Brian McGuire | National Catholic Register | March 19, 2000
Washington—Missy Smith can face her friends again, after congressional hearings and a recent ABC “20/20” exposé.
The Washington, D.C., mother was so upset by November news reports of the fetal parts that she founded WAKE-UP — short for Women Against the Killing and Exploitation of Unprotected Persons — to sound the alarm. But friends would walk away from her when she raised the issue, thinking she was “weird,” she said.
“I could hear the skepticism in their voices when I would tell them about it,” she recalled.
Now, congressional evidence and the undercover “20/20” report confirm that baby body parts are being sold for profit. Said Smith: “It’s going to be like Niagara Falls when the code of silence on abortion is broken.” The U.S. House of Representatives began to hear testimony March 10 on a trade that insiders are calling an illegal $70-million-a-year business.
The U.S. House of Representatives began to hear testimony March 10 on a trade that insiders are calling an illegal $70-million-a-year business.
A day earlier, Commerce Committee Chairman Tom Bliley, R-Va., appeared on ABC’s “20/20” newsmagazine program to discuss his findings. He said that since first learning of the trade last fall, his committee had gathered enough evidence to determine that an illegal trade in fetal body parts has flourished in the United States since 1996, the year President Clinton issued an executive order lifting the ban on fetal tissue research.
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