Editor's note: This is WorldNetDaily's third and final exclusive report on the rapidly growing business of selling baby body parts. Part 1 exposed the legal loophole that has allowed companies to circumvent the federal law prohibiting the sale of fetal tissue. In Part 2, a whistleblower formerly employed by a fetal tissue wholesaler claimed that late-term abortions, partial-birth abortions, and even live births were routine at the abortion clinic in which she worked -- all in the pursuit of greater profits from the resale of intact baby body parts.

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The sale of baby body parts -- a "ticking time bomb," in the words of one prominent bioethicist -- promises to be an important issue in the next Congress, in light of recent revelations of the ghoulish new growth industry.

Condemning the fact that "a market has developed in the trafficking of baby body parts," Rep. Tom Tancredo, R.-Colo., is hailing passage of House Joint Resolution 350, a proposal urging Congress to conduct hearings on the trafficking in aborted baby tissues.

While critics like California Democrat Rep. Henry Waxman condemned the resolution, accusing the Republican leadership of "kowtowing to its pro-life right-wing with misleading and sensationalist rhetoric," Tancredo points out that "this practice has been outlawed for years."

The problem, said Tancredo, is that "private companies, acting as middlemen between abortion clinics and research facilities, have apparently found a way to profit in this trade."

HJR 350, approved by the House on Nov. 9, says in part: "That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the Congress should exercise oversight responsibilities and conduct hearings, and take appropriate steps if necessary, concerning private companies that are involved in the trafficking of baby body parts for profit."

Typical congressional comments from the HJR 350 debate included:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.: "The proponents of this resolution are attempting to corrupt medical research with the politics of abortion. ... The resolution is totally misleading, and that may in fact be its real purpose. Sale of body parts for profit, the resolution talks about. No one is going out selling body parts, arms, or legs for any purpose."

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.: "The House has not addressed this issue since 1993, when the NIH Revitalization Act was passed by this body. At that time, many of us were deeply concerned, and expressed it on this floor, that research using the shattered bodies of aborted babies could quickly lead to a greater number of abortions, particularly if the demand for their body parts grew among researchers. Those concerns appear to have been well-founded."

In late October, Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., introduced an amendment to the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act to require the disclosure of baby body part donations or sales from abortion clinics to researchers. Although his amendment was defeated 46 to 51, Smith plans to reintroduce his amendment as a stand-alone bill in the next session of Congress.

Bioethical debate raging
Predictably, pro-life groups are universally opposed to the use of fetal tissues from aborted babies. Focus on the Family, for example, has issued a position statement on its opposition to both human embryo research and fetal experimentation.

Focus "adamantly opposes the use of aborted babies for fetal tissue research. We regard it as unconscionable that unborn life is destroyed (or created) and used for purposes of scientific experimentation."

The statement also notes, "... we reject the premise that the use of aborted babies in such research is defensible on the basis that it may yield scientific breakthroughs to aid the living. This is a morally bankrupt rationalization of abortion. Indeed, we devalue all humanity when we prey on those least able to defend themselves for the supposed benefit of others."

Also of concern to Focus on the Family is the belief that use of fetal tissue from aborted infants or the use of embryos in experimentation will lead inevitably to further abuses, including the use of the eggs from aborted babies to be donated to infertile women, cloning, and the creation of chimeras -- humans with transplanted animal genes.

Another pro-life group, Lutherans for Life, is particularly concerned over the ever-increasing demand for fetal brain tissue for research experiments. Fetal brain tissue must be alive and intact when transplantation occurs, requiring that the brain be sucked from the fetus' skull while the infant is still alive. This method of extraction was perfected by Dr. Barry Hoffer and his associates. Hoffer was a member of the 1988 National Institutes of Health panel that recommended overturning the moratorium on fetal tissue transplantation.

Opponents of fetal tissue research also fear that increased demand for fetal tissue will change -- and indeed already has changed -- the way abortions are performed. Indeed, Dr. Bernard Nathanson -- an early pioneer of the pro-choice movement personally responsible for thousands of abortions, but who later came to abhor abortion and today actively promotes the end to its legal sanction -- predicted years ago that abortionists in the U.S. would eventually adopt certain procedures for the purpose of obtaining fetal tissue.

For instance, in Sweden, the abortionist cuts a hole in the fetus' skull as it appears in the cervix, then sucks out the brain to provide fresh tissue. Nathanson predicted in 1992 that a fetal "farm industry" would grow out of increased demand for fetal tissues in research.

Babies, fish, insects
Dr. Arthur Caplan with the Hastings Center, a New York-based ethics think tank, has observed that harvesting fetal tissue from aborted babies is a "ticking time bomb of bioethics" because of where it could lead -- and by reliable reports, already has led.

The harvesting of baby organs has long been debated among bioethicists. Ethicist Mary Ann Warren, for example, advocated the use of unborn infants as organ farms. As early as the October 1978 issue of Hastings Center Report, Warren supported the concept of a woman deliberately conceiving a child to abort it for its body parts to aid someone else. She observed, "While a fetus of five or six months, perhaps, possesses some flickering of sensation or some capacity to feel pain, this is equally true and probably even more true of creatures like fish or insects, which few would doubt the propriety of killing in order to save human lives. In such cases, a proper respect for the right to life requires that it not be respected where it does not exist."

Warren's view was supported by bioethicist Mary Mahowald who wrote in the February, 1987 issue of the Hastings Center Report, that the cannibalization of live babies "... is morally defensible if dead fetuses are not available or are not conducive to successful transplantation."

Babies, pork bellies, wheat
Dr. Jean Wright, a pediatrician with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Ga., testified before Congress in 1996 on the topic of fetal pain as it relates to partial-birth abortion. She is also a spokesman for the Christian Medical and Dental Society, a professional group based in Tennessee.

Wright told WorldNetDaily that since she has been following the debate over fetal tissue harvesting and abortion, it now makes sense to her why there has been such aggressive support for partial-birth abortion among those in the abortion industry: There's money to be made.

"We're taking a precious human life and turning it into a commodity, like pork bellies or wheat that you would bid for out on the Web," said Wright.

She says physicians who say they must use tissues from aborted babies are being dishonest, adding that there are numerous ethical ways of obtaining fetal cells. Cells can easily be obtained through cord blood at the time of the delivery of a normal healthy baby, for instance. These cells can be harvested and grown for research. "You don't have to go after discarded fetal tissue," said Wright.

Having studied the requests for fetal tissue from researchers, including the truncated time frames they require for harvesting to delivery, Wright has arrived at a discomfiting conclusion: Since the time frames are simply too short to be met through a normal abortion procedure, she says, many of these orders are filled through partial-birth abortions, "where somebody is literally standing there with the jars and equipment ready to move on it."