Hey, keep your lawyers outta my state - I've got a $3 Billion boost to our economy to work on here!
New lawsuit for stem cell center
By Marisa Lagos
Staff Writer
A second lawsuit filed against California's new $3 billion stem cell institute could invalidate the agency if it stands up in court, though legal analysts and stem cell officials said its chances are unlikely.
The suit is filed on behalf of "Mary Scott Doe" and the other estimated 400,000 fertilized eggs in storage at in vitro clinics across the nation, as well as a Riverside couple whose 2-year-old child was adopted as an embryo from one of those in vitro clinics.
Maryland anti-abortion activist and attorney H. Martin Palmer challenges the institute's constitutional legality on the theory that by destroying the embryos to harvest stem cells, the state is violating the embryo's rights.
Palmer said the research is paramount to slavery, adding that he used the middle name "Scott" to hearken back to the famous Dred Scott decision.
"It's the same question we had over a century and a half ago, but it's simply cleaned up and sanitized. Person or property, that's the question," he said.
Stem cell research is controversial because in order to collect the cells, days-old embryos must be destroyed. There are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of fertilized embryos at in vitro clinics across the country, made when a couple hoping to conceive had their sperm and egg mated in a test tube and then frozen.
Palmer is standing on shaky legal ground, however, said San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Aleeta VanRunkle, who is representing The City in its challenge to a federal partial-birth abortion ban.
"I find the comparison to slavery to be ridiculous," she said.
Joel Paul, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, agreed. Paul said federal and state courts have upheld numerous times that a fetus â?? let alone a days-old embryo â?? is not a person protected under the U.S. Constitution.
"And, the Supreme Court has said it will not decide question when life begins â?? implicit in that [ruling] is that the fetus is not a person," he said. "I would have to assume that this is a nonstarter in a court."
If the suit were successful, Paul added, it could end the whole practice of in vitro fertilization because of the liabilities surrounding "murdering" an embryo or violating its rights. Marjorie Singer, spokeswoman at the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, added that granting independent personhood to an embryo could nullify Roe v. Wade.
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, created in November when 59 percent of California voters passed Proposition 71, is already facing another lawsuit that has stalled its ability to begin research.
The institute is also busy battling a proposed constitutional amendment that, if passed by both houses of the state Legislature and approved by voters, would place stricter rules on the way the institute issues grants. The state Senate could vote on the measure as soon as today.
Stem cell institute board members and supporters said they were disheartened by the newest legal challenge, but not surprised.
"Obviously there is strong opposition to stem cell research based on folk's religious beliefs," added San Franciscan Jeff Sheehy, a patient advocate on the CIRM board. "The passage of Proposition 71 did not change their beliefs, but one would hope the will of the voters â?¦ would be respected."
The man behind the lawsuit
H. Martin Palmer has filed a lawsuit challenging the state's newly formed stem cell institute's constitutional legality on the theory that by destroying the embryos to harvest stem cells, the state is violating the embryo's rights.
Head of the National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children, which advocates the belief that life begins at the moment of fertilization.
Palmer has been an abortion foe for years and an outspoken champion of the French geneticist Jerome Lejeune, who championed the rights of embryos in court.
In 1999, Palmer unsuccessfully sued the National Institutes of Health over stem cell research, using a similar claim and "Mary Doe," another embryo, as the plaintiff.
Palmer is the head of his namesake law office in Maryland, where he has practiced trial law for 29 years.
