On Tuesday, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and defended her organization against a series of false smears from Republican presidential hopefuls like Carly Fiorina.
Their attacks — and the significant cable news coverage that followed — stemmed from a series of legally questionable and heavily edited videos targeting the national women’s health organization that were released in July. Several abortion opponents are even pushing to let the government shut down again to ensure not a penny more goes to Planned Parenthood.
But outside of D.C., there’s a new effort gaining ground in the states that also directly stems from the video controversy — specifically, the practice at some Planned Parenthood clinics of facilitating fetal tissue donations and accepting payment for expenses — and that threatens to have a big impact on the future of scientific innovation.
As Wisconsin legislators mull a controversial proposal to prohibit research on fetal tissue, experts say similar restrictions are likely to be seen nationally over the next year.
Women who have abortions say there are good reasons why they may want the option to donate fetal tissue. Sarah (who asked that her last name be withheld to protect her family’s privacy), for example, and her husband are both carriers for a severe type of cystic fibrosis. Though the two were eager to have a second child, 12 weeks into the pregnancy they learned the fetus tested positive for the disease.
“We did testing quite early,” she recalled. “I suppose in some ways that probably blunted the impact, but it was still quite devastating.” Together, they made the difficult choice to terminate the pregnancy.
As she prepared for the procedure, Sarah was asked if she would like to donate the remains to scientific research. “The choice, when they offered to donate tissue, was very easy,” she said. “I said ‘yes, of course do that.’” The decision felt “comforting and obvious” to her: “Anything [positive] that could be made of the situation we were in felt like it was an option I was glad we had.”
An Old Fight Returns
The controversy about whether to allow fetal remains to be used for scientific and medical research is not a new one, but was thought to be a largely settled issue.
In 1988, the National Institutes of Health appointed a committee of experts to consider the morality and ethics of human fetal tissue transplantation research. Though the commission voted 18 to 3 in support of allowing the research, the George H.W. Bush administration rejected the findings and continued a moratorium on publicly funded fetal tissue research.
On his second full day in the White House, Bill Clinton lifted the ban and bipartisan super-majorities in Congress voted to affirm such research. A 1997 General Accounting Office report found “no reported violations in the acquisition of human fetal tissue for use in transplantation.”
Several reliably anti-abortion Republicans and Democrats supported the legislation to allow fetal tissue research at the time. Utah Republican Sen. Jake Garn said, “I am still opposed to abortion, but I am pro-life, and that means pro-lives of adults, too.” Even Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter, invoking his diabetic daughter and “other individuals who suffer from diabetes, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s diseases,” writing, “we cannot afford to lose this opportunity to develop a cure.”
Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues associate at Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that tracks reproductive health policy, told ThinkProgress that while a handful of states have prohibited fetal research, “this has not been an issue that has been at play at the federal or state level for a very long time.”
But since the videos were released, “we’ve seen five states introduce legislation and Arizona look at administrative action around fetal tissue donation and research,” she said. “That’s a lot of action considering that nearly every state is out of session.” A federal bill to restrict publicly funded fetal tissue research to those from stillbirths has also been filed in the U.S. House.
In Illinois last month, 35 state representatives have signed on to a bill to remove fetal tissue from aborted fetuses from the list of things that may be donated under the state’s Anatomical Gift Act. Five members of the California state assembly proposed legislation to prevent public funds to any facility that “furnishes cadaveric fetal tissue for research purposes.”
In Ohio, where fetal tissue donation is already illegal, a filed bill would crack down on the transfer of “aborted human conception.”
Showdown In Wisconsin
While many state legislatures will not have a chance to take up similar bans until next year, Wisconsin’s legislature could act on one any day. Earlier this month, a state assembly committee endorsed — on a mostly party-line vote — a bill that would make it a felony for researchers to use aborted fetal tissue remains for new research (though it would allow existing research on existing cell lines to continue). State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) has said he hopes to get a fetal tissue ban bill passed this year.
The bill’s chief sponsor, state Rep. André Jacque (R), told a local newspaper that he believes such a ban is “a very common sense policy.”
“I think that’s one of the sad things about the use of aborted fetal tissue in research,” Jacque said. “You have this modification of unborn children in such a way in that we value the humanity of their tissues… yet we deny their humanity when they’re killed.”
This effort, however, has drawn opposition from the state’s chamber of commerce and 680 members of the University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty.
Michael Sussman, director of the university’s biotechnology center, co-authored the faculty’s letter opposing the restrictions. He told ThinkProgress that research on “really important things like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cancer utilize not only [cell lines derived from previous fetal issue research] but actual fetal tissue,” and pointed to bioethicist Alta Charo’s recent New England Journal of Medicine editorial as proof that would be “unethical not to use it.”
Sussman believes that if Wisconsin bans the research, scientists will go to states that permit it. “If that bill passes, faculty will just flee and it’ll be a race to the bottom.” For the University of Wisconsin, he quipped, this would be like letting Aaron Rodgers and the division-leading Green Bay Packers go to Chicago, in exchange for the cellar-dwelling Chicago Bears.
Tragedy happens. In the face of tragedy, you should be able to use it to help people.
His co-author, Anna Huttenlocher, is a professor of medical microbiology and immunology and of pediatrics. She explained that much modern medical research derives from already discovered cell lines from fetal tissue. While existing lines discovered to date would be permitted under the proposed legislation, the bill would prohibit study of any new cell lines that are harvested anywhere, if they are initially derived from fetal issue.
“Once you have a cell line, it’s established,” she said. “But once they’ve been in culture for a long time, sometimes they aren’t good anymore. We might need to generate a new equivalent… and to limit the ability to get fetally derived cell lines from the U.S., Asia, or Europe makes no sense.”
“Humanized mice, where they use fetal tissue, [provide] powerful ways to screen drugs and understand autoimmune disease,” Huttenlocher said. “Fetal tissue research is extremely powerful, limiting tissue that is available is unreasonable.”
She likened fetal tissue less to the abortion controversy and more to organ donation: “Tragedy happens. In the face of tragedy, you should be able to use it to help people. Anyone who signs the organ donation card understands that… It will not change the number of abortions performed in this country.”
Wisconsin state rep. Chris Taylor (D) told ThinkProgress that the Republican majority in the legislature is dominated by a “white men in the assembly caucus who are very, very extreme.” She predicts that they will push through some kind of ban, though she notes at least a few Republicans seem worried about the economic impact of a proposal she believes would “stop progress in its track in the state of Wisconsin,” as much private and public research funding that currently flows into Wisconsin could be lost if the state became inhospitable to scientific research.
“Curing childhood leukemia is pro-life. This bill is not pro-life — it’s anti-science, it’s anti-medical advances. It just sets us back so far,” Taylor added.
But she predicted that the GOP majority would give something to the extremists pushing the ban on fetal tissue research. “They’re gonna get something, I just don’t know what it’s going to be.”
A National Model
Guttmacher’s Nash predicts that fetal tissue research will be a big issue for 2016, in part because Americans United for Life (AUL) has included a proposal for a ban on all transfer or use of fetal tissue resulting from abortions among its “model legislation” for 2016.
AUL, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit which claims to be responsible for one-third of all anti-abortion laws enacted in the U.S. since 2010, serves as a legislation mill for like-minded politicians.
Its bills for 2016 include two marked as updated “in response to Planned Parenthood videos.” One, the “Unborn Infants Dignity Act,” would broadly “prohibit the use of bodily remains from an abortion for experimentation.”
In an email, a spokeswoman for the group said that the “broken bodies of aborted infants should not be exploited for scientific experimentation or pecuniary gain.” She added that while the group has seen interest in the model bill, they expect they will “know more after legislative sessions begin in the new year” how widespread the efforts will be.
How many organizations already weren’t doing a fetal tissue donation? And now, more aren’t.
“Instead of advancing measures that will actually improve the health of women and their families, politicians are resorting to political grandstanding by banning patients from choosing to donate fetal tissue for medical research,” Amanda Allen, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in an email.
“Women are capable decision-makers and we need to trust them to make thoughtful decisions about their reproductive health care. That includes the very compassionate decision to help others by contributing to advancements in research and treatment for debilitating and sometimes life-threatening medical conditions like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.”
As for Sarah, she worries that the much-publicized series of videos attacking Planned Parenthood have already driven some clinics to stop offering women the choice to donate fetal remains to research. “How many organizations already weren’t doing a fetal tissue donation? And now, more aren’t,” she observed. “Seems like a waste.”