Abstract
The possibility of human reproductive cloning has led some bioethicists to suggest that potentiality-based arguments for fetal moral status become untenable, as such arguments would be committed to making the implausible claim that any adult somatic cell is itself a potential person. In this article I defend potentiality-based arguments for fetal moral status against such a reductio. Starling from the widely-held claim that the maintenance of numerical identity throughout successive changes places constraints on what a given entity can plausibly be said to have the potential to become, I argue that the cell reprogramming that takes place in reproductive cloning is such that it produces a new individual, and so adult somatic cells cannot be potential persons.
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Oakley, J. Reproductive cloning and arguments from potential. Monash Bioethics Review 25, 42–47 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03351446
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03351446