UW-Madison to oppose legislation banning research using aborted baby parts

In college at UW-Madison, our pro-life group would pray and sidewalk counsel at Planned Parenthood in Madison. An incident that's burned into my mind is watching a UPS truck leave Planned Parenthood with a cooler, drive over to UW Hospital and drop off the cooler there. What was in the cooler? Aborted baby parts. AKA dismembered human beings.

- Virginia

From Pro-Life Wisconsin:
An article in Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal focused on pro-life legislative efforts now that the state budget has been signed into law.

In the article, UW-Madison states it will oppose efforts to ban research using aborted baby parts:
Pro-Life Wisconsin’s top legislative priority is a law that would prohibit the sale and use of any human fetal body part, such as a cell, tissue or organ. [Pro-Life Wisconsin's legislative director Matt Sande] said the law is needed to prevent parts of aborted fetuses from being used in research, which he said has been done at UW-Madison.

UW-Madison and UW Health issued a joint statement in response saying, in part, “Limiting or barring access to legally and ethically obtained research materials would compromise the ability of scientists to find new drugs and therapies to treat serious diseases.”

“It’s a very exciting time for us, with a 100 percent pro-life governor and pro-life majorities in both houses,” he said.

Sande’s group also hopes to repeal a law passed by the last Legislature that requires schools that teach sex education to include age-appropriate information about birth control.
Authored by Representative Andre Jacque (R-Bellevue) and Senator Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend), the legislation bans persons from knowingly and for valuable consideration acquiring, receiving, or transferring a fetal body part. It also bans persons from knowingly providing, receiving, or using for experimentation a fetal body part.

Read the rest here.

2 comments:

Siarlys Jenkins said...

EITHER the abortions shouldn't be happening AT ALL (your position), OR there is nothing wrong with using fetal material after a legal abortion for research (current law). I would see your point if stopping the research would bring a pregnancy to term, or if researchers were hiring women to have abortions in order to provide research material. In the absence of either one, this is all rather silly.

I think your quotes are out of order -- it sounds like the research group quoted is excited about a "pro-life governor" and legislature.

Siarlys Jenkins said...

I am opposed at all times to pulling the teeth of anyone (outside of therapeutic purposes, voluntarily accepted, based on a valid diagnosis). That includes Jews. That includes pulling teeth to sell to the dental industry. Even if it does no good at all to the dental industry, it shouldn't be done, period.

A better analogy, from your side of the argument, would be whether research labs should REFER TO or, in more ethically acceptable research, follow up on, research performed by the Nazis, if some bits of it, however repugnant the procedure, might point the way toward life-saving treatment? That has been passionately debated, but my position is, yes, if any of the records provide clues that could guide research which might save lives, use it. The dead are already dead. The tortured are already tortured, and dead. No pain will be relieved, no person brought back to life, by burning the notes. The "procedures" should never have been done, but they were. By no means should they be repeated.

Now in this instance, one difference between us is that I do not consider first trimester abortion immoral, I don't consider abortion prior to the 20th week immoral, and you most certainly do. I also don't consider late-term abortions immoral, IF there is sound medical reason to fear that the mother's life is in danger. I'm not sure how you feel about that. There was a time in Ireland when priests directed doctors to kill the mother, if necessary, in order to save the baby, at all costs. I don't claim that was official church canon, but it was done by priests who sincerely believed it was the command of the church.

Your original post did not talk about embyronic stem cell research. You talked about chopped up little arms and legs, and perhaps livers as well. Again, if your case is that no abortion should ever be done, is doesn't prevent one abortion to ban use of the tissues removed in abortion. And, if you succeed in banning all abortions, there will be no tissue to ban the use of.

As to embryonic stem cell research, your flat statement that it is "junk science" has no factual basis I know of. That strikes me as wishful thinking. It may be arguable that, whatever the benefits, it is immoral, and we should forego the benefits rather than run procedures on embryos. But it is not junk science.