Hidden-camera videos showing Planned Parenthood staffers discussing fetal tissue donations have led not just to efforts to defund the organization, but to calls for an end to the use of fetal tissue in research. In an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, the law and bioethics professor R. Alta Charo explains why these calls are misguided.
Fetal tissue is not only being used in potentially life-saving medical research, it has already saved countless lives. “Virtually every person in this country has benefited from research using fetal tissue,” Dr. Charo writes. “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.”
Fetal tissue remains “the gold standard for some disease research,” she writes, and in some cases it’s not yet clear if any viable alternatives exist.
Dr. Charo also makes the important point that whether fetal tissue research is allowed has no effect on how many abortions are performed — a woman is extremely unlikely to seek an abortion in order to donate fetal tissue. A panel convened in 1988 by Ronald Reagan (and including members who opposed abortion) determined there was no evidence this had ever happened, and argued that the use of fetal tissue for research was ethically permissible.
The current campaign to discredit Planned Parenthood through its connection to fetal tissue research, Dr. Charo concludes, “represents a betrayal of the people whose lives could be saved by the research and a violation of that most fundamental duty of medicine and health policy, the duty of care.”
Among those who have done research using fetal tissue is the presidential candidate Ben Carson, who co-wrote a paper in 1992 describing research conducted on specimens “from two fetuses aborted at the ninth and 17th week of gestation.” After the release of the first Planned Parenthood video in July, Dr. Carson criticized fetal tissue research, saying “there’s nothing that can’t be done without fetal tissue.” But in an interview with the Washington Post after his 1992 paper resurfaced, he said fetal tissue research should not be banned and was not immoral.
An editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine concurs with Dr. Charo and adds that “the contraception services that Planned Parenthood delivers may be the single greatest effort to prevent the unwanted pregnancies that result in abortions.” This underscores a point that may have been obscured in the controversy over the videos: Those who really want to reduce the number of abortions should be supporting Planned Parenthood, not attacking it.