They love to send letters…..

Senator Gary Simpson and Representative Daniel Short, the Minority Leaders for the Republicans in the General Assembly, have sent a letter to Delaware Health Secretary Rita Landgraf on Wednesday in order to take advantage of the current conservative push to defame and defund Planned Parenthood, thereby harming if not ending healthcare for women in Delaware. So once again, Delaware’s Republicans are attaching themselves to a national and radical social conservatism that has made the state Republican Party toxic in Delaware for the last 23 years.

They specifically want to know if Delaware’s Planned Parenthood clinics harvest or sell body parts or tissue from abortions as well and if there are any state and federal laws regulating the extraction, sale and research of fetal tissue.

“The point of this letter is not to engage in a discussion of ethics,” the lawmakers wrote. “As the stewards of taxpayer money, our goal is to gather information about Planned Parenthood of Delaware, an organization that receives part of its funding from the state.”

So they want the Secretary to do their homework for them, for they for themselves can discover the existence of any state and federal laws that relate to fetal tissue research, and they want to know if any legal procedures are being performed in Delaware. If I were the Secretary, I will give them a copy of the Delaware code, and instructions on how to use Google.

But here, I will do some of their homework for them, to give them a head start….

But Republicans and conservatives have long supported Planned Parenthood’s retrieval of tissue from legally aborted fetuses. They also support allowing Planned Parenthood to be reimbursed for the costs related to the retrieval[.]

Fetal tissue research is legal in all but a handful of states, and it has been conducted in the United States, with federal support, for decades, except for a brief moratorium on the use of National Institutes of Health funds in the 1980s. It is regulated by federal law, and was funded by the Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama administrations, most recently to the tune of about $76 million per year.

That law again is 42 U.S. Code § 289g–1. Ok, Senator Simpson and Representative Short? And here is a little history lesson:

Support for this research has been bipartisan. And individuals who are both anti-choice and pro-choice have benefited. Indeed, almost every American has benefited, in the form of vaccines for polio, chicken pox and German measles; and research toward treatments for blindness and furthering our understanding of cancer cells.

[M]ultiple federal advisory commissions have found fetal tissue research ethically acceptable. The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was asked to study fetal research and in 1975 issued a report, Research on the Fetus, that concluded that the practice was ethically permissible. Despite this, the practice has been caught up in the abortion debate. Unlike our use of organs from deceased adults, opponents have claimed that using fetal remains for medical research makes funders and users “complicit” in the underlying abortion.

In the 1980s, while research proceeded in other countries to treat Parkinson’s disease, the Reagan administration rejected a request for NIH support, thus beginning a moratorium on federal funding. President Reagan created a Human Fetal Tissue Transplantation Research Panel to review the research. It concluded that use of the tissue did not encourage ambivalent women to choose abortion, and the panel distinguished the moral analysis of abortion from the moral analysis of using remains for research. Like the earlier advisory committee, this panel found the research to be ethically permissible, provided that the decision to have an abortion was separated from the decision to donate the remains, and that tissue recovery did not affect the safety of the procedure for the woman.

This should have re-started the funding, and Reagan’s own secretary of health and human services later said he favored lifting the moratorium in light of this analysis. But it wasn’t lifted by Reagan or his successor, President George H.W. Bush. Patients and medical societies fought back, and their efforts led to provisions in the NIH Revitalization Act that specifically authorized federal funding for fetal tissue research. In 1992, the Senate passed the bill by an overwhelming 85-to-12 vote — with 30 GOP votes — and the House passed it 260 to 148 — with 43 GOP votes.

Republican supporters of the bill recognized the difference between opposition to abortion rights and opposition to research using fetal tissue. Sen. John McCain reportedly wrote, “My abhorrence for the practice of abortion is unquestionable. Yet my abhorrence” for Parkinson’s and juvenile diabetes “and the suffering they cause is just as strong.”

In the ’90s, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voted to lift the moratorium, but he now decries fetal tissue research, and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) was so supportive in 1992 that he reportedly attempted to talk Bush out of vetoing the bill. Though Upton was unsuccessful, President Bill Clinton removed obstacles to funding upon taking office, and Congress followed suit with legislation that set the conditions in force today.

And in terms of regulation of Planned Parenthood in general, these Republicans must have very short memories.

Planned Parenthood of Delaware came under scrutiny in Delaware in 2013 after former employees made claims about unsafe and unsanitary practices at its Wilmington clinic, including the organization’s failure to inform as many as 200 women that they tested positive for gonorrhea and chlamydia.

The News Journal reported that the clinic has also received citations from the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services and the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration, including violations related to blood-borne pathogens and employee exposure to contaminated needles.

As a result of those findings, lawmakers voted to require facilities that perform invasive medical procedures, such as abortion, to have independent, secondary accreditation[.] Since that time, Planned Parenthood of Delaware has been accredited by the American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities, Inc.[.]