Women's Health and the Cloning Debate

American feminists and women's health activists are debating on the difficult issue of human cloning and stem cell research. Human cloning involves creating embryos with the intent of implanting them in women to produce children. In therapeutic cloning on the other hand, genetic material from a body cell is inserted into an egg cell, replacing the nucleus. As the cell begins to divide, scientists believe stem cells can be extracted and grown into tissue or organs. Thus, a kind of 'regenerative medicine' gives people access to therapies derived from their own cells.

Last year, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the US Congress passed a bill banning all human cloning, a measure President Bush supports. The bill, introduced by Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who has been called "the torchbearer of the Christian Right", called for a total ban on human cloning, which would also preclude cloning embryonic stem cells for research purposes, or 'therapeutic cloning'.

In May 2002, the Senate countered with its own legislation designed to foster scientific research. Their "Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2002" would prohibit...