Alexis Sneller of the Pennsylvania Family Institute tells AFN the controversy began when pro-lifers discovered Planned Parenthood's business relationship with an organ recovery company.
"CORE (the Center for Organ Recovery & Education), which is a tissue procurement company, was outside of this Planned Parenthood with coolers," Sneller relays. "They went in and they came out with these baggies and then put them in their van that had coolers. So, this raises so many questions that we as a taxpayer deserve to know the answers to."
The university has already been under scrutiny for conducting experiments with tissue from aborted babies, including grafting scalp skin onto the backs of rodents to grow hair.
"Earlier this year, and even last year, the question was raised to Pitt and Planned Parenthood what their relationship was, how they were getting scalps and different parts of aborted babies at Pitt for this research," the pro-lifer recalls.
They hired an independent law firm to investigate, but the panel, which included an attorney who graduated from Pitt, gave the university a clean bill of health and suggested that no federal laws had been broken. But some thought that report downplayed the situation, and 80 members of Congress wanted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct a separate audit.
Months later, the question of ethics remains unanswered.
