Peripheral and Essential Moral Charicteristics

Where is the line between an act such as cloning-to-produce-children become morally wrong in itself or morally wrong due to peripheries? What distinguishes a periphery from what is central to a moral action? (Q&A 1)

In the cloning debate in class there was a lot of talk about what was peripheral to the idea of cloning, especially when we where discussing the possible health effects. Are effects of a morally considered action therefore peripheral and something else essential? But an action is a thing producing results, so the results define the action.

Maybe the difference between an essential and a peripheral quality of an action is weather the effects of the action must necessarily make certain results. If human cloning necessarily has negative health effects then that would be essential to the action of cloning. If ill health effects can be avoided, then they are a peripheral quality of the action of human cloning.

Then the only essential quality of cloning to produce a person is creating a human clone. We can solve all the peripheral qualities of that action as they come up, but the action of cloning itself doesn't seem to be challenged much at all.