| Take a moment to read yesterday's Arizona Republic editorial by Linda Valdez, one of the paper's more liberal columnists. Her column resoundingly denounced the practice that we have been fighting against at The Center for Arizona Policy: paying young women, strapped for cash and usually of college age, to have their eggs harvested for handsome payments. Unfortunately, the harvesting process involves hyper-stimulating the ovaries with powerful hormones. Then, an invasive procedure is required to actually remove the eggs from the young woman's body. The procedure leaves these young women vulnerable to impairment of future fertility, stroke, and sometimes even death, for nothing more than a short-term financial gain. Valdez mentions our work at the legislature, but distorts my position slightly. I agree with Valdez that a complete ban on selling human eggs should be the policy goal, however, last year I did support legislation limiting egg sales only for the purpose of cloning as an incremental first step. Last year's measure limiting the ban resulted solely from the infertility community's opposition, not because of our "anti-choice" agenda as stated by Valdez. Valdez quotes me, "This cuts across conservative, liberal, Democrat or Republican, we should be able to find common ground." As Valdez writes, "...we do agree that the high price of human eggs makes young women vulnerable to exploitation ...there is a great deal of common ground out there...." Let us hope that we can find more liberals who understand that egg exploitation is an issue that both sides can agree on and seek the appropriate public policy solutions! |
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Please, "pray the news"