October 22, 2003
Dear Concerned Citizen,

It was recently announced that medical researchers are trying to learn how to maintain the viability of ovaries taken from female fetuses destroyed in late term abortions. The purpose of these macabre experiments: to determine whether aborted babies could someday become sources for eggs for use in treating infertile women. If researchers succeed it could lead to the surrealistic outcome of baby girls who were never born becoming mothers.

Here’s the story. Scientists in Israel and the Netherlands have successfully kept the ovarian follicles of female fetuses destroyed in second and third trimester abortions alive for several weeks. They then experimented on these immature ovarian tissues with chemicals to determine whether they could induce them to develop mature eggs that could be harvested. The researchers announced that they are encouraged by their early efforts, although they admit that they have a long way to go before the ovaries of late term fetuses could be transformed into so many human egg farms.

We should all be shocked by this turn of events—regardless of our individual beliefs about the propriety of abortion. It is all so dehumanizing. If this research succeeds, we will face the prospect of late term abortion becoming seen as a potential boon to society. It could also provide an excuse for permitting the use of partial birth abortion—known medically as dilation and extraction—since that procedure leaves the destroyed fetus largely intact.

It is disturbing to contemplate, I know. But we must face the prospect that this research could result in the late term abortion of female fetuses becoming the first step in a supply chain geared toward providing human eggs to the medical marketplace.

Before you dismiss me as an alarmist, please consider these facts: It is currently illegal to sell fetal body parts but a few years ago Congressional hearings disclosed that a black market had formed in which for-profit companies sold organs, spinal columns, and other tissues taken from aborted fetuses. I have seen the price lists!

Given that some people will do anything if the price is right, and given that we have entered a cultural milieu in which some accept the notion that unwanted human life can be treated as a mere natural resource, might we one day not be willing to use the ovaries from aborted fetuses as sources of eggs?

Adding to this worry is the prospect that human cloning might one day become a source for tissues to be used in medical treatments: A process known as “therapeutic cloning.” In therapeutic cloning, a cloned embryo would be made of each patient to be treated, a process that requires the use of human eggs. After one week of development, the cloned human embryo would be dissected for its embryonic stem cells, which would be grown in culture and eventually injected into the patient in the hope that they morph into tissues that could rebuild diseased or injured organs or other tissues.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are more than one hundred million patients with degenerative conditions in the United States alone who could potentially benefit from therapeutic cloning. Thus, if therapeutic cloning ever were perfected—admittedly a big if—the demand for human eggs could skyrocket since tens of millions of them would be needed for use in the therapeutic cloning process. Considering that college girls can already sell their eggs for $5000 or more per donation for use in fertility treatments, if therapeutic cloning becomes a widely available medical treatment, there might be no upper limit to the price that the unscrupulous could charge for eggs derived and developed from aborted fetuses.

With this story, we face the very real possibility that late term abortion could one day become the foundation for a thriving market in human eggs. The time is coming—and I fear it is coming soon—when society will have to decide whether we are willing to permit such crass exploitation of human life.

Wesley J. Smith