By Richard Doerflinger
The federal government has been debating experimentation on unborn
children for 30 years, in a variety of contexts. Whether it involves barbaric
exploitation of children born alive during an abortion, harvesting organs
from abortion victims, or manipulating and dissecting live embryos in the
laboratory, such experimentation has produced some of the most cold-blooded
abuses against human life in our generation. Throughout this sad history,
it was sometimes Congress and sometimes the White House - - depending on
who was in control of these institutions at the time - - that sought to
hold federal policy to a higher standard of ethical principles.
The one constant of the last 30 years was that appointed federal advisory
boards could be counted on to sink to a lower moral denominator than any
elected body. Even President Clinton, whose commitment to a pro-abortion
agenda is well known, has found himself outdone by his appointees in disregard
for human life in its early stages. Such advisory bodies nonetheless tend
to wield great influence, partly due to the mystique surrounding a consensus
of technical "experts."
Political leaders and journalists need to be more aware that advanced degrees
in science - - or even in the modern discipline of "bioethics"
- - are no guarantee of an advanced degree of moral sensitivity. Sometimes,
it seems, such training actually tends to suppress the moral sensibilities
that define common sense among the rest of us. It is clear that to many
researchers and ethicists, the dominant principle governing experimentation
on unborn children is this: If an experiment technically can be done, morally
it should be done.
1968: As abortion laws become more permissive in Europe and the United
States, researchers increasingly use the aborted child as a guinea pig for
risky experiments. One experiment, using an "artificial womb"
to prolong the painful dying of children born alive during late-term abortions,
wins a major award from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.1
1972: In Finland, American researcher Peter Adam uses a grant from
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to cut off the heads of living aborted
children and perfuse them with drugs to study brain metabolism.2
1973: Roe v. Wade removes all legal protection from unborn
children in the United States. Congress, learning of the fetal experiments
already conducted abroad by researchers like Dr. Adam with federal funds,
realizes that Roe has made it possible to conduct such barbaric experiments
on American soil. It therefore bans the use of National Science Foundation
funds for experiments on "a human fetus which is outside the womb of
its mother and which has a beating heart."
1974: Congress enacts new compromise legislation, banning federally
funded non-therapeutic experiments "on a living human fetus, before
or after the induced abortion of such fetus" until a new National Commission
for the Protection of Human Subjects can make recommendations on a permanent
policy. The commission is chaired by Dr. Kenneth Ryan, a longtime abortion
advocate who signed one of the pro-abortion Supreme Court briefs in Roe
v. Wade and pioneered the use of prostaglandins for late-term abortions.
1975: Over the objections of its sole pro-life member, David Louisell,
the 11-member national commission issues a report which becomes the basis
for new federal regulations on fetal research. While harmful experiments
are generally forbidden, there are several loopholes in the final regulations.
First, it is not clear whether unborn children intended for abortion may
be subjected to risks that would be unacceptable for other unborn children.
Second, the child born alive during an abortion who is not expected to survive
(called a "non-viable fetus ex utero" in the regulations) can
be subjected to any degree of harm or pain as long as his or her life is
neither shortened nor lengthened by the experiment; the commissioners claim
that unborn children before viability cannot feel pain in any case. Third,
a "waiver" clause provides that any experiment prohibited by the
regulations as too risky can nonetheless be authorized by the Secretary
of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) if the information to be gained is
seen as important enough to outweigh the interests of the fetal subject.
The regulations evade two issues: the regulation of research on dead fetuses
and fetal tissue is left to state laws, and experiments involving human
embryos produced in the laboratory are allowed only if found ethically acceptable
by an HEW Ethics Advisory Board.
1979: With the approval of a federal Ethics Advisory Board (EAB),
the "waiver clause" in the 1975 regulations is invoked to allow
funding for a destructive experiment on children intended for abortion.
Dr. Ezra Davidson tests the new prenatal diagnostic tool known as the fetoscope
on low-income black and Hispanic women in South Central Los Angeles just
before they have abortions, to see how often fetoscopy itself causes an
abortion. He finds that it does cause this in some cases. The EAB also reviews
the question of experimenting on human embryos produced in the laboratory;
it concludes that there are good arguments for finding some of these experiments
"ethically acceptable," but that the issue is still "legitimately
controverted." The board makes no recommendation on whether to fund
such research, leaving that decision to federal policy makers.
1980: After receiving written objections to federally funded human
embryo experiments from 55,000 Americans, HEW decides to use its funds on
less controversial matters; the EAB is allowed to dissolve and no embryo
experiments are funded.
1982: Reacting to the Davidson experiment and other abuses, the House
of Representatives votes 260 to 140 to ban non-therapeutic experiments on
live children before, during, or after an abortion, effectively negating
the 1975 "waiver" clause. But the bill containing this provision
dies in the Senate.
1983: A similar ban is approved by both House and Senate as an amendment
to the NIH reauthorization bill. But the bill is vetoed by President Reagan
for unrelated fiscal reasons.
1985: Congress finally enacts improved standards for fetal research,
correcting the national commission's errors of 10 years before. Children
intended for abortion, or those already aborted alive, are to be protected
from experimental risks to the same extent as children intended for live
birth. All use of the "waiver" clause for approving harmful experiments
is banned for three years, to allow a new Congressional Biomedical Ethics
Board to study the issue and recommend a permanent policy.
1987: NIH receives a grant proposal for fetal tissue transplants
using tissue from abortion victims. The Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS, formerly HEW) is asked to propose a procedure for considering such
requests.
1988: The Biomedical Ethics Board proves unable to conduct its study
due to an impasse over the abortion issue; Congress extends the ban on any
use of the "waiver" clause for another two years. Meanwhile, HHS
decides to places a moratorium on fetal tissue transplant research until
a new Human Fetal Tissue Transplantation Research Panel appointed by NIH
has studied the ethical issues. The panel's two vice chairmen, Dr. Kenneth
Ryan and Professor Leroy Walters, and another of its members, Professor
Patricia King, are all veterans of the 1975 commission which decided to
place no federal limits at all on fetal tissue research using abortion victims.
Among Dr. Ryan's qualifications is that he himself has performed late-term
abortions and experimented on the victims' brains. The panel invites Dr.
Ezra Davidson, who performed the unethical fetoscopy experiment of 1979,
to advise it on ethical issues. He presents his infamous experiment as a
model for incorporating ethical standards into research protocols. Ultimately
the panel votes 17 to 4 to recommend federal funding for such research,
claiming it will not promote abortion. However, 10 of these 17 sign an additional
statement proposing that if current elective abortions are not plentiful
enough to provide an adequate supply of fetal tissue, the federal government
should consider having abortions performed for the sole purpose of providing
tissue. The Bush Administration ignores the panel's recommendations and
leaves the moratorium in place.
1991: Congress votes to lift the moratorium on federally funded transplants
using the victims of induced abortion. But President Bush vetoes the NIH
bill because of this provision, and his veto is sustained by Congress. Meanwhile,
two pro-abortion medical groups (the American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists [ACOG] and the American Fertility Society) form their own
"ethics advisory board" to fill what they call the "moral
vacuum" left by the Administration - - on the assumption that a "moral"
policy will allow non-therapeutic fetal experiments. The ACOG spokesman
announcing the creation of the new board is none other than Dr. Kenneth
Ryan. This National Advisory Board of Ethics in Reproduction includes Dr.
Ezra Davidson among its members; another member, Patricia King, served on
the 1975 national commission and the 1988 Fetal Tissue Transplantation Panel
with Dr. Ryan.
1993: On taking office, President Clinton rescinds the HHS moratorium
on funding abortion-dependent fetal tissue transplants. Congress approves
a new NIH reauthorization bill funding such abortion-dependent fetal tissue
transplants. The bill also deletes from federal regulations the 1975 requirement
that proposals for experiments on human embryos produced in the laboratory
must be screened by an Ethics Advisory Board. Thus NIH acquires complete
freedom to fund experiments on such embryos. President Clinton signs this
bill into law. HHS provides $4.5 million for a fetal tissue transplant project
at the University of Colorado using the bodies of abortion victims.
1994: NIH appoints a new Human Embryo Research Panel to make recommendations
on the funding of various controversial experiments involving laboratory-produced
embryos: experiments in artificial twinning or "cloning," transplanting
ovaries from abortion victims, lethal experimentation on "spare"
embryos from fertility centers, etc. The panel chairman, Stephen Muller
of Johns Hopkins University, announces that anyone who opposes such embryo
research would be unfit to serve on the panel, because its task is only
to decide which experiments to recommend. Dr. Ryan, Professor King,
and other veterans of past pro-abortion advisory panels are again appointed
to help steer the new panel in its preordained course. In September the
panel releases its final report, and in December its recommendations are
unanimously endorsed by the Advisory Committee to the Director of NIH. President
Clinton says he will not allow funding of the special creation of embryos
solely for research purposes, but panel chairman Muller notes that this
will affect "just one little part" of the proposed research. Federal
funds would still be used to manipulate and destroy human embryos, as long
as the embryos were created using private funds or were originally designated
for reproductive purposes.
1995: Congress bans federal funding of all harmful human embryo experiments,
including those which President Clinton would have permitted, thereby negating
all the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel's recommendations. The funding ban,
included in the Labor/HHS appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 1996, prevents
"the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes"
as well as experiments in which human embryos are "destroyed, discarded,
or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed
for research on fetuses in utero" under federal law. The practical
effect is to prevent federal funding of experiments on human embryos outside
the womb generally.
1996: Congress renews its funding ban on harmful embryo experiments
for Fiscal Year 1997. A weakening amendment by Congresswoman Nita Lowey
(D-NY) that reflects the Clinton position (allowing destructive experiments
on "spare" embryos from fertility centers) is defeated in the
House, 167 to 256. President Clinton appoints 18 experts, including three
members of the defunct Human Embryo Research Panel, to a new advisory panel
called the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC). The Com-mission
begins discussing issues involving human experimentation and genetics.
1997: In February the announcement that scientists have used cloning
to produce "Dolly" the sheep from another sheep's body cell raises
new questions. President Clinton immediately instructs the NBAC to conduct
a 90-day study of the issue, "particularly with respect to the possible
use of this technology to clone human embryos." But the NBAC ignores
this part of the President's mandate, declaring that it will not "revisit"
issues involving "embryo research." Instead it issues a lengthy
report in June dealing solely with the use of cloning to create a "child"
(by which it means a live-born infant).
By the NBAC's definition, no human "cloning" has occurred so long
as one simply discards, or aborts, all human embryos that result from the
cloning process. Thus, when the President recommends new legislation in
June based on the NBAC's recommendations, what he really proposes is a five-year
ban on allowing cloned embryos to be born alive. Even during the five years
of this temporary ban, there would be no barriers to experimental cloning
and destruction of human embryos.
Seeing through this evasion, Congress again renews its ban on funding of
embryo research for Fiscal Year 1998, this time adding language to ensure
that the ban covers experiments in human embryo cloning. The House Science
Committee also approves a permanent ban on federal funding of cloning, after
soundly defeating a "clone-and-kill" substitute based on the NBAC
approach. Nonetheless, the Clinton Administration weakens language against
cloning in a new "Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human
Rights" being drafted by UNESCO's International Bioethics Committee.
As amended, the declaration urges only a ban on "reproductive"
cloning (which can be interpreted to forbid only cloning which results in
live birth). Thus the stage is set for a renewed congressional debate in
1998 on respect for the lives of human embryos.
Richard Doerflinger is associate director for policy development at the
Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.