Gilbert Meilaender

About the author: Gilbert Meilaender holds the Board of Directors Chair in Theological Ethics at Valparaiso University in Indiana.

Protestant Christian belief maintains that children should be the product of the sexual union of a man and a woman united in marriage, not only because this arrangement is in the best interest of the child but because it is in the interests of the man and woman as well. When children are begotten through the sexual union of two parents, they are equal in humanity to the parents. But if they were to be made by the parents through cloning, they would be robbed of this dignity. Cloning would give to parents the power to determine the genetic makeup of their children—a power that would be unethical to...