Both Liberals and Conservatives Oppose Human Cloning :: Argumentative Persuasive Topics

Both Liberals and Conservatives Oppose Human Cloning The reporting of the debate over human clone is usually portrayed as a contest between religious opponents of abortion and medical researchers striving to benefit humankind. The stereotype was epitomized in a January 17, 2002, majuscule Post story by science reporter Rick Weiss. Implying that opponents of human cloning are the moral equivalent of the Taliban, Weiss wrote In November, researchers announced that they had made the beginning human embryo clones, giving immediacy to warnings by religious button-downs and others that science is no longer serving the nations moral will. At the same time, the United States was rubbish a war to free a faraway nation from the grip of religious conservatives who were denounced for imposing their moral code on others.(Washington) The Post ombudsman gently rebuked Weiss for his tangible or perceived bias, but the fact that he made the comparison, and that no editor removed it, is revea ling. In reality, the opponents of human cloning are not so easily categorized. For one thing, they include many secular activists associated with the pro-choice left. Last year, in a lopsided bipartisan vote, the House of Representatives passed the Weldon bill (H.2505), which would outlaw some(prenominal) research and reproductive human cloning. Among those supporting the ban were 21 House members whose voting records on abortion were at least 75 percent pro-choice as scored by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Now, 68 leftist activists have signed a Statement in Support of jurisprudence to Prohibit Cloning. Among them are such notables as activist Jeremy Rifkin, sensitive York University professor Todd Gitlin, novelist Norman Mailer, Commonweal editor Margaret OBrien, Abortion Access Project director Susan Yanow, New Age spiritual leader Matthew Fox, and Judy Norsigian, author of the feminist manifesto Our Bodies, Ourselves. Among arguments against the c loning of human life, these leftists stress the commercial eugenics that the new technologies threaten to unleash. They write We are similarly concerned about the increasing bio-industrialization of life by the scientific community and life science companies and shocked and dismayed that clonal human embryos have been procure and declared to be human inventions. We oppose efforts to reduce human life and its various parts and processes to the status of mere research tools, manufactured products, commodities, and utilities.(Prepared) These are points that conservative opponents of cloning have been making for a long time, with limited effect thanks to the medias obsession with the politics of abortion.