Late-term aborted baby brain given to New Mexico high school summer camp for dissection

A shocking story landed in the abortion debate as news broke that a New Mexico abortion clinic once provided a high school summer camp with the “intact” brain from a third-trimester baby for high school summer students to dissect. The request came from the University of New Mexico as was discovered as part of a criminal referral of UNM and SWWO to state Attorney General Hector Banderas.

The panel released dozens of pages of handwritten “Procurement Notes” kept by the UNM’s Health Sciences Center (UNMHSC).

A handwritten note from May 24, 2012 – on page 186 of the 291-page PDF – reads that that someone from UNMHSC “asked clinic for digoxin treated tissue 24-28 weeks for methylation study + because [name] wants whole, fixed brains to dissect w/summer camp students.”

The UNM runs a Dream Makers Health Careers Program (DMHCP) giving middle and high school students “unique opportunities” to learn about “the health professions.”

The students’ activities include “dissection of various specimens,” according to the program’s website.

photo Ivon19 via wikimedia commons

University of New Mexico has long faced scrutiny over its close relationship with Southwest Women’s Options, a late-term abortion facility located in Albuquerque. Critics have claim that this relationship amounts to a taxpayer-funded expansion of abortion in the region and SWWO provided aborted babies’ organs and tissue to UNM.

“The fashion in which the nameless UNMHSC employee custom orders baby’s brains” is “nothing short of depraved,” the New Mexico Alliance for Life said in its statement.

The procurement notes refer to other “specimens,” including an unborn baby aborted at 30.5 weeks and kept “intact.”

Others had “clubbed feet” or Down syndrome.

“Laboratory notes produced to the Panel reveal that a UNMHSC employee has collected aborted infant tissue from SWWO an average of 39 times a year since 2010,” the panel’s chairwoman, Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, noted in her letter to Banderas.

“Organs harvested include brain/head, heart, lung, eyes/retina, kidney, spleen, adrenal gland, intestines, bone marrow, and stomach,” she wrote.

“Documentation obtained by the panel in the course of our investigation reflects the transfer of fetal tissue from Southwestern Women’s Options to UNM for research purposes is a systematic violation of New Mexico’s Spradling Act,” Tennessee Congesswoman Marsha Blackburn says. “These violations occurred as UNM personnel procured fetal tissue from patients at Southwestern Women’s Options for research by UNM entities.”

University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center spokesman Billy Sparks told local media that university officials “categorically deny the Chair’s assertions in every respect.”

“The University of New Mexico and its medical providers are committed to complying with all federal and state laws, rules and regulations. This includes the New Mexico Jonathan Spradling Uniform Anatomical Gift Act,” Sparks told the Albuquerque Journal on Thursday night. “Contrary to Chairman Blackburn’s assertions, this act does not apply to fetuses from pregnancies that may have been terminated at Southwestern Women’s Options.”