Essay on Cloning in America: Legal Rights and Boundaries is published for informational purposes only. The free papers are not written by our writers, they are contributed by users, so we are not responsible for the content of this free sample paper. If you want to buy a quality Essay on Essay on Cloning in America: Legal Rights and Boundaries at affordable prices please use our essay writing services offered by EssayEmpire.

In 1994, Federal District Court Judge Barbara Rothstein struck down Washington state's ban on physician-assisted suicide. In her opinion she employed what she thought was the logic of Casey: "Like the abortion decision, the decision of a terminally ill person to end his or her life 'involves the most intimate and personal choices a person can make in a lifetime,' and constitutes a 'choice central to personal dignity and autonomy.'" Legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin makes a similar claim:

Our Constitution takes no sides in these ancient disputes about life's meaning. But it does protect people's right to die as well as live, so far as possible, in the light of their own intensely personal convictions about "the mystery of human life." It insists that these values are too central to personality, too much at the core of liberty, to allow a majority to decide what everyone must believe.

It is not difficult to imagine, given Rothstein's and Dworkin's interpretation of Casey, that one could conclude that there exists a near absolute right to personal autonomy that would include both a right to physician assisted suicide and a right to clone. However, in Washington v. Glucksberg, the Court corrected this interpretation of its "autonomy passage": By choosing this language, the Court's opinion in Casey described, in a general way and in light of our prior cases, those personal activities and decisions that this Court has identified as so deeply rooted in our history and traditions, or so fundamental to our concept of constitutionally ordered liberty, that they are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The opinion moved from the recognition that liberty necessarily includes freedom of conscience and belief about ultimate considerations to the observation that "though the abortion decision may originate within the zone of conscience and belief, it is more than a philosophic exercise." That many of the rights and liberties protected by the Due Process Clause sound in personal autonomy does not warrant the sweeping conclusion that any and all important, intimate, and personal decisions are so protected, and Casey did not suggest otherwise.

Thus, the Glucksberg Court saw its "autonomy passage" in Casey as having its application limited to those activities that can be grounded in identifiable and deeply rooted traditions, as well as that which is fundamental to the concept of ordered liberty. Therefore, the Court concluded that there is not a right to physician-assisted suicide as there is a right to abortion.

This provides an important clue as to how the Court may rule concerning the question of whether the right of privacy is broad enough to encompass a right to clone. For, like physician-assisted suicide, cloning, as we have seen, is a matter over which there is a profound debate regarding its morality, legality, and practicality. In addition, cloning, like physician assisted suicide, is not grounded in our nation's history and traditions.

Strong evidence of such is found in the largely negative political, legal, and public reaction to cloning in the United States, as well as the NBAC's and PCB's conclusions and careful analysis of the issue. Therefore, it is likely that the Court will say the same thing about cloning that it has said about physician-assisted suicide: "Throughout the Nation, Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality, and practicality of physician-assisted suicide. Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society." Given what we have covered in this paper, it seems to me that the Supreme Court could reasonably, and is likely to, reject a constitutional right to clone. The Court may employ something like the following argument:

1. The right of privacy establishes the right of contraceptive use.

2. The right of privacy encompasses the right to abortion, though that right is the result of a balance between three interests: the woman's burden of pregnancy and future child rearing, the state's interest in the unborn, and the state's interest in maternal health.

3. Therefore, it is not unconstitutional for a state to ban or restrict cloning, because such an action would not involve a ban on contraceptive use and/or an absolute prohibition of a woman's right to abortion.

4. Cloning, like physician-assisted suicide, is a controversial matter better left to public discussion, deliberation, and debate.

5. Given (3) and (4) above, a state may ban cloning on any rational basis, including for the purposes of protecting unborn human life (as has been done in tort and criminal statutes and common law cases), preventing the commodification of children and their parts, or preserving the integrity of the family, an institution whose existence predates the Bill of Rights (Griswold).

Therefore, given the Supreme Court's current trajectory on the matter of reproductive liberty, there is no constitutional right to clone.

It is an issue that brings to the forefront of public discussion the question lurking behind the abortion controversy - who and what are we? Although most citizens, and political leaders, have a visceral reaction against cloning, it is not clear that their negative judgment can be sustained if the premises on which many think the abortion right is grounded - for example, the unborn is not a person, reproductive liberty entails near absolute bodily autonomy - cannot logically be prevented from being applied to the practice of cloning. Although the pro-life position on abortion seems to entail that human cloning - as well as embryonic stem-cell research - ought to be prohibited by law, I have argued in this paper that one need not have to accept the totality of the pro-life position to oppose these practices, either morally or legally. On the other hand, if the medical benefits that may result from research on the unborn become more promising, it will become more difficult to resist these practices unless one has good reasons to believe that the unborn are subjects of rights and must be treated as intrinsically valuable beings deserving of our respect.

Free essays are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can order a term paper, research paper or custom TOPIC at our site which offers professional essay writing services. Get your high quality custom paper at relatively cheap prices. EssayEmpire is the best solution for those who seek help in essay writing related to TOPIC and other relevant topics.