No, really!
From Santorum Exposed:
Thanks to Atrios, we saw the San Diego Union-Tribune has reported that a federal lawsuit was filed on Friday by the National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children against the administrators of California's stem cell institute. The NAA-PC is seeking to stop the institute's work on the grounds that the civil rights of frozen embryos are violated by stem cell research.
Lawsuit brief is at the bottom.
According to the Union-Tribune:
The suit was filed on behalf of Mary Scott Doe, a fictitious embryo produced by in vitro fertilization and then frozen and put into storage. Some of these embryos, which people have decided not to use in attempts to have children, have been donated for use in stem cell research, which involves destroying them.
The lawsuit claims the embryo is a person who should be given equal protection under the Constitution, and her destruction violates her right to freedom from slavery.
NAAPC, it appears, was formed in 2004 by Martin Palmer, a lawyer, to oppose John Kerry's presidential bid, (see
newsletter Oct. 2004), and promote the ideas of Dr. Jerome Lejeune.
Dr. Lejeune believed that ""From the moment of fertilization, that is from the earliest moment of biologic existence, the developing human being is alive, and entirely distinct from the mother who provides nourishment and protection. From fertilization to old age, it is the same living human being who grows, develops, matures and eventually dies. This particular human being, with his or her characteristics, is unique and therefore irreplaceable.," he said.
Palmer recalls that Lejeune warned, referring to experimentation with embryos, that the biological bomb is probably more dangerous for humanity than the thermo-nuclear bomb."
Dr. Lejeune, from Paris, first came to attention in this country when he testified in a divorce case in TN where the couple was fighting over whether the wife could implant the couple's embryos against the husband's wishes.
Dr. Lejeune believed in what he called a "natural morality". Among its many different assertions, a couple stand out to me:
If one agrees that there can exist a natural morality, it follows immediately that to dissociate love of the child and the child of love is an error in method. Hence the quite natural prescription of continual abstinence in the chaste celibate and periodic continence in the happy marriage. If monogamy indeed corresponds to human nature and if morality reserves to the husband the prerogative of being the only one authorized to deposit reproductive cells in the inner temple that is the wife's body, one then arrives quite simply at fundamental moral notions. Contraception, which is making love without making babies; extracorporeal fecundation (fertilization) which is making the baby without making love; abortion, which is unmaking the baby; and pornography, which is unmaking love are not in keeping with the natural dignity of man.
When technology gives us control over the very young human being, over the embryo which can be formed in a quasi-alchemical phial, and even brought back from a frozen state, this natural morality teaches us that young as he might be, as fragile as he might be, the human embryo is member of our species and by that fact ought to be protected from all exploitation. He is not a stock of spare parts to be drawn on at need. He is not a commodity to be frozen and unfrozen at will. He is not a consumer good for sale or exchange. He is quite precisely our neighbor, our likeness, our brother.
So, A+B = XYZ?
Today, people are questioning what to do with frozen embryos. Kill them? Or keep them for experimental benefit? These same questions were asked fifty years ago.
The only answer is very simple. Concentration camps must be forever strictly verboten.
So, unused embryos are the same as concentration camp prisoners?
If respect for human nature is not an obstacle to research, is it a safeguard? I tend to think so. I will take a very recent example under discussion at the present time - the abortive pill, RU 486. It is an anti-progesterone, a false key that blocks the site on which progesterone, the hormone indispensable for the progress of the pregnancy, normally acts. In technical terms, this product is called Mifepristone; in practical terms, it is the first specialized anti-human pesticide. One can imagine, without any mistake in reckoning, that if this product is industrially manufactured it will kill each year more human beings than were killed by Hitler, Stalin, and Nao Tse Tung combined.
To eliminate the extremely young humans by a binary ammunition (anti-progesterone for poisoning and prostagladine for expulsing) is precisely the beginning of chemical warfare against humanity!
Emphasis is all mine.
So, if these people win, stem-cell testing be stopped, not just de-funded by the feds, but stopped entirely. The next step will be the outlawing of abortion, contraception, and the ability for a couple to decide the fate of their own, unimplanted, embryos.
These people view a woman as only the receptacle of the male sperm ("The conjugal act is the only natural mode of depositing male reproductive cells into the feminine body")and that the fetus is, from the moment of conception a distinct and separate person ("the developing human being is alive, and entirely distinct from the mother who provides nourishment and protection").
If you follow their line of "logic", then a woman will cease to have any rights over her own reproductive system. The lawsuits to follow could be for the abuse or neglect of embryos, the abuse or neglect of the "unborn" during the term of the pregnancy, or the "murder" of embryos used in stem cell research.
Under this scenario, the embryos will have more rights than the people who create them and are expected to raise them. From the TN case:
THE SALIENT findings, conclusions and the judgement are summarized as
follows, to-wit:
(1) Mr. and Mrs. Davis undertook in vitro procedures for the purpose of
producing a human being to be their child.
(2) The seven cryogenically preserved embryos are human embryos.
(3) American Fertility Society Guidelines are for intra-professional use, are
not binding upon the Court, but are of probative value for consideration by the
Court.
(4) The term "preembryo" is not an accepted term and serves as a false distinction
between the developmental stages of a human embryo.
(5) From fertilization, the cells of a human embryo are differentiated, unique
and specialized to the highest degree of distinction.
(6) Human embryos are not property.
(7) Human life begins at conception.
(8) Mr. and Mrs. Davis have produced human beings, in vitro, to be known as their child or children.
(9) For domestic relations purposes, no public policy prevents the continuing development of the common law as it applies to the seven human beings
existing as embryos, in vitro, in this domestic relations case.
(10) The common law doctrine of parens patriae controls children, in vitro.
(11) It is to the manifest best interests of the child or children, in vitro, that they be available for implantation.
(12) It serves the best interests of the child or children, in vitro, for their Mother, Mrs. Davis, to be permitted the opportunity to bring them to term through implantation.
JUDGMENT OF THE COURT: The temporary custody of the seven cryopreserved
human embryos is vested in Mrs. Davis for the purpose of implantation.
All issues of support, visitation, final custody and related issues are reserved to
the Court for consideration and disposition at such time as one or more of the
seven human embryos are the product of live birth.
In this case, the embryos, which had not yet been implanted, were given the same consideration as living, breathing, full-term children.
This can not be allowed to happen!
The brief for the suit goes like this:
The Complaint sought a declaratory judgment that (1) the plaintiff Mary
Doe, a human embryo, is a "person" entitled to the protection of the due process
and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, (2) the
recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission fail to recognize
Mary Doe's "equal humanity and personhood and therefore, violate her rights to
equal protection and the due process of law," and (3) that human embryo
experimentation that "results in the certain and sudden death of Mary Doe" violates
her Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection and due process of law. The
Complaint further sought the issuance of an injunction against the Defendants,
"ordering them to cease and desist any and all plans to undertake human embryo
(stem cell) experimentation."