As Maine is poised to legalize up until birth, an amendment was introduced to ensure that the body parts of those babies are, at the very least, not trafficked. But this common-sense amendment was voted down.
Sen. Eric Brakey introduced the amendment on Tuesday, which would have put a four-year ban on trafficking the body parts of preborn children abortion in Maine.
“Nothing in Maine law currently would prohibit an abortion clinic from selling or transferring fetal remains for research purposes,” he said in a speech on the floor, adding:
The tissue is valuable if you can find a biotech company willing to use it. And I’m concerned that, without this amendment passing, the underlying legislation will create a market demand for something very ghoulish.
For example, Dr. Shannon Carr, the abortion expert put forward by Governor Mills to promote the legislation, has some experience in this field. When Carr was working as an abortion provider in New Mexico, her clinic — Southwestern Women’s Options — had an exclusive arrangement with the University of New Mexico to provide researchers with fetal remains.
According to UNM’s logs, over 500 aborted babies were transferred from Carr’s clinic to UNM. The tissue then moved to other universities outside New Mexico, and at least one private medical facility.
As such, I am deeply concerned that the demand for late-term fetal body parts used for medical research will generate an incentive for elective late-term abortion, not motivated by any concerns for the health of the mother.
An undercover investigation from the Center for Medical Progress found that the abortion industry routinely sold the body parts of preborn children, haggling over prices and joking about the gruesome ways they killed.
Sen. Mattie Daughtry filed a motion to indefinitely postpone consideration of the amendment, and in a vote of 23-11, Daughtry’s motion passed. A similar bill — which would have given mothers the right to decide what happens to fetal remains — was voted down in 2021. Both the House and the Senate have voted in favor of legalizing abortion through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason, and it is expected that Gov. Mills will sign the bill into law.
