Pro-life group calls for Fauci's firing over NIAID funding of ‘barbaric’ experiments on aborted babies
A pro-life group held a rally outside the National Institutes of Health Thursday, calling for the firing of Dr. Anthony Fauci over the organization’s role in funding experiments that use aborted babies.
Students for Life of America held a #FireFauci rally outside the National Institutes of Health headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, calling for the firing of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a branch of the NIH. While Fauci has received criticism from conservatives for his directives to combat the novel coronavirus, pro-lifers are seeking to hold him accountable for his role in providing funding to the University of Pittsburgh, which was used to perform experiments on aborted babies.
Attendees at the rally carried “pink slips” to show their support for Fauci’s firing. The pink slips contained phrases including “Demand Fauci Resigns!” “Notice of Termination: Fire Fauci,” as well as “Notice of Termination” accompanied by “Name: Anthony Fauci” and “effective immediately,” along with the hashtag #FireFauci.
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The first speaker at the rally was Stephanie Stone, the Mid-East regional manager of Students for Life of America. “We are here on this hot day, outside of the NIH today, to call for President Biden to fire Fauci,” she said.
“Dr. Fauci, as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, the NIAID, has allowed federal tax dollars to fund what should be considered a criminal act that is currently … taking place at the University of Pittsburgh. Right now, medical researchers at Pitt are undergoing a series of tests,” she added.
“These tests involve taking the scalp of five-month-old aborted children and grafting them on the backs of lab mice. Researchers then observed as the rats and mice grew human baby hairs.”
Stone described the grant used to conduct the research as an “insane misuse of not only taxpayer dollars but an absolutely abhorrent waste of precious human lives.” According to Stone, “It’s shameful that this office has seen fit to put their stamp of approval on this project, let alone using taxpayer money to do it. Taking the lives of five-month-old [aborted] babies to graft their scalps onto lab mice is absurd, immoral and disgraceful.”
“We want to see Dr. Fauci fired for not only being involved but essentially giving his stamp of approval and our taxpayer dollars to something that is unethical,” Stone proclaimed. She called on the Biden administration to “fire Dr. Fauci and anyone involved in this inhumane scheme.”
Herb Geraghty, the executive director of Rehumanize International, which he said exists “to promote the protection of every human life from conception to natural death,” also addressed the crowd.
Geraghty, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, recalled how he attended a public hearing of the Pennsylvania House Health Committee on the experiments being done on aborted babies that caused him to feel “shame” about his alma mater: “I learned that my beloved university was committing some of the most barbaric attacks against innocent human life that you could even possibly imagine.”
He also lamented that the published report about the experiments involving aborted babies included “photographs in which the hair of the poor innocent babies can be seen growing on the backs of rodents.” He slammed the university’s experiments on babies up to 22 weeks gestation, noting that at that age, unborn babies have “beating hearts and rapidly developing brains, they can respond to external stimuli, and they have all of their internal organs.”
Under Pitt’s protocol for obtaining tissue from aborted babies, Geraghty noted that doctors conduct “labor-induction abortions” before “immediately putting the fetal remains on ice to transport them to the laboratory” where “the bodies are dissected to harvest the liver.” He maintained that “it is possible that some of these fetuses dissected over the years were, in fact, infants who were born alive and died shortly after in transport to the research labs.”
The final speaker, Alyssa Thoburn, serves as president of the Students for Life chapter in Fairfax, Virginia. Thoburn, a high school student who plans on attending college in the fall, agreed with the previous speakers that “we need to fire Dr. Fauci.”
“It’s one thing to accept what’s going on. It’s another entirely to know what’s going on, approve of it and fund it. These taxpayer funds are responsible for the senseless deaths of five-month-old babies and the use of their bodies for nothing more than the grotesque curiosity of medical researchers,” she added.
The event concluded as Stone read aloud a statement from Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins, who did not attend the event: “Abusing another’s body who has given no consent and has no power to object is wrong. This is exactly why we must stand against this injustice and hold accountable those who have perpetuated and funded this inhumane practice. We call on President Biden to fire Anthony Fauci for being involved in this crime against humanity.”
After urging pro-lifers to “make noise about this unethical research and about Dr. Fauci’s involvement in it,” Stone remarked that “this injustice needs to stop.”
The crowd chanted “We are the pro-life generation” while holding the pink slips and other signs expressing support for the pro-life movement and decrying medical research relying on the use of aborted babies.
The #FireFauci rally comes as the Biden administration has repeatedly expressed confidence in Fauci. At a press conference last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked if there was any circumstance under which Biden would fire Fauci. She bluntly responded with a “No.” Meanwhile, the president told a reporter that he was “very confident” in the head of NIAID.
In an interview with The Christian Post, Hawkins expressed hope that the event would add to “the public pressure being put on NIH right now … including the Biden administration to … dramatically re-assess the role of Anthony Fauci in our government and his leadership.”
While she acknowledged that the Biden administration is unlikely to fire Fauci, she stressed that the pro-life movement should not discount the effect of the “grassroots movement of continuing to beat … the drum of what’s happening with our government, making people aware of the ghastly research that we’re funding with our taxpayer dollars.”
In addition to the #FireFauci rally, Students for Life is also circulating a petition asking Fauci to resign, citing the “barbaric, taxpayer-funded research” that has taken place at the University of Pittsburgh and the fact that “Dr. Anthony Fauci’s office approved grants that funded it.” As of Thursday afternoon, the petition had accumulated more than 1,600 signatures.
David Daleiden, the head of the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress, expanded on the research involving aborted babies' tissue conducted by the University of Pittsburgh using taxpayer dollars during his testimony before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in early May. His organization recorded undercover video of Planned Parenthood officials discussing how they supply the university with the body parts of aborted babies that they use to conduct the experiments.
Daleiden told lawmakers that in addition to the $500,000 grant used to conduct experiments grafting the hair of unborn babies onto mice, “Pitt received a $1.4M grant from the NIH to become a distribution hub for aborted fetal kidneys and bladders and other organs in the NIH’s genitourinary development mapping atlas program.”
In his testimony, Daleiden noted that “Pitt’s grant application for this grant application from the NIH states that the university has unique access to a large number of high-quality aborted fetuses and can ‘ramp up’ delivery of aborted fetal body parts across the country.”
Appearing on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” last month, Daleiden suggested that the experiments conducted by the University of Pittsburgh using tissue from aborted babies might have broken the law: “The fact that they were using scalps from five-month-old aborted babies, that means the heads of those children probably needed to be intact in order to get the scalps, which is an indication that those are either partial-birth abortion or even infants delivered alive and whole.”
As Daleiden indicated, federal law currently prohibits the practice known as partial-birth abortion. The Partial-Birth Abortion Act was passed in 2003 and was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007.
For its part, the University of Pittsburgh has denied allegations of wrongdoing, with a spokesperson telling The College Fix that “the University does not obtain fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood, does not use any of its state appropriation to fund fetal tissue research and follows all laws and regulations governing fetal tissue research.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
