Charge: U.S. Selling Aborted Baby Body Parts

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 3/19/2012

Even though the practice is a criminal offense, one pro-lifer asserts that body parts are being harvested from aborted babies and used for research purposes in the U.S. and abroad.

After an investigation by Life Dynamics revealed the practice, Investigate Magazine, a New Zealand-based current affairs publication from a conservative Christian standpoint, went on to determine that a Maryland brokerage firm has been arranging the sale of parts of American aborted babies to the University of Auckland medical school in New Zealand for experiments.

Mark Crutcher, founder and president of Life Dynamics, says there is no excuse for this project titled "Photoreceptor-associated gene expression in human fetal and embryonic chicken retina."

"We justify all this on the concept that it might help society. It may help cure diseases. It may help do this wondrous thing and this other wondrous thing, but the fact is that we cannot profit from our own evil," he contends. "We have no right to harvest the parts of these dead babies who we intentionally kill in order to make our lives better. There has to be a limit at what you're willing to do."

And he points out that it is against U.S. law.

"It is illegal, but these people have developed a loophole around it in that, for example, when they sell baby parts, they don't sell you the part," Crutcher details. "They say we will donate the part to you. Well, that makes it legal, but then, you have to pay us to harvest the part ... to transport it ... to gather it, and get it to you, and they can set the price on that."

Part of the New Zealand research mixes human and animal cells. Investigate Magazine reports that five universities in the U.S., including the University of Washington, have been harvesting the parts.

The practice of aborted American infants being sent out of the country for this research came to light when a former abortion clinic technician revealed that clinics were harvesting body parts to sell to labs testing new drugs or procedures, or to researchers trying to find the causes of genetic disorders. According to ABC's 20/20 interview with an insider six years ago, the trafficking was taking place inside abortion clinics run by Planned Parenthood, the U.S. affiliate of New Zealand's family planning organization.