News - United States - Fetal Harvest - Philip Lawler - Catholic World Report

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Fetal Harvest

An exposé by pro-life activists prompts a Congressional call for
investigation of the traffic in fetal tissue.

In the autumn of 1999, as the US Senate was about to resume what has become an annual debate on partial-birth abortion, a pro-life organization in Texas produced a blockbuster report. Life Dynamics, Incorporated (LDI) charged that abortion clinics were cooperating in a ghoulish—and illegal—campaign to market and sell fetal tissue.

Since LDI was founded in 1992, the group has specialized in the use of aggressive legal tactics against the abortion industry. LDI encourages women to sue abortionists for malpractice, and provides legal support for those who do so. The group has sent out hundreds of thousands of letters to American doctors and medical students, in what it describes as “a very innovative direct-mail campaign designed to reinforce the stigma attached to abortion.” And LDI unabashedly recruits “spies” to work inside abortion clinics, so that they can take note of—and eventually expose—any illegal or unsavory practices.

The LDI revelations about the marketing of fetal tissue were the product of one such undercover operation. In 1997, LDI was approached by a woman who announced that she had been working for an organization that bought and marketed fetal tissue. The woman (who is identified in LDI literature only by the pseudonym “Kelly,” because she insists that her former employers might seek to punish her for betraying them), reported that she had been asked not only to harvest tissue from aborted babies, but also—in at least one case—to kill twin babies who had survived a late-term abortion.

Mark Crutcher, the president of LDI, found Kelly’s claims “so horrifying that no one could believe them without unassailable proof.” So for two years, working with other informants inside the abortion industry, he painstakingly amassed evidence. By September 1999 he had the “unassailable proof” that he wanted, and LDI was ready to make a shocking public announcement.

LDI produced a videotape, featuring a background interview with “Kelly” and a lengthy telephone conversation with one of the two major firms engaged in the marketing of fetal tissue. The organization also published a booklet containing promotional literature from those firms, and copies of more than 50 orders for fetal remains.

Those orders, or “protocols,” came from medical researchers, who were looking for very specific types of human tissue. The protocols specify which body part the researcher wants, how it should be preserved, and the gestational age of the unborn child from whom it should be harvested. The researchers also provide details on how the tissue should be shipped (usually overnight, on wet ice), and how they will pay for it.

The sale of fetal remains is illegal. But two firms—Opening Lines, of Illinois; and the Anatomic Gift Foundation, of Maryland—were circumventing that restriction by charging a “service fee” for the delivery of tissue. These two wholesalers provided researchers with a detailed schedule of the “service fee” for specific body parts. For the brain of an embryo less than eight weeks old, Opening Lines charged $999—with a 30 percent discount if the brain was “significantly fragmented.”

On some of the order forms obtained by LDI, the researcher who is purchasing fetal remains specifies that the tissue must be harvested within 10 minutes—that is, 10 minutes of the baby’s death. In other instances, the researcher stipulates that the unborn child cannot have been killed by certain chemicals. In all such cases, the LDI report observes, “the purchaser is trying to control what procedure the abortionist will use.”

“Kelly” told LDI that her former employer had indeed tailored his abortion techniques to suit the requirements of the market. “All the limbs, the arms, the head, the chest cavity were never invaded,” she recalled. “They were all completely intact.”

Intact fetal organs would command a higher price—as would organs procured immediately after the baby’s death. For those reasons, Mark Crutcher concluded that some abortionists were using the partial-birth abortion procedure more often than necessary, in order to serve the market for fetal tissue. Faced with the information from the LDI report, other pro-life activists reached the same conclusion. A statement from the American Life League read: “Planned Parenthood has claimed in the past that partial-birth abortions were done for reasons of safety, efficiency, and convenience, but it is now believed that fetal tissue profits have been the motivation for the procedure.”

The abortion industry made no effort to refute the evidence contained in the LDI report. (In fact one of the fetal-tissue wholesalers mentioned in that report, Opening Lines, quietly closed down its offices.) But pro-life activists were outraged, and their complaints caught the attention of legislators on Capitol Hill.

The level of outrage mounted still higher when pro-life activists found that a federal agency was involved—at least indirectly—in the marketing of fetal tissues. A web site maintained by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) carried an advertisement from the Central Laboratory for Human Embryology at the University of Washington. That advertisement told researchers that the laboratory “can supply tissue from normal or abnormal embryos and fetuses of desired gestational ages between 40 days and term.” It continued: “Specimens are obtained within minutes of passage and are shipped by overnight express, arriving the day following procurement.” (As this article is written, the advertisement is still posted on the NIH web site.)

By early November, the public outcry provoked by the LDI report had produced a tangible result on Capitol Hill. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives calling for an investigation into the “possibly illegal” activities of the fetal-tissue marketers. Tancredo quickly found 41 co-sponsors for his effort, and the resolution was approved within a week. In 2000, under the terms of that resolution, the House of Representatives will open public hearings into the marketing of fetal tissue.

However, even as Congress was approving an investigation of fetal-tissue marketing, the National Institutes of Health were calling for an expansion of fetal research. Citing the potential for such research to find ways of “alleviating and even curing catastrophic illness,” the NIH recommended a loosening of the federal policy that now bans government funding for fetal-tissue research. (The absence of government subsidies has apparently not stalled such research —as the LDI report, with its dozens of copies of orders for fetal tissue, illustrates.)

The National Right to Life Committee denounced the NIH decision, saying that a change in government policy “would result in federal sponsorship and funding of experiments in which living human embryos are dissected and killed—a clear violation of federal law.” Given the existing practices within the abortion industry, the logic of that prediction is difficult to question.

The Sense of the House
The full text of H. Res. 350, passed by the US House on November 9:

Whereas the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993 effectively lifted the ban on federally funded research involving the transplantation of baby body parts, and such Act made it a Federal felony for any person to knowingly, for ‘valuable consideration,’ purchase or sell baby body parts (with a term of imprisonment of up to 10 years and with fines of up to $250,000 in the case of an individual and $500,000 in the case of an organization);

Whereas private companies have sought to meet the demand by both public and private research facilities by providing baby body parts;

Whereas the definition of ‘valuable consideration’ under the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993 does not include reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of baby body parts; and

Whereas private companies appear to believe that the definition of ‘valuable consideration’ allows them to circumvent Federal law and avoid felony charges with impunity while trafficking in baby body parts for profit: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the Congress should exercise oversight responsibilities and conduct hearings, and take appropriate steps if necessary, concerning private companies that are involved in the trafficking of baby body parts for profit.