Group Accuses Obama of 'Enslaving' Embryos, Compares Policy to Holocaust
The National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children is urging a
federal judge to halt Obama's plans to infuse embryonic stem cell research
with federal funds.
By Mike Levine
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
A group opposed to abortion and embryonic stem cell research is accusing
President Obama of violating the constitutional rights of a frozen embryo
and "enslaving" it, like Nazis enslaved Jews during the Holocaust.
The group is urging a federal judge to halt Obama's plans to infuse
embryonic stem cell research with federal funds. In a lawsuit filed
Thursday, the group said it was taking legal action on behalf of "Mary Scott
Doe" -- described as a "U.S. citizen" whose life has been "suspended" since
"she" was frozen in liquid nitrogen -- and thousands of other embryos just
like "her."
"She is entitled to due process and the equal protection of the laws and to
be free from slavery and involuntary servitude, as guaranteed by the
Fourteenth and Thirteenth Amendments," said the lawsuit, filed by Maryland
attorney Martin Palmer, who heads the National Association for the
Advancement of Preborn Children.
In early March, Obama issued an executive order reversing the Bush
administration's limits on embryonic stem cell research, in effect opening
the door for an influx of federal dollars toward such research. Embryos have
to be destroyed to create stem cells for research, but many scientists
believe it could lead to cures or treatments for serious ailments, including
Parkinson's Disease and diabetes.
"That potential will not reveal itself on its own," Obama said in announcing
his plans. "Medical miracles do not happen simply by accident.
They result from painstaking and costly research, from years of lonely trial
and error -- much of which never bears fruit -- and from a government
willing to support that work."
The lawsuit filed Thursday said Obama is "treating human embryos, and, thus,
human beings as property" that "may be donated for use and destruction in
federally-funded [research] ... without the consent of and against the will
of the embryos themselves."
According to a 2003 study by the Rand Corporation, about 400,000 embryos
have been frozen and stored for future use, but the vast majority of them
are designated for future attempts at pregnancy. Only about 11,000 have been
designated for research.
Nevertheless, the lawsuit said any frozen embryos designated for research,
by their inherent state, are "entirely incapable of giving an informed
consent to their use," insisting that every embryo has "a will to live and
develop into a fully-formed human being." Therefore, the lawsuit said, stem
cell research is "a form of slavery or involuntary servitude in violation of
the Thirteenth Amendment."
The lawsuit compared the use of embryos in stem cell research to the human
experiments Jews endured during the Holocaust.
"The utilitarian thinking underlying [President Obama's] proposed government
funding of human embryo stem cell research and experimentation is what led
to the Nazi experimentation on concentration camp prisoners during World War
II," the lawsuit said, noting that after all the Nazi experiments on humans
"not a single advance for medical science resulted."
The lawsuit is asking -- actually, "praying" in its words -- for a federal
judge in Maryland to declare Obama's executive order "null and void," to
rule that "Mary Scott Doe" and other frozen embryos are "persons" entitled
to due process under the Constitution, and to order Obama to "cease and
desist any and all plans to fund or otherwise facilitate, assist or
encourage the undertaking of any human embryo stem cell experimentation."
This is the latest in a series of similar lawsuits filed by Palmer over the
past several years.
In 1995, he filed a lawsuit to halt research recommended by the National
Institutes of Health under President Bill Clinton. A federal district court
and a federal court of appeals in Virginia dismissed the case after
determining it had no legal standing, and the U.S. Supreme Court then
rebuffed Martin's efforts to have the highest court in the land hear the
case.
Ten years later, in 2005, Martin filed a lawsuit in California, arguing that
a 2004 law expanding state money for stem cell research violated the
constitutional rights of a frozen embryo named "Mary Scott Doe." Its
language, including the reference to Nazi experiments, was nearly identical
to the lawsuit filed this week against President Obama. That lawsuit was
dismissed.
Rayilyn Brown
Director AZNPF
Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation
rbrown@xxxxxxxxx
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