I've been thinking a lot about the ethics of cloning and there seems to be an issue that nobody feels like discussing.
There seems to be a unanimous opinion that reproductive cloning would be highly unethical and should be illegal. I really don't see either point. Certain uses of cloning I can see as illegal, certain abuses such as sci-fi scenarios like cloning people without their consent for whatever nefarious purposes. But the act itself, assuming that in the future the technology will mature to the point where the procedure is as safe as an ordinary pregnancy does not seem to be like other unethical things.
Most unethical things seem to be either predatory acts or depraved indifference or acts of selfishness. Illegal things are usually acts that do harm to other people. Cloning doesn't seem to be any of these things.
So why are people so adamant? I have an idea that makes sense, but I haven't really heard anyone articulate it. It has to do with the concept of a soul.
During the course of the debate on abortion, there is an implicit and inductive idea that if a person has a soul then a baby has a soul, and if a baby has a soul then a fetus in the womb has a soul and finally if a fetus has a soul then a fertilized egg has a soul. This, in their eyes, makes a fertilized egg, a single cell, the equal of a person, because they both have souls.
But this means they've hung their hat on the act of fertilization. What happens if you can make a person without fertilization? What happens if can clone a human being? Either you might suspect that the cloned person would have no soul and be some kind of sociopath. Or maybe you might use a sort of retroactive logic and want to prevent cloning simply because it challenges the idea that fertilization is a spiritually siginificant event.
Strangely, the formation of an identical twin should already challenge this notion.
So when politicians say that a fertilized egg is "a life" or talk about "human life" they are, in fact, making a tacet reference to a human soul.
It strikes me as odd that as comfortable as many politicians are on the Right to invoke God as a justification for all sorts of things, that they are uncomfortable invoking the spiritual concept of a soul explicitly but prefer to refer to terms like "a life".
Now, getting back to whether cloning is unethical or illegal, let me propose a scenario. Suppose we consider a rather ideal couple, the husband, say, is a scientist working on a cure for aids, the wife a former member of the Army National guard, now a beat cop. They have a young daughter who is beautiful and kind and incredibly talented at whatever she does. Now let's disrupt this idealic picture with violence, the mother is killed in the line of duty and the daughter two years later is in a horrible car accident, puting her in an irreversible coma. Suppose the father, in his grief, decides to have his daughter cloned. Suppose his wife's sister agrees to carry the cloned child and give birth to her.
Suppose now, that this is future scenario where the technology has matured and is a safe as an ordinary pregnancy.
If you think that cloning is unethical and should be illegal, then tell me; how long should the hypothetical father in the scenario (and his sister-in-law for aiding and abeting) be put in jail for this act? I don't think jail time or a fine would be appropriate here. And yet, if you say that something you don't like should be illegal, that idea has no substance if you cannot conceptualize putting someone away or fining them for the act.
My overarching point, outside of the concept of cloning, is that for something to be illegal, for something to merit someone being fined or going to jail, it should meet a standard higher than "I don't like the idea". In fact, I think there should be an enumerated list of legal theories that laws fall under and if they don't meet that standard, the law should be discarded.
