Before last week, I had never heard of a company called StemExpress. But with the revelation that Planned Parenthood sells the organs of aborted preborn babies, more of us know about this company that acquires parts from the victims of abortion, processes those parts in their lab, and then sells them on their website. Here’s how they describe what they do:
StemExpress is a multi-million dollar company that supplies human blood, tissue products, primary cells and other clinical specimens to biomedical researchers around the world to fuel regenerative medicine and translational research. Founded in 2010, we offer the largest variety of raw material in the industry, as well as fresh, fixed and cryopreserved human primary cells.
Ed Stetzer helped spread the word about StemExpress by posting screen shots from the company website where they sell fetal liver cells. Stetzer also posted an image of the tiered payment schedule for people who work to obtain “specimens” for StemExpress. In other words, they pay bonuses to “procurement technicians” based on how many baby livers they can get their hands on. Then they chop those livers up in their labs and sell the cells, which is how they became a “multi-million dollar company.”
Here’s the thing. In the United States, it is illegal to acquire or sell fetal tissue for profit. Take a look at the relevant section of the U.S. Code:
“for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce” 42 U.S.C. 282g-2(a).
So, here’s my question. And let me emphasize that this is a legitimate question. If StemExpress transfers fetal cells for profit, why are they allowed to do business as a legal company in the United States? What’s the loophole? Is it because the livers are “donated” and then processed in such a way that they are not considered “fetal tissue” before they are sold? Are the fetal cells from fetal tissue not themselves legally considered fetal tissue? If not, how many cells does it take to come up with something that can be considered tissue? And if company employees are paid wages and bonuses (i.e., “valuable consideration”) for transferring the livers, heads, and hearts of aborted babies from Planned Parenthood to StemExpress, why are they not prosecuted under the law? I guess you can get paid “valuable consideration” to traffic preborn baby organs as long as you don’t take “valuable consideration” in exchange for those same organs. Yep, that makes sense. Wait…what?
Well that turned out to be more than one question. Funny how one thing leads to another. Seriously, though, someone help me. _____ Image credit: Ed Stetzer
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