Wilson does profess sympathy with those who think cloning is contrary to nature, but nature s normative pointings have become invisible to him. Here is probably the biggest philosophical reason for our difference. At the center of my objection to cloning is my belief in the profundity of sex. At the center of Wilson s is the concern that all children have parents. But the fact is we will be increasingly incapable of defending the institution of marriage and the two-parent family if we are indifferent to its natural grounding in sex.
Cloning is asexual reproduction.
A clone is the twin rather than the offspring of its source. It has no parents, biologically speaking, unless its parents are the mother and father of the person from whom it was cloned. Wilson is willing to define motherhood solely by the act of giving birth. In that way Wilson tries to give a virtually normal biparental identity to this radically aparental child, but in doing so Wilson clings to nature and the natural facts of gestation and parturition as his anchor. By playing down cloning s psychological problems of identity and individuality, Wilson is able to treat it as an innocent prospect.