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" A national anti-abortion group yesterday served the administrators of California's stem cell institute with a federal lawsuit seeking to stop their work on the grounds that the civil rights of frozen embryos are violated by stem cell research.
The lawsuit was delivered during a a monthly meeting of the institute's oversight committee at the University of California San Diego. Around the same time it arrived, committee Chairman Robert Klein was announcing that several lawsuits filed in state court had been consolidated to be heard by one judge, in one county, on an expedited basis.
That litigation has blocked the sale of government-backed bonds to fund the institute, which is supposed to award $300 million annually for stem cell research.
The federal lawsuit, filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children, could now further delay the sale of bonds.
The lawsuit appears to be identical to one filed against the National Institutes of Health and dismissed after the 4th Circuit court determined it had no legal standing. The court said federal funding restrictions placed on embryonic stem cell research by President Bush in 2002 made the case against the NIH moot.
Proposition 71, the California bond initiative that created the stem cell institute, was designed to bypass the federal funding restrictions by allocating state funds for the research.
The people who filed the federal lawsuit likely know it is still a moot case, said Joan Samuelson, a member of the committee overseeing the stem cell institute.
"It is just a maneuver to continue to delay our work, which 7 million Californians voted to try to get cures to people," said Samuelson, who has multiple sclerosis.
The suit was filed on behalf of Mary Scott Doe, a fictitious embryo produced by in vitro fertilization and then frozen and put into storage. Some of these embryos, which people have decided not to use in attempts to have children, have been donated for use in stem cell research, which involves destroying them.
The lawsuit claims the embryo is a person who should be given equal protection under the Constitution, and her destruction violates her right to freedom from slavery.
In decisions that have upheld the right of women to receive abortions, the Supreme Court has ruled that a woman's right to control her body outweighs the early-stage fetus's rights.
In his appeal of the initial federal case, lawyer R. Martin Palmer argues that Roe v. Wade does not apply in this case because the embryo is in deep freeze and not a mother's womb.
Meanwhile, the lawsuits being handled in state court include arguments that Proposition 71 violated the state constitution because the $3 billion in taxpayer funds it allocates for stem cell research are not under the control of elected officials."
Okay you all may hate what I have to say about this, but I'm going to do it anyways. The simple response to this is that it's stupid. Conservatives talk all this horse shit about frivolous cases that clog up the legal system and cost the state millions a year, and this case cleary falls under the frivolous category because it's a case that has already been thrown out of court. The difference now is they've added an equally(if not more) offensive name to back it. The National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children??!? That's such a clever title, I'm disgusted. So what do I have to say to offend you all? Well a couple of things. One, I'm for stem cell research because it's the future of medical science currently. I'm not a fan of medical science so much, but this research really does help us understand how our cell structures work and it is highly usable if controlled. I also am pro-choice. I'm pro-choice because I don't believe that Washington or even your state capitol should have any business telling you what to do with a fetus that was created from your reproductive cells. I also think that the fact that the embryo was created in vitro has little to do with blanking out the parent's concern. They didn't make a sperm and an egg, they took donated ones and created an embryo. Therefore the embryo has parentage meaning that the mother and the father have a choice on it's existence. They chose for the embryo to go towards stem cell research, they should have their wish. Would these folks prefer the embryo was kept in a freezer until it was useless(yes, even embryos have a shelf life)? Would they prefer that it was just destroyed all together? Or do they actually believe that these research labs should allow these children to grow up with no parents in the middle of a research lab for the benefit of no one? Personally, I think there are too many humans on this planet. Already areas like the Gallapagos islands that once were considered "untouched" by man are being over populated and destroying the diversity of the species. Any idiot knows that diversity helps the planet. Helping the planet helps everyone, man or beast and if that's ungodly, than I'm a heathen bastard and so be it. There's a counter at the Rain Forest exhibit at the Cleveland Zoo, and it counts the number of acres od Rain Forest that's depleted by the second and compares it to the population of humans on the Earth. The parallel is so striking that I can't get it out of my mind. It makes me think that all this family crap really is crap. Why do we raise our children with the stigma that they must have a family and children. Is it because god to Abraham to "go forth and mutiply"? Last I checked, my name wasn't Abraham and god has yet to give me that specific of a demand. What I don't understand is why people can't accept that we're all here for an individual reason. That reason may be to crank out babies or it may be to not have children to make that something special instead of something required. That is not to say that I believe these folks think children aren't special, but they certainly consider it required. These are the same folks that want to have an amendment in the constitution that makes married people the eschalon of society and the single folks just not there yet. Since when is a union between man and woman necessary for all human beings and what exactly makes all human beings necessary in the first place? If anything can be gained from close study of the bible, it's that human life is precious, but also fleeting. Is it worth destroying the rest of the planet for the sake of a few thousand new assholes in America? I don't think so. I also don't think that these people appreciate the depth of insight and knowledge that scientists have going into experiments like this. Scientists take ethics courses for a reason. There are laws about ethics in science in the US for a reason. To prevent an abomination or a scientist that goes mad with power. But we need to think globally now. We're not living in a sandbox anymore. If we decide to delay important research like stem cell research, we are purposely putting ourselves behind the world. Do we think that the rest of the world will take our example and just stop? Think what would've happened if we had taken that approach to the nuclear missile? It's foolish to think something this beneficial will not be utilized by our competitors and more so, it's silly to think that any single human life is worth preventing solutions to problems that kill millions. If anything they sacrifice their one week existance for the sake of all humanity.
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