Lawyer Represents Unborn Embryo in Federal Court Tuesday
By Kristen Philipkoski
Martin Palmer's client
A Maryland lawyer has filed a lawsuit representing Mary Scott Doe, an unborn embryo, against Robert Klein, chairman of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the state-run $3 billion stem cell research funding agency.
Martin Palmer, a trial lawyer in Hagerstown, Maryland, and founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children (NAAPC, get it? The website goes to a placeholder as of Friday afternoon), has also represented several men in paternal rights cases involving unborn embryos.
I spoke to to CIRM spokesman Dave Carlson today (his last day at that post, by the way) who said the Doe v. Klein, originally filed in 2005, challenges the right of the state of California to fund embryonic stem cell research, saying that the destruction of human embryos violates the 13th and 14th U.S. Constitutional amendments. The embryos, the argument goes, deserve equal protection under the law (13th amendment) and are being enslaved (14th).
The lawsuit was originally filed in Riverside, California, where a federal judge said that was the wrong place for it. Palmer should have filed in either San Francisco, where CIRM is located, or Sacramento, the state's capital.
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