Thank you for printing M.D. Harmon’s excellent opinion piece, “Unbelievable as it sounds, body parts from abortions change hands” (July 24).

Federal law prohibits the sale and purchase of human body parts as well as the alteration of an abortion procedure to facilitate the harvesting of tissue for medical research.

In two separate meetings captured on film, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s senior director of medical services and their Medical Directors’ Council president discuss harvesting fetal body parts with actors they believe are representatives for a fetal tissue procurement company.

Frankly, I fail to see how anyone, even an ardent abortion supporter, could view the films and still believe that the only fees being paid are to reimburse shipping charges, or that the abortion procedures themselves are not being specifically tailored to obtain intact specimens of whatever body parts are on the medical researchers’ pre-order list for the day.

The bottom line, though, is that even if PPFA were following federal law perfectly, there is still a problem at Planned Parenthood – in fact, at all abortion providers.

That problem is that the real “donor” of the hearts, livers, lungs or other organs is not Planned Parenthood, which will be collecting the monetary reimbursement, nor even the desperate mother who has become convinced that abortion is the best she can aspire to for herself and her child, but the baby from whom the tissue will be sliced.

There are humane solutions to the challenge of an untimely pregnancy, such as adoption or parenting with family and community support – solutions that do not involve aborting babies, whether selectively for organ harvesting, or non-selectively for disposal as waste.

Linda Milliken

Gray