Frozen Embryo Gets Day in Court
A frozen embryo has not only retained a lawyer to file a federal court case over planned stem cell research but has strong objections to a previously enacted California ballot measure.
Martin Palmer, a Maryland attorney who says he represents the “preborn” plaintiff, Mary Scott Doe, argued against a 2004 state stem cell research law before a federal appellate panel in Pasadena yesterday, reports an NBC television station in Los Angeles. “However, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals repeatedly interrupted him, in attempts to remind him that the issue before the court wasn’t the initiative’s legality, but whether or not Palmer’s lawsuit was filed in the proper venue,” the station says in a Web site posting that provides a blow-by-blow account of the far-ranging argument.
The 2005 suit, filed in Riverside in southeastern California, names as defendants dozens of individuals affiliated with the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, located in San Francisco considerably northwest. A federal judge in Los Angeles dismissed the case, saying it should have been filed in San Francisco, and Palmer is appealing the dismissal. However, the National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children founder focused his argument not on venue but on objections to the institute and Proposition 71, which established and funded it.
Palmer opened with a Biblical quotation, to which 9th Circuit Judge Kim Wardaw responded: “Your argument is quite eloquent but it’s not addressing why we’re here today.”
“Undeterred, Palmer sought to liken Doe’s situation to the plight of slaves before the Civil War,” the station recounts. “Have embryos been enslaved?” asked Judge Judge Ferdinand Fernandez.
Indeed they had, responded Palmer, who at one point “held up rose petals and allowed them to fall on the floor in what he said was symbolic of the institute destroying life,” the station says.
A venue decision is expected within a few months.
(Hat tip: Wired Science.)
