing a service of
bringing a baby to term and delivering it for infertile couples, so this
part is already regulated. The only difference from the current situation
is that the genetic material would come from a single person rather than
two, but this is quite a technical detail. If today one can get sperm and
an egg from anonymous donors, and find a woman (all providers are financially
compensated) to be an incubator for nine months, there is not much more
legally involved in simple cloning.
Another reason for accepting human cloning are people of both genders
that have not found a mate that they would like to share genetic material
with in their offspring. In such cases it should be their right to have
a wanted child through cloning. It should be obvious that in such cases,
after investing a substantial sum of money, the child would be highly desired
by a parent (let alone that it carries parent's exact genes), and would
get more attention and love than most
"regular" children.
In conclusion, men are unable to have children unless they find a mate
while
this is not true for
women. Human cloning is a technology that would expand reproductive
options of individuals and relieve current situation that is unfair for
men. It should be allowed, while establishing rules that would prevent
its misuse.
Mihailo Alic, MFA, MS, California
alic@rocketmail.com
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