By Bob Allen
The Southern Baptist Convention’s top public policy spokesman vowed to continue to seek defunding of Planned Parenthood after Senate Democrats blocked a proposal to redirect the $500 million a year in taxpayer funding that the women’s health care provider currently receives.
On Monday, Aug. 4, legislation introduced by U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) in response to undercover videos allegedly depicting Planned Parenthood’s role in procurement of fetal tissue for medical research fell seven votes short of a 60-vote threshold needed for cloture.
“I am disappointed that the Senate did not show the moral leadership to stop funding this violence,” Russell Moore, head of the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said in a statement released after the vote. “Now senators are on record as for or against, and the debate goes on. We will not rest until the fundamental protections of right to life and liberty apply to all, regardless of age, income, or stage of development.”
Last week Moore wrote leaders of both houses of Congress announcing his agency’s support for eliminating federal funding for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates.
In portions of his letter quoted by Baptist Press, Moore told Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) that opposition to government funding of Planned Parenthood “has only been exacerbated by the recent discovery of the callous collection — and apparent sale — of fetal body parts.”
“Federal tax dollars should not be entrusted to an organization that has chosen to engage in such horrific behavior,” Moore said.
Planned Parenthood denies breaking any law and describes the videos as a smear campaign by anti-abortion activists designed to entrap doctors.
Planned Parenthood’s clergy advocacy board released a statement July 28 denouncing “the politically motivated, heavily edited and secretly recorded videotape falsely portraying Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research.”
“The fact that the attacking organizations use fraudulent and extreme tactics to spread false allegations about Planned Parenthood’s role in tissue donation is theologically and morally reprehensible,” the clergy group said. “The scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam strongly and repeatedly condemn dishonesty and hate.”
While much-discussed videos being rolled out by the California-based Center for Medical Progress have pushed the issue to the forefront, Southern Baptists are long on record opposing the use of tissue obtained through elective abortion for medical research.
A 1991 an SBC resolution supported a government ban “on funding any transplantation of tissue from induced abortions for purposes of experimentation and research.” A resolution the following year reaffirmed “Southern Baptist opposition to the unethical practice of using fetal tissue from induced abortions in experimental research, whether privately or publicly funded.”
Similar statements were passed in 1993 and 1999, and in 2000 the SBC passed a resolution denouncing “the growing industry of buying and selling human fetal organs, tissues and cells.”
Moore’s predecessor, Richard Land, vigorously opposed a 1991 effort to lift a moratorium on research on tissue from induced abortions.
“This ‘Brave New World’ of fetal tissue experimentation will result in a significant increase in the harvesting of fetal life for speculative scientific, experimental purposes,” Land said in a May 1991 letter to selected members of the House of Representatives. “An approval of this bill with the fetal tissue transplantation provision would lower the United States Congress to the level of Dr. Joseph Mengele and his experiments in the Nazi death camps.”
President Bill Clinton, a Southern Baptist, rescinded a moratorium on federal funding of transplantation research using tissue from elective abortions implemented by the Reagan and Bush administrations on his third day in office.
On June 10, 1993, President Clinton signed into law the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) allowing research on the transplantation of fetal tissue for therapeutic purposes regardless of whether it is obtained through spontaneous or induced abortion.
That measure passed the Senate by a vote of 93-4. One of the four “nay” votes was by North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms, a Southern Baptist, while some of the politicians now pushing for defunding Planned Parenthood, like McConnell, voted in favor.
“This research has promising application for the treatment of life-threatening conditions including Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, Huntington’s and diabetes,” Clinton said at the signing ceremony. “At the same time [it] puts in place important safeguards to insure against possible abuses by providing a clear separation between research and abortion.”
Responding to a reporter’s question as he was stepping away from the microphone, Clinton added: “On the fetal tissue issue alone, I can’t tell you how many people I met all over this country in 1992, from both political parties, who came to my campaign and supported me simply because I wanted to put a scientific basis back in our decisions on fetal tissue — people with parents with Parkinson’s, with children with diabetes.”
Clinton said one person “who became a very close friend of mine” and went on to serve in his administration “in part came to my campaign because she had a child with diabetes.”
“So this is a very, very important bill,” he said.
Previous stories:
St. Louis mention in Planned Parenthood video riles Missouri abortion foes
Pastor calls Planned Parenthood exposé ‘journalistic distortion’
Moore hopes Planned Parenthood controversy will galvanize pro-life evangelicals