[The Freelance Star] THE SLIPPERY SLOPE just became a little more treacherous. In 2008, the state of New York — determined to trump the Bush administration’s position on embryonic stem cell research — established the New York Empire State Stem Cell Board, designed to help the state become a leader in that area.

Now, in a Machiavellian move, the ESSCB has voted to paywomen (out of state funds) for their eggs, which researchers will then use to create the embryos they need for their experiments. To harvest the eggs, women must be injected with hormones, then undergo a surgical procedure.

In addition to the ethics of creating a human embryo just to harvest its stem cells, the decision puts female donors at considerable risk. Jennifer Lahl, founder and national director for the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, points out: “The egg donation process has well-documented risks associated with the dangerous drugs taken to produce abnormally large numbers of eggs along with the risks of anesthesia and surgery to remove the eggs. Added to these dangers are the longer-term risks associated with cancers and damage to the donors’ future fertility.” The board could allow payments as high as $10,000, a sum that would be particularly tempting to impoverished women.

The outcry on the decision has begun, and it’s not just from social conservatives: One pro-cloning advocate, University of Pennsylvania ethicist Arthur Caplan, says, “The market in eggs tries to incentivize women to do something they otherwise would not do. Egg sales and egg rebates are not the ethical way to go.”

Father Thomas Berg, a Roman Catholic priest who serves on the ethics committee of the ESSCB, voted against the move. Writing in National Review Online, he highlights one of the few studies of the effects of egg donation, which has found that fully one-third of donors experience serious side effects, including ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome that can lead to anything from nausea and bloating to infertility to death.

Of the several states that have passed legislation easing the way for embryonic stem cell research, New York now becomes the only one to pay women for their eggs. Proponents of embryonic stem cell research look past the human lives it necessarily destroys to its potential results: The embryos become tools to effectuate an end. Now, women will be likewise categorized. That’s called “exploitation,” and even when it’s done in the name of “science,” it devalues human life.