by Fran Eaton
A question raised over and over in Illinois stem cell research debate this week was, "Okay, we agree that life begins at conception. But what do we do with those thousands of embryos frozen in labs? Rather than being flushed into the sewer system, shouldn't we use them to help find a cure for juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's or spinal cord injuries?"
Two things: One, there's not that many "unused" viable human embryos available for medical research and two, the shortage of available, unused embryos has already created a market for human eggs.
The Rand study indicates only 2.8 percent or 11,000 frozen embryos are available for research. A high percentage of those are no longer "alive," having had the life frozen out of them.
Adoption agencies for the few viable, unclaimed frozen embryos remaining would offer a human-dignifying alternative to splitting them up in a taxpayer-funded university research lab. Illinois has no system in place for embryo adoption and the pro-abort financed Democrat majority is not interested in developing one.
With the increased demand for human eggs, women desperate for cash will exploit their bodies to be used as hen houses, where human eggs can be gathered. Poor, uneducated and struggling women will be especially vulnerable.
If our legislature proceeds with embryonic stem cell research, sooner or later they will be forced to set up a regulatory system to protect women who, for a price, are willing to undergo the hormone therapy and painful extraction procedure to sell their valuable, "unused" human eggs.
Sorry to be so crass, but what "fox" do we trust to guard that "hen house"?
