Constitutional Constraints on the Regulation of Cloning
Robert A. Burt, 9 Yale J. Health Pol’y, L. & Ethics 495 (2009)
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Broadly speaking, I will evaluate four different constitutional challenges to a total ban [on cloning]: 1) that such regulations violate researchers’ constitutional right of free scientific inquiry; 2) that such regulations violate individual rights to reproductive freedom; 3) that the former Executive Branch restriction imposed an unconstitutional condition on the availability of government funding; and 4) that neither reproductive nor therapeutic cloning is a permissible subject for congressional enactment, but that both are reserved exclusively for state regulatory authority. Exhaustively evaluating these four possible constitutional objections would require writing at least a small textbook on constitutional law; I will instead be suggestive rather than exhaustive.
