University of Pittsburgh disputes fetuses were 'alive,' after organ harvesting operation uncovered

Medical professionals are left with questions about the ethics surrounding the University of Pittsburgh's organ harvesting program of aborted babies for the sake of medical research.

While recent discoveries show the in-depth focus the school has placed on gathering body parts, they deny that the babies are "alive" when the collection process starts.

It was earlier this week that Judicial Watch published documents from the Department of Health and Human Services. They sued the HHS on behalf of The Center for Medical Progress after failing to comply with an FOIA request from April 2020.

Statements from the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) regarding fetal organs being the most concerning. This coming out of the 252 pages of documentation that HHS finally coughed up in court.

As outlined by Fox News, Pitt wanted "liver, heart, gonads, legs, brain, genitourinary tissues including kidneys, ureters and bladders." Some of these body parts were requested for the GUDMAP research project. Judicial Watch says HHS funded neared three million dollars for this "tissue hub" operation.

Fox News highlights that the University of Pittsburgh told the NIH it wanted to become a "hub for fetal tissue" so that the school could minimize "ischemia" time. That medical phrase means whenever an organ loses blood supply during the collection process.

Bluntly speaking, to achieve minimal ischemia time would require keeping babies alive for as long as possible during the abortion process, to efficiently take organs out.

The idea that fetuses are alive during the collection process raises ethical red flags within the medical community.

Fox News talked to several medical professionals:

• "Dr. Ronna Jurow, an ob-gyn who previously worked at Planned Parenthood and describes herself as 'pro-choice,' told Fox News Thursday that 'there's no question' the fetus would be alive during tissue collection."
• Dr. Kathi Aultman, an ob-gyn who used to perform abortions: "The baby's going to have to be either born alive or be killed immediately prior to delivery."
• Dr. Christina Francis, chair of the American Association of Pro-Life Gynecologists: "If it says ischemia time starts after tissue collection, that means that the baby is still alive at the time that they’re harvesting the tissue."
• AAPLOG CEO Dr. Donna Harrison. "[T]hese babies would not receive a feticide procedure prior to the abortion, because induction abortion after feticide can take hours to days, and the baby's tissue would be ischemic from the time of demise until delivery … [I]t is likely that these bab[ies] are being delivered by induction abortion, and likely that a substantial portion of these babies are actually alive at the time of organ harvesting."

David Seldin on behalf of the University of Pittsburgh denied that "fetuses were alive during tissue collection."

But then it's disputed by one Dr. Mitchell Creinin (said to have served in leading positions at University of Pittsburgh) about what Seldin defined as "alive" when it comes to human fetuses.

Seldin doubles down that "the University of Pittsburgh does not perform medical procedures and is not part of the tissue collection process. All of the University's research is closely supervised to ensure compliance with strict and rigorous federal and state laws and regulations."

What's not in dispute, as highlighted by Campus Reform earlier this year, is that researchers at the University of Pittsburgh grafted aborted baby body parts to rats for the sake of experimentation.

Politifact acknowledged this experiment took place and that it was "at least partially supported by various branches of the National Institutes of Health." Politifact, however, stated that Dr. Anthony Fauci was not in any way involved. As for the research, they write that "Studies describe the process as 'increasingly important' for studies of infectious diseases and cancer — an 'alternative to in vitro studies with human tissues and nonhuman primates for the study of human immunobiology.'"