CGS-authored

Odd-Couple Pairing in US Cloning Debate:
Abortion-Rights Activists Join GOP Conservatives

Tom Abate
San Francisco Chronicle
August 9, 2001

The debate over human cloning has spawned an unprecedented alliance between some pro-choice activists and anti-abortion Republicans. Both camps see human clones as the first step toward the creation of designer babies.

The parties to this strange-bedfellows alliance base their opposition on different grounds. Feminists who object to cloning fear it will turn women's eggs and wombs into commodities, while abortion opponents have religious qualms about this brave new form of reproduction.

At a time when the related debate over stem cell research has seen some anti-abortion Republicans flip-flop and support human embryo research, the odd- couple alliance over cloning dramatizes the power of biotechnology to redraw the political map.

"This is not a matter of left or right, liberal and conservative," said Claire Nader, chairwoman of the Council for Responsible Genetics in Boston and sister of the former third-party presidential candidate, Ralph Nader. "This is about people who want to draw the line versus those who want to rush ahead...

Human Cloning