Vaccines & Abortion:

...from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/02/vaccine-race-history-science-politics-meredith-wadman/#universal-video-inlinePlayer_0000015a-614f-d7df-a9df-efef72090000

Fetal cell lines used in COVID-19 vaccines

The fetal cells lines being used to produce some of the potential COVID-19 vaccines are from two sources:

The CanSino, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Janssen and ImmunityBio vaccines use a virus called adenovirus genetically altered to be harmless but loaded with SARS-CoV-2's spike protein genetic code, necessary for viral entry into human cells. Similar to how Pfizer and Moderna's messenger RNA vaccine operates by providing cells instructions on how to make anti-spike protein antibodies, the altered adenovirus delivers the spike genetic sequence so the body can make the antibodies itself.

The altered adenovirus cannot replicate on its own, and that is where the fetal-derived cell lines come in by providing their replication machinery and generating vast amounts of the virus.

...from https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/february/novavax-covid-vaccine-cell-lines-pro-life-abortion-christia.html

...from https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/02/24/novavax-covid-vaccine-religious/

...from https://personhood.org/2022/02/22/yes-novavax-used-hek293-an-aborted-fetal-cell-line/

No abortions have ever been performed for the purpose of medical research.

...from https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/02/24/novavax-covid-vaccine-religious/

Here are all the references to HEK293 in the scientific study mentioned above:

...from https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/17/health/fetal-tissue-explainer/index.html#headerMenuIcon

...from https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2016/fetal-tissue-research-weapon-and-casualty-war-against-abortion#article-body

...from https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2016/fetal-tissue-research-weapon-and-casualty-war-against-abortion#article-body

...form https://www.nature.com/news/the-truth-about-fetal-tissue-research-1.18960#box

...from https://www.chop.edu/news/feature-article-fetal-cells-and-vaccines-common-questions-answered#skip-to-content

...from https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-government-and-politics-business-religion-b8608af5a14ec95e98cf4b60e62a2b17

...from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_fetal_tissue_in_vaccine_development#cite_ref-Offit_4-0

...from https://abcnews.go.com/Health/aborted-fetuses-vaccines/story?id=29005539#

...from https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/dna#

...from https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid19-vaccine-ethical-issues#post-3089387

...from https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/you-asked-we-answered-are-covid-19-vaccine-ingredients-public#block-mainpagecontent

...from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/overview-COVID-19-vaccines.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fvaccines%2Fnovavax.html

...from http://www.immunizationinfo.org/issues/vaccine-components/human-fetal-links-some-vaccines/#footnoteref3_03d7pp3

...from https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid19-vaccine-ethical-issues#post-3089387

...from https://immunizebc.ca/ask-us/questions/do-covid-19-vaccines-contain-aborted-fetal-cells

...from https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/human-cell-strains-vaccine-development#body-mediaitem-switcher

...from https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/17/health/fetal-tissue-explainer/index.html#headerMenuIcon

...from https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-human-cost-of-a-life-saving-vaccine-1487366342#cx-article-inline-newsletter-tile

...from https://www.nature.com/news/medical-research-cell-division-1.13273?src=longreads#mediaplayer-7112371372241474

[HEK-293 cells utilized a 1973 abortion.
PER.C6 cells utilized an abortion in 1985.
HEK-293 and PER.C6 cells are used in some COVID-19 vaccines and some of these vaccines]

...from PDF (p 1) at https://www.immune.org.nz/resources/written-resources/animal-derived-products-and-national-immunisation-schedule-vaccines-%E2%80%93

I think five of these seven represent one abortion per fetal cell line.
Additional aborted fetuses were utilized in developing WI-38 and RA 27/3.

In fact, some vaccines are grown in cell cultures that were originally obtained from two human fetuses. In addition, the rubella virus used to make rubella vaccine was isolated from a third human fetus.

Though there are hundreds of cell lines available in the United States, WI-38 makes up the majority of the cells used, together with just one other.

"MRC-5" cells, named after the initials of the Medical Research Council where they were collected, were obtained from the lungs of another three-month-old foetus. This time the abortion happened in England in 1966 for "psychiatric reasons".

It is well known (this isn't some shocking truth as some are trying to push) that some vaccines are made with fetal embryo fibroblast cells (the WI-38 and MRC-5 cells) from cell lines that are derived (they can replicate infinitely) from two electively terminated pregnancies (abortions) in the 1960s.

Those two fetuses weren't the only two fetuses ever used in research though, they were just the only ones used to actually make vaccines.

There are two particular fetal cell lines that have been heavily used in vaccine development. They are named according to the laboratory facilities where they were developed. One cell line is known as WI-38, developed at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, PA. The other is MRC-5, developed for the Medical Research Council in England. WI-38 was developed by Dr. Leonard Hayflick in 1962, by taking lung cells from an aborted female baby at approximately the end of the third month of pregnancy. Dr. Hayflick's article published in the journal Experimental Cell Research states that three cell lines, WI-26, WI-38, WI-44 were all developed from aborted babies. "All embryos were obtained from surgical abortions and were of approximately three months' gestation."(1) Dr. Stanley Plotkin, who developed a Rubella vaccine using WI-38, addressed a question at an international conference as to the origin of WI-38. Dr. Plotkin stated:

"This fetus was chosen by Dr. Sven Gard, specifically for this purpose. Both parents are known, and unfortunately for the story, they are married to each other, still alive and well, and living in Stockholm, presumably. The abortion was done because they felt they had too many children. There were no familial diseases in the history of either parent, and no history of cancer specifically in the families."(2)

The origin of the MCR-5 cell line, created in 1966, is documented in the journal Nature by three British researchers working at the National Institute for Medical Research. They wrote, "We have developed another strain of cells, also derived from foetal lung tissue, taken from a 14-week male foetus removed for psychiatric reasons from a 27 year old woman with a genetically normal family history and no sign of neoplastic disease both at abortion and for at least three years afterward."(3) Noting that their research parallels that of Dr. Hayflick's development of the WI-38 cell line, the researchers conclude, "Our studies indicate that by presently accepted criteria, MRC-5 cells--in common with WI-38 cells of similar origin--have normal characteristics and so could be used for the same purposes as WI-38 cells."(4)

In both of these cell lines it is quite clear that the aborted children were presumed to be healthy, and that there was no life-threatening condition or other medically-indicated reason for the abortion of these two babies.

(According to this chart, COVID-19 vaccines utilize two of these five fetal cell lines--HEK-293 and PER.C6.)

1... HEK-293:

2... Erythropoietin gene, fetal liver lambda.hE1/:

3... PER.C6:

4... WI-26 VA4:

5... RA 27/3:
(RA 27/3 is not a fetal cell line...
...It is a virus that was isolated from a fetus)

Hayflick developed 25 different fetal-cell strains, numbered WI-1 to WI-25.

WI38- W=Wistar I=Institute 38= # of abortion used

Fetal cell lines are not the same as fetal tissue. Fetal cell lines are cells that grow in a laboratory.

Human fetal tissue is defined as tissue or cells obtained from a dead human embryo or fetus after a spontaneous or induced abortion or stillbirth. This definition does not include established human fetal cell lines.

The fetal fibroblast cells used to grow vaccine viruses were first obtained from elective termination of two pregnancies in the early 1960s. These same fetal cells obtained from the early 1960s have continued to grow in the laboratory and are used to make vaccines today. No further sources of fetal cells are needed to make these vaccines.

Ethical alternatives to tissue derived in abortions include sources from the placenta, umbilical cord, amniotic fluid, discarded surgical tissue, and postmortem tissue.

However, Catholic teaching would probably allow research done with stem cells obtained from postpartum placental tissue and from adult bone marrow and tissue. These cells, which lack the pluripotency of embryonic and fetal stem cells, are nevertheless scientifically promising and do not involve the destruction of human life.

Indicate why the research goals cannot be accomplished using an alternative to HFT [human fetal tissue] (including, but not limited to, induced pluripotent cells not developed from HFT, organoids not developed from HFT, neonatal human tissue, human tissue obtained from adults, human fetal tissue not derived from elective abortion, animal models, and in vitro models that are not developed from HFT, and computational models)

The definition of research involving HFT [human fetal tissue] does not include the following:

• human fetal primary or secondary cell cultures, if cells were not derived from an elective abortion

• already-established (as of June 5, 2019) human fetal cell lines (e.g. induced pluripotent stem cell lines from human fetal tissue, immortalized cell lines, differentiated cell lines).

• derivative products from human fetal tissue or cells (e.g. DNA, RNA, protein) if not derived from elective abortion.

• human extra-embryonic cells and tissue, including, but not limited to, umbilical cord tissue, cord blood, placenta, amniotic fluid, and chorionic villi if not derived from elective abortion.

• human fetal cells present in maternal blood or other maternal sources

• embryonic stem cells or embryonic cell lines.

• research on transplantation of HFT for therapeutic purposes (because of the statutory provision(s) addressing such research)

"While there have been some advances in recent years that have reduced the need for fetal tissue in certain areas of research, it remains critically important in many other areas."

Biological scientists currently have no better alternatives to using fetal tissue to give mice humanlike immune systems, concluded scientists who convened yesterday at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) workshop to discuss the issue.

One member also believed that no alternatives to HFT [human fetal tissue] were possible for this application, and reported that while alternatives have been attempted for the past 10 to 15 years, none has been successful and that the work cannot be done with mice or organoids.

The scientific community has been adamant that no alternatives to human fetal tissue have proved as effective. Opponents, however, say that newer methods, including the use of thymus tissue from newborn infants who undergo heart surgeries, appear promising.

Critics of fetal tissue research have argued that more modern alternatives -- such as using adult cell lines, "organoids" grown in a lab, or computer models -- can be used, instead. But many scientists say that this isn't true of all branches of research and that it is difficult to duplicate the flexibility and adaptability of fetal tissue.

Q: Aren't there effective alternatives?

It depends on whom you ask. Opponents of fetal tissue research point to a number of other possible options, including monkey or hamster cells for vaccines as well as blood collected after birth from umbilical cords that are rich in blood-forming stem cells. They also suggest the use of adult stem cells and "organoids" -- artificially grown cells that somewhat mimic organs.

But supporters of the research counter that fetal tissue is legally obtained, that it would otherwise be destroyed, that such work has already led to major medical advances and that, if there were better alternatives, they would turn to them. "Fetal tissue is a flexible, less-differentiated tissue. It grows readily and adapts to new environments, allowing researchers to study basic biology or use it as a tool in a way that can't be replicated with adult tissue," says Carrie Wolinetz, the NIH's associate director for science policy.

But off-the-shelf fetal cell lines are of limited use for scientists because they do not faithfully mimic native tissue and represent only a subset of cell types: WI-38 and MRC-5, for example, were derived from fetal lungs. The lines can also accumulate mutations after replicating in vitro over time. And creating humanized mice such as Su's requires whole pieces of fetal organs to provide sufficient numbers of stem cells. For all of these reasons, researchers turn to fresh tissue.

In the United States, this is collected at medical centres and clinics that perform abortions under a patchwork of laws and regulations governing consent, tissue collection and transfer (see 'Fetal tissue and the law').

Sally Temple, scientific director of the Neural Stem Cell Institute who is a past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, said that while these other types of cells hold promise, they aren't ready for prime time.

"There's a lot of excitement about using stem cells and talk about how we can use three-dimensional organoids," said Temple. But organoids don't have the same cellular arrangement or blood vessel network. "Organoids can't mimic real tissue," she said.

"If we're going to understand how tissues are made in humans, you really have to have access to human tissue," she added. "It makes you so nervous that scientists aren't being heard."

Some commentators have argued that technological advances have obviated the need for research using fetal tissue. When questioned about whether there are alternatives to fetal tissue for stem cell research, such as induced pluripotent stem cells derived from adult tissue, NIH acknowledged that such technology bears promise. However, according to NIH, the technology is not yet mature, and for the immediate future, fetal stem cells continue to play an important role in scientific research. Indeed, during the period while the new technologies are being developed NIH said that it is important to continue to have access to fetal tissue to validate these new methods. ⁹⁵

This Board member noted that ethically derived tissue from non-elective abortions is a viable alternative to HFT [human fetal tissue] with tissue of good quality available from well-established banks. However, other members thought that tissue from miscarriage was not a viable alternative due to the timing of tissue collection and tissue quality. These members noted that most spontaneous abortions are abnormal for a variety of reasons, including genetic abnormalities such as aneuploidy. In addition, one member said that the timing of spontaneous abortion relative to collection of the tissue is typically longer than in the cases of HFT collection from elective abortions, and therefore the quality of the tissue is not as high.

Vice president--elect Mike Pence, meanwhile, has consistently opposed ES cell research, arguing that the discovery of induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells--reprogrammed adult cells that take on stemlike properties--make it unnecessary to take cells from embryos.

Indeed, IPS cells "have taken some of the heat off the embryonic stem cell research," says Timothy Kamp, a cardiologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who works with ES cells. But they aren't poised to replace it altogether, he says. Embryonic cells remain a "part of the tool set that we like to use to show that our finding is robust, reproducible, and not an artifact of reprogramming or keeping cells in culture," he says. "I think it would be quite devastating to take those lines out of federally funded protocols."

NIH last year launched a $20 million research program seeking alternatives to the use of human fetal tissue in research. But in announcing the program, NIH Director Francis Collins said that to validate such alternatives, "You're going to have to compare it to the current standard, which is using fetal tissue."

"Some of the proposals were constrained by the NIH requirement that [human fetal tissue] be used as a comparator," the report states.

The near-blanket rejection of the proposals has upset scientists who support research with fetal tissue. "Crucial advances in biomedical research will be slowed because of the American restrictions on research using human fetal tissue," Christine Mummery, president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research and a stem cell scientist at Leiden University Medical Center, says in response to the report. "People may die unnecessarily because the administration has allowed an ideological special interest group to hijack biomedical research."

Fetal tissue has unique and valuable properties that often cannot be replaced by other cell types. Cells from fetal tissue are more flexible and less specialized than cells from adult tissue and can be more readily grown in culture. This is part of the reason why fetal tissue is used for the generation of vaccines and for studying infectious diseases like Zika, HIV, and other viruses. It is also the reason why human fetal tissue is used to develop and validate model systems to study the progression of diseases and test new therapeutics.

While some have argued that advances in recent years have reduced the need for fetal tissue in certain areas of research, fetal tissue remains the gold standard for evaluating the accuracy of models of human fetal development. Fetal tissue also remains an essential resource for studying complex interactions between cells. Fetal cell lines are not a substitute for fetal tissue, because they are limited to a small number of cell types and are inadequate for studying complex interactions between cells. Similarly, organoids and stem cell model systems are simplistic models that only mimic certain aspects of human development. Finally, tissue from spontaneous abortions is not a reliable substitute for tissue from induced abortions, because they often result from genetic defects, developmental abnormalities, or other conditions that undermine the availability and usefulness of the tissue.

The long-standing existing review process for fetal tissue research ensures that research using fetal tissue is scientifically meritorious, legal, and ethically sound. The legal framework for this research prohibits people from profiting from acquiring, receiving, or transferring fetal tissue for research.

...from https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2015/10/02/are-american-taxpayers-paying-for-abortion/?sh=2ecb5ae16a4b#article-stream-0

...from PDF (p 26) at https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/facts-figures/annual-report

...from https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121402281?storyId=121402281#ad-backstage-News_Health_Health_Care

...from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/health/planned-parenthood-title-x.html#article-summary

...from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jason-chaffetz-planned-parenthood-funding_n_5616ed01e4b0dbb8000de134#us_5616ed01e4b0dbb8000de134

...from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/health/planned-parenthood-title-x.html#article-summary

...from PDF (p 35) at https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/facts-figures/annual-report

...from https://www.factcheck.org/2015/09/planned-parenthoods-services/#dpsp-post-content-markup

...from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/08/12/for-planned-parenthood-abortion-stats-3-percent-and-94-percent-are-both-misleading/#slug_interstitial

"If restrictions were the main driver across the board, we'd expect birthrates to increase," said Ms. Nash, a writer of the policy analysis.

A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.

Nash notes that the U.S. birthrate is also down, suggesting a decline in the number of women becoming pregnant. Also, the data come from 2017 -- before a series of restrictive abortion bans were passed in state legislatures around the country. Those bans have yet to take effect, and many are tied up in legal challenges.

In 2017, the abortion rate -- which measures how common abortion is among women of childbearing age -- dropped to 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, down from 14.6 in 2014. That continues a downward trend since the peak in 1980 of 29.3.

Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues manager at Guttmacher, said the overall drop is not attributable to a growing number of abortion restrictions.

"I don't think there's a clear pattern around why rates are falling," Nash said. "They're going down across the country in nearly every state."

Abortion restrictions were not the main driver of the decline in the U.S. abortion rate between 2011 and 2017. Rather, the decline in abortions appears to be related to declines in births and pregnancies overall. There are a number of potential explanations for this broad decline, some more plausible than others.

Still, abortion restrictions, particularly those imposing unnecessary, intentionally burdensome regulations on providers, played a role in shutting down abortion clinics in some states and thereby reducing access to abortion.

"The abortion industry will go to extraordinary lengths to obscure the fundamental reality that the child in the womb is a human being. The requirement to treat the remains of unborn children with dignity and respect would do nothing to affect the availability of abortion in Texas," said Attorney General Paxton. "The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that States have an interest in the lives of the unborn, and this Texas law serves to honor their dignity rather than treat them as medical waste."

New research suggests contraception and fewer pregnancies may be more responsible for the decline than state laws restricting abortion.

The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute.

Patients' ability to be adequately informed in order to make sound medical decisions is impeded when state regulations require that women be provided inaccurate or misleading information about abortion's potential harms; and women's preferences for whether they want individualized counseling not be taken into consideration.

On average, the incidence of abortion is similar in countries with restrictive abortion laws and those with more liberal access to abortion.^[146] However, restrictive abortion laws are associated with increases in the percentage of abortions performed unsafely.^{[22][147][146]} The unsafe abortion rate in developing countries is partly attributable to lack of access to modern contraceptives; according to the Guttmacher Institute, providing access to contraceptives would result in about 14.5 million fewer unsafe abortions and 38,000 fewer deaths from unsafe abortion annually worldwide.^[148]

As mentioned above, the 2018 NAS study found that "numerous abortion-specific federal and state laws and regulations affect the delivery of abortion services."⁷⁷ The NAS study states that safety "is enhanced when the abortion is performed as early in pregnancy as possible."⁷⁸ The 2018 NAS study also states that "the risk of serious complication increases with weeks gestation. As the number of weeks increases, the invasiveness of the required procedure and the need for deeper levels of sedation also increase. Thus, delaying the abortion increases the risk of harm to the woman."⁷⁹ The NAS study provides a table listing state regulations that may affect safety and quality by delaying abortion services or otherwise adversely impacting the delivery of abortion services.⁸⁰ Examples given in the 2018 NAS study of state regulations that delay the abortion include the following:

• requiring women to make multiple in-person visits because, for example, ultrasound or counseling must be performed or conducted before the abortion;

• requiring mandatory waiting periods between in-person counseling and the abortion procedure;

• reducing the availability of care by restricting the types of providers and the settings in which abortion services can be provided;

• prohibiting public payers from paying for abortions; and

• prohibiting health insurance exchange plans or private insurance plans sold in the state from covering or paying for abortions, with few exceptions.⁸¹

Regarding the state requirements for mandatory counseling before an abortion is performed, the 2018 NAS study found that abortion patients in many of these states are offered or given inaccurate or misleading information (verbally or in writing) on: reversing medication abortions [Arkansas, South Dakota, Utah], risks to future fertility [Arizona, Kansas, North Carolina, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas], possible breast cancer risk [Alaska, Kansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas], and/or long-term mental health consequences of abortion [Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia].⁸²

The 2018 NAS study notes that "[l]ong-established ethical and legal standards for informed consent in health care appear to have been compromised in the delivery of abortion care."⁸³ The main objective of the informed consent process is that patients understand the nature and risks of their upcoming procedure. "[L]egally requiring providers to inform women about risks that are not supported and are even invalidated by scientific research violates the accepted standards of informed consent."⁸⁴

Overview of State Abortion-Specific Regulations That May Impact Safety and Quality, as of September 1, 2017

Does Abortion Care in the United States Meet the Six Attributes of Quality Health Care?

Rubella caused spontaneous abortions.

The irony of the protest is not lost on Plotkin. "I am fond of saying that rubella vaccine has prevented thousands more abortions than have ever been prevented by Catholic religionists," he says.

Although abortion was illegal in the United States (and in many states, birth control was, too), criminal laws contained an exception allowing doctors to perform "therapeutic abortions" for medical reasons. These abortions were meant for cases in which the life of the woman was in danger, but the term was vaguely defined. Some doctors began performing these types of abortions on women infected with rubella. After this came a push by doctors to legally define what conditions could allow a "therapeutic abortion," and that helped lead to a national movement to legalize abortion.

A specific example where the reasons for accepting vaccination are sufficiently serious to justify it, even though the vaccine has been developed with the help of cell lines derived from aborted fetal cells, is the case of rubella (German measles).⁷ The most important danger posed by spread of rubella is that of congenital rubella syndrome, which affects unborn children when their mothers become infected while pregnant. Congenital rubella syndrome can cause miscarriages and a wide range of severe birth defects. The only available vaccine, however, has been developed with the help of aborted fetal cell lines. In such a situation, parents are justified in having their children vaccinated against rubella, not only to avoid the effects of rubella on their children, but, secondarily and just as importantly, to prevent their children from becoming carriers of rubella, as the spread of rubella can lead to the infection of vulnerable pregnant women, thereby endangering their lives and the lives of their unborn children. It is important to note that the making of the rubella vaccine (or that of the new COVID-19 vaccines)⁸ does not involve cells taken directly from the body of an aborted child. Cells taken from two abortions in the 1960s were replicated in a laboratory to produce two cell lines that can be reproduced again and again, indefinitely. To make the rubella vaccine, cells from these cell lines are stimulated to produce the chemicals necessary for the vaccine. It is not as if the making of the vaccine required ever more cells from ever more abortions.

(According to this chart, COVID-19 vaccines use HEK-293 and PER.C6.)

Two common immortalized cell lines go by the monikers HEK-293 and HeLa.

Immortalised cell lines are widely used as a simple model for more complex biological systems, for example for the analysis of the biochemistry and cell biology of mammalian (including human) cells.^[2] The main advantage of using an immortal cell line for research is its immortality; the cells can be grown indefinitely in culture. This simplifies analysis of the biology of cells which may otherwise have a limited lifetime.

Immortalised cell lines can also be cloned giving rise to a clonal population which can, in turn, be propagated indefinitely.

It should be noted that Hayflick's methods involved establishing a huge bank of WI-38 and MRC-5 cells that, while not capable of infinitely replicating like immortal cell lines, will serve vaccine production needs for several decades in the future.

Although advocates of these vaccines argue no more abortions are needed, new cell lines derived from aborted fetal tissue continue to be developed. Researchers are concerned that cell reproduction in these strains will eventually become nonviable, or at least more difficult to access.

They are also motivated to discover increased duplication rates, higher limits to duplication, and improved suitability for viral propagation. Researchers have developed cell lines -- including IMR-90, IMR-91, PER.C6, and Walvax-2 -- from aborted fetuses, with the intent of supplementing or replacing WI-38 and MRC-5 for vaccine development.

PER.C6 (1985):

IMR-90, IMR-91 (1975):

Walvax-2 (2015):

Because of the power of logarithmic growth, a cell line such as WI-38, the product of the lungs of a single aborted fetus, can give rise to 22 million tons of cells, supporting decades and perhaps centuries of vaccine production.

HEK-293 is the name given to a specific line of cells used in various scientific applications. The original cells were taken from the kidney of a legally aborted foetus in 1973. HEK-293 cells used nowadays are clones of those original cells, but are not themselves the cells of aborted babies.

The WI-38 cell line and one other cell line created in 1966 from the lungs of an aborted fetus (known as MRC-5, after Britain's Medical Research Council) are available in such quantity that there's not a need to go on deriving new fetal cell lines. A Chinese company did do that last year because they were getting worried about access to MRC-5 cells. But by and large, new technologies have come along, making cells derived from aborted fetuses no longer necessary.

The lungs of Mrs. X's aborted fetus were flown to Philadelphia and used by Hayflick to create the cell line known as WI-38, "WI" standing for the Wistar Institute. What's amazing is the power of exponential growth. Hayflick created about 800 tiny vials of these cells in 1962. Each vial had a couple of million cells in it, and each cell in each vial had the potential to multiply about another 40-50 times. This became known as the Hayflick Limit because that's when a normal cell in the lab will cease replicating and die. When you do the math you discover that one pint-sized lab bottle of these cells will produce around 20 million metric tons of cells. As a result, the supply is almost infinite and this cell line is still being used.

Moreover, HEK293 is an established cell line. What this means is that these cells have been used and studied by biologists for nearly half a century. They are well characterized, and they have been validated for their safety. I point this out because it helps explain why it is unheard of for a vaccine manufacturer to seek out new human fetal cells from a recent abortion. Such novel fetal cells would be uncharacterized, unvalidated, and unapproved by regulatory agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for human vaccine production. Why waste time, effort, and money to obtain, characterize, and validate new human fetal cells when the classic fetal cell lines obtained decades ago like HEK293 are readily and cheaply available? Regrettably, Chinese scientists have recently established a novel human fetal cell line from an elective abortion for biomedical research. This was unnecessary, especially in light of the proven success of HEK293.

The fetus -- female, 20 centimetres long and wrapped in a sterile green cloth -- was delivered to the Karolinska Institute in northwest Stockholm. There, the lungs were dissected, packed on ice and dispatched to the airport, where they were loaded onto a transatlantic flight. A few days later, Leonard Hayflick, an ambitious young microbiologist at the Wistar Institute for Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, unpacked that box.

Working with a pair of surgical scalpels, Hayflick minced the lungs -- each about the size of an adult fingertip -- then placed them in a flask with a mix of enzymes that fragmented them into individual cells. These he transferred into several flat-sided glass bottles, to which he added a nutrient broth. He laid the bottles on their sides in a 37 °C incubation room. The cells began to divide.

So began WI-38, a strain of cells that has arguably helped to save more lives than any other created by researchers. Many of the experimental cell lines available at that time, such as the famous HeLa line, had been grown from cancers or were otherwise genetically abnormal. WI-38 cells became the first 'normal' human cells available in virtually unlimited quantities to scientists and to industry and, as a result, have become the most extensively described and studied normal human cells available to this day.

So, now you might be wondering, if cells can only reach 50 passages, how do we still have cells to make vaccines almost 50 years later?

When scientists are passaging the cells, instead of continuing to make more and more containers, they freeze some. For example, instead of making 25 containers in passage 2, the scientist may decide to make five new containers and freeze the cells that would have gone into the other 20 containers. The remaining cells are placed into vials for the freezer. When the cells are frozen, they are stored at about -200 degrees C in liquid nitrogen. At this temperature, biological activity stops. But, when the cells are thawed and placed in new containers with nutrients, they again start to grow.

Depending upon the cell type and container size they are using, the quantity of cells in this example could produce eight to twenty vials of cells to freeze. These passage 2 cells can be thawed, typically one or two vials at a time, to start the cell growth process again anytime the currently growing cells get too old. Likewise, in a few days the five new flasks will grow to confluence, and the same process can be followed, creating more vials to freeze. The important point to understand though is that cells grow exponentially, so scientists can grow large quantities of cells to use immediately or to store for future use. In the case of the fetal cells, this process was used to ensure a virtually endless supply.

Human fetal tissue is defined as tissue or cells obtained from a dead human embryo or fetus after a spontaneous or induced abortion or stillbirth. This definition does not include established human fetal cell lines.

"There is no evidence that the use of donated tissue from fetal remains has any effect on whether women choose abortions, and no evidence that decades of research using donated tissue has ever led to an increase in the number of abortions," said Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin.

The panel's report noted that "the reasons for terminating a pregnancy are complex, varied, and deeply personal" and "regarded it highly unlikely that a woman would be encouraged to make this decision [to abort] because of the knowledge that the fetal remains might be used in research" (DHHS/NIH, 1988:3). In addition, the panel noted the lack of any evidence that, over the past 30 years, the possibility of donating fetal tissue for research purposes had resulted in an increase in the number of abortions (DHHS/NIH, 1988:3).

Legislative proposals that halt research from cells already developed from fetal tissue and/or restrict scientists' access to new tissue or cell lines would have serious downstream consequences:

As a prominent bioethicist has observed, the legal and ethical rules enforced for fetal tissue donation are similar in many respects to the ethics of organ donation. The ability to donate fetal tissue for medical research is not linked to an increase in the number of abortions practiced. Nor can we reasonably expect a limitation on fetal tissue donation or research to reduce the number of abortions. Rather, it will prevent the use of tissue that would otherwise be destroyed, hindering efforts to better understand, diagnose, and treat diseases.

There are drawbacks: the BLT mouse's average lifespan is relatively short, at only around 8.5 months, because the animals tend to develop cancers of the thymus. And the humanized immune system is not inherited, so the model must be created again and again -- leading to the constant demand for fetal tissue that so disturbs abortion opponents.

But off-the-shelf fetal cell lines are of limited use for scientists because they do not faithfully mimic native tissue and represent only a subset of cell types: WI-38 and MRC-5, for example, were derived from fetal lungs. The lines can also accumulate mutations after replicating in vitro over time. And creating humanized mice such as Su's requires whole pieces of fetal organs to provide sufficient numbers of stem cells. For all of these reasons, researchers turn to fresh tissue.

In the United States, this is collected at medical centres and clinics that perform abortions under a patchwork of laws and regulations governing consent, tissue collection and transfer (see 'Fetal tissue and the law').

A second concern involves fairness. Every human being should reasonably be able to expect that incentives for his or her death will not be created, and that the motivation for contributing to his or her survival will not be diminished.

Some scientists involved in fetal tissue research have been afraid to speak out.⁷ They have seen how abortion providers have been targeted, and now they too fear for their personal safety. Others have spoken out strongly to defend the importance of their work, pointing out that tissue that would otherwise be discarded has played a vital role in lifesaving medical advances and holds great promise for new breakthroughs.

Regarding the situation today, Scott Kominers, a research scholar at the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago, Illinois, argues that offering donors a share in future profits from their tissues could encourage them to donate and fuel medical progress¹². "We think that if you offer some sort of value-based compensation you'd be likely to boost tissue supply," he says. But Steven Joffe, a paediatric oncologist who directs the ethics programme at Harvard's translational medicine centre in Boston, Massachusetts, is concerned that compensating donors may paradoxically decrease their willingness to donate tissues, by taking altruism out of the equation.

First, the appropriator could make the person who committed the past evil action think that his evil act was in fact, not evil. This is the moral offense we call scandal. The man who purchases the stolen item may, because of his actions, convince the burglar that theft is not evil. The burglar steals again. Second, the appropriator could make the person who committed the past action think that he should commit it again because he would benefit again from the appropriator's future actions. This is the moral offense we call cooperation. Here, the man who purchases the stolen item may, because of his actions, cause the burglar to believe that if he stole again, the appropriator would reward him with another purchase. In this case as well, the burglar steals again.

According to written testimony from the Bishops' Committee for ProLife Activities of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, "it may not be wrong in principle for someone unconnected with an abortion to make use of a fetal organ from an unborn child who died as the result of an abortion; but it is difficult to see how this practice can be institutionalized [including arrangements to ensure informed consent] without threatening a morally unacceptable collaboration with the abortion industry" (DHHS/NIH, 1988:E42; for a slightly different version, see G1). What may be possible in the abstract, in principle, or in theory is not possible in practice because of the institutionalization of abortion and the way fetal tissue is currently procured. James Bopp and James Burtchaell write in their dissent: "Our argument, then, is that whatever the researcher's intentions may be, by entering into an institutionalized partnership with the abortion industry as a supplier of preference, he or she becomes complicit, though after the fact, with the abortions that have expropriated the tissue for his or her purposes. It is obvious that if research is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Government also enters into this same complicity" (Bopp and Burtchaell, 1988:70).

...from https://www.aei.org/op-eds/abortion-ethics-and-the-coronavirus-vaccines/#the-main-content

...from https://jme.bmj.com/content/17/2/70.long#p-1

...from PDF (p 73) at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1376000

...from https://www.nature.com/news/medical-research-cell-division-1.13273?src=longreads#mediaplayer-7112371372241474

...from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234204/#ddd0000102

...from PDF (p 60) at https://www.immunize.org/talking-about-vaccines/maher.pdf

...from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234204/#_ddd0000099_

...from PDF (p 59) at https://www.immunize.org/talking-about-vaccines/maher.pdf

You cannot point to good consequences to justify the killing of an unborn baby. Assuming that Dutch baby was killed in an elective abortion, nothing done with HEK-293 (and scientists and drug companies have done plenty of good things with HEK-293) can make the abortion OK.

Father Nic Austriaco, a pro-life priest and biology professor, wrote this year, "I received an e-mail a few months ago from Professor Frank Graham, who established this cell line. He tells me that to the best of his knowledge, the exact origin of the HEK293 fetal cells is unclear. They could have come from either a spontaneous miscarriage or an elective abortion."

But that account isn't corroborated. Graham, the scientist in the Dutch lab, told AFP this year, "Abortion was illegal in the Netherlands until 1984 except to save the life of the mother. Consequently I have always assumed that the HEK cells used by the Leiden lab must have derived from a therapeutic abortion."

That argument doesn't hold up, either. Abortion, while technically illegal in the Netherlands in 1971 and 1972, was not uncommon. The most thorough study I could find of Dutch abortion history estimates that in 1971 and 1972, there were 37,000 abortions in the Netherlands, which is about half the United States' current abortion rate per population.

When I pressed Graham on the history, he pleaded ignorance. This was 50 years ago, and the kidney cells were prepared in the lab before he used them. His uncertainty on the provenance of the cells may be frustrating to a pro-life ethicist, but it also bears moral weight: Graham doesn't know because he wasn't involved in the abortion.

That is, if this child was killed by an elective abortion, Graham did not formally cooperate with that evil.

Again, if it was an elective abortion -- the mother simply decided she didn't want this child -- that abortion was evil, even if Graham made something good come of it. You can't justify killing an innocent person because you might be able to do something good with her corpse.

But this is precisely what the use of fetal tissue from aborted human beings involves: it predicates the health of some on the deliberate destruction of the lives and health of others.

"These kinds of situations aren't straightforwardly 'ethical' or 'unethical' -- they involve competing ethical concerns, all of which need to be taken into consideration," says Anne Wilkinson, programme officer at the Nuffield Council on Bioethics who has written about Scotland's Guthrie cards.

He interprets the majority's proposals as an effort to balance interests "through a policy of damage containment" (Bleich, 1988:40). By contrast, he notes that the duty to rescue human life through fetal tissue transplants is diminished because the studies at issue are research protocols with uncertain, distant benefits rather than certain immediate good for identified lives, and because the "moral harm" of the increase in the number of abortions is certain and immediate. Hence, "on balance, the duty to refrain from a course of action that will have the effect of increasing instances of feticide must be regarded as the more compelling moral imperative" (Bleich, 1988:43). This formulation appears to leave open the possibility of a different balance if the procedure reached the point, without federally funded research, of providing an immediate, certain benefit. By contrast, the majority of the panel held that the increase in the number of abortions was not certain and immediate and could be avoided at least in part through the proposed guidelines.

Given the panel's conclusion that research use of fetal remains is ethical, it seems clear that the needs of current and future patients outweigh what can only be symbolic or political gestures of concern.

the panel majority was quick to respond to this argument, pointing out that researchers would play no causal role in the abortions, that they were merely using tissue that would otherwise be discarded (16).

He stressed that he and his colleagues think hard about the ethics of their work. "We are not happy about how the material became available, but we would not be willing to see it wasted and just thrown away."

Cooperation that involves casual actions--for example, driving the getaway car after a robbery--must be distinguished from actions that only symbolize, convey, or express approval but do not materially contribute to the actions themselves. Burtchaell invoked various analogies. One involved the banker in a town in Florida who decided to accept deposits from participants in the drug trade on the grounds that this action would benefit the community and that the drug trade would continue regardless of what the banker did. Another was of the researcher who visits an abortionist each week to obtain fetal tissue but who each time expresses his disapproval while planning to return the next week. Burtchaell contends that these actions involve complicity in the moral wrongdoing of others, whether drug trafficking or abortion.

David Oshinsky, the author of Polio: An American Story, believes that the success of vaccines in eradicating so many deadly diseases is precisely why the anti-vaxx movement has gained ground in recent years. "These vaccines have done away with the evidence of how frightening these diseases were," he told me.

Virtually every person in this country has benefited from research using fetal tissue. Every child who's been spared the risks and misery of chickenpox, rubella, or polio can thank the Nobel Prize recipients and other scientists who used such tissue in research yielding the vaccines that protect us (and give even the unvaccinated the benefit of herd immunity).

Vaccines made using WI-38 cells have immunized hundreds of millions of people against rubella, rabies, adenovirus, polio, measles, chickenpox and shingles. In the 1960s and 1970s, the cells helped epidemiologists to identify viral culprits in disease outbreaks. Their normality has made them valuable control cells for comparison with diseased ones. And at the Wistar Institute, as in labs and universities around the world, they remain a leading tool for probing the secrets of cellular ageing and cancer.

"Here's a clump of cells that has had an enormous impact on human health," says Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "These cells from one fetus have no doubt saved the lives of millions of people."

"You have to think, well what about the ethical consequences of not using the cell line?" says Olshansky. "Just keep in mind that they are a critical link in the chain, in the development of viral vaccines."

Do you recall seeing film clips of individuals burning themselves in protest over some issue? Perhaps it attracted attention to the cause, but was the sacrifice necessary or effective? I believe an effective protest against using cell cultures derived from abortion can be made without putting ourselves and our children at risk.

One is morally free to use the vaccine regardless of its historical association with abortion. The reason is that the risk to public health, if one chooses not to vaccinate, outweighs the legitimate concern about the origins of the vaccine. This is especially important for parents, who have a moral obligation to protect the life and health of their children and those around them.

To prevent the spread of the yellow fever virus, yellow fever vaccinations are required for travelers to enter numerous countries around the world. Those who are traveling from nations where yellow fever is common and yet who choose not to vaccinate themselves against yellow fever are free to do so, but they are also not permitted to enter those countries that require a yellow fever vaccine from travelers to protect their own citizens.

...from PDF (p 891) at https://europepmc.org/article/med/26267448

...from PDF (p 71) at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1376000

...from https://hillemanfilm.com/stanley-plotkin#main

I don't think there have been similar statements from religious leaders about fetal tissue research.

...from PDF (p 59) at https://www.immunize.org/talking-about-vaccines/maher.pdf

...from https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-legitimate-children-of-rape#main-content

...from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_from_rape#cite_ref-FOOTNOTEde_Brouwer2005144_73-0

...from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/24/rape-and-incest-account-few-abortions-so-why-all-attention/1211175001/#

...from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_from_rape#Rape-pregnancy_incidence

...from https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/09/health/rubella-abortion-zika/index.html#paragraph_2A1F6509-6D54-B35E-7023-6D0047C87BAA

...from https://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/the-life-of-the-mother/#dpsp-post-content-markup

...from PDF (p 74) at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1376000

...from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abortion-murder-or-medica_b_4986637#us_4986637

...from page 3 at https://www.google.com/books/edition/Scarlet_A/7AFCDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Is+abortion+late+birth+control%3F+Early+infanticide%3F+Or+some-thing+in+between%3F+In+Roe+v.+Wade+(1973),+the+U.S.+Supreme+Court+ruled+that+the+Constitution+doesn%27t+give+government+the+power+to+answer+those+questions.+Instead,+before+viability+(the+point+at+which+a+fetus+might+be+able+to+survive+outside+the+womb),+that+power+lies+with+individual+citizens+and+their+doctors,+who+must+be+allowed+to+follow+their+individual+conscience+and+religious+beliefs+in+answering+those+questions+for+themselves.&pg=PA3&printsec=frontcover

...from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/equality-autonomy-abortion/605356/#injected-recirculation-link-0

...from https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/why-i-cannot-think-of-abortion-as-murder-1.300001#at-243a2e04-1587-497b-b2c3-b5c29d8ef9e6

...from https://www.utm.edu/staff/jfieser/class/160/5-abortion.htm#

...from PDF (p 114) at https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2005/reasons-us-women-have-abortions-quantitative-and-qualitative-perspectives

...from https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/vaccines_and_abortion/#st-1

...from https://www.nature.com/news/the-truth-about-fetal-tissue-research-1.18960#mediaplayer-7323231449513755

The science examining when a fetus begins to feel pain is complex. Most scientists who have expressed views on the issue have said they do not think the neurological wiring to feel pain is in place until a fetus is further along in a pregnancy, past the point when nearly all abortions occur.

Many states restrict abortions at 22 weeks gestational age or 20 weeks post-fertilization, arguing the fetus has the ability to feel pain at this point in development, contrary to medical evidence. A systematic review of literature on fetal pain found that pain perception is unlikely before weeks 29 or 30 gestational age. ACOG has found "no legitimate scientific data or information" that supports the assertion that fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks post-fertilization, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has also concluded fetal pain is not possible before 24 weeks, given immature brain development and neural networks.

Prenatal pain (Wikipedia)

...from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/us/abortion-planned-parenthood-videos.html?_r=1#link-2a20b2a4

...from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/us/abortion-planned-parenthood-videos.html#link-2a20b2a4

...from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_2015_undercover_videos_controversy#cite_ref-NYT_11-1

...from PDF (p 8) at http://ppfa.pr-optout.com/ViewAttachment.aspx?EID=mr9WXYw4u2IxYnni1dBRVk3HDyuhhkPMnFMCvK5fVC8%3d

...from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-planned-parenthood-witch-hunt/2016/02/20/a6cb0e5c-d660-11e5-b195-2e29a4e13425_story.html#U10207305599371sD

...from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_2015_undercover_videos_controversy#cite_ref-2

At present, only two out of PPFA's 59 affiliates are participating in fetal tissue donation, and only one affiliate is receiving any reimbursement for costs. An additional four affiliates facilitated fetal tissue donation for research in the past five years.³⁰ The California affiliate that is currently participating receives a reimbursement of $60 per tissue specimen from a TPO [tissue procurement organization]. The other four affiliates, which had participated in fetal tissue donation programs in the past five years, either sought no reimbursement or had reimbursement rates ranging from $45 to $55 per tissue specimen.³¹ The letter states, "[i]n every case, the affiliates report that these amounts were intended to recover only their costs, as allowed under the federal law and our guidance."³² The evidence received by the Committee during the course of this investigation supports this assertion.

The contracts between StemExpress and two Planned Parenthood affiliates state, "The reasonable costs associated with the services specified in this Agreement shall be fifty-five dollars ($55.00) per POC [product of conception] determined in the clinic to be usable."³⁶

In a briefing with Committee staff, Dr. Ben Van Handel, the Executive Director of Novogenix Laboratories, confirmed that at the affiliate where Novogenix has a contract, Planned Parenthood set the price of $45 for services rendered on a per specimen basis.³⁸

Similarly, in a briefing with Committee staff, Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) confirmed that the reimbursement rate at the Planned Parenthood affiliate with which they partner is $60 per patient product of conception.⁴⁰

To date, the Committee has not obtained any evidence that Planned Parenthood physicians altered the timing, method, or procedure of an abortion solely for the purpose of obtaining fetal tissue for research.

Dr. Nucatola confirmed that changing the position of the fetus is not a change in the method or procedure; instead, it often needs to be done for patient safety.

Although she does not personally change the position of the fetus in her practice, she believes that some physicians may need to convert the fetus to breech position in order to perform the abortion procedure safely; it is a matter of skill and experience.⁵⁵

(PDF) at https://republicans-energycommerce.house.gov/news/press-release/select-investigative-panel-releases-final-report/

During an appearance tonight on CNN's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform who is currently leading the investigation of Planned Parenthood, admitted that he has identified no evidence that Planned Parenthood has violated any laws:

Blitzer: "Is there any evidence in your opinion that Planned Parenthood has broken any law?"

Chaffetz: "No, I'm not suggesting that they broke the law."

...from https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/statement-from-planned-parenthood-on-new-undercover-video#site-main

...from PDF at https://prochoice.org/naf-supports-fetal-tissue-donation-for-humanitarian-and-medical-research/

...from PDF (p 2) at https://energycommerce.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/committee-finds-no-evidence-to-support-allegations-against-planned

...from PDF (pp 5-6) at https://energycommerce.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/committee-finds-no-evidence-to-support-allegations-against-planned

...from PDF (p 9) at http://ppfa.pr-optout.com/ViewAttachment.aspx?EID=mr9WXYw4u2IxYnni1dBRVk3HDyuhhkPMnFMCvK5fVC8%3d

US law says that clinics can recover "reasonable payments" to offset the costs of providing the tissue, but it makes it a felony to profit from doing so. Planned Parenthood officials say that its clinics obtain full and informed consent from women choosing to donate fetal remains for research, and the organization announced in October that its clinics will no longer recover costs of $45--60 per specimen for collecting the tissue.

Just 1% of the approximately 700 health centers that are part of the Planned Parenthood network are equipped for fetal tissue donation. And in another response to the disinformation campaign and to try to quell some of the controversy, Planned Parenthood announced in October 2015 that its clinics will no longer seek reimbursement for their costs related to fetal tissue donation, even though the practice is perfectly legal and commonplace.

Thirty-eight states explicitly permit fetal-tissue donation for research, while six states currently ban such research, including Ohio, which is now also moving to make reimbursement for fetal-tissue samples illegal. In mid-October, Planned Parenthood announced that it would no longer accept reimbursements for its fetal-tissue donations in order to "remove beyond the shadow of a doubt the ludicrous idea that Planned Parenthood has any financial interest in fetal tissue donation."

Researchers most often acquire fetal tissue from a tissue bank or, sometimes, directly from a hospital or abortion clinic.⁴

Back at the company, lab technicians process the tissue to try to isolate the specific cell type a researcher has ordered -- for instance, fetal liver stem cells.

"These cells are hard to isolate," Ms. Dyer said. "These are hard processes, expensive processes that take millions of dollars of equipment. Just to attempt to do some of these isolations can cost us thousands of dollars, and it may not even work."

The effort is reflected in the pricing: a vial containing five million frozen fetal liver CD133+ stem cells can cost more than $24,000.

As the New York Times reported back in July 2015, researchers who use fetal tissue in their work can acquire it in several ways. The paper indicated that some scientists, who are typically affiliated with universities, can acquire fetal tissue from reproductive health clinics at their organization or from university tissue banks.

The Times added that researchers can also purchase fetal tissue from companies that serve as an intermediary between reproductive health clinics and research institutions. These companies process fetal tissue and can charge researchers related processing fees, but they are not legally allowed to make a profit from the transaction, the paper noted.

The companies that process the tissue then sell it to researchers for higher prices, sometimes charging up to thousands of dollars for a vial. But even this is not illegal. The founder of one major fetal tissue supplier told the Times that the increased prices reflect the high costs associated with extracting cells or tissue, storing them, and shipping them. StemExpress founder Cate Dyer said that isolating certain fetal cells can "take millions of dollars of equipment" and can cost "thousands of dollars" without a guarantee that it will work. However, the Times also notes that the suppliers "exist in a gray zone, legally," as "[f]ederal law says they cannot profit from the tissue itself, but the law does not specify how much they can charge for processing and shipping."

4. There are no regulations for what brokers charge researchers, either.

While abortion clinics or hospitals sometimes provide tissue directly to researchers, organizations or private companies like the tissue brokers mentioned above often act as middlemen. Profiteering may be occurring on this level, Caplan said.

Caplan said brokers can resell tissue to researchers at what seem like fairly high markups, but "regulations don't exist on fees, so what they charge is set by market."

California-based StemExpress is one such broker and is cited in one of the Center for Medical Progress videos as contracting with Planned Parenthood for fetal tissue. The company charges fees for many kinds of human cells, from $100 for a vial of peripheral blood to $24,000 for a vial of highly concentrated fetal liver cells. The company reported $2.2 million in revenue in 2013, according to a profile in Inc. Magazine.

Prue Talbot, the director of the Stem Cell Center at the University of California, Riverside, agreed with a StemExpress statement that said research methods and expensive medical equipment are expensive. Talbot said skilled technicians that can isolate and preserve specific kinds of cells also command high salaries, driving up costs.

The direct acquisition fees for human fetal tissue were low. In fiscal year 1999, 49 percent of the respondents to our survey did not pay any acquisition fees for the human fetal tissue they received. Among those who paid acquisition fees in fiscal year 1999, investigators reported an average fee of $80 per human fetal tissue sample, with a minimum fee of $2 and a maximum fee of $214. In addition, tissue acquisition fees varied substantially among the different sources identified in our survey. Only one of the researchers who received human fetal tissue from academic medical centers paid an acquisition fee ($12). More than four-fifths of the researchers who received tissue from health clinics paid no fee. The fees per sample of human fetal tissue from health clinics ranged from $2 to $75, with an average of $22. In contrast, 78 percent of the researchers receiving human fetal tissue from a central tissue supplier paid an acquisition fee---those fees ranged from $5 to $214 per sample, with investigators paying an average fee of $96.⁹

Second, some of the principal investigators who completed our survey had additional expenses for transporting, processing, preserving, storing, and ensuring the quality of human fetal tissue specimens, even if they paid nothing to acquire the tissue. For all of the principal investigators who responded to our survey, total expenditures for acquiring human fetal tissue in fiscal year 1999 totaled approximately $359,000, including both tissue acquisition fees and these other expenses (see table 2).

Two bioscience companies have reached a $7.785-million settlement with the Orange County district attorney's office over allegations that they illegally sold fetal tissue to companies around the world, prosecutors said Friday.

According to the settlement signed Monday, DV Biologics LLC and sister company DaVinci Biosciences LLC, both based in Yorba Linda, must cease all operations in California within 60 to 120 days. The agreement also requires the companies to admit liability for violations of state and federal laws prohibiting the sale or purchase of fetal tissue for research purposes, prosecutors said.

Many researchers buy tissue from two small California companies. StemExpress, a five-year-old business based in Placerville, Calif., describes itself as "the largest provider of maternal blood and fetal tissue globally." It also says it offers "special discounts to the academic community."

Its founder, Cate Dyer, has a bachelor's degree in sociology from California State University in Sacramento. She started StemExpress with $9,000. An article last November in Sacramento Business Journal said that the company had grown more than 1,300 percent in three years. Its revenue was $2.2 million, according to a report in August 2014 in Inc. magazine.

Ms. Dyer said that fetal tissue accounted for about 10 percent of the company's business.

Six years after deriving his famous strain, Hayflick made off with stocks of the cells and later started to charge for shipping them, prompting an epic legal battle with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, about who owned the cells. That struggle nearly destroyed Hayflick's career and raised questions about whether and how scientists should profit from their inventions.

What's more, the WI-38 strain has helped to generate billions of dollars for companies that produce vaccines based on the cells, yet it seems that the parents of the fetus have earned nothing. That recalls the earlier development of the HeLa cell line, named after the woman whose tumour gave rise to the cells and chronicled in Rebecca Skloot's book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010). As with HeLa, the WI-38 case highlights questions about if, and how, tissue donors should be compensated that are still urgently debated today. Last month, for example, some scientists in the United States found themselves barred from using new stem-cell lines derived from human embryos because women had been paid for the eggs used to make them (see Nature http://doi.org/mv2; 2013).

The conversation, which Dyer says lasted about two hours, was edited down to less than 10 minutes. Any talk of money, she said, was taken out of context in the editing. She says that her business grew quickly because of the research community's high demand for adult tissue and blood, and that's what she was referring to when profit was discussed.

The company's records indicate that roughly 1 percent of the tissue StemExpress collects is fetal. StemExpress typically gave Planned Parenthood $55 per sample, paying mostly for use of its rooms, storage and staffers.

Last year, a StemExpress catalog advertised a vial of two million "fresh" stem cells from a fetal liver for $1,932, and $1,840 for the same amount "cryopreserved," or frozen. Company records show they charge researchers a flat fee of $595 for each sample of fetal tissue, which costs an average $732 to prepare. In addition to compensating staffers who collect the tissue, the company pays for mileage, shipping, packaging, lab equipment, screening the sample for diseases and general upkeep.

In 2015, revenue from the transfer of fetal tissue to researchers totaled roughly $26,000. The cost of preparing the tissue, the company said, was about $33,000 -- resulting in a $7,000 financial loss.

...from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/health/fetal-tissue-from-abortions-for-research-is-traded-in-a-gray-zone.html#link-7f5a5e51

...from https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/09/04/beyond-abortion-and-planned-parenthood-regulating-fetal-tissue#ac-lre-player

...from PDF (p 3) at https://energycommerce.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/committee-finds-no-evidence-to-support-allegations-against-planned

If this procedure is so controversial, then why was it developed in the first place?

The further along a pregnancy is, the more complicated -- and the more controversial -- the procedures are for aborting it. Abortions performed after the 20th week of pregnancy typically require that the fetus be dismembered inside the womb so it can be removed without damaging the pregnant woman's cervix. Some gynecologists consider such methods, known as "dilation and evacuation," less than ideal because they can involve substantial blood loss and may increase the risk of lacerating the cervix, potentially undermining the woman's ability to bear children in the future.

Two abortion physicians, one in Ohio and one in California, independently developed variations on the method by extracting the fetus intact. The Ohio physician, Martin Haskell, called his method "dilation and extraction," or D&X. It involved dilating the woman's cervix, then pulling the fetus through it feet first until only the head remained inside. Using scissors or another sharp instrument, the head was then punctured, and the skull compressed, so it, too, could fit through the dilated cervix.

Haskell has said that he devised his D&X procedure because he wanted to find a way to perform second-trimester abortions without an overnight hospital stay, because local hospitals did not permit most abortions after 18 weeks.

The Guttmacher Institute estimated there were 2,200 intact dilation and extraction procedures in the US during 2000; this accounts for <0.2% of the total number of abortions performed that year.^[155]

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights research group that conducts surveys of the nation's abortion doctors, about 15,000 abortions were performed in the year 2000 on women 20 weeks or more along in their pregnancies; the vast majority were between the 20th and 24th week. Of those, only about 2,200 D&X abortions were performed, or about 0.2 percent of the 1.3 million abortions believed to be performed that year.

It is also known as intact dilation and evacuation (D&E) and, in United States federal law, as partial-birth abortion. Partial-birth abortion is not an accepted medical term and is not used by abortion practitioners or the medical community at large.^[1][2]

In 2000, although only 0.17% (2,232 of 1,313,000) of all abortions in the United States were performed using this procedure,^[3] it developed into a focal point of the abortion debate. Intact D&E of a fetus with a heartbeat was outlawed in most cases by the 2003 federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart.^[1][4]

The table below summarizes the available data at the state and national level on the number of partial-birth abortions or dilation and extraction abortions (note that this data is very incomplete):

About 8,500 partial-birth abortions in the U.S. up to 2005 can be documented; the actual number is significantly higher. Reasonable estimates of the annual number of PBAs in the U.S. range from 2,200 to 5,000, with somewhat higher numbers possible. This would imply 22,000 to 50,000 PBAs performed in the last decade.

To date, the Committee has received no evidence that any physician employed by Planned Parenthood affiliates has performed an "intact" dilation and evacuation (D&E) to preserve fetal tissue for research.

Similarly, Dr. Nucatola explained that it would be rare for a patient to be sufficiently dilated to deliver an intact fetus.⁴⁵ When questioned whether it was possible to do a D&E resulting in an intact fetus, she stated that while possible, no Planned Parenthood physician would intentionally perform such a procedure because to do so would be illegal.⁴⁶

Representatives of all three TPOs [tissue procurement organizations] also stated to the Committee that the donated fetal tissue specimens they receive do not include intact fetuses.⁴⁷

The decision of anti-abortion groups to focus on partial birth abortion reform was tactical. The concept of partial birth abortion and the language with which it was discussed were political constructs used to draw attention to, and stimulate discussion about, the notion of abortion more generally.

References to "intactness" contained in the undercover videos refer to "the intactness of the tissue and specific organs," not the intactness of the fetus. Any suggested reference to an intact fetus is "the result of deceptive editing" by the Center for Medical Progress.[27 [sic]

The CDC examined infant death certificates between 2003 and 2014 and identified 143 cases where the infant was born alive during an attempt to terminate the pregnancy. To put that in perspective: there were more than 9.3 million abortion procedures performed in the United States during that same 12-year period, PolitiFact Texas reported.

What about abortions that result in a live birth? One CDC report on death certificates for infants for 2003 to 2014, showed "143 deaths involving induced terminations" of pregnancies during that 12-year period, 97 of which "involved a maternal complication or, one or more congenital anomalies." The data "only include deaths occurring to those infants born alive; fetal deaths (stillbirths) are not included."

Infant deaths for the 12 year period 2003 -- 2014 assigned to code ICD-10 code P96.4 -- Termination of pregnancy, affecting fetus and newborn were reviewed. During this period there were 315,392 infant deaths and 49,126,572 live births. The purpose of this analysis is to provide some additional information regarding infant deaths with this cause of death code. This category includes both spontaneous terminations of pregnancy and induced terminations of pregnancy. Analysis of the text as reported by the cause-of-death certifier show that of 588 deaths with mention of P96.4, 143 (24.3%) could definitively be classified as involving an induced termination. A list of the terms on which this number is based is shown below. Most of the remaining deaths are clearly spontaneous. However, it is possible that this number (143) underestimates the total number of deaths involving induced termination.

According to the CDC's Abortion Surveillance Data, the vast majority of abortions (91%) occur at or before 13 weeks gestation, while 7.7% occur from weeks 14 to 20 gestation, and just 1.2% of abortions are performed at or after 21 weeks (Figure 1).

Abortions occurring at or after 21 weeks gestational age are rare. They are often difficult to obtain, as they are typically costly, time-intensive and only performed by a small subset of abortion providers. Yet these abortions receive a disproportionate amount of attention in the news, policy and the law, and discussions on this topic are often fraught with misinformation; for example, intense public discussions have been sparked after several policymakers have theorized about abortions occurring "moments before birth" or even "after birth." In reality, these scenarios do not occur, nor are they legal, in the U.S. Discussion of this topic is further obscured due to the terms sometimes used to describe abortions later in pregnancy-- including "late-term," "post-viability," "partial birth," "dismemberment" and "born-alive" abortions--despite many medical professionals criticizing and opposing their use. This fact sheet explains why individuals may seek abortions later in pregnancy, how often these procedures occur, how the concepts of viability and fetal pain play into this topic, and the various laws which regulate access to abortions later in pregnancy.

Potential for survival of babies aborted in late-term abortions

The attention on late-term abortions stems in part from the fact that babies born alive at these stages of pregnancy have significant chances of survival. Rysavy et al. (2015) reported (for hospitals in their survey) overall infant survival rates of 5.1% at 22 weeks' gestation, 23.6% at 23 weeks, 54.9% at 24 weeks, 72.0% at 25 weeks, and 81.4% at 26 weeks.

Assume that babies aborted in late-term abortions were instead delivered at the gestational ages of their abortions, with survival probabilities as reported by Rysavy et al. (2015), except with 10-50% having fetal health issues making survival unlikely. The resulting estimates of babies that could have survived for selected years are:

Due to the current prevailing abortion-favoring interpretation of U.S. law, a child is not afforded constitutional protection of the right to life until delivered from the womb. However, even this is not secure given that abortion proponents actively oppose legislation that would protect babies born alive after abortions. There are significant numbers of cases where babies have survived abortions. Melissa Ohden is one such survivor (Ohden, 2017) and has founded the Abortion Survivors Network which reports knowing of 260 survivors (Abortion Survivors Network, 2019). The efforts to oppose life-saving care in such cases demonstrate the degree to which a pro-abortion mentality has warped both the legal and medical professions.

(video) Holly O'Donnell was coached during the interview.

Unreleased footage filed in a civil court case shows that O'Donnell's apparently spontaneous reflections were carefully rehearsed. David Daleiden, the anti-abortion activist who made the videos, is heard coaching O'Donnell through repeated takes, instructing her to repeat anecdotes, add details, speak "fluidly" and be "very natural."

"Let's try it two more times," he told her at one point.

Later, O'Donnell protested: "I don't want to tell that story again. Please don't make me again, David."

A portion edited out of the video stated that the fetus was dead at the time the organ was removed.

To dramatize O'Donnell's interview, the video cuts to a fetus outside the womb, placed on what appears to be some sort of examination surface, and the fetus' legs are moving. The Center for Medical Progress says the source of the footage is the Grantham Collection, an organization that hopes to stem abortion by promoting graphic images of the procedure. We don't know the circumstances behind this video: where it came from, under what conditions it was obtained, or even if this fetus was actually aborted (as opposed to a premature birth or miscarriage).

No video released by the Center for Medical Progress showed the image Fiorina described, but one of the CMP videos does include a brief edited clip from the video Cunningham released on Tuesday, showing a fetus on a stainless steel background with its leg moving.

David Daleiden, who created the Center for Medical Progress videos, edited in the Cunningham footage to illustrate a story that he had been told on camera of a medical technician witnessing an abortion that resulted in an extracted fetus with moving legs and beating heart.