The United States does not yet have a national law against human reproductive cloning. However, several bills have been introduced in Congress, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has applied some general regulatory laws to prevent human reproductive cloning – at least for now. Meanwhile, many states have enacted laws that make human reproductive cloning a crime or civil offense.

This chapter discusses these bills, regulatory actions, and state laws and explains how these anticloning laws could be enforced – not just against scientists and doctors but also against parents who want to have a child to raise and love.

Federal Bills

Efforts to Ban All Cloning

In 2001, during the 107th Congress, Representative Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) introduced a bill known as H.R. 2505. The bill would have criminalized both research and reproductive cloning. H.R. 2505 passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming margin of 263–162. However, this early effort to impose a total ban failed because some senators did not want to ban research cloning.

In 2003, as soon as the 108th Congress began, Representative Weldon introduced a nearly identical bill, and the entire debate began over again. The 2003 Weldon bill made it unlawful for any person knowingly to perform, attempt to perform, participate, or attempt to participate in human cloning within the United States.