Since the Center for Medical Progress began exposing the lucrative business of trafficking aborted fetal remains, media pundits –claiming to speak in the name of science—have shamelessly shoved the notion that ‘the remains of preborn children are a boon to medical research’ down the collective throats of the American public.
We have been fed many angles of this story: that the bodies would just be discarded, so why not bring good from their deaths by sending them to bioresearch labs; that abortion is legal, so what happens to the remains should not be a contentious issue; and that the use of fetal tissue is an altruistic endeavor that benefits society. This last notion is the most widespread and also the most factually egregious. In reality, the benefits of fetal tissue research have been patently overstated, if not blatantly misrepresented.
Biased reporting relies on wordplay to spin the story that fetal tissues are the key to a world of promising treatments and cures to which the public will only be privy if on-demand abortion continues to funnel tiny body parts into scientists’ hands. Even if this were true, the abortion industry would have no defense for the senseless mass killing of our future generations. And, as Dr. Maureen L. Condic outlines here, evidence cannot even pretend to support the notion that people will ultimately benefit from the harvesting of baby body parts. In short: abortion and fetal body part harvesting have had no consequential impact on medical progress.
To make her case, Condic searched the body of clinical trials as documented by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and found staggeringly different results than what the mainstream media incessantly peddle. Condic said: “A search of the NIH-administered database of clinical trials for the terms “fetal stem cell” returns only 21 currently funded human trials (only two of which actually involve transplantation of fetal stem cells), compared with 5,072 trials using non-fetal cells. Science has indeed spoken — but not in support of fetal-stem-cell research.”
Condic addresses claims that fetal cells procured during two abortions decades ago have been responsible for myriad breakthroughs, insinuating that the cells’ fetal characteristics were responsible for these breakthroughs. Cells extracted from aborted children were indeed developed into highly effective cell lines that have had an enduring impact on medical progress. But Condic notes that these cells were not rendered effective because they were obtained – tragically – from aborted children. Rather, the way in which the cell lines were manipulated, or transformed and “immortalized,” is what rendered them ideal for vaccine production. “Although these cells were initially isolated from aborted fetuses,” Condic explains, “they are categorically not fetal stem cells. Indeed, they are nothing like the cells she describes isolating directly from fetal tissue.” The ability of these cells to help save Lives, she continues, has “absolutely nothing to do with their fetal origin.”
Actual science is not the foundation for the persistent research demand for and high cost – both monetary and ethical—of fetal body parts. Condic attributes “curiosity and hope” for the continued willingness of researchers to pay a hefty price tag (as much as $20,000 for a vial of stem cells from aborted babies). There is no promise of medical progress in continuing to ravage the corpses of aborted children for their commodities. “Scientists are curious about the unique properties of fetal cells, and they hope that understanding those properties will yield novel approaches to curing human disease,” Condic explains.
She points to the bioethical dissonance that exists in the scientific community’s treatment and commoditization of fetal remains. There is an understanding within the scientific community that the remains of human beings, except those who were aborted, cannot simply be ravaged, bought, sold, and dissected at will. But the remains of aborted children somehow fail to assume the dignity or rights that would afford them the same consideration.
Condic poignantly concludes: “[W]e rightly condemn using organs from prisoners without consent as a revolting commodification of human beings, even if the ‘donors’ were legally terminated under the law. And we should condemn research on human fetal body parts for exactly the same reasons.”
