 What is the main reason the writer takes issue with the Pope's stance on cloning?
Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. When Clinton says, "Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves," it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership. The pope, unlike the president, is known for resisting temptation. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. The basic religious doctrine he follows was set down some two millennia ago. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in "test-tube babies."
 When he supports the ban, he goes beyond his position as a religious leader for a specific group of people.
 His opinion on it carries too much weight on how the ban is handled.  When he supports the ban, he goes beyond his position as a religious leader for a specific group of people.  The writer feels that humans have the right to choose how they reproduce, and the Pope is disallowing that.  The Bible says nothing about cloning in it.