University Used Body Parts Harvested From Babies Who Were Still Alive, It Must be Investigated

State   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Aug 17, 2021   |   3:05PM   |   Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

A growing number of leaders are calling on Pennsylvania authorities to investigate allegations that aborted babies may be being born alive so that their organs can be harvested for scientific research through the University of Pittsburgh.

These include former Pennsylvania Superior Court Judge Cheryl Lynn Allen, Catholic League president Bill Donohue, state Rep. Kathy Rapp and U.S. Senate candidate Sean Parnell, as well as state pro-life organizations.

On Tuesday, in a letter to Pennsylvania Auditor General Timothy DeFoorDonohue said the University of Pittsburgh is a taxpayer-funded school and the allegations of criminal activity must be investigated.

“The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has earned an outstanding reputation, and that is why reports that it is operating a fetal organ ‘chop shop’ are so disconcerting,” Donohue wrote. “If it is true, as some doctors have said, that in order to perform some of these procedures, ‘The baby’s going to have to be either born alive or be killed immediately prior to delivery,’ then justice demands that a thorough investigation take place.”

Allen, who served on the Pennsylvania Superior Court and now works for the Pennsylvania Family Institute, said she felt horrified when she learned of the allegations against her alma mater, Fox News reports.

“I join with so many Pennsylvanians in a collective response of horror to these recent reports,” Allen said. “As an alumnus of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, I am extremely troubled and call for an urgent investigation into what appears to be illegal, inhumane and taxpayer-funded practices at this public university.”

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Earlier this month, Judicial Watch and the Center for Medical Progress exposed evidence of babies potentially being born alive in abortions and other disturbing practices at the university in documents they obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The documents show that the federal government gave the University of Pittsburgh at least $2.7 million over the past five years to become a “tissue hub” for aborted baby body parts for scientific research.

The Center for Medical Progress and several doctors, including one who supports abortion, pointed to evidence that suggests some aborted babies’ hearts still may be beating when their organs are harvested for scientific research.

But David Seldin, assistant vice chancellor for news at the university, called the allegations “irresponsible and false” in a statement to Fox News. He said the university and its partners comply with all laws, and the university itself does not perform abortions.

Fox News contacted the offices of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Gov. Tom Wolf, but neither responded. Shapiro and Wolf are pro-abortion Democrats.

The University of Pittsburgh has been using Americans’ tax dollars to pay for its “tissue hub” for aborted baby body parts for years. According to the documents, the university requested $3.2 million over a five-year period in 2015, and it has received at least $2.7 million so far.

The university maintains that it has not done anything wrong, and it follows the law, including the restrictions in the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act.

However, the Center for Medical Progress said the university’s statements confirm that aborted babies’ hearts still are beating while their kidneys are harvested for scientific research.

“Pitt is now admitting to the news media that the aborted babies are still alive at the time their kidneys are cut out for [National Institutes of Health] grant money,” said David Daleiden, founder and president of the Center for Medical Progress.

In grant application documents provided by the federal government, the University of Pittsburgh mentions “labor induction” as a “procedure that will be used to obtain the tissue,” according to the Center for Medical Progress.

Labor induction abortions are basically what they sound like; the abortionist typically injects the poison digoxin into the unborn baby’s heart and then induces labor so that the mother gives birth to her dead baby’s body. This method is used in later second- and third-trimester abortions.

If digoxin is not used – and the Center for Medical Progress found that scientists want “fetal tissue” without digoxin because the poison interferes with their research, there is a chance of the baby being born alive. One study estimated up to 50 percent of labor-induction abortions without digoxin can result in an infant born alive.

Previously, LifeNews and other pro-lifers exposed a disturbing experiment at the University of Pittsburgh that involved scalping babies aborted at five months and then implanting their scalps onto rodents to study the human immune system. The information comes from a study that University of Pittsburgh researchers published in 2020 in the journal “Scientific Reports.”