To The Editor:
I was inspired and grateful to read your Thursday, August 20, editorial – “Politically convenient scapegoat." You put forward the facts on Planned Parenthood and the GOP's major effort to defund this organization. They have been chipping away at Planned Parenthood since the day Roe v. Wade took effect. It is a cheap publicity trick aimed at discrediting a group that has provided reproductive health services to many low-income and poor men and women.
Surely, if they want to increase abortion rates, close the doors on Planned Parenthood and that will send women to the back alleys and butchers. It will increase sexually transmitted diseases and prevent cancer-screening procedures. Do they really want to eliminate contraceptives to poor, impoverished, single moms and teenagers? At one time this was a bipartisan agreement, starting with Eisenhower, Nixon and followed through with the Reagan administration. Republicans and Democrats were in unison on providing reproductive health care.
In regard to fetal tissue being used in research, this has been done for years. Its study and use of fetal tissue helped produce the polio and rubella vaccines. It is used in the diagnosis of fetal defects and fetal diseases. It is used to treat diseases in transplantation, injected into the pancreas and brain tissue. In more recent years it is being used to treat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Fetal tissue use, as with other tissue (read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by R. Skloot), has high guidelines and is federally regulated. We cannot stop the many medical advances that have occurred and are ongoing. We have all benefited from this research. The alternative is to discard, throw into medical waste and incinerate, the fetal tissue. Is this a sensible choice. I think not.
Carole Crossman
Warren
