030175 Should your tax dollars pay for abortions and fetal research ?

William C. Brennan, Ph.D.

FEDERAL support of biomedical research has had a long, uninterrupted career dating back to the 1930's. Only recently, however, has Congress displayed reticence in granting blanket approval to all forms of experimentation involving human subjects. Much of this is due to the rising number of abuses uncovered.

Some of these, which have come to the public's attention, include injecting live cancer cells into infirm, aged populations, infecting institutionalized mentally retarded children with hepatitis for experimental purposes, and withholding an essential nutrient from the diets of newborn, minority-group children in order to confirm the detrimental effects. The project that precipitated the greatest furor was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which 400-plus black men were allowed to go untreated for 40 years in order to follow the natural course of their disease. Many participants died from syphilis and others experienced various forms of muscle and organ deterioration. A major inducement offered for participation in this study was the provision of free burial services. Not only are these studies blatant instances of science without humanity, but they were also made possible through funds provided by governmental agencies!

Congressional reaction to these d isturbing disclosures has been promising. Various proposals have been put forth, the most recent one being the establishment of a National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, composed of 11 members selected by the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Its charge over a two-year period will be to undertake " . . . an extensive investigation and study to identify the basic ethical  priinciples which should un(1(!I'IiC the Conduct Of biomedical and behavioral research involving humans." The ultimate aim of such a commission is the formulation of guidelines and necessary legislation to prevent the recurrence of other Tuskegees.

Neo-Nazi scientific experimentation

Paradoxically, as the regulations involving the employment of human beings in experiments are certain to become more stringent, the principles governing research on human fetuses are sure to loosen up considerably. The current ban on federal support of fetal research covers living human fetuses before

or after induced abortion unless such research is done for the purpose of assuring the survival of such infants." What on the surface appears like clear-cut Congressional opposition to any experiments being performed on unborn children slated for abortion, however, may actually be a spurious indicator of how Congress will eventually

resolve this issue. The moratorium on fetal research is only in effect for a four-month period, and some congresspersons, who voted for the temporary ban, are strongly in favor of what they refer to as responsible, carefully controlled studies on live human fetuses and fetal tissue.

The unborn child has, in fact rapidly emerged as the principal tar get of experimental procedures formerly reserved only for those captive expendables in orphanages , prisons, and institutions for the mentally retarded. The abortion law liberalization movement, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court decision of January 22, 1973, has resulted in a virtually limitless pool of potential experimental subjects. The Court's declaration, that life before birth constitutes, at best, only the "potentiality of life," is increasingly interpreted by medical investigators as a license to perform experiments on the unborn that they would not dare conduct on any other human subject.

Among the types of studies performed are those involving analysis of the fetal circulatory system immediately after the child is aborted, with the placenta attached and his heart still beating. After circulation is closely examined and scrupulous attention paid to such factors as cardiac output, blood pressure, organ blood flow and heart rate, the organs are then dissected, weighed, and placed in plastic bottles. Another experimental series concerns the administration of drugs to test their effects on the mother and child in the womb. If the drugs happen to be harmful to fetal development, this is of little consequence since they are only employed in circumstances where the child is scheduled for destruction via abortion. One other project involved observation of metabolic functioning in the isolated human fetal brain. The specimens for this research resulted from decapitating fetuses obtained by hysterectomy abortion at 12 to 20 weeks of gestational life.

Many would find it hard to believe that such gross procedures were the handiwork of American doctors. They appear to bear a far closer resemblance to those repulsive experiments conducted by physicians in Nazi Germany. The kinship with the Nazi doctors is by no means far-fetched. Nonetheless, the above cited research projects and many others were, and are, currently being performed by reputable American doctors. The gory details are amply documented in the pages of leading American medical journals. And one more commonality: Each study was financially supported, in whole or part, by such prestigious governmental bodies as the United States Public Health Service, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Allergy and infectious Diseases, and the National Heart and Lung Institute! These, then, are J~ust an inkling of how tax monies have been abused in support of highly questionable activities involving the manipulation, mutilation, and dissection of the victims of induced abortion,

Your tax dollars pay for inhuman research

Most of these well-funded projects were not merely isolated accidents surreptitiously conducted in defiance of federal agency policies, they were actually done in accordance with formulated guidelines, Back in September 1971, an advisory body to the National Institute of Health recommended that "nonviable, intact, living human fetuses" be utilized for research. In March 1972, the National Advisory Child Health and Human Development Council supported fetal experimentation with two provisos being that: 1 ) " . . . the investigator shall not be involved in the decision to terminate a pregnancy"; and 2) " . . . informed consent must be obtained from the appropriate parties) " Public disclosure of these statements, however, did not occur until 1973. It is also no longer any secret that a number of federal health officials have no qualms about the issue of fetal research. One bureaucrat from the Federal Drug Administration is on record as advocating increasing the testing of drugs on those destined for extermination through abortion; all of this, of course, at the taxpayer's expense.

A strong suspicion persists that the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects will, with some minor modifications, simply serve as a rubber stamp for preexisting policies and practices. There is little likelihood that the commission would be so forthright as to take a strong stand against the. orgy of medical experiments being conducted on the unborn. Instead of challenging the right of doctors to manipulate and mutilate the products of their destructive activities, all in the name of science, one has the distinct impression that much of the commission's energy will be devoted to building up an intellectual rationale to justify research on human fetuses before, during, and after induced abortion regardless of whether said fetuses are dead or alive.

Should pet theories be supported by public tax dollars?

The form in which the rationale for broadened governmental support of fetal research will take is already evident in the Congress. Representatives Abzug of New York, Brown of California, and others are making concerted efforts to gain greater acceptance among their colleagues of enlarged federal sponsorship of research on human fetuses. Their approach is to invoke an almost endless litany of impressive scientific advances attributed to fetal research including the development of the polio and rubella vaccines, fertility drugs, and treatment for the Rh incompatibility. Future cures for cancer, birth defects, sickle-cell anemia, forms of cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and aging are also presented as being heavily dependent upon expanded fetal research. Anytime eq amendment is offered to restrict the use of tax funds for such research, it is immediately labeled is dealing a damaging blow to essential scientific activities.

Another feature of the strategy employed by the defenders of fetal research is to make legislators, opposed to governmental support of fetal experimentation, appear as unreasonable obstruction is' s. Not only are such representatives as Roncalo, Hogan, and Froehlich
placed in the position of being labeled antiresearch in general, but worse yet, of being against research which promises to benefit all humanity. What the defenders of expanded fetal research fail to emphasize is that most of the gains in the battle against disease obtained from fetal tissue came from miscarriages and not from induced abortions. If the extension of research activities to include intentionally aborted fetuses is so necessary, one wonders how all the tremendous medical advances of the past ever took place before the advent of legalized abortion.

Do you want to buy an abortion with your tax dollar?

While Representative Roncalo and others attempt to curb the use of government funds for abortions and fetal research, through the passage of restrictive amendments to appropriations bills, Congresswoman Abzug and like-minded legislators complain that such efforts constitute undue invasions of such private matters as the woman's right to abort and the physician's right to practice medicine. Ms. Abzug and her followers are all too ready to accuse their opponents of foisting their own sectarian beliefs regarding human life on others. Yet she and a number of congresspersons are not adverse to utilizing the public's money to promote their own contentions about the nature of human life and the acceptable boundaries of experimental manipulation upon this life.

Once tax monies are expended to support abortion and research on aborted fetuses, these matters no longer exist exclusively in the realm of private morality where the abortion and research proponents claim they should remain. The ultimate imposition, the tyranny of taxation, threatens to implicate every American citizen in practices that are repugnant to millions. If abortion and fetal research are to be truly contained within the boundaries of privacy and personal morality, then the woman, who decides to have an abortion, and the doctor, who implements this decision and exploits the opportunity for research purposes, should have no right to demand that others pay for their so-called exercises in private decision making. If doctors wish to continue their death-dealing experiments on unborn children inside and outside the womb, let them procure financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Upjohn Company, and other favorably disposed, well heeled establishments instead of continuing to sponge off the taxpayer's pocketbook.

In the final analysis, it may well be that the best deterrent to wholesale abortion and unfettered experimentation ever devised is to insist that the participants, at the very least, pay their own way. Unless the public and a segment of Congress heed this message, American taxpayers may soon find themselves footing the bill for the vast majority of abortions performed, in addition to picking up the tab for the widespread expansion of biomedical research on abortion victims. 2

Dr. Brennan teaches in the School of Social Service at St. Louis University.

Distributed by
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
1100 West Wells Street
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53233