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Feminist Revolutionary Warns of Exploitation of Women with Cloning Research

BOSTON, March 3, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Judy Norsigian’s name might not ring a bell for those not raised in the 1970’s but the generation immediately following the sexual revolution of the 60’s will instantly remember her most influential work, the feminist bible, “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” Now the direction that revolution is taking in IVF and cloning labs has begun to generate second thoughts in some of its most ardent advocates.

Norsigian, writing in the Boston Globe, echoes worries that were first aired – and largely ignored – by pro-life persons lobbying against cloning. She writes, “There is a disturbing lack of attention to the risks to women's health posed by the advent of embryo cloning.” Norsigian it must be remembered, is completely in favour of abortion and generally supportive of using frozen IVF embryos for research purposes.

She says that the media has focused on the ‘anti-abortionists’ claims about the personhood of the embryo. What has been missed, she says, is the potential for exploitation of women by researchers desperate to acquire ova for their experiments.

Recent legislation introduced in Massachusetts specifically calls for ‘therapeutic’ cloning, the creation of cloned embryos to be killed and used for their stem cells. Norsigian writes, “Omitted from the polarized debate is any discussion of the thousands of women who will need to undergo egg extraction procedures for such embryo cloning. A primary concern is the substantial risks to women's health posed by the extraction procedure and the inability to obtain true informed consent from egg donors given the current lack of adequate safety data.”

Canadian pro-lifers in their presentations to Parliament on the Canadian cloning bill, pointed out that for such research to go forward, thousands of ova would have to be extracted from women in a potentially dangerous and invasive procedure.

Norsigian warns, “Because we have such an incomplete picture of the risks to women's health, any responsible stem cell research plan would specifically postpone embryo cloning research with human eggs until better data make true informed consent possible for any woman considering the donation of eggs for research.”

“There are other concerns about embryo cloning as well, such as the potential for commodification of eggs and embryos, embryo cloning's gateway role in germ line genetic modification of future generations.”

Read Norsigian’s editorial:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/02/25/risk...

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