PITTSBURGH, PA (May 7, 2021) — In a protest, press conference, and rally this Friday, anti-abortion grassroots leaders from the Western Pennsylvania region will demand an end to unethical research at the University of Pittsburgh that uses organs and tissues derived from preborn children who have been killed in abortions. The use of these fetal tissues in Pitt’s medical research was recently unearthed at a Pennsylvania House Health Committee hearing on Tuesday, May 4.
“Children, no matter how small, cannot consent to being killed, nor to donating their organs to science after the fact,” said Aimee Murphy, a 2011 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s Ethics, History, and Public Policy program and the founder of the host group, Rehumanize International. She continued, “We must stop treating humans and their bodies as mere means to an end. The University of Pittsburgh is walking in the footsteps of Dr. Parran and other gruesome physicians who have used medicalization to get by with grotesque and dehumanizing violence against the most vulnerable members of society.” Ms. Murphy, a resident of the Brookline neighborhood, will be speaking at the rally and press conference on Friday.
A broad-based coalition of pro-life organizations will be working together to protest outside the University of Pittsburgh on May 7 and regularly into the future to put pressure on the university administration and state legislators to end and prohibit research that uses fetal tissues procured from abortion procedures. The process to obtain fetal tissues for experimentation often involves completing labor-induction abortions followed by refrigeration preservation of the tiny cadavers until the bodies can be dissected at a laboratory to harvest the organs the researchers desire.
It is possible in some cases that the chosen method of abortion used in these cases may fail to kill the fetus while they are in the womb, instead killing the very young child using a death by exposure and neglect. Therefore, it is conceivable that some of the “fetuses” dissected over these years for medical research at the University of Pittsburgh were in fact infants who had been born alive and died shortly thereafter in transit to the research labs. This would be a violation of several Pennsylvania laws which require medical care be given and prohibit experimentation on children born alive during attempted abortion procedures. The pro-life coalition represented at Friday’s rally will be calling for a legal investigation into this process, and most of all an end to this cruel practice of killing humans and using their bodies for scientific experimentation. At the head of this coalition is Rehumanize International, working with national and local groups such as Students for Life of America, the Pennsylvania Family Council, Choose Life at Pitt, and 40 Days for Life Pittsburgh.
In addition to the gruesome methods of tissue procurement, the experiments that this coalition of organizations will be protesting include grisly procedures to humanize mice by surgically attaching the detached scalps collected from fetal humans who were killed by abortions as late as 18-22 weeks after conception. The speakers at the protest will be calling attention to the fact that the study of prenatal development has shown that at just 7 weeks after conception, unborn children have beating hearts and rapidly-developing brains, and that fetuses 18 weeks from conception can respond to external stimuli, including their parents’ voices and music. The protestors will be calling attention to these scientific facts in an attempt to rehumanize the fetuses killed by abortion and brutalized by the University of Pittsburgh.
Herb Geraghty, a downtown Pittsburgh resident and Executive Director of Rehumanize International went on to say, “As a proud Pitt graduate, I was shocked to learn the extent to which my alma mater participates in this type of medical and scientific research. As a tax-payer, I was horrified to learn that our government is actively funding this cruelty.” The study that necessitated the scalping of these children for medical research received a $235,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health, which is funded by taxpayer dollars.
EVENT INFORMATION:
Friday, May 7th at 11:00 AM
The sidewalk at the corner of Fifth Avenue & Bigelow Blvd in front of Soldiers & Sailors Memorial, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
FB event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/295241122198338
MEDIA CONTACT:
Herb Geraghty
Executive Director, Rehumanize International
(412) 419-1483