If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help- at delivery, and even before. Truly natural human reproduction would make pregnancy-related death the number.1 killer of adult women. .
OF course, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in " test-tube babies". Today, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many parents have been made happy. So what low or principle says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is Ok, but another is not? .
Nature clones people all the time, and rather frequently. Approximately 1 in 1000 birth is of identical twins. However, despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins have in common, they are different people. They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. They enter different occupations, get different diseases, have different experiences with marriage, alcohol, community leadership, and etc. They have different souls as would cloned individuals. Even if somebody did clone 2,000 Napoleons, they would be even more different from their parents than twins are from each other because the cloned child would be raised in a different historical period. The argument that cloning robs individuals of their individuality therefore doesn't hold. .
Perhaps the strongest ethical argument against cloning is that it could lead to a new , unfamiliar type of family relationship. We have no idea what it would be like to grow up as the child of a parent who seems to know you from inside. Some psychological characteristics may be biologically based and the parent will know in advance what crises a cloned teenager will go through and how he or she will respond.