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Judicial Watch recently released a nearly 600-page report with emails showing that the federal government has sought after and purchased aborted fetal tissue, and now the Biden administration is rolling back the Trump ban on the use of aborted fetal remains in medical research.
The 575-page report by Judicial Watch provides evidence that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) purchased “fresh” aborted baby tissue and body parts from Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) for the purposes of producing “humanized mice.” The humanized mice contain fetal remains and organs and humanized immune systems that are then used in medical testing.
The report contains email discussions between the FDA and ABR regarding procuring fetal tissue. One FDA scientist wrote, “It is strongly preferred to have a male fetus if at all possible … [but] undetermined sex or female is better than no tissue.” When scientists requested to have a check on the sex of “Liver #4505,” an ABR employee responded, “The techs were not able to identify the gender. We only can check external genitalia and if it’s not there … due to the nature of the termination procedure … we have no way of telling.”
The “nature of the termination procedure” translates to “the abortion procedure requires the dismemberment of a human being which is so gruesome that not all parts of the baby were present.”
Other emails confirm that some of the remains belonged to babies who were up to 24 weeks gestational age, a point in development when babies are considered old enough to survive outside the womb and are capable of feeling pain. One email shows that ABR was working with doctors who abort babies at 20 and 21 weeks.
In the same email the employee coldly responds, “…this week we had 4 21-week cases that all had been injected with digoxin on Wednesday so the tissue is unusable.” Digoxin sends a baby into cardiac arrest, and the mother delivers a stillborn baby intact.
The Trump administration banned medical experiments with new aborted fetal tissue in 2018, but the Biden administration has just recently lifted the ban. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is overseen by the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS), will “manage and oversee research using human fetal tissue according to policies and procedures that were in place” prior to the ban.
Any projects suspended due to the Trump ban “will be reinstated without further review.”
Dr. Mike McCune, an HIV expert at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco, called the reversal, “fantastic.” He cautioned that it may take time to recover research because working with fetal tissue is a “specialized” field. “People with decades of experience had to find other jobs. All of that will have to be reconstituted to make it start again — but they will,” he explained.
Some scientists claim that the use of fetal tissue is “necessary” for vaccines and other medical research.
But pro-life advocates blasted the decision as not just medically unethical but outside the bounds of a civilized society. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC), stated,
As expected, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, a fanatical advocate for abortion, announced the Biden administration will now force American taxpayers to pay for barbaric experiments using the body parts of aborted babies. Instead of using ethical and effective alternatives, Biden is choosing to reinstate a policy that traffics in the [grisly] remains of what would have been our next generation.
He continued,
“The fact is that the remains of aborted babies have not been used to create the cure of a single disease. It’s clear that the NIH under President Biden means to do the opposite of ‘follow the science.’ The Biden administration is making it once again clear that it places no value on the inherent dignity of human life. Their actions deny the truth that every human life, born and unborn, possesses inherent dignity and deserves to be treated with respect.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said,
“Biden and Harris, working hand-in-glove with radical appointees like Xavier Becerra, are moving rapidly to pay back their abortion industry allies and wipe out pro-life progress made under the Trump-Pence administration. From day one they have sought to expand abortion on demand, funded by taxpayers, against the will of the strong majority of Americans.”
At what point do the ends justify the means when it comes to developing medical therapies and cures? In this case, the federal government and the medical community might as well be actively breeding and growing human beings for the sake of harvesting their body parts, not unlike livestock. Is that the kind of society we want to live in?
When undercover investigator David Daleiden broke the news regarding Planned Parenthood’s involvement in the trafficking of aborted human tissue, many were rightly shocked and horrified. But instead of feeling shame, Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion advocates, including Vice President Kamala Harris, launched an ongoing crusade against Daleiden to silence him.
Now, thanks to a treasure trove of official emails and documents obtained by Judicial Watch, Americans are learning that their own government has been involved in these activities, providing further understanding as to why some government officials were so determined to discredit Daleiden for simply uncovering the truth about what is actually an illegal activity.
When Trump banned government scientists from using new fetal tissue in medical research, HHS stated, “Promoting the dignity of human life from conception to natural death is one of the very top priorities of President Trump’s administration.”
This stands in stark contrast to the Biden administration, which seeks to advance abortion at any and all costs. Elections have consequences. Like Trump or hate him, he enacted pro-life policies, something that cannot be said for virtually any national-level Democrat.
This news should cause Americans to ponder: What type of society not only kills its most vulnerable members, but turns killing them into a business, including the custom ordering and purchase of their body parts? The FDA tells Americans whether medical products are safe or not, so for it to be secretly involved in trafficking the remains of human babies is shocking and hard to fathom.
As the Standing for Freedom Center recently discussed, medical and technological advancements can be a noble pursuit, but there are ethical limits that must be respected no matter the potential for societal good. Vaccines are certainly beneficial, but if their development involves the use of human tissue and experimentation, then our scientists and government leaders should pursue another way to produce those vaccines.
When Americans hear stories of unethical experiments done on human beings in the name of “science” or “medical advancement, we have historically recoiled in disgust, whether it’s the Nazis’ medical experimentation on Jewish prisoners or the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
Pro-abortion advocates have managed to largely reframe the killing of a baby in utero as a “choice” or “women’s heathcare,” which makes it easier to justify and normalize buying and using the resulting acquired tissue like a commodity. But can you imagine the outrage if a similar marketplace existed for tissue and body parts acquired during the autopsies of murder victims or military servicemembers?
No matter how one feels about abortion, the Biden administration and the FDA have much to answer for. For starters, are the women who have abortions informed that their baby is going to be used for medical experimentation? Are women in their second trimester pressured into having an abortion because that fetal material is more valuable to researchers? Is an abortion strategically planned as to timing and type of procedure to ensure that purchasers can acquire the best kind of “usable” tissue?
And if using fetal tissue is ethical, why did the FDA keep it a secret from the American public and will they now throw open their records and be fully transparent?
As a society, we also have critical questions to answer: Now that we know what our government is doing, do we really believe that it is morally and ethically acceptable to traffic in and experiment with aborted human tissue for the advancement of medicine and science — and if not, what are we going to do about it?
