Pro-life undercover journalist David Daleiden won a major victory for transparency and against the abortion lobby last week when the University of Washington agreed to turn over documents related to its fetal tissue agreement with Planned Parenthood.
The university must give Daleiden documents relating to its “acquisition or use of human fetal tissue, human fetal organs, human fetal cell products, human fetal placenta and/or other human products of conception from induced abortions,” according to the Thomas More Society, which represents him.
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UW officials must also release “subsequent research, financial records, contracts, grant applications, correspondence, and reports,” the legal nonprofit group wrote in a media statement. The university must pay $30,000 in legal fees as well.
This type of research requires stricter scrutiny, and Daleiden’s victory is a good step toward exposing the problems with the buying and selling of fetal tissue, particularly when it comes from the deliberate killing of a preborn baby through abortion.
Consider that in March, a pro-life group reportedly found frozen fetuses stored like food in brown bags in a freezer at the University of Washington.
Other documents related to the University of Pittsburgh’s fetal tissue program revealed that Pitt officials, in the name of diversity, promised federal officials it would procure fetal organs from racial minorities. This is the same university that approved the grafting of late-term aborted fetuses onto mice.
If treating preborn babies like commodities sounds callous and immoral, it is. The monetary payments create conflicts of interest for medical providers who should not be pressuring women into having abortions.
Yet, a congressional panel in 2016 found that the University of Washington and a local abortion facility shared employees. UW is not the only university with questionable ethics when it comes to the procurement of fetal tissue. The report identified at least five instances of Washington University School of Medicine faculty who also worked at the nearby St. Louis Planned Parenthood. There were also two University of Wisconsin medical professors who held jobs with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin.
Society and our laws should not tolerate the buying and selling of fetal tissue. Abortion should be outlawed, but at a minimum, even pro-choice states should require the dignified burial of aborted babies. Abortionists already trample on human life when they kill innocent babies in the womb; allowing them and their academic peers to experiment on the same tissue only furthers the cheapening of human life.
Daleiden’s victory will presumably shed light on the barbarism of fetal tissue trafficking. Otherwise, UW would not have fought so hard to stop the release of details. For the sake of the humanity of the preborn and ethical scientific research, let us hope that Daleiden keeps fighting to expose these atrocities.
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Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.
