After the national scandal broke showing the Planned Parenthood abortion business selling aborted babies and their body parts, attention turned to the research universities buying those aborted baby parts for dubious research.
In September, LifeNews.com reported on how documentation surfaced showing that the University of Minnesota purchased aborted babies’ organs for research, including a 16-24 week fatal pancreas, a 16-22 week fetal lung, a second trimester fetal liver and thymus. Purchase orders from middleman Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) showed the University of Minnesota purchasing the body parts of aborted babies.
ABR, like Stem Express, harvests and sells aborted babies for research and has been doing so longer than any other entity. The University of Minnesota has had some sort of agreement with the company since 2008.
Now, new information indicates the University of Minnesota is buying aborted baby body parts directly from a Minnesota-based abortion clinic in violation of state laws.
On Thursday Alpha News published MN State Representative Marion O’Neill’s letter to the University’s board of Regents.
On Monday morning Rep. O’Neill confirmed that Dr. Brian Herman, Vice President for Research at the University of Minnesota, told her that the University– at some point– had procured fetal parts directly from Meadowbrook Women’s Clinic in Minneapolis. An email from Rep. O’Neil to Alpha News Reporter Julia Erynn reads: “If you wanted to know if Brian Herman told me that the U used to obtain aborted fetal tissue from Meadowbrook in Minneapolis, yes, he told me that.”
Meadowbrook Women’s Clinic in Minneapolis merged with another local abortion clinic in 2013 and now works under the banner of Whole Women’s Health Clinic, which is based in Texas. Whole Woman’s Health operates one clinic in Minnesota located in Minneapolis and offers abortions for up to 24 weeks gestation. The clinic’s surgical abortion consent form states, “I understand that the fetal tissue removed during the abortion will be disposed of, following legal and health guidelines.”
Click here to sign up for daily pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com
The law in Minnesota states that aborted babies and their remains must be disposed of in a “dignified” manner. Specifically, statute 145.1621 states that:
Hospitals, clinics, and medical facilities in which abortions are induced or occur spontaneously or accidentally and laboratories to which the remains of human fetuses are delivered must provide for the disposal of the remains by cremation, interment by burial, or in a manner directed by the commissioner of health.
There is also a significant question about what is happening to the body of thousands of babies aborted every year in Minnesota, as the state health department is not able to account for almost all of them.
A 2013 report on induced abortions to the legislature showed that remains were cremated for 5,616 abortions that occurred in Minnesota in 2012, only 22 were buried, and 5,063 were not reported.
But the University’s purchase order records, which Alpha News posted, show 13-24 week fetal body organs being purchased, which would require disposal via cremation or burial.
In addition to the disposal law, Minnesota state statute 525.A.02, which covers organ tissue donation, specifically excludes the use of organs from aborted fetuses. “An embryo or fetus that has died of natural causes in utero” may be donated.
As LifeNews previously reported, Planned Parenthood claims their facilities in the state do not participate in any organ “donation; however, in the ninth video released by The Center for Medical Progress, the Procurement Manager for ABR said her firm purchases aborted babies from clinics “in San Diego, in Oregon, in Minnesota, and soon we will be starting in New Jersey and Philadelphia.”
Although the ABR manager doesn’t call out Planned Parenthood by name, it is definitely possibly they are lying about their organ harvesting negotiations in the state. Unfortunately, Minnesota Gov. Dayton has refused to launch an investigation into Planned Parenthood even though sixty-five state legislators have urged him to do so. He said, “As far as I’m concerned there’s no basis for an investigation at taxpayer expense into a private nonprofit organization that has stated they don’t engage in those practices here in Minnesota.”
The information regarding the University of Minnesota using aborted babies in research follows reports showing that other publicly funded universities in the U.S. have done the same, such as Colorado State University and the University of Wisconsin. In 2013, Colorado State University purchased fetal body parts from Planned Parenthood’s flagship abortion facility in San Jose, California via StemExpress. In total, nine specimens were harvested from eight different aborted babies killed in abortions at that Planned Parenthood clinic and the purchase order reveals CSU bought two body parts, including an aborted baby’s liver.
In Wisconsin, the Dean of the University of Wisconsin’s health school defended the school’s decision to buy aborted baby body parts for research. According to a 2012 report, Dr. Shannon C. Kenney of UW’s McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research used human fetal livers and thymus tissue from Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) for some of the University’s latest research. The report explains, “Human fetal thymus and liver tissue of gestational ages 17 weeks to 20 weeks were obtained from Advanced Bioscience Resource…. The recipient mice…[were] implanted with fetal thymus and liver fragments under the recipient kidney capsule after irradiation.”
The report was published in the Journal of Virology and titled, “An EBV Mutant with Enhanced BZLF1 Expression Causes Lymphomas with Abortive Lytic EBV Infection in Humanized Mouse Model.” Apparently after the body parts from aborted babies are obtained, their “tissue” is injected into mice for research purposes.
Oregon Health and Science University is also involved in research with aborted baby body parts.
