인간배아복제 연구에 관한 헌법학적 고찰

Now, the issue of whether human embryonic cloning can be allowed or not comes to face with the issue of whether or not human life can be a means of achieving not its own but other purposes. This issue inevitably encounters with some fundamental questions at the end: ‘Is it possible to deal with an embryo differently from a human being or a fetus?’; ‘Does an embryo have right to life protection?’; and ‘Does an embryo have the same right to a human being born?’ In particular, though it is a kind of human life, an embryo cloned for the research of medical treatment has the destiny not to become a human being, and therefore raises doubts about whether it is a human being or not, since it cannot become a human being at the end. In this vein, the issue of a cloned embryo needs to be taken into account prudently from the aspects of normative definition or developmental stage of human life. In this study, the concept and characteristic of stem cell will be examined first of all. And then, based on it, the constitutional issue of human embryonic cloning will be addressed. Finally, upon the premise of the constitutional value of right to life, this study examines the issue of whether human embryonic cloning can be allowed or not.