By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
New York has become the first state in the nation that will allow the use of taxpayer money to pay women to have their eggs extracted for stem cell research.
According to an report by the Catholic Courier, the plan to pay women for their eggs was approved on June 11 by the Empire State Stem Cell Board, which oversees $600 million in New York taxpayer funds earmarked for stem-cell research. The plan allows women who agree to have their eggs “harvested” for research to be paid up to $10,000 for each retrieval.
The New York State Catholic Conference quickly voiced its opposition.
“This is a grossly unethical, dangerous and exploitative move that treats women’s body parts as commodities,” said Kathleen Gallagher, the Conference’s director of pro-life activities.
Gallagher said the plan will be especially tempting to low-income women who are struggling to support themselves and their families. However, the retrieval process can be painful and has been linked to health risks and loss of fertility.
“In this economy people are desperate,” Gallagher said. “Vulnerable women should not be coerced into risking their health and their lives for speculative science with speculative benefits.”
Researchers will use the eggs to create human embryos upon which to experiment.
Gallagher, who watched a webcast of the proceedings, said board members were discussing human eggs as if they were nothing more than a commodity.
“It was almost surreal. It really was mind-boggling to listen to the conversation at the board meeting,” she said. “I think the only thing that could stop this is the passage of a law that prohibits payment for eggs. We (the Catholic conference) have already drafted such a bill.”
Legion of Christ Father Thomas Berg, executive director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, is a member of the stem-cell board’s Ethics Committee. He was opposed to the plan but was outvoted.
“I can assure you, it won’t be the upper-class set who responds to state inducement and risks potentially life-threatening side-effects of human egg harvesting; it will be the vulnerable classes of cash-strapped and college-aged women who will be exploited by the state in this scheme,” Father Berg said in a statement.
“In a desperate quest and unprecedented measure to obtain women’s eggs to create embryos for research purposes, New York will waste taxpayers’ money on unproven science, and women who take the bait will be risking their health and future fertility,” Father Berg said.
Gallagher agrees. “Payments to women for the extraction of their eggs crosses an ethical line that New Yorkers should not be forced to finance,” she said. “Regardless of one’s position on embryonic stem-cell research, we can all agree that women should not be exploited by researchers, with state approval. The Legislature should step in now to ban payments for eggs.”
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