By: Dan Bartkowiak
This week, the PA House Health Committee held a fourth hearing on abortion, this time centered on fetal experimentation. There were four testifiers: investigative journalist David Daleiden; a former abortionist; an ethics professor from Stanford; and a doctor/researcher from the University of Pittsburgh.
Here were three takeaways from the hearing:
1. Pitt Offers Little On Fetal Experiments, Makes False Statements: “They’re mice, not rats.”
For a hearing centered on the use of aborted babies for research, the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) unbelievably provided a doctor – a neuro-oncologist – who is not involved at all with these types of experiments.
Dr. Jeremy Rich testified by video and admitted, “speaking from my own experience, I don’t use fetal tissues.” Dr. Rich also shared he was “relatively new to the state of Pennsylvania,” having only been at Pitt for five months. Pitt has been experimenting on aborted babies for decades. Simply put, he repeatedly claimed to know very little about the experiments that were the key issue at the hearing.
The very first question to this Pitt testifier was from pro-life champion and chair of the PA House Health Committee – Rep. Kathy Rapp (R-Warren). She asked about the Pitt study published last September of scalping aborted babies and grotesquely grafting their skin onto mice and rats; the primary focus of this hearing and for why the University of Pittsburgh would be there to testify.
Dr. Rich interrupted Rep. Rapp (he routinely interrupted Representatives throughout the questioning period) to say, “They’re mice actually. They’re not rats.”
First of all, whether they’re mice or rats makes no difference to the horrific fact that babies aborted halfway through pregnancy are being scalped for experimentation at Pitt — and funded by taxpayers. Secondly, the Pitt doctor’s statement is completely false. Just read the title of the study: Development of humanized mouse and rat models with full-thickness human skin and autologous immune cells. (Emphasis added)
It’s baffling how the person Pitt provided to testify says he doesn’t even know about the fundamental elements of the main study in question. We need answers — answers the University has failed to provide. That’s exactly why the public protest on Friday, May 7th at Pitt is so important. We cannot let the university just sweep this under the rug, hoping it will soon be forgotten.
2. Powerful testimony from courageous pro-life leader David Daleiden.
David Daleiden is the founder and chief executive for the Center for Medical Progress, whose undercover video investigation exposed Planned Parenthood and other groups in their involvement with illegal trafficking of aborted babies and sale of their body parts. Daleiden has been a vocal advocate for exposing the relationship between Planned Parenthood and the University of Pittsburgh. He presented expert testimony that focused on the awful experiments associated with Pitt – and experiments funded by your tax dollars.
Daleiden discussed numerous examples of experiments, including those by Pitt’s Dr. Jörg Gerlach, a stem cell scientist in Pitt’s McGowan Regenerative Medicine Institute, involving the abortion of five-month old fetuses born alive via labor induction in order to deliver the baby whole for better use of their organs.
“Experimenting on a living infant during or after an abortion, or failing to provide medical care regardless of prematurity, is a third degree felony in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” testified Daleiden. “Sadly, live fetal experimentation has been reported and documented at Pitt for decades.”
You can watch Daleiden’s full testimony here.
During questioning, one Representative asked what Pennsylvania can do moving forward. Daleiden said to call for an investigation on the enforcement of state law covering the ban on the sale of aborted baby parts. That responsibility is the PA Department of Health, who as you will recall, due to their gross negligence under former Gov. Tom Ridge and Gov. Ed Rendell, allowed abortionist Kermit Gosnell and his House of Horrors to prey upon women and their unborn babies for decades without any health inspections.
With Gov. Tom Wolf and his administration being extremely pro-abortion and completely aligned with Planned Parenthood, it’s all the more reason why we must demand an investigation into the PA Department of Health along with the experimentation practices at the University of Pittsburgh.
Pro-abortion Rep. Dan Frankel (D-Allegheny) – who shamefully voted against the bill in 2011 to prevent future Gosnells in Pennsylvania by making abortion clinics that perform surgery follow the same safety regulations as any other surgical facility in the state – shared prepared remarks attempting to discredit Daleiden’s testimony; making false claims like Daleiden has been “found civilly libel for doctoring videos” and all courts have ruled his videos found no wrongdoings. “Every time a judge or court has looked, the answer has been the same. Planned Parenthood is cleared of wrongdoing and Mr. Daleiden and his organization have been revealed as having repeatedly broken the law in an effort to trick us into believing that taxpayer-funded black market for body parts,” said Rep. Frankel.
To Rep. Frankel’s claim of being found libel in Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit for doctoring videos, Daleiden stated to the committee that it’s “entirely false.” Planned Parenthood brought no defamation, slander or libel claim against Daleiden and even admitted that their words in the videos were correct. Their lawsuit is claiming they defrauded them because they did not actually buy body parts. Daleiden went on to say, “the veracity of the footage was never questioned” and later plainly stated “the video camera does not lie.”
It’s also “simply not true” that every court and judge has found no wrongdoing. “Two of Planned Parenthood’s oldest business partners in the sale of fetal tissue – the DaVinci Bioscience companies – were shut down in a $7.8 million settlement by local law enforcement directly as a result of my undercover reporting and they were being supplied by a Planned Parenthood official who was trained at the University of Pittsburgh,” responded Daleiden.
Rep. Frankel, who has previously complained about the lack of hearings on various pro-life legislative efforts, also stated, “Hearings like this one provide a platform and give a veneer of credibility to fantasies developed in the minds of people who want one thing and one thing alone: to block access to abortion.”
The reality is the University of Pittsburgh is involved in inhumane, unethical and taxpayer-funded experiments on babies aborted halfway through pregnancy. This must end.
Here’s more from Daleiden after the hearing. (Warning: the video shows graphic images.)
3. Former abortionist shares why she’s now pro-life.
Dr. Kathi Aultman is a former abortionist who has performed first trimester suction abortions and second-trimester Dilation and Evacuation (D&E), or dismemberment, abortions. She also served as Medical Director for a Planned Parenthood region in Florida. Her experiences with abortion eventually led her to becoming pro-life. She was the first to testify in this Pennsylvania committee hearing.
She described the barbaric dismemberment abortion procedure “during which the fetus is removed in pieces using special forceps.”
“After each procedure I scrutinized the tissue to account for all of the body parts to ensure that nothing was left to cause infection or bleeding,” shared Dr. Aultman. “The products of conception were sent to pathology to document the presence of the fetus and the placenta.”
This barbaric procedure would have been banned in Pennsylvania had Gov. Wolf not vetoed in December 2017 bipartisan legislation that would have ended late-term abortions as well as the dismemberment abortion procedure. As a result, Pennsylvania still permits elective abortions up to six months in pregnancy (24 weeks) and the use of the dismemberment abortion procedure.
Dr. Aultman went on to discuss the challenge she was presented with aborting babies later in pregnancy. “The only time I had any qualms about what I was doing was when I had my neonatal care rotation and realized that I was trying to save babies in the NICU that were the same age as babies I was aborting.” She later shared how, “I realized I could no longer kill babies just because they were not wanted.”
Dr. Aultman’s views changed primarily as a result of her experiences at abortion clinics. “I will never forget one woman came to see me for prolonged bleeding after an induction abortion. She was still struggling with the horror of delivering her live, 20-week-old baby into the toilet. Her baby brother had drowned and she couldn’t forgive herself or get the image out of her mind.”
We thank Dr. Aultman for sharing these stories.
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Additional links:
- To watch the full hearing, click here.
- To sign the open letter to Pitt, go to PittExposed.com.
- For details on the protest at Pitt this Friday, May 7th, click here.
