Feminists
Choosing Life of New York (FCLNY) has filed suit in New
York State Supreme Court to block the use of taxpayer funds to pay women
recruited to donate their eggs for embryonic stem cell research. The complaint, filed in Feminists Choosing Life of New York v.
Empire State Stem Cell Board (available
here, opens pdf), seeks:
an Order declaring that the creation of the ESSCB and the
manner in which its members are appointed is in violation of the New York State
Constitution and separation of powers doctrine, invalidating the June 11, 2009
Resolution and/or otherwise enjoining Respondents from making grants or
otherwise authorizing spending for research on stem cell lines derived from
using female human eggs where the donor was, or will be, compensated with state
funds.
According to FCLNY Executive Director, Wendy McVeigh: “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.”
The suit is almost certainly motivated more by FCLNY’s
pro-life agenda than by a concern for the vulnerability of egg donors, which,
in any event, is a sorely misguided, if commonly invoked, anxiety. Moreover, the complaint highlights the
extent to which sentiments that the state must “protect women” from coercive
economic bargains are co-opted by groups with other political goals — in this
case, embryo protection. (This is
a topic I discussed more generally last week at the North Carolina Law
Review’s Globalization, Families, and the State Symposium)
As I argued in this
post shortly after the New York law took effect this summer, payment has
long been provided for eggs to be used in fertility treatments, and the FCLNY
suit, even if successful, would have no impact on the active market for oocytes
used in fertility treatments. See here for
a detailed discussion of that market, and a critique of the coercion rationale
against paying egg donors. Also see this 2006 LA
Times op-ed piece by Judith Daar & Russell Korobkin, making a similar
argument in connection with California’s law.