NJ Stem Cell Bond Referendum Challenged on Human Cloning, Property Tax Financing Grounds
by Staff
September 25, 2007
(christiansunite.com) -- A lawsuit was filed by the Morristown-based Legal Center for Defense of Life on behalf of fifteen NJ Citizens and New Jersey Right to Life in The Mercer County Chancery Division of the Superior Court. The lawsuit challenges the $450M NJ Stem Cell Research Bond Act of 2007 and its interpretive statement for its deceptive failure to disclose that the Bond Act will finance the creation, experimentation and then destruction of cloned human beings through the entire period of normal gestation and its deceptive failure to disclose that the bonds will be paid through higher local property taxes if sales tax revenues are insufficient.
The relief being sought in the case, McKenzie et al. v. Corzine, is a temporary restraining order to stop the printing of the November 6, 2007 ballots, as well as preliminary and permanent injunctions ordering that the NJ Stem Cell Research Bond Act of 2007 not appear on the November 6, 2007 ballot and ordering that the Act be remanded to the Legislature for further revision of its deficient interpretive statement.
For the last five years, New Jersey Right to Life repeatedly voiced concerns to the Legislature about cloning and the risks to women that would occur under this Act. "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.
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," noted New Jersey Right to Life Executive Director, Marie Tasy.
"This Bond Act is a shameful breach of the public trust," said Tasy. Tasy said the Legislature repeatedly ignored New Jersey Right to Life's request to limit the funding exclusively to life-saving adult stem cell research such as umbilical cord blood which is successfully providing cures and does not involve human cloning and the destruction of human life.
