New Jersey Pro-Life Advocates File Stem Cell Research Funding Lawsuit 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 18, 2007
Trenton, NJ (LifeNews.com) — New Jersey pro-life advocates have filed a lawsuit against the state challenging the bill Gov. Jon Corzine signed in July that would ask state voters to approve borrowing $450 million to fund grants for stem cell research over the next 10 years. The lawsuit says the bill fails to disclose that the money will also pay for human cloning.
The measure Corzine signed would build on the one he and state lawmakers already approved to put a referendum on the state ballot to borrow $230 million for stem cell research over the next seven years.
But the Legal Center for Defense of Life filed a lawsuit in the Mercer County Chancery Division of the Superior Court on Tuesday challenging the bill.
The suit, which represents New Jersey Right to Life and fifteen state residents, says the bill fails to disclose that it will "finance the creation, experimentation and then destruction of cloned human beings through the entire period of normal gestation."
It also says the bill does not tell voters that the bonds will be paid through higher local property taxes if sales tax revenues are insufficient.
New Jersey Right to Life director Marie Tasy told LifeNews.com that the cloning portion of the lawsuit is important because the bill will likely exploit poor women.
"Since it is highly unlikely that there are enough left over embryos from NJ fertility treatments to meet the demands of researchers, there is a very real potential for exploiting NJ women, especially poor, minority and college-aged women who will be offered financial incentives to donate their eggs for cloning research," she said.
"The list of dangerous health effects reported from the large amounts of hormones used in the egg extraction procedure includes memory loss, liver disorders, early osteoporosis, ovarian cancer and death," she added.
Tasy pointed to a 2003 law which allows scientists to clone and kill human embryos for research purposes.
"[Scientists] will have absolute authority to clone and kill human beings through the embryo, fetal and newborn stages for their organs, parts and tissues,” Tasy said.
The case is McKenzie et al. v. Corzine and the pro-life advocates seek a temporary restraining order to stop the printing of the November 6, 2007 ballots and an injunction preventing the act from appearing on the ballots.
The lawsuit requests the court remand the bill to the legislature for further revision of its deficient interpretive statement.
Related web sites:
New Jersey Right to Life – https://www.njrtl.org
