Public records obtained from the National Institutes of Health by Judicial Watch and The Center for Medical Progress reveal the practice of procuring fetal body parts by the University of Pittsburgh, including racial quotas for body parts and the possibility that body parts are procured from babies that are still alive. These human body parts were procured with a $3 million federal grant to support the creation of a tissue hub at the university.

From The Center for Medical Progress’ website:

“In a statement to news today, the University of Pittsburgh admitted that ‘ischemia time’ in its NIH grant application for the GUDMAP aborted fetal kidney harvesting program ‘refers to the time after the tissue collection procedure’. … Ischemia starts when the organ (the kidneys primarily in Pitt’s GUDMAP project) is cut off from blood circulation. The NIH defines ischemia as ‘lack of blood supply to a part of the body.’ The University states the fetal organs do not undergo ischemia — lose their blood supply — until ‘after the tissue collection procedure’. This means the organs are still receiving blood supply from the fetal heartbeat during the ’tissue collection.'” [emphases in original]

And that means that the babies are still alive when the organs are harvested.

The University of Pittsburgh says, in an application for grants from the NIH that, “labor induction” is the “procedure that will be used to obtain the tissue.” CMP notes: “if the fetus’ heartbeat and blood circulation continue in a labor induction abortion for harvesting organs, it means the fetus is being delivered while still alive and the cause of death is the removal of the organs.”

Live Action News has reported on previous research by the University of Pittsburgh on live fetuses.

Also in the application for grants from NIH, the University of Pittsburgh communicated its intention to procure 50% of its fetal body parts from White women and 50% from minority women, including 25% from Black women. The university justified its racial profiling by claiming that the subjects needed to be diverse because the population of Pittsburgh is diverse. Yet, Pittsburgh itself is 70% White, and Allegheny County, in which Pittsburgh lies, is 80% White and 13% Black.

CMP also exposed a study funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), whose director is Dr. Anthony Fauci, and performed by the University of Pittsburgh where fetal scalps were grafted onto rodents for the purpose of studying the human immune system. The “use of de-identified human fetal tissues to construct humanized rodents was reviewed and approved” by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Pittsburgh.

Clearly we have moved beyond the notion of abortion being safe, legal, and rare. We now have medical research that depends on women procuring abortions. Should abortion ever become unpopular in Pennsylvania, will the UPitt apply for grants from the federal government to pay women to get pregnant in order to provide them with fetal body parts?

It is impossible for a society to go decades where the killing of innocent children for profit is legal without that negatively impacting respect for human life in general. Now we see that abortion, justified because of the rare cases of pregnancy because of rape or incest, has been expanded to include abortion for any reason up to the moment of birth, infanticide, and now killing babies in order to obtain their body parts for research.

And we wonder why random attacks on people are increasing, as well as violent crime in general. We’re kidding ourselves. We think we can do these horrible things and there will be no consequences. We refuse to make any connection with calls for abortion on demand, euthanasia, and capital punishment and the decline in respect for human life. How far do we have to go before we wake up to this horror? How “humanized” will rodents have to become by exploiting the parts of murdered children before we realize that such frankensteins will do more harm to our psyches, our souls, and our moral reserves than any benefit they offer to an understanding of our immune system?

Some Republicans in Congress are calling for an investigation of the University of Pittsburgh’s fetal harvesting program. I wonder how far it will go. While two companies that sold body parts for Planned Parenthood were shut down temporarily and their selling of body parts stopped, Planned Parenthood itself seems not to have suffered much after it was confirmed that they were selling fetal body parts.

The Cultures of Death and Relativism have invaded and now dominate our political, social, cultural, and academic elites. There is little to stop them. We have a mandate, as followers of Christ, to transform the social and cultural order to reflect the gospel. Christians used to take that seriously, until we somehow became convinced that living in a pluralistic society meant tolerating policies that are antithetical to the gospel, and even antithetical to basic human decency. Living in a pluralistic society does not mean that some people do not count as people. It means that those of us who fear God must work even harder to maintain the respect for human life to which being made in the image and likeness of God obliges us.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.