{"id":181551,"date":"2018-04-22T14:01:41","date_gmt":"2018-04-22T18:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=181551"},"modified":"2018-08-15T11:05:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T16:05:29","slug":"grisly-research-abortion-survivors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/grisly-research-abortion-survivors\/","title":{"rendered":"Not just Nazis: The grisly history of research on abortion survivors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A look back at some of the grisly experiments once conducted on human abortion survivors will most likely make your stomach turn. This history shows the depravity a society can spiral into when medical research is allowed to advance untethered to any sense of ethical morality. Today, as videos of Planned Parenthood staffers haggling<\/a> over the price<\/a> of aborted baby body parts come to mind, a look into the fetal research market dating back to the 1930s reveals again how those who experiment on the bodies of tiny victims will often justify their actions as good.<\/p>\n

Davenport Hooker’s Fetal Experiments on Living Aborted Babies<\/b><\/p>\n

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Davenport Hooker (Image credit: University of Pittsburgh)<\/p><\/div>\n

From the 1930s until the mid 1960s, University of Pittsburgh anatomist Davenport Hooker conducted research on children who survived surgical abortion by hysterotomy<\/a>, a risky procedure similar to Caesarian section, where the doctor opens up the uterus with an incision and pulls the baby out.<\/p>\n

Forensic anthropologist Emily K. Wilson authored a paper<\/a>\u00a0in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, explaining how Hooker obtained the abortion survivors:<\/p>\n

Immediately following a surgical abortion by hysterotomy, performed on an unnamed woman at a nearby lying-in hospital, Hooker took the seven-week-old fetus to an observation room. He touched and stroked the face, body, arms, and legs as a motion picture camera recorded the fetus\u2019s corresponding movements and reflexes. Over the next thirty-one years, Hooker would\u00a0observe more than 150 fetuses and prematurely born infants in this manner. The project resulted in over forty articles and one nine-minute medical film and contributed information and photographic stills to numerous scientific and popular publications.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wilson also writes, “But while Hooker and the 1930s medical and general public viewed live fetuses as acceptable materials for nontherapeutic research, they also shared a regard for fetuses as developing humans with some degree of social value.”<\/p>\n

READ: New research on amniotic fluid is latest proof we don’t need fetal tissue<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

According to PittMed<\/a>, a publication of the University of Pittsburgh, “Hooker purchased a 35-mm motion picture camera. Having gained the trust and permission of the obstetricians at Magee-Womens Hospital, Hooker was able to observe therapeutically aborted fetuses removed by Caesarian section. Upon stimulating the skin, he recorded the degree of reflex development, and in January of 1933, created the first films ever made of human fetal movement.”<\/p>\n

Rutgers professor Johanna Schoen, an abortion supporter, adds, “In\u00a01952, he [Hooker] assembled his footage into a silent educational film called “Early Fetal Human Activity.” The film showed the muscle activity of six fetuses ranging from 8 1\/2 to 14 weeks.”<\/p>\n

Video from that film can be viewed below (Warning<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0– Images may be disturbing for some):<\/p>\n