I testified at the Pennsylvania House Health Committee's hearing on "Fetal Experimentation" earlier this month.

Pennsylvania has a pro-life reputation, yet the University of Pittsburgh hosts disturbing and barbaric government-sponsored experiments on aborted babies: infant scalping, exporting fetal kidneys and killing live-aborted infants by organ harvesting. Mounting evidence connects Planned Parenthood to it all.

Despite the serious questions about these experiments and Pitt's inextricable relationship with Planned Parenthood, Pitt stonewalled lawmakers with an unprepared, newly hired witness who could not answer basic questions. Perhaps Pitt could not send a qualified witness to defend these programs, because what takes place in them is indefensible.

In one study published last year, Pitt scientists described scalping 5-month-old aborted babies to stitch onto the backs of lab rats. They wrote about how they cut the scalps from the heads and backs of the babies, scraping off the "excess fat" under the baby skin before stitching it onto the rats. They even included photos of the babies' hair growing out of the scalps. Each scalp belonged to a little Pennsylvania baby whose head would grow those same hairs if he or she were not aborted for experiments with lab rats.

Pitt's explanation? "Lab mice, not lab rats," the university's witness told the committee indignantly.

In fact, the published study used both rats and mice to grow the babies' scalps. How was this paid for? With a $430,000 grant from Dr. Anthony Fauci's NIAID office at the NIH. Pitt's witness implied that government NIH grants somehow did not concern taxpayers in Pennsylvania.

Previously, I wrote about another Pitt scientist who developed a nightmarish "protocol" for harvesting the freshest, most pristine livers from 5-month-old aborted babies in order to isolate massive numbers of stem cells for experimental transplants. This technique calls for aborting late-term fetuses alive via labor induction, rushing them to a sterile laboratory, washing them and then cutting them open to harvest the liver. This Pitt scientist received $3 million from the NIH.

At the hearing, Pitt asserted, without evidence, that this experiment was done only in Italy and ended in 2013. But the Pitt scientist responsible published further research in 2019 and described obtaining the same uniquely massive, two-billion-stem-cell yield from "complete" fetal livers harvested in Pittsburghindicating the same technique he outlined was still being used in America.

Starting in 2016, Pitt received $1.4 million in NIH grants to operate a distribution "hub" for aborted fetal kidneys and other organs in NIH's GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project. Pitt's grant application advertises the university's unique access to a large number of high-quality aborted fetuses and that "collections can be significantly ramped up."

Pennsylvania law makes experimentation on a living fetus or failure to provide immediate medical care to a born-alive infant a third-degree felony. Sadly, fetal experimentation, including on babies delivered alive in late-term abortions, has been documented at Pitt for decades.

Astonishingly, at and after the hearing, Pitt doubled down on a demonstrably false talking point: "There is no procurement relationship for tissue with Planned Parenthood."

Pitt's fetal research projects generally obtain fetal tissue through the university's tissue bank from local abortion providers. Two years ago, sources told me Pittsburgh was one of the major hubs of the FBI's investigation into Planned Parenthood's human trafficking of aborted fetuses. Planned Parenthood Western Pennsylvania (PPWP) abortion providers, who were on staff at Pitt, confirmed this information. When I was undercover, they told me they supply the university's tissue bank.

What is Pitt so afraid of admitting?

Since 2005, Pitt has been a major location for Planned Parenthood's Ryan Residency and Family Planning Fellowship abortion training programs. Some of the most notorious Planned Parenthood abortion doctors came up through the program.

Dr. Jennefer Russo, VP of Planned Parenthood Orange and San Bernardino Counties, supplied the aborted fetuses to the criminal company DaVinci Bioscienceswhich admitted to illegally selling the fetal body parts and was shut down by local law enforcement. She did her abortion training fellowship at Pitt. And there are many others.

Today, Dr. Beatrice Chen, PPWP's medical director, also runs the abortion programs at Pitt. Dr. Sharon Achilles, the laboratory director at PPWP and a prominent Pitt faculty member, is on Planned Parenthood Federation of America's National Medical Committee.

Shockingly, Dr. Chen is also vice chair of the university's Institutional Review Board, which reviews and supervises all fetal research projects. This obvious conflict of interest makes the Pitt-and-Planned-Parenthood lead abortionist a supervising participant in every fetal research project, contravening federal requirements that fetal researchers be separated from clinical abortion practice.

Planned Parenthood Western Pennsylvania, meanwhile, is a "contracted care" site for Pitt, receiving access to medical students, medical resources, medical infrastructure, patient population and referrals at the university.

We know this much, just from public sources: first, Planned Parenthood abortionists supply fetuses to Pitt; second, Pitt uses its access to fetal tissue and organs to get major NIH grant money; third, Planned Parenthood enjoys access to people and resources at Pitt.

Needless to say, a quid pro quo over aborted fetal body parts, funded by taxpayers, would be illegal. If what we know publicly about Pitt is damning, imagine what we do not know. Public officials at every level of government must unearth the full scope of the human trafficking and experimental use of aborted infants, and stop enabling these atrocities.

David Daleiden leads The Center for Medical Progress and is responsible for the multi-year undercover video reporting that exposed the trafficking of aborted fetal body parts at Planned Parenthood and other institutions.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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