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27 Hofstra L. Rev. 509 (1998-1999)
Religious Attitudes toward Cloning: A Tale of Two Creatures

handle is hein.journals/hoflr27 and id is 519 raw text is: RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES TOWARD CLONING: A TALE OF TWO CREATURES Dena S. Davis* INTRODUCTION A scholar looking for a rich and coherent account of religious re- sponses to cloning at this early point in the debate is likely to be disap- pointed. Religious responses range from the thoughtful to the predict- able to the hysterical. Groups that come up with something that looks like a definitive response are either those, like the Roman Catholic tra- dition, that already have a theological construct-in this case, the right of every human person to be conceived and born within marriage and from marriage'-into which cloning fits reasonably well, and thus joins the list of illicit reproductive technologies such as gamete dona- tion, or those, like the Southern Baptists, who do not blanch from mak- ing statements devoid of argumentation, for example, the statement Against Human Cloning, which simply states that Baptists are known for their strong affirmation of the sanctity and uniqueness of human life and therefore request that cloning be made illegal.2 Not surpris- ingly, the definitive statements are negative, while more positive ap- * Associate Professor, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University; B.A., Marlboro College; J.D., University of Virginia School of Law; Ph.D. (Religious Studies), University of Iowa. The Author is grateful to Christopher Janezie for his superb research assis- tance, and to the Cleveland-Marshall Fund for financial support. 1. John Cardinal O'Connor, Diminished Humanity, REFLECrIONS (Program for Ethics, Sci- ence, and the Env't, Dep't of Philosophy, Or. State Univ.), May 1997, at 13, 13. This special issue presents responses from scholars in a number of religious traditions, who were asked to comment on cloning by Joan Woolfrey and Courtney Campbell, who in turn had been asked to do a study of the religious issues and themes raised by human cloning for the National Bioethics Advisory Committee's Report on cloning, which was presented to President William J. Clinton. Joan Woolfrey & Courtney S. Campbell, Cloning: Fact, Fiction, and Faith, REFLECTIONS (Program for Ethics, Science, and the Env't, Dep't of Philosophy, Or. State Univ.), May 1997, at 1, 1. 2. The Christian Life Comm'n of the S. Baptist Convention, Against Human Cloning, REFLECTIONS (Program for Ethics, Science, and the Env't, Dep't of Philosophy, Or. State Univ.), May 1997, at 14, 14.