The harvest of abortion

Lynn Vincent reports on the growing traffic in foetal body parts in the USA.

WARNING: this article contains some graphic detail which many readers may find upsetting.

As Monday morning sunshine spills across the high plains of Aurora, Colorado, USA, and a new working 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, pick 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 client once requested to receive 4 to 10 eyes per day.

Although she works in Aurora at an abortion clinic called the Mayfair Women's Centre, Ms. Ying is employed by the Anatomic Gift Foundation (AGF), a Maryland-based non-profit organisation. AGF is one of at least five US organisations that collect, prepare and distribute to medical researchers foetal tissue, organs and body parts that are the products of voluntary abortions.

Parts trade

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: 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 ƒ 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) Revitalisation Act, effectively lifting the ban on federally-funded research involving the transplantation of foetal 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.

Market opening?

The US being the land of opportunity, foetal-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 counsellors 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 foetal-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 foetal-tissue donation programmes persuade more mothers that abortion is an acceptable, even altruistic, option?

Requests

While the ethical debate ranges 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 foetal liver and thymus and occasional lymph node from foetal cadaver within 10 (minutes of death).' 'Arms and legs need not be intact.' 'Intact brains preferred, but large pieces of brain may be useable.'

Most researchers want parts harvested from foetuses 18 to 24 weeks in utero, which means the largest babies lying in lab pans awaiting a blade would stretch 10-12 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 its 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).

Noble goals?

Many of the dissection orders provide details of research projects in which the foetal tissue will be used. Most, in the abstract, are medically noble, with goals like conquering AIDS or creating 'surfactants', substances that enable premature babies to breathe independently.

Other research applications are chilling. For example, R. Paul Johnson from Massachusetts' New England Regional Primate Research Centre requested second-trimester foetal livers. His 1995 protocol notes that the livers will be ultimately used 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 foetal tissue donated 'is for research purposes which may lead to commercial application'.

That leads to the money trail.

Life Dynamics' investigation uncovered the financial arrangement between abortionists and foetal-parts providers. The Uniform Anatomic Gift Act makes it a federal crime to buy or sell foetal tissue. So entities involved in the collection and transfer of foetal parts operate under a documentary rubric that, while technically lawful, looks distinctly like a legal work-around: AGF, for example, pays the Mayfair Women's Centre for the privilege of obtaining foetal tissue. Researchers pay AGF for the privilege of receiving foetal tissue. But all parties claim there is no buying or selling of foetal 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.

Reprinted from WORLD Magazine with permission.

US government concern

Allegations that companies are selling the organs of aborted children must be investigated, according to Pro-Life congressmen, Tom Tancredo and Chris Smith.

They want Congress to investigate a network of abortion clinics and medical researchers allegedly involved in selling body parts. 'If this is happening, then the abortion industry is turning children into lab rats, and making their deaths and destruction of their bodies into a money-making business,' Family Research Council spokesperson Janet Parshall said.

Reports in the magazines WORLD and Insight promoted calls for an investigation.

One of the companies alleged to be dealing with these things has vacated its offices in West Frankfurt, Illinois. The National Institutes of Health Revitalisation Act of 1993 makes it a Federal felony to buy or sell the organs and bodies of aborted children.

The harvest of abortion

A report on the shocking US trade in the body parts of aborted foetuses (reprinted from World Magazine)