Trump Admin Can Help Defund Planned Parenthood by Defunding Research With Aborted Baby Parts

Now is an opportune time for pro-lifers to advocate defunding research using tissue from abortion.

A confluence of factors explains why. The incoming administration is now considering defunding Planned Parenthood, which has a history of purveying body parts used in this type of research. Later-term abortions received much attention in the recent election cycle. The previous Trump administration took an interest in this issue.  Finally,  recently disclosed documents about UC San Diego’s relationship with Planned Parenthood once again pose the question whether researchers use live babies harvested for body parts.

The Rationale for Defunding

Defunding this type of research is necessary to address its inherent moral problems. Should there be any lingering questions, consider the ghoulish, Mengelian research spectacle described here–a reductio ad absurdum of arguments that defend research using tissue from abortions.

HELP LIFENEWS SAVE BABIES FROM ABORTION! Please help LifeNews.com with a donation!

This December 2023 LifeNews article suggests an additional reason for defunding. The article describes how impervious this research is to public scrutiny. Various regulatory entities have proved incapable of investigating–and then clarifying to the taxpaying public–what transpires when extracting aborted tissue.

A case study is the association between UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital, the source of “fetal tissue” used by the University of Pittsburgh (hereafter, Magee and Pitt).

Despite Congressional letters to NIH in September 2021 and May 2022 that itemize numerous questions about  Pitt’s research, opacity persists about what transpired, or may still be transpiring, at these entities.

Just two examples of this opacity are these.  First, consider the December 2021 law firm report, funded by Pitt, that attempted to deflect questions about its use of aborted tissue provided by Magee). In testimony to Magee’s board, Christopher Pushaw questioned the law firm report’s conclusions (testimony full text here). To my knowledge, neither Magee nor Pitt have publicly attempted to address his questions. Apparently they regard the problematic legal report as decisive.

Ironically, a Pitt website mentions that “research involving fetal tissue is tightly regulated. Researchers must follow strict regulatory requirements at both the state and federal level.”

Second, it remains unclear how NIH intends to respond to the two Congressional letters and the many questions journalists have posed about this type of research.

Perhaps a recently submitted FOIA request about the NIH Office of the Inspector General’s investigation of these matters, also discussed in the article, will provide insight.   Either that investigation is still ongoing, in which case it is taking too long, or the investigation ended without the public knowing its findings.

The Pitt situation poses the question: why does it take citizen use of FOIA requests to investigate matters that a properly designed regulatory system could handle?  This is not of course to detract from the value of these mechanisms for pro-life investigators of government policy. But their use, in this instance, should not be necessary. FOIA requests can take a long time to elicit a reply and can involve legal challenges to obtain documents when they are not forthcoming.

Pitt’s website mentions that ten other institutions receive NIH funding for fetal tissue research. One can only speculate on the extent of the vested and entrenched political and scientific interests that have led to the regulatory vacuum.

Change government regulations

Defunding this type of research must be bolstered by a change in government regulations to ensure that federal grant dollars are not surreptitiously diverted or hidden by accounting legerdemain. Changes will require robust, detailed certifications from the grantee’s institution.

A review of the two letters from Congress, and of extensive journalistic accounts of the difficulty of determining how tissue from abortions was extracted, will suggest ways to reframe federal regulations to facilitate the needed transparency.

While this is not the venue for discussing how to redraft the regulations, one suggestion is this. In addition to whatever much more detailed certifications the grant recipient’s office of research should provide, it is crucial that a doctor provide a detailed statement about how any tissue procured within a hospital or from an external source was derived. This will provide an additional layer of accountability.

There is precedent for requiring such a doctor’s statement. Current NIH regulations maintain that transplantation uses of HFT require a doctor to sign a statement. However, according to an email from NIH this provision is not required for non-transplantation uses of tissue from abortion.

Assuming that the email represents a correct interpretation of NIH regulations, a possible reason–among others–for lapses in transparency is that doctors have not been required to provide such statements.

Conclusion

In sum, the incoming administration should link its expressed interest in defunding Planned Parenthood to a defunding of the research mentioned above. That linkage should be complemented by Congressional hearings that subpoena individuals, for testimony under oath, who are associated with the HHS’s Office of the Inspector General; with NIH and other relevant branches of the HHS; with Planned Parenthood; and with research institutions whose practices are under question.

LifeNews Note: Brian Simboli, Ph.D. is an independent researcher and writer. He volunteers with Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation as a research associate.

The post Trump Admin Can Help Defund Planned Parenthood by Defunding Research With Aborted Baby Parts appeared first on LifeNews.com.