Anti-abortion lawmakers’ dogged focus on restricting Planned Parenthood’s activities — which they say is about protecting innocent lives — is actually hampering lifesaving medical research.
Last summer, a series of heavily edited videos accused Planned Parenthood of illegally selling “aborted baby parts,” a misleading reference to the tissue samples from aborted fetuses that some patients at women’s health clinics choose to donate to science. Since then, multiple states have moved to ban the use of fetal tissue in medical research.
For months, scientists warned that politicians should not cut off access to this essential resource, which has been instrumental in developing treatments for degenerative diseases.
And now, their warnings are starting to come to fruition.
Researchers across the country who rely on fetal tissue told the Washington Post that the political fight over Planned Parenthood has “stalled lifesaving work.”
The Use Of Aborted Fetuses In Medical Research Has ‘Saved The Lives And Health Of Millions’Over the past several weeks, Republicans lawmakers have seized on Planned Parenthood’s practice of facilitating fetal…thinkprogress.orgOne of those researchers, Steven Goldman, is a neurologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York who’s working to find a cure for multiple sclerosis. He was hoping to start a clinical trial this year — but he’s being forced to push it back to 2019 because it’s gotten too difficult to procure the necessary fetal tissue samples. He said that since the videos were released, hospitals have been less willing to donate this tissue.
“This kind of delay results in the additional deaths of people who could have been rescued,” Goldman told the Washington Post.
Researchers at Indiana University have gone so far as to file a lawsuit against a new state law that makes it a felony to “acquire, receive, sell, or transfer” fetal tissue. According to the university, if that law is allowed to take effect this summer, it will have “catastrophic” consequences for the school’s neuroscience research.
The impending restrictions on fetal tissue “would irreparably harm the university’s ability to conduct important research into Alzheimer’s and other devastating neurological diseases,” the complaint, which was filed last week, argues.
Plus, with the rapid spread of the mosquito-borne Zika virus — which poses a particular risk to pregnant women because it has been linked to serious birth defects — restricting fetal tissue research could prevent scientists from finding an effective vaccine to safeguard fetuses in the womb.
During one of the dozens of inquiries in Planned Parenthood’s activities that were held in the aftermath of the video campaign, experts told Texas lawmakers that allowing abortion clinics to continue donating fetal tissue could save infants’ lives.
“Right now, we are struggling to understand exactly how the Zika virus operates, how it is that it can be transmitted through the placenta to the fetus, how it is it can affect fetal development at different stages of gestation and how we can understand what kinds of outcomes it will have,” University of Wisconsin Law Professor Professor Alta Charo told the legislative panel.
Fetal Tissue Research Uncovers New Information About ZikaHealth by CREDIT: Shutterstock New medical research has quickly advanced doctors’ understanding of how the Zika virus…thinkprogress.orgMicrocephaly, the birth defect linked to Zika that can lead to serious developmental problems, has affected thousands of babies in South America and is already making its way to the United States. This week, a baby suffering from microcephaly was born in New Jersey to a woman visiting from Honduras.
Nonetheless, the lawmakers focused on investigating Planned Parenthood have shown little interest in moving quickly to halt the spread of Zika. Last week, Congress broke for a two-week recess without allocating additional funding to battle the virus. As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted, the pro-life majorities in Congress have not been leaders on this issue despite the potentially huge ramifications for protecting babies’ lives.