Last week in Time magazine, after two weeks of fallout, Planned Parenthood found someone to support their questionable fetus part-selling practices.

“Why I Donated Fetal Tissue After My Later Abortion”: http://t.co/v6SECWZmFS via@TIME #StandWithPP

— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) July 27, 2015

The mother in question had an abortion nine years ago due to severe medical challenges with her baby. One can imagine just how hard it was to make such a difficult decision after wanting so very much to meet your healthy baby. I feel for Katie Lyon, and can imagine the heartbreak one would feel when faced with such bad news. I’m not here to reconsider the decision she made, but I do want to parse the claims being made because of a heartbreaking situation.

I feel fortunate that I had the chance to donate the tissue — I was able to turn my pain into something that could benefit someone else.

I want people who are politicizing the option to donate fetal tissue to think about the implications of removing this option. I want them to think about people suffering from diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS and sickle cell disease — and to consider those people’s family members who no doubt want their loved ones to live longer, fuller lives.

Why would anyone want to destroy the chance to save another person’s life?

This pregnancy, its termination, and subsequent donation happened more than nine years ago. It did not, unless the author failed to acknowledge, happen at a Planned Parenthood facility. It certainly did not occur during the period the fetal-harvesting videos reveal Planned Parenthood’s alterations of abortion procedure and financial compensation for baby organs and tissue. So her story has no tie to the “less than five” Planned Parenthood clinics that trade fetal organs and tissue for some monetary amount, as Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards confirmed on ABC’s “This Week.”

Let’s See Some Proof, Cecile Richards

Second, while I understand the desire to try to find something good in a tragic outcome, Lyon’s article doesn’t substantiate her claim that her child’s donation benefited someone. What change or discovery has come from “the spinal bifida research project funded by the National Institutes of Health” that she donated tissue to? None is mentioned.

This talking point has been rolled out repeatedly. Every time Richards insists lives may be saved from the baby body parts trade, she never highlights an actual scientific discovery: “What happens in this country, at Planned Parenthood and other hospitals is that, women in very few places are allowed to donate fetal tissue for life-saving medical research. Research, you know, developing cures for Parkinson, even the Ebola vaccine.”

In previous attempts to use fetal tissues to treat Parkinson patients, side effects forced an end to that investigation. As scientists continued with another technique that used dopamine nerve cells they obtained from fetal tissue, they noted that this line of investigation has its limits for Parkinson’s: “It is very difficult to obtain dopamine nerve cells from fetal tissue, he said. It would be far easier to grow the cells in a laboratory from stem cells, he noted. There have been no stem cell transplants as of yet for Parkinson’s patients.”

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