Not every medical school is alike. If an unborn infant cadaver is available in gross anatomy class, it should be used to teach. It needn’t be the product of an elective abortion. And abortion also means “miscarriage”— the question was not whether the unborn appear in gross anatomy classes, but from whence they come. This is a cheap shot at Carson.
I am an RN myself and am well aware of what an “elective vs a spontaneous” abortion is. Remember also that any delivery over 20 weeks is not referred to as a miscarriage and is a premature birth. Regardless of what you believe should be used, reality is, that fetal remains in either instance are very rarely intact and usable for the purpose of teaching medical students. Autopsies on babies that have congenital defects are performed by pathologists but only with the consent of the parents. You should be aware that consent from patients must be obtained for tissue to be used and not infrequently when parents have lost children they refuse to consent to autopsy let alone tissue donation for research.
Informed consent is one aspect of the whole issue regarding the use of aborted fetal tissue. As someone who has professional experience with obtaining the informed consent of patients, it well known that they key term is “informed” and that it is vey possible to get people to sign papers that they really don’t understand. The latest Planned Parenthood video discusses how this might work and I have seen it done myself albeit in a different setting.
Politically, I like Ben Carson and agree that this story was a political “gotcha” however it shows his political naiveté in not discussing his role in fetal tissue research before the left dug up his study. In doing so he wouldn’t have found himself on defense.