Planned Parenthood’s supporters in the media have been working hard to shift negative attention away from the abortion giant and onto pro-lifers.
This week on Politico, journalist Brett Norman blamed pro-life leaders for hindering research on the Zika virus by working to end the trafficking of aborted babies’ body parts. World health authorities have declared the virus a health crisis in South America. Researchers are trying to develop a vaccine and are exploring whether the virus is connected to an increase in the number of babies born with birth defects.
Norman contended that a series of state bills to ban the sale and/or trafficking of aborted babies body parts could be detrimental to the research. In the past few months, legislators in a number of states, including Wisconsin, Arizona, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana and Florida, have introduced legislation in reaction to the undercover videos showing top Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of aborted babies’ body parts.
Abortion activists have been firing back against the bills. In his article, Norman claimed aborted babies’ body parts could be “the keys to unlocking the disease [Zika] and preventing the massive birth defects associated with it.”
He went on to quote a series of abortion advocates and pro-abortion researchers who say aborted babies’ body parts are necessary to scientific advancements. However, he did not mention other medical researchers who say fetal “tissue” is unethical and unnecessary to scientific research.
Norman also did not mention a breakthrough on Zika earlier this month using pluripotent stem cells, an adult stem cell research tool. Researchers used the adult stem cells to learn how the virus infects the brains of unborn children, according to The Washington Post. New reports also indicate that the first level trial on human subjects of a Dengue fever vaccine, which is related to Zika, has been a success. The vaccine was developed using monkey and mosquito cells — not the organs of unborn babies.
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Pro-life U.S. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn’s office pointed out that these breakthroughs show that fetal “tissue” is not as necessary as abortion advocates claim it is.
“I am extremely pleased with recent studies showing potential cures for Dengue fever and the Zika virus. Both diseases are causing untold pain and suffering to thousands of people. Both of these scientific breakthroughs show a solution to end these crippling diseases is on the horizon,” Blackburn said. “I find it very interesting that this news comes in direct contrast to accusations made by Democrats and their witnesses during our March 2nd hearing on Bioethics and Fetal Tissue where they claimed that the work of our panel would slow down progress on efforts to find a vaccine for the Zika virus.”
Breitbart columnist Thomas D. Williams also took Norman to task for the ethical problems with his argument:
Stooping to a new level of fear-mongering, Norman suggests that blocking Planned Parenthood’s fetal research business could actually cause “more abortions,” and that some of the states to be hardest hit by the Zika virus will be those trying to restrict Planned Parenthood’s business.
… As a toady for Planned Parenthood, Norman fails to mention that regardless of the possible medical knowledge gained from research on the tissue of aborted babies, there is a moral issue at play that deeply concerns a growing number of U.S. citizens. The sort of activity involved in harvesting human tissue is not indifferent to the morality of the research done on it.
Historians acknowledge, for instance, that significant advances in medical science came about as a result of research on prisoners of the Third Reich during World War II. But no amount of positive medical benefit can possibly justify the immoral activities involved in obtaining it.
Planned Parenthood and its lackeys are squirming as Americans study ways to legally curtail the organization’s deplorable practices, and no number of propaganda pieces will change the reality of what countless citizens have now seen with their own eyes.
The federal law that technically prohibits the sale of aborted babies and their body parts was written by a pro-abortion Congressman decades ago and essentially spells out a process by which sellers of aborted baby body parts can meet certain criteria that allows the sales to be legal. That’s why a Colorado congressman has introduced federal legislation to totally ban the sales of aborted baby body parts.
