For years the March of Dimes (MOD) has been boycotted by pro-life groups for its involvement in the abortion industry. Unfortunately, many well-meaning pro-life citizens continue to support MOD, not knowing one of the group’s methods of preventing what it calls “Birth Defects” is to promote abortion.
Necessary Abortions?
MOD was one of the major forces behind the development and widespread use of amniocentesis in the second trimester of pregnancy. Amniocentesis is a test commonly used to determine if an unborn child has a congenital abnormality, knowledge of which can facilitate the decision to abort “defective” children.
Pat Robertson of CBN and the Christian Coalition asked those with this philosophy, “Would we have been better off if there had never been a Helen Keller or Beethoven or Einstein — all of whom had “birth defects?”
Henry Foster, who was rejected by the Senate as President Clinton's nominee for Surgeon General, served on the March of Dimes' Medical Service Advisory committee. While on the committee, Foster admitted doing nearly 700 abortions following the results of amniocentesis. Foster also defended fetoscopic prenatal research as “clearly therapeutic” since “it was done for the same reason that we do amniocentesis, to decide whether or not the pregnancy should continue, and to provide a therapeutic abortion.”
Dr. David Nathan, Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard University, MOD grantee, and National MOD adviser, explained that one particularly elaborate international prenatal testing arrangement involving scientists in London, New Haven, and Boston was done in order that “knowledge go on, vital clinical testing go on, and when necessary, abortions go on.”
In a letter to Congress in 1978, MOD President Charles Massey wrote in favor of legislation to fund this genetic screening. Massey notes, “The financial cost of treating and institutionalizing our severely affected survivors is staggering; we cannot begin to measure the cost.”
MOD has given several grants for developing tests that can detect abnormalities in the first trimester. Prostaglandin abortionists Dr. Maurice J. Mahoney of Yale received $35,000 for research on chorionic villi sampling and for developing a prenatal diagnostic technique that would permit the first-trimester abortion of affected pre-born children. From 1989 to 1990, MOD gave $50,000 to Dr. Haig H. Kazazian of Johns Hopkins University, a staunch advocate of eugenic abortion, to perfect methods to detect, early in pregnancy, disorders such as beta-thalassemia, hemophilia A, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and cystic fibrosis — none of which is treatable in the womb.
Bizarre Experimentation
MOD has also funded fetal experimentation and fetal tissue use for more than two decades. In the early 1970s, MOD gave $19,000 to Dr. John F.S. Crocker of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to study congenital kidney abnormalities. This study involved “60 pairs of embryonic kidneys…obtained from human therapeutic abortions after five to twelve weeks' gestation.”
In 1973-74, MOD gave $9,420 for appallingly grotesque fetal brain metabolism studies in Helsinki, Finland on living, human babies aborted by hysterotomy and still attached by the umbilical cord to the mother. The babies were then decapitated and their heads were mounted on perfusion equipment. Arthur A. Galloway, MOD Vice President for Development, defended this research, saying it was “done legally and ethically” under Finnish law; that “the investigators did not participate in the decision to terminate pregnancy;” and “they were concerned with the ethics of discarding such fetal issue without seeking to find ways to improve the life and health of live-born premature infants.”
In the 1970s, a MOD grant was awarded to Dr. A. de la Chapelle of the University of Helsinki for research on maternal and fetal blood cells to detect genetic conditions early in pregnancy. Some cell sources for the experiment were obtained “by open-heart puncture of 10-week fetuses that had been aborted for various reasons, not connected with fetal diseases” (i.e., healthy babies).
A Pro-life Alternative
MOD published Strategies in Genetic Counseling: Reproductive Genetics and New-Age Technologies in 1990. The book states the March of Dimes' viewpoint that, “There is no substitution for a constitutional right to abortion which protects our fundamental rights.” Fortunately, pro-life leaders say, many Americans still recognize the fact that pre-born children, perfect and imperfect, are among those with fundamental rights to be protected.
Thankfully, there is a pro-life alternative for those wishing to support prenatal research. Those wishing to support life-supporting birth-defect prevention research may send donations to the Michael Fund, a pro-life genetic research foundation seeking to protect both unborn children with defects and children and adults with defects.
Because Down's Syndrome babies are often among those innocent babies killed by abortion, the Michael Fund places special emphasis on Down's Syndrome research. Columnist Rich Hinshaw says, “It is one of the triumphs of modern society that the life of the average person with Down's Syndrome has become strikingly normal — except that, unlike normal people, people with Down's Syndrome have been targeted for elimination.” For an up-to-date information packet about the organization and documentation of the pro-abortion aspects of MOD please call 412-823-6380 or write:
The Michael Fund
500 A Garden City Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15146
www.michaelfund.org
This article was produced by the PA Pro-Life Federation and is used by permission.
