Stop the Industry of Death and Exploitation

In recent years, pro-lifers have exposed the gruesome, ongoing practice of harvesting and buying and selling the body parts of aborted children for medical research.

A series of undercover videos released by pro-life researcher David Daleiden showed abortionists and executives of biomedical companies callously describing how they obtain the bodies, and haggling over the prices for different body parts.

In one of the most disturbing videos that I have ever seen, Daleiden and his co-investigators captured footage of the dismembered body of a child aborted at 20 weeks in a dish. At one point the camera operator uses tweezers to lift up the fully intact hand and arm of the baby, who, we are informed, was a twin.

Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood, the abortion industry in general, and pro-abortion politicians and the media did everything they could to ensure that as few people as possible viewed the actual videos. When the media did report on the videos (which was very rarely), they slavishly called the videos “deceptively edited” – as if “editing” could possibly explain the gruesome images of the violated bodies of these children.

To this day, far too few people are aware of the macabre experimentation going on involving the bodies of children killed during legal abortions. Even fewer are aware that, in many cases, the federal government has funded this experimentation, using taxpayer dollars.

Biden Administration Renews Fetal Research

In two recent reports, Judicial Watch exposed that between 2012 and 2018, the federal government spent tens of thousands of dollars to buy human fetal tissue from California-based Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR).

In 2018, however, the Trump administration cancelled the contract with ABR. They also clamped down on the funding of fetal tissue research in other ways.

According to the Susan B. Anthony List, the Trump administration committed $20 million to ethical alternatives to fetal tissue; “banned intramural (National Institutes of Health-based) research using tissue from elective abortions”; and convened an Ethics Advisory Board (EAB) to “review all new and renewable requests for research using tissue from elective abortions.” According to the SBA List, that EAB rejected many funding requests from researchers “due to major deficiencies with their consent process for women being solicited for tissue and organ donations.”

In the latest assault on the sanctity of human life, however, the Biden administration has announced that they are reversing some of the key restrictions on fetal tissue research. According to a statement from the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) released Friday, April 16th, “HHS is reversing its 2019 decision that all research applications for NIH grants and contracts proposing the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions will be reviewed by an Ethics Advisory Board.”

The move is hardly surprising, given the extreme pro-abortion views of newly confirmed HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. However, religious leaders and pro-life groups vociferously condemned the decision, which uses our money to fund experiments that are almost too disturbing to fathom.

“The bodies of children killed by abortion deserve the same respect as that of any other person,” said Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, in a statement. “Our government has no right to treat innocent abortion victims as a commodity that can be scavenged for body parts to be used in research.”

SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser noted that the Biden and Harris administration is “working hand-in-glove with radical appointees like Xavier Becerra…to pay back their abortion industry allies and wipe out pro-life progress made under the Trump-Pence administration.”

“Now,” she added, “they would force Americans to be complicit in barbaric experiments using body parts harvested from innocent children killed in abortions, with no limits of any kind. Pro-abortion Democrats push this deeply unpopular agenda at their own political peril.”

Real Children, Real Exploitation

As I have mentioned in the past, I am convinced that one of the reasons that abortion is still legal and widely accepted is that for most people it is basically an abstract issue. We may read about abortion in the news or on social media. But usually, the language used is so clinical, or so familiar, that we fail to grasp the physical reality of what is going on.

For decades now, some pro-life activists have attempted to awaken consciences by confronting people with the concrete, documentary evidence of the brutality of abortion. David Daleiden’s videos remain some of the most powerful recent instances of this strategy.

I have already mentioned perhaps the most heart-wrenching video – the one involving the 20-week-twin, whose mutilated body is captured on camera, while an abortion staff member boasts that sometimes “the organs come out really, really well.”

Another heart-stopping video is not so graphic, visually speaking, but is equally (if not more) damning and horrifying.

In the video, Cate Dyer, the CEO of StemExpress, one of the companies that trades in the bodies of aborted children, describes how her company sometimes ships the “intact” bodies of unborn children to academics at research institutes. Dyer explained that they have to warn the lab technicians on the other end that the shipment is coming, “so they don’t open the box and” scream. Sometimes, she admitted, “their lab techs freak out and have meltdowns.”

Dyer sounds positively contemptuous of the delicate feelings of these lab techs. “Academic labs cannot fly like that, they are just not capable,” Dyer says. “It’s almost like they don’t want to know where it comes from. I can see that.”

In some cases, Dyer says, they receive requests for the “limbs” of aborted children, but with the request that “no hands and feet need to be attached.” At one point Dyer agrees with the “joke” of one of the pro-life investigators that if you’re shipping the bodies of aborted children, they should make sure the “eyes are closed.”

Fighting for the Dignity of Unborn Victims of Abortion

It is important to emphasize that everything that Daleiden exposed in those horrific videos is still happening today. Just a few days ago, Fox News reported that StemExpress had provided the fingers of aborted children to researchers at Stanford University, who injected the human tissue into mice, in an effort to regenerate cartilage.

The papers of one of the studies bluntly explains the origin of the tissue. “Fourteen human fetal samples were obtained from Stemexpress (Folsom, CA) and shipped overnight,” it says. “Samples ranged in age from 10 to 20 weeks of gestation with no restrictions on race or gender.”

“Samples”! In other words: the bodies of children, some of them nearly old enough to live outside the womb had they had a chance to be born!

Although Daleiden’s videos had a huge impact in raising awareness, the powerful pro-abortion legal, media, and political apparatus went into overdrive attempting to crush and discredit him and his videos. Current U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris herself played a key role in persecuting Daleiden, during her time as California Attorney General. Harris colluded with Planned Parenthood executives to launch heavy-handed investigations, which included a raid on Daleiden’s home. Now, unsurprisingly, Harris is once again taking care of her good friends in the abortion industry, making them eligible for our money to support their gruesome and inhuman activities.

It angers me deeply to see Biden, Harris, the FDA, researchers, and biomedical institutes endorse and secure the atrocious actions of this macabre industry. Through words and actions, they blatantly deny human dignity and the personhood of unborn children, determining that they are not only unworthy of life but that these human beings can be treated as commodities – dehumanized and exploited for financial gain and for the benefit of others.

This dangerous mentality – denying the equal dignity of every person, born and unborn – has resulted in atrocious crimes and acts against human life, staining the landscape of human history. Its acceptance, justification, and perpetuation only further degrade our culture and society.

There is a dual injustice inflicted upon the unborn – murder and usury. The unborn has not relinquished its life, nor has the child given permission for its body to be scavenged and trafficked. It is time to end all experimentation on the bodies of unborn children killed by abortion; it has no place in a civilized society. Even if the outcomes of the research are medically helpful, the means are barbaric and evil, and evil means can never be used for a good end.

Human life is always good and from conception has dignity proper to a person that we are obliged to respect and defend, without exception. If a single life is determined to have no value, then no life has value, placing each of us in grave danger, not just the unborn.

Call and write your representatives, senators, and President Biden demanding that the bodies of unborn children killed by abortion be given the same respect as that of any other person. And at the same time let us add, stop the violence of abortion, and end the industry of death and exploitation it has created.