September 22, 2010
CONTACT: Jean Baric
Phone # (585) 323-9149
Email:info@feministschoosinglife.org
FEMINISTS CHOOSING LIFE OF NEW YORK TO APPEAL LOWER COURT RULING IN EGG DONOR COMPENSATION SUIT
To Protect Woman from Exploitation as Egg Donors and Enforce the NY Legislature’s Ban on Taxpayer Money Going to Advance Human Cloning, Feminists Choosing Life of New York Will Appeal Flawed Lower Court Ruling
Rochester – Feminists Choosing Life of New York has cleared the way for the Appellate Division, Third Department, to hear FCLNY’s challenge to the State Health Department’s payment-for-eggs program. If allowed to stand, the State’s scheme would use taxpayers’ dollars to pay economically vulnerable young women to undergo risky procedures so researchers can use their eggs to create cloned embryos for embryonic stem cell research. FCLNY filed a notice of appeal after a Court of Claims appointee rejected its challenge to the program and ruled in essence that the courts cannot look at the legality of this program until a woman is injured due to the egg donation process and brings suit. The trial court’s hyper-technical approach does not square up with the law or with common sense.
In the egg retrieval process, a woman is prescribed a drug to trick her body into a chemically-induced menopause (often through off-label use of a prostate cancer drug linked to birth defects). She is then given drugs to cause super-ovulation to bring about the maturation of multiple eggs at once, followed by another drug which triggers the final stages of egg maturation. Finally, she undergoes anesthesia and a surgical procedure where a needle is inserted though the vagina to puncture her ovaries for the collection of the eggs via suction. This process entails risks associated with ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome which can cause in the short-term stroke, pulmonary embolism, kidney damage, clotting disorders, and even death. Longer-term risks can result in problems with her fertility and increased incidences of certain cancers.
The unknown consequences of these procedures for young fertile women, along with the very speculative benefits of egg-based research, are of great concern. Evidence submitted to the lower court, including an affidavit by Jennifer Lahl, founding director of The Center for Bioethics and Culture, challenges the notion of genuinely informed patient consent among these research egg donors. Lahl warns that New York’s payment-for-eggs program “unfairly targets women who may not meet the higher criteria of donating in the more lucrative private fertility market and yet are financially enticed to earn money to pay bills and other expenses, particularly during these difficult economic times.” Lahl recently produced a documentary entitled Eggsploitation, which had its New York premier at an FCLNY event.
FCLNY maintains that the payment-for-eggs program exploits women’s bodies by using taxpayer monies to entice a young woman to undergo a risky medical procedure to retrieve eggs from her finite supply for speculative research. No wonder New York stands as the only state in the Union to allow the use of public funds above and beyond out-of-pocket costs to compensate and to lure women to undergo egg retrieval for research. We have no doubt that the Appellate Division will recognize exploitation when it sees it.
We will also ask the Appellate Division to correct the lower court’s failure to enforce our Legislature’s strict ban on using tax dollars to hasten the day when whole human beings will be cloned.
Going outside the evidence presented by the parties, the judge concluded after conducting his own internet research that the only type of cloning that could aid stem cell research was the kind used to clone Dolly the Sheep in 1996. The judge upheld taxpayer funding for this kind of cloning. But, of course, such cloning is the mainstay of scientists today working to duplicate full-blown human persons, the very work our Legislature said New York cannot support ‘directly or indirectly.’ The judge wholly ignored breakthroughs in stem cell research using reprogrammed adult cells cloned to create stem cells as versatile and promising as any egg-derived stem cells; he ignored these advances even though the State’s own expert acknowledged them at length.
We are hopeful and confident the Appellate Division will reverse the trial court. It will render a decision reflecting the current state of science. And it will vindicate the will of New York’s citizenry as expressed by an unequivocal statutory prohibition against using funds “directly or indirectly” for research involving human clones. New York aspires to be the Empire State not the Petri dish for a Brave New World.
August 25, 2010
Jean Baric
Phone # (585) 323-9149
E-mail info@feministschoosinglife.org
STATEMENT BY FEMINISTS CHOOSING LIFE OF NEW YORK
To Protect Woman from Exploitation as Egg Donors and Enforce the NY Legislature’s Ban on Taxpayer Money Going to Advance Human Cloning, Feminists Choosing Life of New York Will Appeal Flawed Lower Court Ruling
Rochester – Last week, Feminists Choosing Life of New York cleared the way for the Appellate Division, Third Department, to hear FCLNY’s challenge to the State Health Department’s payment-for-eggs program. If allowed to stand, the State’s scheme would use taxpayers’ dollars to pay economically-vulnerable young women to undergo risky procedures so research scientists can use the women’s eggs to create cloned embryos for research purposes. FCLNY filed a notice of appeal after a Court of Claims appointee rejected its challenge to the program and ruled in essence that the courts cannot look at the legality of this program until some poor woman is injured and brings suit. The trial court’s hyper-technical approach here does not square up with the law or with common sense.
In the egg retrieval process, a woman is prescribed a drug to trick her body into a chemically-induced menopause (often through off-label use of a prostate cancer drug linked to birth defects). Then she is given drugs to cause super-ovulation to bring about the maturation of multiple eggs, followed by another drug which triggers the final stages of egg maturation. Finally, she undergoes anesthesia and a surgical procedure where a needle is inserted though the vagina to puncture her ovaries for the collection of the eggs via suction. This process entails risks associated with ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome which can cause in the short-term stroke, pulmonary embolism, kidney damage, clotting disorders, and even death. Longer-term risks can result in problems with her own fertility and increased incidences of certain cancers.
The uncertainties of these procedures for young fertile women, along with the very speculative benefits of egg-based research, are of great concern. Evidence submitted to the lower court, including an affidavit by Jennifer Lahl, founding director of The Center for Bioethics and Culture, challenges the notion of genuinely informed patient consent among these research egg donors. Lahl warns that New York’s payment-for-eggs program “unfairly targets women who may not meet the higher criteria of donating in the more lucrative private fertility market and yet are financially enticed to earn money to pay bills and other expenses, particularly during these difficult economic times.” Lahl recently produced a documentary entitled Eggsploitation, which had its premier New York showing at an FCLNY event.
FCLNY maintains that the payment-for-eggs program exploits women’s bodies by paying taxpayer monies to entice a young woman to undergo a risky medical procedure to retrieve eggs from her finite supply for speculative research. No wonder New York stands as the only state in the Union to allow the use of public funds above and beyond out-of-pocket costs to compensate and to lure women to undergo egg retrieval for research. We have no doubt that the Appellate Division will recognize exploitation when it sees it.
We will also ask the Appellate Division to correct the lower court’s failure to enforce our Legislature’s strict ban on using tax dollars to hasten the day when whole human beings will be cloned.
Going outside the evidence presented by the parties, the judge concluded after conducting his own internet research that the only type of cloning that could aid stem cell research was the kind used to clone Dolly the Sheep in 1996. The judge upheld taxpayer funding for this kind of cloning. But, of course, such cloning is the mainstay of scientists today working to duplicate full-blown human persons, the very work our Legislature said New York cannot support ‘directly or indirectly.’ The judge wholly ignored breakthroughs in stem cell research using reprogrammed adult cells cloned to create stem cells as versatile and promising as any egg-derived stem cells; he ignored these advances even though the State’s own expert acknowledged them at length.
We are hopeful and confident the Appellate Division will reverse the trial court. It will render a decision reflecting the current state of science. And it will vindicate the will of New York’s citizenry as expressed by an unequivocal statutory prohibition against using funds “directly or indirectly” for research involving human clones. New York aspires to be the Empire State not the Petri dish for a Brave New World.
October 14, 2009
Jean Baric
Phone: (585) 323-9149
Email: info@feministschoosinglife.org
Lawsuit seeks to end NYS compensation for women’s eggs
ALBANY, N.Y. — Feminists Choosing Life of New York (FCLNY) filed suit Friday in New York State Supreme Court (Albany) to block the use of taxpayer funds to pay women recruited to “donate” their eggs for embryonic stem cell research.
FCLNY Executive Director, Wendy McVeigh stated: “New York State has the responsibility to protect women. Instead, the state is using taxpayers’ dollars to entice young, economically vulnerable women to experiment in this medically risky procedure.”
New York State is the first governmental entity anywhere in the U.S. to approve taxpayer money to pay women to undergo an invasive procedure to harvest eggs for embryonic stem cell research.
The legal complaint was filed on October 9, 2009 in Feminists Choosing Life of New York v. Empire State Stem Cell Board. In part, the complaint states, “The Payment for Eggs Program provides significant monetary inducements to women to engage in this painful and risky procedure, which in part disproportionately appeals to economically vulnerable women.... (it)… fails to satisfactorily provide for informed consent and other safeguards to ensure adequate disclosure to women of the risks of egg harvesting.”
In 2007, the New York State Legislature enacted a new Title V-A to Article 2 of the Public Health Act, committing $600 million for stem cell research. On June 11, 2009, the Empire State Stem Cell Board (ESSCB), which was given the responsibility for administering the funds, passed a resolution authorizing significant taxpayer monies of up to $10,000 per donation to be used to compensate young women who donate their eggs for research.
Egg stimulation and extraction carries significant health risks, including, but not limited to, ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome, clotting disorders, kidney damage, ovarian twisting, pulmonary embolism, damage to future reproductive ability, and stroke.
FCLNY also argues that research on adult stem cells, which are plentiful and don’t involve the ethical and medical concerns of embryonic stem cell research, have produced positive results that make the egg donation program funded by taxpayer monies excessive spending.
The National Institutes of Health does not permit federal dollars to be spent on stem cell research that uses embryos derived from procedures that "require women to donate oocytes [eggs], due to the "health and ethical implications, including the health risk to the [egg] donor." The National Academies of Sciences agrees: “No cash or in kind payments should be provided for donating oocytes (eggs) for research purposes.”
April 18, 2007
Contact: Kelly Vincent-Brunacini
(585) 359-4838
Feminist Group in New York Applauds Supreme Court Decision Upholding Ban on 'Partial Birth Abortion'.
Feminists Choosing Life, a pro-woman organization that supports alternatives to abortion in New York, applauds a US Supreme Court ruling today that said partially delivering a child alive, then killing it, is not consitutional. The decision prohibits "a method of abortion in which an unborn child is killed just inches before completion of the birth process", the opinion reads. More than 6 pages of the decision describes in grisley detail what the Court describes as the 'overt act that kills a partially delivered fetus'
Kelly Vincent-Brunacini, President of Feminists Choosing Life, says, "Roe v Wade in 1973 gave birth to Doe v Bolton, a ruling who's 'health exception' extended the right to abortion from Roe's viability perameter to include all 9 months of pregnancy. This monumental decision today marks the first time Doe v Bolton's overly broad 'health exception' was narrowed." The decision also states that the exception for the 'health' of the mother in partial birth abortion will be limited to a life threatening situation.
Riddled throughout the 39 page opinion are references to the rights of mothers to be informed about alternative procedures, about women's grief after abortion, and about the health effects or lack of health effects on mothers. "For women who have suffered emotional trauma from abortion, this is good news," Vincent-Brunacini said.
In response to Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups' claims that the decision will erode the unrestricted right to abortion. Vincent-Brunacini says, "This is like the National Rifle Association which refuses to compromise on the most innocuous gun control attempt. Every industry is restricted and regulated, and the abortion industry is no exception."
The Supreme Court also upheld the ban on partial birth abortion as an 'inhumane' abortion procedure which 'perverts' the moral dignity of the medical profession.
Feminists Choosing Life is a member of Consistent Life, a network of over 200 pro-peace, pro-justice and pro-life organizations that oppose all violence.