Cloned offspring have only one genetic parent. Cloning (clone = colony of cells derived from one cell) of Dolly, a sheep, occurred in 1997 (died of pneumonia, 2003). The later cloning of monkeys led to concerns about human cloning. Claims of cloned human embryos used to produce tissues for transplant purposes in 2001 led President Obama to state (2009) that human cloning would never be sanctioned.

In 2011 it was reported that human oocytes could be used to reprogramme somatic cells to a pluripotent state. Cloning in humans was considered outlawed in Britain under 1990 legislation but in 2001 the High Court ruled that this idea was mistaken, causing the government to promise to prohibit this practice. However, in 2005, the Law Lords ruled that such cloning was not prohibited: it allowed a family to create a ‘saviour sibling’ so that it could donate various tissues to save the life of a sibling. Since 2009, the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 regulates assisted reproduction and allows scientific investigation into treatments for diseases. Extracorporeal embryos are regulated as are human-admixed embryos. Selection of offspring on the basis of sex is disallowed. Same-sexed parents are recognised as legal parents of children conceived via donated sperm, eggs or embryos.

The Irish Medical Council stated in 2009 that doctors should not create new forms of life simply for experimental reasons and neither should they become involved in human reproductive cloning. Artificial insemination using the partner’s semen has been possible for over two centuries, with donor insemination following in the late 19th century. IVF dates from the late 1970s with the side-effect of multiple births.

Advances in assisted reproduction technology are outside the way we usually imagine and feel about having a baby. Sperm from an unknown donor or an ovum from the mother’s sister may create problems of identification with the baby for the woman’s partner. Nevertheless, most couples react positively. Confusion and distress can be reduced by appropriate counselling. In surrogate motherhood, artificially, or by sexual intercourse, a woman (providing oocyte and womb) is inseminated with the male partner’s semen and when the baby is born she hands it back to the male partner/genetic father and his partner (normally the adoptive mother). Alternatively, the genetic mother (who may or may not have a womb) gives her fertilised ovum to the surrogate mother (IVF and embryo transfer).

The motives of surrogate mothers vary from financial profit to a wish to do a good deed. While most women on either side of the equation do not have psychological problems such practices can excite legal disputes, as when custody issues arise.