We Want To Protect You...
[Arizona] State representatives voted Monday to make it illegal for a woman to sell her eggs, but they refused to impose similar restrictions on men selling their sperm.
On a voice vote, the House of Representatives said that a woman who sells her eggs could be sent to prison for up to a year and fined up to $150,000. The same penalty would apply to any organization or doctor who made the purchase.
Lawmakers also gave preliminary approval to a companion measure requiring that before women even donate their eggs, they be informed of medical risks. Here, too, legislators refused to warn men of the potential legal and ethical risks of donating sperm, including the possibility that a child born from the donation could seek them out and demand support.
Rep. Bob Stump, R-Peoria, said both measures are necessary to protect the health of women.
So it's okay for men to sell their sperm, but not for women to sell their eggs? But it's okay for both sexes to donate? Why criminalize women who sell their eggs? Other than that you think it's bad for women to control their reproductive functions, but just fine and dandy for men.
And how is sending women to prison for selling their eggs in any way necessary to protect the health of women? We send people to prison for endangering OTHER PEOPLE, not themselves.
Utter BS. This is about criminalizing female behavior. Period the end.
Via Feministe.
Comments
Apparently this Bob Stump fellow figures that an egg might be used to produce stem cells, which he asserts would be a Bad Thing.
This is the same logic, or lack thereof, that's made it difficult to get decent cough remedies, lest someone use them to produce meth. (Today's NyQuil is a pale shadow of its former self.)
Posted by: CGHill | March 6, 2006 07:29 PM
But wouldn't you have the same problem if a woman donated her eggs?
Posted by: Lesley | March 6, 2006 08:25 PM
The results are obviously identical either way. I'm thinking he's thinking that selling them sounds worse and he stands a better chance of getting it passed.
Posted by: CGHill | March 6, 2006 10:29 PM
I might buy that this is nothing but a backdoor ban on stem cell research and cloning IF it weren't for the fact that the law penalizes the women with jail time and a huge fine for selling their eggs. It would be the purchasers who would be using the eggs for this research. Not the women. So if the only ones subject to jail and fines were the doctors, maybe. But by criminalizing the behavior of women? Sorry, there's something else at work as well.
Posted by: Lesley | March 7, 2006 06:51 AM
You think maybe he's one of the We Must Punish Women As God Commandeth, Dammit types? (Certainly he sounds like he could be.)
Posted by: CGHill | March 11, 2006 04:41 PM