Comments on: Cloning and Adoption

By: Jonathan Ichikawa

Jonathan Ichikawa — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 23:27:42 +0000

I have no idea why part of my comment appeared as a link.

By: Jonathan Ichikawa

Jonathan Ichikawa — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 23:26:29 +0000

I don’t understand what this argument has to do with the issue. Here’s a loose version of the “adoption argument against cloning”: (1) It is bad for children not to have parents. (2) Every instance of adoption reduces the number of children without parents. (3) Every instance of cloning will replace an instant of adoption. Therefore, (4) Cloning will result in decreased adoption, and increased children without parents. Therefore, (5) Cloning is bad. How does the quoted argument bear on this argument? “It’s bad when children have to be placed up for adoption.” Ok… yeah, that’s true… but what does it have to do with cloning? Surely we don’t think that since adoption usually comes from bad circumstances, it’s therefore wrong to adopt! (By that reasoning, it would be wrong of me to save children from burning buildings, because it’s bad for children to be stuck in burning buildings.)

By: anon

anon — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 16:22:30 +0000

There is no right to adopt, and I don’t know that I would ever go so far as to say that there is a “right” to clone, as opposed to saying that cloning should be legal. In general, however, I think that cloning should be legal or illegal independent of whether adoption is a good thing, because I don’t think there can ever be a one-size-fits-all solution to the question of “why not adoption?” People who face obstacles to natural fertility get this question all the time. I encourage you to spend some time reading the internal debate that goes on among women who are really debating this issue—because they are deciding whether to do one or the other or both or none of the above (obviously not cloning, but just about everything else). There are lots of chatboards where you can see this debate in action, and what is really striking is that people ask themselves what is most suitable, what is most ethical, what they feel most emotionally comfortable with, and they come up with totally different answers. For some, adoption is more acceptable than high tech assisted reproductive intervention. For others, a genetic connection is key, and for others, they can give up the genetics but not the biological connection (i.e., they use donor gametes). I have read enough about international adoption, and known enough people who have gone through it, for instance, to have deep moral qualms about using the developing world as a pool for adoptable babies. It seems to me that the issues with cloning are not cloning versus adoption anymore than it should be natural reproduction versus adoption (I mean why doesn’t everybody adopt if that’s the morally superior thing to do?). It’s whether cloning has negative societal consequences, including consequences to the newly created family (I don’t think prospective parents of cloned babies are looking the have seriously disabled children), which to you’re credit you are bringing up for discussion.