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.
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