Ethics Controversy Quotes
He prefaced his remarks by stating that he was speaking for himself and not the Commission.
This quotation is noteworthy because he is one of the only Judeo-Christian theologians who hold that the ends justify the means. Even most politicians do not believe this.
Once someone implants a clone into a willing human female, there is little society can do to “prevent” the clone from being born unless an abortion were forced on the woman. Many religious fundamentalists who oppose human cloning will fight to protect the life of the clone baby in utero. Eigen’s article observed, for all we know, clones have already been born and are attending school with other children as no one could easily tell that a child (or an adult) is a clone. The Lutheran Church has already taken the position that if a clone were born, the clone would be eligible for membership in the Church and be welcome.
This very controversial remark turned out to illustrate the argument that can develop over context. Conservative supporters provided this spin: Bennett was opposed to all kinds of abortion on moral grounds. He was arguing that the opposition to abortion should never be made on a pragmatic basis, but only on a moral basis. To illustrate he gave this example. However he certainly was not advocating the activity. Critics argue that he meant exactly what he said—that he represents a very racist constituency and knew exactly what he was saying and could say it, he thought, because he was not in any, public office at the time. Other critics, who give Bennett the benefit of the doubt, point out that even if he used the example to illustrate that a pragmatic result should not be used to argue the abortion issue, he picked a particularly racially insensitive example which shows his antipathy to Blacks which his critics argue that is part of a long pattern of opposing all legislation and programs designed to reduce the inequality in society.
