All in the family: a child welfare perspective on human reproductive cloning.

For centuries a woman who bore a child was clearly the birth mother of that child: mater est quam gestatio demonstrat. However, this relationship is no longer unequivocal. The possibility of embryo transfer or egg donation separates biological motherhood into genetic and gestational components. With the announcement in 1997 of the live birth of the first cloned adult mammal using differentiated bodily (or somatic) cells from an adult organism, the prospect of creating children through somatic, cellular cloning has pushed the envelope wider than ever before.