Ethical questions as only my friends could come up with...

[arib]

bluepapercup and I were chatting, and the following dilemma ensued:

Given that bluepapercup needs help taking care of two hypothetical ponies and I live too far away to help her, she's generously offered to clone me. Would my clone be Jewish, and would she be obliged to raise him that way? I mean, somebody's got to muck the stalls on Saturdays.

Here's what we came up with:

According to Orthodox Judaism, a person's status as a Jew is determined by his or her mother. So, who's my clone's mom? Is it my mother, since all of clone-Ari's DNA comes from me? Is it any surrogate mother that might be needed to carry a clone baby to term? Is it the egg donor who gave up an oocyte for us to extract the DNA from to insert my own? What if clone-Ari was grown in a vat? Vats can't be Jewish, they're inanimate!

Your thoughts?

Comments

[polydad.livejournal.com]

I think you contain insufficient brandy to sustain this debate. Wanna come ova' my house?

best,

Joel

[arib.livejournal.com]

There's time for booze and philosophy later, this has serious real-world implications! Honest!

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Outline those implications, please?

best,

Joel. Eager to help, and possibly even in the manner in which you need help.

[arib.livejournal.com]

No *real* implications, besides coming up with an interesting question for my rabbi. :-)

[bluepapercup]

I was sober when I thought of it!!

[polydad.livejournal.com]

So?

best,

Joel

A goy jumps into the fun.....

[kayre]

Well, a clone is genetically a twin, so I'd think your mom would be its mom? As for the surrogate, I bet that's already been answered (my guess would be it's still the biological mom that would matter; the surrogate is a sort of stepmother?)

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

Based on real halakha involving surrogate motherhood, which is apparently based on some talmudic piece (I have No idea where) about implanting some sort of non-cow fetus into a cow- the womb determines the Jewishness of the baby. It's not the DNA at all, or who gave the egg- it's the religion of the posessor of the womb that gestated the baby. How that applies to a vat, I don't know. The owner of the vat's religion perhaps? Or maybe the baby is just converted ASAP? That's farther than I can figure out at this hour of the night- I'll let you know if I figure anything else out.

[bluepapercup]

Right, I am more concerned with whether I have a moral/ethical/religious duty to raise the (probably vat-grown) clone Ari as Jewish. I'm Jewish by birth but not by practice, and so, hypothetically, would only raise the clone Jewish if required to.

If it is so that I must raise clone-Ari Jewish, must I help him to attain the same level of orthodoxy as his DNA donor, the "real" Ari? My feelings say yes, but I'm not sure.

[arib.livejournal.com]

hm.

Religious issues aside, I'd say let clone-Ari decide for himself, it's what I ended up doing. Sure, I ended up sticking with the religion I started out in, but it was ultimately my decision to do so. :-)

As to what the religion itself would say? I don't think we've figured that one out yet.

(and now you see why I don't bring my religious questions to my rabbi very often. They involve things like time travel on Shabbos, or telekinesis outside of an Eruv, things like that... *grin*)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I believe there's already been a ruling on this issue, with regard to surrogate motherhood. The rabbis decided that it was the mother who carried the child to term that determines the Jewish status of the baby, and not the DNA. So if your clone is carried by and brought to term by a non-Jewish woman, it would not be considered Jewish.

Presumably, by extension, a clone carried to term in an incubator device of some sort would also not be Jewish, as the device is not human.

[greyman.livejournal.com]

How does this affect premature babies, who come to "term" in the incubator? They *were* in their mother's womb for a while.

[(Anonymous)]

It doesn't. Being born means emerging alive from the womb. A stillbirth does not get a birth certificate. No religious (or secular authority) readjusts birthdates based on a theoretical "term" birth. Some doctors may use this as a medical milestone, but it is basically meaningless. Especially for premmies who have long term medical complications due to their premature birth.

[arib.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your input, random stranger. :-)

If you'd like to sign off on your comment, please feel free.

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

Lots of literature on the topic already:

Cloning people in Jewish Law
Torah perspectives on cloning part 1
Part 2
Human Cloning:Scientific, Ethical and Jewish Perspectives

Enjoy!

Admittedly most of this deals with whether cloning is permissible, not with the Jewish status of the resultant clone.