The Marketing of Aborted Babies is a thorough report on that investigation and contains data, analyses and documentation not previously released to the public. This book contains exact copies of baby body parts orders and price lists. These documents were not altered in any way other than to assign them page numbers and size them for this publication. This book reveals how this system works, exposes the baby parts money trail and presents undeniable proof that these abortions - including the late-term ones - are being done on perfectly healthy babies.
Although federal law, and many state laws, prohibit the sale of fetal tissue or body parts, abortion industry profiteers have devised a way to circumvent these laws, in order to capitalize on the growing market for this material. The abortion industry claims that this scheme is legal because, technically speaking, no one is actually paying for body parts. But evidence presented in The Marketing of Aborted Babies suggests that, in reality, the "site fees" and "retrieval fees" that change hands in these transactions are nothing more than proxy payments for the sale of baby parts. Whatever the actual costs are to pluck the eyes out of a baby, or chop off its leg, keep in mind that the issue is whether someone is profiting from the sale of baby parts.
The tissue logs we obtained reveal that one baby can be chopped up and sold to many buyers, resulting in increased profits for the traffickers in baby parts. Still, pro-lifers must not allow the discussions about the marketing of baby parts to be hijacked by a focus on money. The main point is not the price that an eye, a brain or heart is sold for, but that a helpless child had to be killed in order to obtain these parts. The documents in this book will remove any uncertainty that the marketing of baby body parts begins with the intentional destruction of a living human being.
Finally, some people assumed that this fiendish practice ceased following our exposé, but nothing can be further from the truth. Our investigation did receive national attention on the ABC News program "20/20", which was followed by a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on this matter. However, special interests within the two main political parties conspired to bury this issue and the evidence was never even considered. Nothing was ever done to curtail this grisly business and the sale of baby body parts from abortion clinics in the United States continues to this day.
Body parts for sale
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
"KELLY" (a pseudonym) was a medical technician working for a firm that trafficked in baby body parts. This is not a bad joke. Nor is it the hysterical propaganda of an interest group. It was reported in The American Enterprise magazine -- the intelligent, thought-provoking and utterly trustworthy publication of the American Enterprise Institute.
The firm Kelly worked for collected fetuses from clinics that performed late-term abortions. She would dissect the aborted fetuses in order to obtain "high-quality" parts for sale. They were interested in blood, eyes, livers, brains and thymuses, among other things.
"What we did was to have a contract with an abortion clinic that would allow us to go there on certain days. We would get a generated list each day to tell us what tissue researchers, pharmaceutical companies and universities were looking for. Then we would examine the patient charts. We only wanted the most perfect specimens." That didn't turn out to be difficult. Of the hundreds of late-term fetuses Kelly saw on a weekly basis, only about 2 percent had abnormalities. About 30 to 40 babies per week were around 30 weeks old -- well past the point of viability.
Is this legal? Federal law makes it illegal to buy and sell human body parts. But there are loopholes in the law. Here's how one body parts company -- Opening Lines Inc. -- disguised the trade in a brochure for abortionists: "Turn your patient's decision into something wonderful."
For its buyers, Opening Lines offers "the highest quality, most affordable, freshest tissue prepared to your specifications and delivered in the quantities you need, when you need it." Eyes and ears go for $75, and brains for $999. An "intact trunk" fetches $500, a whole liver $150. To evade the law's prohibition, body-parts dealers like Opening Lines offer to lease space in the abortion clinic to "perform the harvesting," as well as to "offset [the] clinic's overhead." Opening Lines further boasted, "Our daily average case volume exceeds 1500 and we serve clinics across the United States."
Kelly kept at her grisly task until something made her reconsider. One day, "a set of twins at 24 weeks gestation was brought to us in a pan. They were both alive. The doctor came back and said, 'Got you some good specimens -- twins.' I looked at him and said: 'There's something wrong here. They are moving. I can't do this. This is not in my contract.' I told him I would not be part of taking their lives. So he took a bottle of sterile water and poured it in the pan until the fluid came up over their mouths and noses, letting them drown. I left the room because I could not watch this."
But she did go back and dissect them later. The twins were only the beginning. "It happened again and again. At 16 weeks, all the way up to sometimes even 30 weeks, we had live births come back to us. Then the doctor would either break the neck or take a pair of tongs and beat the fetus until it was dead."
American Enterprise asked Kelly if abortion procedures were ever altered to provide specific body parts. "Yes. Before the procedures they would want to see the list of what we wanted to procure. The (abortionist) would get us the most complete, intact specimens that he could. They would be delivered to us completely intact. Sometimes the fetus appeared to be dead, but when we opened up the chest cavity, the heart was still beating."
The magazine pressed Kelly again: Was the type of abortion ever altered to provide an intact specimen, even if it meant producing a live baby? "Yes, that was so we could sell better tissue. At the end of the year, they would give the clinic back more money because we got good specimens."
Some practical souls will probably swallow hard and insist that, well, if these babies are going to be aborted anyway, isn't it better that medical research should benefit? No. This isn't like voluntary organ donation. This reduces human beings to the level of commodities. And it creates of doctors who swore an oath never to kill the kind of people who can beat a breathing child to death with 
JWR contributor Mona Charen reads all of her mail. Let her know what you think by clicking here. Please bear in mind, though, that while all letters are read, due to the heavy amount of traffic, not all letters can be answered.
Update on the marketing of baby body parts
Baby parts marketing: 20/20 and the House Hearing
In response to information released by Life Dynamics, on March 8, 2000, the ABC News program 20/20 aired a segment about the marketing of baby parts from children killed during abortions. On the following day there was a Congressional hearing on the same issue. The following are our observations about these two events.
20/20
After we first met with a producer from the ABC program 20/20, many in the pro-life movement warned us that you can't trust the media and that no major media outlet will ever do a story which is fair to our movement.
Of course, we have been involved in the pro-life battle long enough to know that this is undeniably true. However, the 20/20 story is about as close as the pro-life movement is going to get to a story which condemns even one aspect of the abortion industry's daily atrocities. By focusing on and condemning those who profit from the sale of baby body parts, 20/20 turned a national spotlight on this barbaric practice. The story may not have been all that we wanted, and 20/20's focus on the money trail is like pointing out that smoke from the ovens at Auschwitz violated Germany's Clean Air Act. But the bottom line is that millions of Americans who could have never dreamed that there are people in this country who traffic in the bodies of children killed by abortion, were stunned and horrified by what they saw in their living rooms that night. At Life Dynamics, the effort to bring this issue to the public is only just beginning and we believe that this was a great starting point.
Having said that, 20/20 was negligent in several aspects of this story which would have otherwise moved the American people from shock to outrage. For example:
- When the issue of baby parts was being discussed, the visual on the screen was a petri dish containing a pea-sized fragment of unidentifiable white tissue. We are sympathetic to the explanation offered by the ABC producer who told us after the show that the network could not broadcast footage of dismembered babies, baggies full of tiny human eyes or any other accurate footage of the "commodity" being sold by the baby parts merchants. But this should have been stated during the program or in the banter which follows each story. Showing scientists poking at slivers of flesh in a petri dish through a microscope was deceptive and it dehumanizes this debate.
- Hearing Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt's pious condemnation of the baby parts traders was sickening. It was like hearing the president of Phillip Morris condemn smoking. 20/20 was completely irresponsible in not making the viewer aware that all of the wrongdoing described in this broadcast occurred at Planned Parenthood facilities, and that Planned Parenthood is responsible for the national network that supports the trafficking of baby body parts. Ms. Feldt clearly wanted to disguise this in her interview and 20/20, by its silence, went right along with her. The result is that the viewer was left with the false impression that Planned Parenthood was outraged at these practices rather than a participant in them.
- The narrator constantly referred to the people involved in the trafficking of baby parts as "businessmen" - instead of by some more accurate description which would identify them as being part of the abortion industry. This was done despite the fact that we provided documentation to 20/20 proving that all the people involved had links with both Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation. It was clear that 20/20 wanted the viewer to perceive that this was not something that occurred within the abortion industry, but that some evil profit-driven outsiders had infiltrated and taken advantage of the abortion industry. It was as if 20/20 was trying to portray the abortion industry as an unwitting victim of the baby parts business.
An interesting aspect of this phenomenon is that each time 20/20 mentioned the issue of "businessmen" getting into the trafficking of baby parts, there was this not-so-subtle suggestion that to be a businessman is, by its nature, evil. This is, of course, a recurring theme throughout the American left of which the media-ABC included-is an integral part. In this case, this bias caused 20/20 to overlook the fact that the greatest scandal of the baby body parts trafficking is not just that people are profiting from it, but that it even exists in a society that claims to be civilized. If a bunch of socialists or non-profit sleaze were aborting children, chopping them up, then selling them and donating the proceeds to their favorite left-wing cause, the babies would be just as dead and just as dismembered. Apparently, the media just doesn't get it: it's not about bucks, it's about babies.
- There was never any mention of the researchers, pharmaceutical companies and universities who buy baby parts. It was like a story about the evils of prostitution that concentrated solely on the women involved and never the customers. The reality is that if baby parts are being marketed, that means there are not only sellers, but buyers as well. For 20/20 to target one and ignore the other was unfair and deceptive.
The Congressional Hearing
Unlike the 20/20 situation, there was little to celebrate here. Congressional hearings are about three things: politics, media coverage and more politics. The Republicans on the committee demonstrated that the only thing they knew less about than the marketing of baby parts was how to conduct a successful hearing. To say it was a train wreck is an understatement. This was, however, not unanticipated. Weeks before the hearing took place, those of us at Life Dynamics were convinced it was a disaster waiting to happen. In fact, about fifteen minutes before the hearing began, the president of Life Dynamics, Mark Crutcher, gave an interview to Greta Kreuz, a reporter for the Washington, DC, area affiliate of ABC Television, in which he emphatically made that very point.
The Prelude
The responsibility of organizing the hearing was given to three lawyers on the House Commerce Committee's Republican staff, Marc Wheat, Brent Delmonte, and Mark Paoletta. Almost from the start, we could see that the hearing was doomed, mainly because these three individuals embraced some utterly disastrous philosophies.
First, due to their self-serving obsession with beating the Senate to hearings, speed, not quality, was their guiding principle. Early in our relationship with them, it became apparent that their insatiable desire to have a political victory over the pro-lifers in the Senate was going to come back to haunt us all. On several occasions we complained that their willingness to put their political agenda ahead of the pro-life cause was jeopardizing the hearing. However, each time we expressed this concern they assured us that the hearing would be a good one, while at the same time making it abundantly clear that the primary objective was to be first.
Another problem was that there was little if any commitment by these staffers to ensure that the House members who would be conducting the hearing were informed, educated, or engaged. Despite the fact that Life Dynamics had spent almost three years investigating and researching this issue, and arguably knows more about it than anyone else in the country, our repeated offers to come to Washington-at our expense-and train Committee members and staff were inexplicably ignored.
As time went on, we began to get the uneasy feeling that the Committee's staff had not developed a game plan. It was also becoming increasingly apparent that, for them, this was not an opportunity to advance the pro-life cause but an opportunity to advance political careers. Evidence of that was seen a few weeks prior to the hearing when we learned that somewhere in the bowels of the Commerce Committee, the decision had been made that radical pro-abortion Congressman Fred Upton (R-Michigan) was going to chair the hearing. Obviously, this was totally unacceptable. We were not naive enough to think that some pro-abort is going to conduct an honest hearing into whether the abortion industry is trafficking in dead baby parts. We suspected that a cover-up was in the making.
If a cover-up was underway, we had no way of knowing whether the Committee staff was oblivious to it or involved in it. In either event, our attitude was that if someone was going to sabotage the hearing, they were going to have to do it without the help of Life Dynamics. We informed the Commerce Committee staff that we would not provide any further data or assistance as long as the hearing was assigned to a sub-committee chaired by a pro-abort. As we had done many times in the past, we again pointed out that our only goal was to educate the American people about this barbaric practice, and toward that end we would rather have no hearing at all than a bad one. A few days later, the hearing was reassigned to a sub-committee chaired by semi-pro-lifer Michael Bilirakis (R-Florida) and we resumed the flow of information.
We provided them with orders for baby parts, price lists for baby parts, brochures and advertising materials for baby parts, internal abortion industry financial records related to the sale of baby parts, abortion clinic protocols for the harvesting of baby parts, and much more. Then we spent hours and hours going over each of these documents with them to make certain they understood their significance.
Moreover, we repeatedly warned them that using our abortion industry infiltrator, Dean Alberty, as the centerpiece of the hearing was courting disaster. We were constantly trying to make them understand that the hearing must focus on the documentation and not Alberty. On several occasions, we pointed out that Alberty had two major things going against him. First, he remains pro-choice, and to embrace that position requires a certain level of intellectual dishonesty. Second, he's a spy and by their nature spies are disloyal. Our suggestion was that they relate to Alberty in the same way we always had. From day one, we simply considered him a kind of bird-dog. He might point us in a particular direction, but we didn't rely on anything he told us until, and unless, we had documentation or independent verification. For over two years, we never made public any of the things Alberty told us, and only did so after we acquired a substantial body of documentation to back it up.
Again, our warning was that if they tried to make their case on what Alberty might do or say, rather than on the documentation, the hearing could blow up in their faces. We sensed at the time, and the hearing would later prove, that this warning was falling on deaf ears. They were so committed to this idea of making Alberty the focal point of the hearing, they blew-off issuing subpoenas for other witnesses who could support his testimony. These guys displayed a kind of underlying arrogance that apparently rendered them incapable of even considering the possibility that they were headed in the wrong direction. To our dismay and frustration, almost every discussion we had with them was a one-way conversation. It was always made crystal clear that our only role was to tell them about every detail of our investigation, then quietly fade into the background and not pester them with questions or advice.
As the date for the hearing approached, we learned that three Republicans, Bilirakis, Upton, and Jim Greenwood of Pennsylvania had joined with Committee Democrats in calling for a closed hearing. They intended to bar both the media and members of the public from being admitted. At this point, the possibility that there was an organized cover-up underway seemed quite plausible. When the media began to circulate stories that the Committee was contemplating secret hearings, it became obvious that doing so was going to be a public relations nightmare. With that, the Democrats withdrew their request.
While this part of the cover-up was being sunk, another was about to surface. In the days immediately preceding that hearing, witnesses who were scheduled to testify reported that they began receiving intimidating phone calls from lawyers associated with the targets of the investigation and one of the leading Committee Democrats.
When this was reported to the Committee Republican staff, they were incensed at this obvious attempt at witness tampering. Despite the fact that an attorney for the Republican staff made calls to the offending parties and warned them to stop, the calls continued. The last one was made the day before the hearing began. Republican members of the Committee were steamed and vowed to begin the hearing with questions about witness tampering and obstruction of justice.
D-Day
Within the first few minutes of the hearing, it became obvious that we were right to suspect that the pro-life Republicans had no plan. They didn't. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said about the pro-aborts. They immediately launched into a vicious and well-designed personal attack against Alberty. Throughout the afternoon and into the night, he was badgered, bullied and beaten without mercy by the Democrats. The inquisition conducted by Anna Eshoo (D-California) and Diana DeGette (D-Colorado) was more ranting and raving than information gathering.
With the exception of Representatives Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), Barbara Cubin (R-Wyoming), Charles Norwood (R-Georgia), Nathan Deal (R-Georgia) and Ed Bryant (R-Tennessee), the Republicans either sat on their hands or joined in the feeding frenzy. One of the most savage attacks was by Fred Upton - the very same Congressman that the Committee staff had originally wanted to chair the hearing. Meanwhile, shell-shocked Commerce Committee staffers were frozen in place with absolutely no idea what to do next.
One of the oddest aspects of the hearing was that we knew more about the investigation into this issue than anyone else, yet were not called to testify. In fact, even when it was clear to every person in the room that the hearing was spinning out of control, and even though we were sitting in the second row of the audience, we were never asked for our input or advise.
The Postmortem
The Republicans surrendered moments after the opening gavel was sounded, and it is simply undeniable that this was due to the arrogance and incompetence of the House Commerce Committee staff. Because they completely failed to prepare their members, they allowed them to be blind sided by issues that we told them were coming and which were easily manageable.
On the other side of the aisle, the Democrats totally dominated the hearing. They got Alberty to admit that he had embellished details of the story he told Life Dynamics, but never gave him an opportunity to say exactly what he had embellished. They skillfully directed the hearing away from questions about the illegal marketing of baby parts, and instead spent the entire hearing intimidating Alberty. Their plan was so well executed that pro-life Republicans on the Committee never mentioned witness tampering, never introduced one single document provided by Life Dynamics, and most bizarre of all, never discussed the marketing of baby parts. You heard right: a Congressional hearing that was specifically created to examine the marketing of baby parts, lasted all day and well into the night and never discussed the marketing of baby parts.
For those of us at Life Dynamics, these developments were especially frustrating. After almost three years of blood, sweat and tears, we had to sit through this sham hearing as the distortions, innuendo, and outright lies of the Democrats were left unchallenged by these befuddled Republicans and their confused staff. Worst of all, a pro-life opportunity of immense potential was squandered for no legitimate reason whatsoever.
Today, the House is saying that there will be additional hearings and the Senate is also planning to take up the issue. Unless both have learned from the bitter experience of March 9th, our hope is that they not bother. Like we said before, no hearing at all is much better than a bad hearing.
Fact Check
Following the 20/20 broadcast and the House hearings, representatives of the abortion industry have made many false, misleading and outlandish claims related to the issues raised during these events. We have addressed a few of the ones we know about.
1) Dean Alberty was paid $20,000 by Life Dynamics for the "Kelly" interview.
FACT: At the hearing, Alberty testified under oath that he was actually paid only $400 to compensate him for the time he spent traveling to Texas, conducting the interview, and returning home. The $20,000 figure being deceptively thrown about by the abortion industry represents the entire amount paid to Alberty over a two-and-one-half-year period of time. (The actual amount was $21,426.04) Less than half of this money was compensation. Alberty's personal earnings from Life Dynamics, from the beginning of this project until its end, averaged less than $310 per month. The majority of the money paid to him was reimbursement for actual expenses he incurred while attending abortion industry conferences and seminars on our behalf. This included airline tickets, hotels, food, registration fees, association dues, tapes and books, etc.
2) Alberty has now accused Life Dynamics of altering the "Kelly" interview.
FACT: Alberty did no such thing. He had never seen the tape until being shown it by attorneys representing the Anatomic Gift Foundation almost a year after it was recorded. Alberty stated that since he did not remember the entire interview, he couldn't state for sure whether Life Dynamics altered it or not. This means that, at most, he agreed to was that it was possible Life Dynamics may have altered some of his answers. In reality, Life Dynamics has released the raw unedited footage of the original interview showing that absolutely no such alterations occurred.
3) Alberty has recanted his testimony in the "Kelly" interview.
FACT: Again, Alberty did no such thing. He only admitted that he had no personal knowledge of, and could not prove that some of the things he told Life Dynamics were true.
However, almost all the allegations he said he could no longer stand behind with certainty were actually proven by documentation provided by Life Dynamics. For example, on the "Kelly" tape Alberty claimed to know that his employer was profiting from the marketing of baby parts. When pressed by the pro-aborts at the hearing, he admitted that he had no personal knowledge or proof of this and had, therefore, lied to Life Dynamics. He did not "recant" as some have claimed and say that his employer was not profiting from the marketing of baby parts.
Of course, Life Dynamics has provided written documentation showing that his employer was indeed profiting from the marketing of baby parts. Although Alberty's admission that he lied to Life Dynamics clearly undermines his credibility, the documentation we supplied to the Committee proves that his assertion was correct whether he had personal knowledge of it or not.
The above is a typical example of what the abortion industry is claiming to be a recantation. In no case was it a matter of Alberty saying that something he told us wasn't true. What he admitted was that there were instances in which he told us certain things were true, when the reality was that he had no personal knowledge or proof they were true. An analogy would be a situation in which the body of a murder victim has been found and someone steps forward to say they witnessed the crime. If it is later determined that this person didn't really witness the murder, it is still true that a murder was committed. Moreover, if details given by this discredited witness are supported by other evidence, the authorities would probably conclude that what this person is saying may have validity, even if he lied about actually seeing the crime. One thing is for certain: if details given by this witness are indeed supported by other evidence, be assured that the people investigating this crime will not ignore what he is saying simply because he lied about having personally witnessed it.
That is, however, precisely what the abortion industry wants the American people to do regarding Alberty and the marketing of baby parts. Since the hearing, their strategy has been to try and make people believe that because Alberty misled Life Dynamics about having personally witnessed certain aspects of the baby parts marketing scandal, then the marketing of baby parts is not occurring. Of course, they know this isn't true. They are apparently hoping that because Alberty lied to us, they can get away with lying to the public.
The truth is that in each circumstance where Alberty admitted that he lied to Life Dynamics, the allegation he was making can be supported through other witnesses, evidence or documentation. It should also be noted that Alberty stood firm behind other claims he had previously made. For example, even under a brutal assault by Committee pro-aborts, he never wavered in his statement that living children who had survived their abortions - including the twins he described in the "Kelly" interview-were sometimes brought to him to be chopped up for parts.
4) The documents being used to support the claim that baby parts are being marketed were stolen by burglars working for Life Dynamics.
FACT: Life Dynamics has never participated in, nor caused anyone else to participate in, a burglary or any other criminal activity. Every single document in question was provided to Life Dynamics by Alberty and other whistle-blowers employed in the abortion industry.
5) Miles Jones, the baby parts broker featured in the 20/20 piece, is in reality an actor hired by Life Dynamics to appear in the 20/20 broadcast.
FACT: This assertion is so outrageous it's difficult to respond to. To suggest that Life Dynamics would be stupid enough to try such a stunt, or that ABC News would be stupid enough to fall for it, or that the US Congress would be stupid enough to issue a subpoena for someone who didn't exist, or that the Federal Marshals Office would be stupid enough to report that they had served a subpoena to someone who didn't exist, is absolutely preposterous.
6) House Commerce Committee staffers say that the hearing failed partially because Life Dynamics didn't turn over all the documents it promised to them.
FACT: This is absolute nonsense. Considering the fact that Life Dynamics had been trying to get this hearing since the day this project began, what possible reason would we have for holding back information? The reality is, in fact, quite the opposite. Not only did we turn over every thing we had, but we also spent dozens of hours going over these documents with Committee staffers. And since they never actually used any of our documents in the hearing, how credible is this bizarre self-serving claim they didn't have enough of them? This is obviously nothing more than a panic-driven attempt by these people to cover-up their own incompetence.
The harvest of abortion
Fetal-tissue research: Making the best of a bad situation, or sliding further down the slippery slope? Congress and the Clinton administration's lifting of the fetal-tissue research ban has turned human-remains trafficking into big business
By Lynn Vincent
Warning: This story contains some graphic detail.
As Monday morning sunshine spills across the high plains of Aurora, Colo., and a new work week begins, fresh career challenges await Ms. Ying Bei Wang. On Monday, for example, she might scalpel her way through the brain stem of an aborted 24-week pre-born child, pluck the brain from the baby's peach-sized head with forceps, and plop it into wet ice for later shipment. On Tuesday, she might carefully slice away the delicate tissue that secures a dead child's eyes in its skull, and extract them whole. Ms. Ying knows her employer's clients prefer the eyes of dead babies to be whole. One once requested to receive 4 to 10 per day.
Although she works in Aurora at an abortion clinic called the Mayfair Women's Center, Ms. Ying is employed by the Anatomic Gift Foundation (AGF), a Maryland-based nonprofit. AGF is one of at least five U.S. organizations that collect, prepare, and distribute to medical researchers fetal tissue, organs, and body parts that are the products of voluntary abortions.
When "Kelly," a woman who claimed to have been an AGF "technician" like Ms. Ying, approached Life Dynamics in 1997, the pro-life group launched an undercover investigation. The probe unearthed grim, hard-copy evidence of the cross-country flow of baby body parts, including detailed dissection orders, a brochure touting "the freshest tissue available," and price lists for whole babies and parts. One 1999 price list from a company called Opening Lines reads like a cannibal's wish list: Skin $100. Limbs (at least 2) $150. Spinal cord $325. Brain $999 (30% discount if significantly fragmented).
The evidence confirmed what pro-life bioethicists have long predicted: the nadir-bound plummet of respect for human life-and the ascendancy of death for profit.
"It's the inevitable logical progression of a society that, like Darwin, believes we came from nothing," notes Gene Rudd, an obstetrician and member of the Christian Medical and Dental Society's Bioethics Commission. "When we fail to see life as sacred and ordained by God as unique, this is the reasonable conclusion ... taking whatever's available to gratify our own self-interests and taking the weakest of the species first ... like jackals. This is the inevitable slide down the slippery slope."
In 1993, President Clinton freshly greased that slope. Following vigorous lobbying by patient advocacy groups, Mr. Clinton signed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act, effectively lifting the ban on federally funded research involving the transplantation of fetal tissue. For medical and biotech investigators, it was as though the high government gate barring them from Research Shangri-La had finally been thrown open. Potential cures for Parkinson's, AIDS, and cancer suddenly shimmered in the middle distance. The University of Washington in Seattle opened an NIH-funded embryology laboratory that runs a round-the-clock collection service at abortion clinics. NIH itself advertised (and still advertises) its ability to "supply tissue from normal or abnormal embryos and fetuses of desired gestational ages between 40 days and term."
But, this being the land of opportunity, fetal-tissue entrepreneurs soon emerged to nip at NIH's well-funded heels. Anatomic Gift Foundation, Opening Lines, and at least two other companies-competition AGF representatives say they know of, but decline to name-joined the pack. Each firm formed relationships with abortion clinics. Each also furnished abortionists with literature and consent forms for use by clinic counselors in making women aware of the option to donate their babies' bodies to medical science. According to AGF executive director Brent Bardsley, aborting mothers are not approached about tissue donation until after they've signed a consent to abort.
Ironically, it is the babies themselves that are referred to as "donors," as though they had some say in the matter. Such semantic red flags-and a phalanx of others-have bioethicists hotly debating the issue of fetal-tissue research: Does the use of the bodies of aborted children for medical research amount to further exploitation of those who are already victims? Will the existence of fetal-tissue donation programs persuade more mothers that abortion is an acceptable, even altruistic, option? Since abortion is legal and the human bodies are destined to be discarded anyway, does it all shake out as a kind of ethical offset, mitigating the abortion holocaust with potential good?
While the ethical debate rages in air-conditioned conference rooms, material obtained by Life Dynamics points up what goes on in abortion clinic labs: the cutting up and parting out of dead children. The fate of these smallest victims is chronicled in more than 50 actual dissection orders or "protocols" obtained by the activist group. The protocols detail how requesting researchers want baby parts cut and shipped: "Dissect fetal liver and thymus and occasional lymph node from fetal cadaver within 10 (minutes of death)." "Arms and legs need not be intact." "Intact brains preferred, but large pieces of brain may be usable."
Most researchers want parts harvested from fetuses 18 to 24 weeks in utero, which means the largest babies lying in lab pans awaiting a blade would stretch 10 to 12 inches-from your wrist to your elbow. Some researchers append a subtle "plus" sign to the "24," indicating that parts from late-term babies would be acceptable. Many stipulate "no abnormalities," meaning the baby in question should have been healthy prior to having her life cut short by "intrauterine cranial compression" (crushing of the skull).
On one protocol dated 1991, August J. Sick of San Diego-based Invitrogen Corporation requested kidneys, hearts, lungs, livers, spleens, pancreases, skin, smooth muscle, skeletal muscle and brains from unborn babies of 15-22 weeks gestational age. Mr. Sick wanted "5-10 samples of each per month." WORLD called Mr. Sick to verify that he had indeed ordered the parts. (He had.) When WORLD pointed out that Invitrogen's request of up to 100 samples per month would mean a lot of dead babies, Mr. Sick-sounding quite shaken-quickly aborted the interview.
Many of the dissection orders provide details of research projects in which the fetal tissue will be used. Most, in the abstract, are medically noble, with goals like conquering AIDS or creating "surfactants," substances that would enable premature babies to breathe independently.
Other research applications are chilling. For example, R. Paul Johnson from Massachusetts' New England Regional Primate Research Center requested second-trimester fetal livers. His 1995 protocol notes that the livers will be used ultimately for "primate implantation," including the "creation of human-monkey chimeras." In biology, a chimera is an organism created by the grafting or mutation of two genetically different cell types.
Another protocol is up-front about the researchers' profit motive. Systemix, a California-based firm, wanted aborting mothers to know that any fetal tissue donated "is for research purposes which may lead to commercial applications."
That leads to the money trail.
Life Dynamics' investigation uncovered the financial arrangement between abortionists and fetal-parts providers. The Uniform Anatomic Gift Act makes it a federal crime to buy or sell fetal tissue. So entities involved in the collection and transfer of fetal parts operate under a documentary rubric that, while technically lawful, looks distinctly like a legal end-around: AGF, for example, pays the Mayfair Women's Center for the privilege of obtaining fetal tissue. Researchers pay AGF for the privilege of receiving fetal tissue. But all parties claim there is no buying or selling of fetal tissue going on.
Instead, AGF representatives maintain that Mayfair "donates" dead babies to AGF. Researchers then compensate AGF for the cost of tissue recovery. It's a service fee, explains AGF executive director Brent Bardsley: compensation for services like dissection, blood tests, preservation, and shipping.
Money paid by fetal-tissue providers to abortion clinics is termed a "site fee," and does not, Mr. Bardsley maintains, pay for baby parts harvested. Instead the fee compensates clinics for allowing technicians like Ms. Ying to work on-site retrieving and dissecting dead babies-sort of a Frankensteinian sublet.
"It's clearly a fee-for-space arrangement," says Mr. Bardsley. "We occupy a portion of their laboratory, use their clinic supplies, have a phone line installed. The site fee offsets the use of clinic supplies that we use in tissue procurement."
According to Mr. Bardsley, fetal-tissue recovery accounts for only about 10 percent of AGF's business. The rest involves the recovery and transfer to researchers of non-transplantable organs and tissue from adult donors. But, in spite of the fact that AGF recovers tissue from all 50 states, Mr. Bardsley could not cite for WORLD an instance in which AGF pays a "site fee" to hospital morgues or funeral homes for the privilege of camping on-site to retrieve adult tissue.
Mr. Bardsley, a trained surgical technician, seems like a friendly guy. On the phone he sounds reasonable, intelligent, and sincere about his contention that AGF isn't involved in the fetal-tissue business for the money.
"We have a lot of pride in what we do," he says. "We think we make a difference with research and researchers' accessibility to human tissue. Every time you go to a drug store, the drugs on the shelf are there as a result of human tissue donation. You can't perfect drugs to be used in human beings using animal models."
AGF operates as a nonprofit and employs fewer than 15 people. Mr. Bardsley's brother Jim and Jim's wife Brenda founded the organization in 1994. The couple had previously owned a tissue-recovery organization called the International Institute for the Advancement of Medicine (IIAM), which had also specialized in fetal-tissue redistribution, counting, for example, Mr. Sick among its clients. But when IIAM's board of directors decided to withdraw from involvement with fetal tissue, the Bardsleys spun off AGF-specifically to continue providing fetal tissue to researchers.
Significantly, AGF opened in 1994, the year after President Clinton shattered the fetal-tissue research ban. Since then, the company's revenues have rocketed from $180,000 to $2 million in 1998. Did the Bardsleys see a market niche that was too good to pass up? Brenda Bardsley, who is now AGF president, says no. AGF's economic windfall, she says, is related to the company's expansion into adult donations, not the transfer of fetal tissue. She says she and her husband felt compelled to continue providing the medical community with a source of fetal tissue "because of the research that was going on."
"Abortion is legal, but tragic. We see what we're doing as trying to make the best of a bad situation," Mrs. Bardsley told WORLD. "We don't encourage abortion, but we see that good can come from fetal-tissue research. There is so much wonderful research going on-research that can help save the lives of wanted children."
Mrs. Bardsley says she teaches her own children that abortion is wrong. A Deep South transplant with a brisk, East coast accent, Mrs. Bardsley and her family attend a Southern Baptist church near their home on the Satilla River in White Oak, Ga. Mrs. Bardsley homeschools her three children using, she says, a Christian curriculum: "I've been painted as this monster, but here I am trying to give my kids a Christian education," she says, referring to other media coverage of AGF's fetal-parts enterprise.
Mrs. Bardsley says she's prayed over whether her business is acceptable in God's sight, and has "gotten the feeling" that it is. She also, she says, reads the Bible "all the time." And though she can't cite a chapter and verse that says it's OK to cut and ferry baby parts, she points out that God commands us to love one another. For Mrs. Bardsley, aiding medical research by supplying fetal parts qualifies.
If they were in it for the money rather than for the good of mankind, says Mrs. Bardsley, AGF could charge much higher prices for fetal tissue than it does, because research demand is so high.
The issue of demand is one of several points on which the testimonies of Mrs. Bardsley and her brother-in-law Brent don't jibe. He says demand for fetal tissue "isn't all that high." She says demand for fetal tissue is "so high, we could never meet it." He says "only a small percentage" of aborting moms consent to donate their babies' bodies. She says 75 percent of them consent. He says AGF charges only for whole bodies, and doesn't see how the body-parts company Opening Lines could justify charging by the body part. She says AGF charges for individual organs and tissue based on the company's recovery costs.
Founded by pathologist Miles Jones, Opening Lines was, until recently, based in West Frankfort, Ill. According to its brochure, Opening Lines' parent company, Consultative and Diagnostic Pathology, Inc., processes an average of 1,500 fetal-tissue cases per day. While AGF requires that researchers submit proof that the International Research Board (IRB), a research oversight commission, approves their work, Opening Lines does not burden its customers with such technicalities. In fact, says the Opening Lines brochure, researchers need not tell the company why they need baby parts at all-simply state their wishes and let Opening Lines provide "the freshest tissue prepared to your specifications and delivered in the quantities you need it."
Opening Lines' brochure cloaks the profit motive in a veil of altruism. The cover tells abortionists that since fetal-tissue donation benefits medical science, "You can turn your patient's decision into something wonderful." But in case philanthropy isn't a sufficient motivator, Dr. Jones also makes his program financially appealing to abortionists. Like AGF, he offers to lease space from clinics so his staff can dissect children's bodies on-site, but also goes a step further: He offers to train abortion clinic staff to harvest tissue themselves. He even sweetens the deal for abortionists with a financial incentive: "Based on your volume, we will reimburse part or all of your employee's salary, thereby reducing your overhead."
Again the money trail: more dead babies harvested, less overhead. Less overhead, more profit.
But Dr. Jones' own profits may be taking a beating at present. When Life Dynamics released the results of its investigation to West Frankfort's newspaper The Daily American, managing editor Shannon Woodworth ran a front-page story under a 100-point headline: "Pro-Lifers: Baby body parts sold out of West Frankfort." The little town of 9,000 was scandalized. City officials threatened legal action against Dr. Jones and his chief of staff Gayla Rose, a lab technician and longtime West Frankfort resident. The story splashed down in local TV news coverage, and Illinois right-to-life activists vowed to picket Opening Lines. Within a week, Gayla Rose had shut down the company's West St. Louis Street location, disconnected the phone, and disappeared.
Area reporters now believe Dr. Jones may be operating somewhere in Missouri. WORLD attempted to track him down, but without success.
The demands of researchers for fetal tissue will continue to drive suppliers to supply it. And all parties will continue to wrap their grim enterprise in the guise of the greater good. But some bioethicists believe that even the greater good has a spending cap.
Christopher Hook, a fellow with the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Bannockburn, Ill., calls the exploitation of pre-born children "too high a price regardless of the supposed benefit. We can never feel comfortable with identifying a group of our brothers and sisters who can be exploited for the good of the whole," Dr. Hook says. "Once we have crossed that line, we have betrayed our covenant with one another as a society, and certainly the covenant of medicine."
by Celeste McGovern
Aborted fetuses are being dissected alive, harvested and sold in pieces to fuel a vast research enterprise
The doctor walked into the lab and set a steel pan on the table. “Got you some good specimens,” he said. “Twins.” The technician looked down at a pair of perfectly formed 24-week-old fetuses moving and gasping for air. Except for a few nicks from the surgical tongs that had pulled them out, they seemed uninjured. “There’s something wrong here,” the technician stammered. “They are moving. I don’t do this. That’s not in my contract.” She watched the doctor take a bottle of sterile water and fill the pan until the water ran up over the babies’ mouths and noses. Then she left the room. “I would not watch those fetuses moving,” she recalls. “That’s when I decided it was wrong.”
The technician uses the pseudonym “Kelly.” She has her back to the camera, she wears a wig, and her voice is electronically modified because she says she fears for her life. Until a few months ago Kelly worked for a Maryland company called the Anatomic Gift Foundation. Her job was to procure fetal tissue for research. She worked at a Planned Parenthood clinic that was also a member of the National Abortion Federation. Her interview appears on the May issue of “Life Talk” video magazine—the first of a monthly series of videos released by Life Dynamics Inc., a renegade pro-life group based in Denton, Texas, that admits to having spies work in abortion clinics to uncover their most closely guarded secrets.
This week the group is releasing the documentary evidence it has gathered since Kelly approached them nearly two years ago. Life Dynamics has dozens of order forms from researchers requesting fetal parts, price lists for fetal organs and tissue, and donation consent forms for women undergoing abortion. It offers a gruesome glimpse at a vast trade in human tissue from babies that are aborted, and sometimes vivisected, to satiate the exploding multibillion-dollar biotechnology industry.
The traffic in tissue flows worldwide into respected tax- funded laboratories, including Canadian ones. The research itself is usually for laudable goals, from helping prenatal infants survive to curing Parkinson’s disease. But the trade, worth billions, raises myriad ethical questions: Are some humans being killed to benefit others? Are women being exploited to support tissue collection? Who is profiting from the trade? And what are the social implications of its existence?
Once the stuff of cheap science-fiction, human clones, artificial wombs and human-animal cross-species are all now serious possibilities. Sexless procreation is already a reality with in vitro fertilization. Selective breeding of human beings is commonplace thanks to embryo screening and “genetic terminations.” And human-human brain cell transplants are government-funded. All of these endeavours rely on aborted fetuses.
Scientists have used fetal tissue in research since at least the 1930s, says Pittsburgh researcher Suzanne Rini, author of the 1993 book Beyond Abortion: A Chronicle of Fetal Experimentation. Thirty years ago, as abortion laws were relaxing and some second- and third-trimester abortions were performed by hysterotomy (essentially a Caesarean section), experiments on live fetuses were cutting-edge technology. Geoffrey Chamberlain received a professional award for research (outlined in the March 1968 issue of The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology) in which he took live aborted fetuses, attached them to an artificial placenta, perfused them to see if he could make them live, and then pulled the plug on them. No one objected.
It was shortly after that article, Mrs. Rini notes, that the Cambridge Evening Post featured a story on Lawrence Lawn, a physician who did manage to provoke controversy when it was learned that he was procuring live fetuses from a private abortion clinic. “We are simply allowing something which is destined for the incinerator to benefit mankind,” he said, obliging a photographer with a picture of himself standing next to a dying fetus suspended in a perfusion tank. Yet even Dr. Lawn believed there were limits. “Of course we would not dream of experimenting with a viable child. We would not consider that to be right.” With the decriminalization of abortion in the 1970s, fetal research became, in the words one ethicist, a “golden opportunity” for researchers. The public almost never heard about fetal experimentation. But by the 1980s, some of the most macabre research was being publicly funded. Mrs. Rini catalogues experiments ranging from the perfusion of impaled beating fetal hearts with adrenaline and caffeine to eye-tissue transplants and skin grafting. Dr. Bernard Gondos of the University of Connecticut at Farmington, whose research on fetal gonads described most of his specimens as “previable dead,” lamented having to import fetuses from outside the United States. Dr. Karen Holbrook of the University of Washington received a $239,740 grant in 1984-85 for her work on “Fetal Skin Biology” using first-, second- and third-trimester human fetuses. She told Mrs. Rini: “Hopefully they are not born alive. It’s better to avoid that. The skin is taken after fetal demise.” Asked if the skin diseases she was trying to diagnose prenatally were fatal, Dr. Holbrook replied, “No, but they ruin your life.”
By the 1980s transplants had become entrenched, and fetal tissue, which grows quickly and is less likely to trigger an immune reaction in a host, became even more coveted. Fetal tissue transplants became part of efforts to treat diabetes, Huntington’s disease, blindness, spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s disease, leukemia and more. In 1988, U.S. president George Bush banned federal funding of fetal human-to-human transplants. This move was widely mistaken for a ban on all fetal tissue research; in fact, most such research carried on unimpeded. In any case, Bill Clinton’s first official act as president in 1993 was to strike down the ban. People were demanding to be “treated” with fetuses. California lawyer Joan Samuelson had founded the Parkinson Action Network (PAN) in 1990 to lobby for an end to the moratorium. “Will lifting the ban save us in time?” she asked when it was abolished, and she began lobbying for an accelerated grant review process for fetal-tissue transplant research.
Transplants of brain tissue from young fetuses (usually aborted at less than 10 weeks) into Parkinson’s sufferers have attracted the most public attention to fetal tissue research. In 1990 the results of Olle Lindvall’s research team’s transplants into four Swedish patients were hailed as “promising” because one recipient appeared to have benefited remarkably. The other patients were not monitored long enough to determine the grafts’ effects.
Neuroscientists presenting findings at the XIII International Congress on Parkinson’s Disease in Vancouver last month sounded optimistic, but their data was not the knockout blow Parkinson’s researchers have been hoping for. Thomas Freeman of the University of South Florida reported that 360 patients have received human tissue transplants in 17 centres worldwide to date. But the variables researchers use to evaluate success differ so widely as to be incomparable, so he focused on the results of his own “open trial” on six patients, which he admitted was open to placebo effects and observer bias.
The only fetal tissue transplant study to be performed with a control group so far was published in April by Curt Freed of the University of Colorado and Stanley Fahn of Columbia Presbyterian. They followed two sets of patients: those who actually received neural fetal cells and those who had their heads opened for a sham surgery in an attempt to eliminate the placebo effect. Although the Medical Post headlined the research story “Parkinson’s progress,” and the New York Times proclaimed, “Hints of success in fetal cell transplants,” Dr. Paul Ranalli, a professor of neurology at the University of Toronto, calls the research “hugely unimpressive.” The only benefits were bestowed on patients under age 60, he notes, and the vast majority of Parkinson’s patients are senior citizens. Even in those cases, he adds, “a magnifying glass is required to discern any functional benefit.”
What is more, Dr. Fahn told the Vancouver congress that he was disturbed by an unexpected outcome of the trial: facial “runaway dyskinesias” (involuntary muscle movements) which were particularly severe in the younger patients. Other researchers have noted similar findings, says Dr. Freeman. As with drugs, there could be a dose at which fetal cells “may be harmful,” he said.
Procedures on more Parkinson’s patients will help clarify these findings. Dr. Freeman told the attendees that Canada is leading the way in these experiments, primarily at the lab of Dr. Ivar Mendez at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Dr. Mendez, who declined an interview last week, received a $90,042 grant from the Medical Research Council of Canada for 1999-2000. His transplant data is anticipated soon.
At the advent of the new millennium it is “pleuripotent” embryonic stem cells that are at the forefront of fetal tissue research. Ethicists are already distinguishing between using human embryos “left over” from in vitro fertilization and humans created specifically for research. “Farmed” embryos are capable of differentiating into many types of tissue and are being hailed as new sources for whole organs for donation, and for human clones.
As bright as all the research may sound, others discern a darker side. There is no law on fetal tissue collection—only guidelines. Researchers are free to hold to them or ignore them. And where laws do exist—such as the ones against infanticide and the sale of human tissue—there are ways around them, and they are sometimes broken outright.
Kelly explains that the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic she was working in received a service fee from the Anatomic Gift Foundation for its tissue “donations.” “We were never employees of the abortion clinic,” she explains. “We would have a contract with an abortion clinic that would allow us to go in...[to] procure fetal tissue for research. We would get a generated list each day to tell us what tissue researchers, pharmaceuticals and universities were looking for. Then we would go and look at the particular patient charts—we had to screen out anyone who had STDs or fetal anomalies. These had to be the most perfect specimens we could give these researchers for the best value that we could sell for.” Probably only 10% of fetuses were ruled out for anomalies, she adds. The rest were “healthy donors.”
Fetuses ranged in age from seven weeks to 30 weeks and beyond. Typically, Kelly harvested tissue from 30 to 40 “late” fetuses each week. “We were taking eyes, livers, brains, thymuses, and especially cardiac blood...even blood from the limbs that we would get from the veins,” she says.
Researchers used their own shipping firms—“UPS, Fedex or a special courier,” she adds. “We would take it in a box and put it on as regular cargo. Sometimes it would be an intact fetus or it might be a batch of eyes or 30 to 40 livers going out that day, or thymuses. Whatever it was, there were mass quantities of it going out.” To support this claim, Life Dynamics provides copies of dozens of order forms for fetal parts from North American researchers. They contain names of researchers, universities and pharmaceutical companies, day and evening telephone numbers, courier account numbers, the type of tissue requested, preferred gestational age of the fetus, and other details.
A sample, from a scientist studying the “Biochemical Characterization of human type X Collagen,” requests “Whole intact leg, include entire hip joint, 22-24 weeks gest.” The extractor is directed to “dissect by cutting through symphasis pubis and include whole Illium [hip joint]. To be removed from fetal cadaver within 10 minutes.”
One order form carries the name of the University of British Columbia’s Dr. Vanugram Venkatesh alongside a request for an international Fedex shipment of “16-24 week lungs (trachea not required)” to study “molecular mechanisms of fluid reabsorption in human fetal lung.” “Significance: Respiratory Distress Syndrome...a major cause of death in premature infants.” The memo adds: “Bill our account.”
Contacted last week at his Vancouver office, Dr. Vankatesh said that he did do research on immature lungs two years ago, with a Medical Research Council grant, at the B.C. Children’s Hospital. But he added, “I don’t do that anymore.” Asked if he used human tissue, he replied, “Yeah,” then changed his mind. “Well, we were doing genetics mainly...Where are you getting your information? We were using cell lines.” Asked if he had ever ordered fetal lungs from the U.S., he said, “I have to go,” and hung up abruptly.
“These researchers don’t want to see the whole baby,” says Life Dynamics’ Dzintra Tuttle. “That’s gruesome. That would freak them out. They think they’re about higher medicine that is serving a cause—not about dead babies.” On their video, Life Dynamics asks Kelly if the abortionist at the clinic ever deliberately altered procedure to procure tissue. “Yes,” she replies. “All the limbs, the arms, the head, the chest cavity were never invaded. They were all completely intact. Sometimes, the fetus appeared to be dead, but when you’d open up the chest cavity you’d see the heart beating.”
The clinic used the partial-birth abortion technique for later pregnancies: the doctor grasps hold of a fetus leg with tongs and pulls the entire baby, except for the head, feet-first and face down out of the mother. Then he punctures the base of the skull with scissors, inserts a cannula to suck out the brain, and slides the head out. It is a three-day procedure requiring that women be inserted with laminaria, seaweed cervix dilators, beforehand.
Were women ever coerced into the procedure? Kelly says that sometimes, before the final surgery, on the third day “you could blatantly hear them in the halls saying they wanted to change their minds.” But they were sedated, in what Kelly calls a “Nyquil nap,” which made it difficult to protest. Sometimes the IV was turned up; in any case, the woman always had the abortion.
Routinely, the women would go into labour before the final surgery. “They were coming out alive,” says Kelly. Aside from the incident with the twins, she says, there were three to four live births in a typical two-week period. “The doctor would either break the neck or take a pair of tongs and basically beat the fetus until it was dead.”
As incredible as Kelly’s testimony seems, other sources corroborate it. Eric Harrah worked in the abortion industry for 11 years, leaving it 18 months ago. He managed and owned or partially owned 26 American abortion clinics. Live births, he tells Life Dynamics, were the industry’s “dirty little secret.” “It was always very disturbing, so the doctor would try to conceal it from the rest of the staff,” he says, but one incident is hard for him to forget.
The woman in question was 26 weeks pregnant. She had laminaria inserted, signed paperwork agreeing not to call anyone but the clinic if she went into labour, and was sent to a motel up the road to await her procedure the next day. She was brought to the clinic in the middle of the night, carrying her fetus in a white cotton hotel towel.
“I was in the scrub room when I saw the towel move,” says Mr. Harrah. “A nurse said, ‘Eric, you’re just tired. It’s three in the morning.’ Then we both looked and a little baby’s arm raised up out of the towel and was moving like a newborn baby. I screamed and ran out. The doctor came in and closed the door and when we went back in to process the baby out of the clinic into the lab, [the baby] had a puncture wound in his chest.”
Evidence of the demand for late-term fetal tissue can be corroborated apart from Life Dynamics. The National Institutes for Health operate a Laboratory for Embryology at the University of Washington in Seattle that runs a 24- hour collection service at abortion clinics. An advertisement in the March 1994 NIH Guide still appears on the Internet, offering to “supply tissue from normal or abnormal embryos and fetuses of desired gestational ages between 40 days and term. Specimens are obtained within minutes of passage... and immediately processed according to the requirements of individual investigators...Specimens are shipped by overnight express.”
Mark Crutcher, president of Life Dynamics, is now convinced that the research demand for intact late-term fetal organs is the hidden truth behind the partial-birth abortion controversy. In state after state this year, partial- birth abortion bans written into state laws by legislatures have been vehemently opposed by pro-choice groups and overturned by courts. “Why do pro-aborts fight so hard to keep it?” asks Mr. Crutcher. “All it says is you can’t kill them by this method. It doesn’t prevent them from getting any other kind of abortion. This is about maximizing profits. First, you sell the woman an abortion. Then you turn around and sell the dead baby you take out of her. But you have to take it out whole or you don’t have anything to sell.”
“It has nothing to do with the woman’s right to choose or with protecting the sanctity of the right of abortion,” agrees Mr. Harrah. “It has everything to do with protecting the sanctity of the fullness of the abortionist’s wallet. This is the only type of abortion procedure that doesn’t cost them to get rid of the dead baby. They actually make money.”
Apart from abortionists and the wholesalers who traffic in aborted baby parts (see story, page 34), who stands to profit from this fetal research? Of the pharmaceutical companies sponsoring it, Mr. Crutcher says: “I don’t think there’s one that’s not involved.” He surmises they are investing in the future. Baby boomers are aging, and about to start falling apart. A practical treatment for Parkinson’s would be lucrative. “Just look at Viagra,” says Mr. Crutcher. (In Canada alone, the little blue impotence pill sold 20,600 prescriptions worth $1.55 million in its first week on the market) “That’s just a hint of the fortunes awaiting drug manufacturers pandering to boomers’ quest for youth. They’re the wealthiest generation in the history of the world. And also the most narcissistic. They want to live forever.” And fetuses are the new human scrap heap. Says Mr. Crutcher: “We’re going to kill the very young to treat the very old.” Perhaps, but Mrs. Rini offers hope of a wrinkle in the plan. “Does the fetus’ aliveness, which is coveted by researchers, and ability to sponsor life for others, ironically but actually prove the fetus’ own life?” she writes. She cites ethicist Paul Ramsey: “Far from abortion settling the question of fetal research, it could be that sober reflection on the use of the human fetus in research could unsettle the abortion issue.”
Steven Bamforth is a geneticist who operates a fetal tissue repository at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton. He and his researchers have the difficult task of sorting through 10- to 12-week fetal remains from abortion clinics in Edmonton and Winnipeg, dissecting recognizable body parts for hearts and eyes, extracting messenger ribonucleic acid and shipping it to other geneticists at the Universities of Toronto and British Columbia. “The humanity is always before us,” Dr. Bamforth told this magazine last year. “If society said this research is not acceptable, of course, we would immediately desist. It’s not something that I do happily.”