Imagine that you are assigned a three- to five-page essay that is due in three weeks. The teacher hands you the following writing prompt to guide your assignment: "Scientists have successfully cloned animals, such as Dolly the sheep. Some people hope that cloning techniques will be used to clone humans someday, while others strongly oppose this use of technology. What is your position on cloning humans? Write a persuasive essay articulating your position on the cloning of humans. Use specific examples and details to support your views."

Brainstorm the topic and list at least six ideas. Then, list your chosen topic and explain why it is an appropriate choice. Hint: This work should have been done in your eResource worksheet.

Human cloning is a means of reproduction  (in the most literal sense), and so the most plausible moral right at stake in its use is a right to  reproductive freedom or procreative liberty (Robertson 1994a; Brock 1994). Reproductive  freedom includes not only the familiar right to choose not to reproduce, for example by means of  contraception or abortion, but also the right to reproduce. The reproductive right relevant to  human cloning is a negative right, that is, a right to use assisted reproductive technologies without  interference by the government or others when made available by a willing provider. The choice  of an assisted means of reproduction, such as surrogacy, can be defended as included within  reproductive freedom, even when it is not the only means for individuals to reproduce, just as the  choice among different means of preventing conception is protected by reproductive freedom.  However, the case for permitting the use of a particular means of reproduction is strongest when  that means is necessary for particular individuals to be able to procreate at all. Sometimes human  cloning could be the only means for individuals to procreate while retaining a biological tie to the child created, but in other cases different means of procreating would also be possible. We shall evaluate these other ethical objections to it below. When individuals have alternative means of procreating, human cloning typically would be  chosen because it replicates a particular individual’s genome. The reproductive interest in  question then is not simply reproduction itself, but a more specific interest in choosing what kind  of children to have. The right to reproductive freedom is usually understood to cover at least some choice about the kind of children one will have; for example, genetic testing of an embryo or  fetus for genetic disease or abnormality, together with abortion of an affected embryo or fetus, are  now used to avoid having a child with that disease or abnormality. Genetic testing of prospective  parents before conception to determine the risk of transmitting a genetic disease is also intended  to avoid having children with particular diseases. Prospective parents’ moral interest in  self-determination, which is one of the grounds of a moral right to reproductive freedom, includes  the choice about whether to have a child with a condition that is likely to place severe burdens on  them and cause severe burdens to the child itself.  The more a reproductive choice is not simply the determination of oneself and one’s own  life but the determination of the nature of another, as in the case of human cloning, the more  moral weight the interests of that other person, that is, the cloned child, should have in decisions  that determine its nature (Annas 1994). But even then parents are typically taken properly to have  substantial, but not unlimited, discretion in shaping the persons their children will become, for  example, through education and other childrearing decisions. Even if not part of reproductive  freedom, the right to raise one’s children as one sees fit, within limits mostly determined by the  interests of the children, is also a right to determine within limits what kinds of persons one’s  children will become. This right includes not just preventing certain diseases or harms to children,  but selecting and shaping desirable features and traits in one’s children. The use of human cloning  is one way to exercise that right.  It’s worth pointing out that current public and legal policy permits prospective parents to  conceive, or to carry a conception to term, when there is a significant risk, or even certainty, that  the child will suffer from a serious genetic disease. Even when others think the risk or presence of  genetic disease makes it morally wrong to conceive, or to carry a fetus to term, the parents’ right  to reproductive freedom permits them to do so. Most possible harms to a cloned child that I shall  consider below are less serious than the genetic harms with which parents can now permit their  offspring to be conceived or born.  I conclude that there is good reason to accept that a right to reproductive freedom  presumptively includes both a right to select the means of reproduction, as well as a right to  determine what kind of children to have, by use of human cloning.  If there is such a right, it would presumably be violated by a legal prohibition of  research on human cloning, although the government could still permissibly decide not to spend  public funds to support such research. My discussion in what  follows will principally concern the moral issues in the use of human cloning, not those restricted  to research on it.

the speech this question is referring to is president kennedy's special message to the congress on urgent national needs, may 25, 1961

kennedy responds in a very direct and concrete way to those thinking that communism is a positive system:

"yet their aggression is more often concealed than open. they have fired no missiles; and their troops are seldom seen. they send arms, agitators, aid, technicians and propaganda to every troubled area. but where fighting is required, it is usually done by others--by guerrillas striking at night, by assassins striking alone--assassins who have taken the lives of four thousand civil officers in the last twelve months in vietnam alone--by subversives and saboteurs and insurrectionists, who in some cases control whole areas inside of independent nations." (kennedy)

president kennedy presents communism as cowardly, as a hidden and treacherous weapon that strikes from the shadows like thieves, he represents the system as not even being capable of showing and open and overt attack or confrontation. to finish up the response, he expresses that the system attacks even a country's idependence and freedom.