V RaptureChrist Newsletter
July 15, 2003

A new discovery makes it possible for aborted fetuses to be used as a source of eggs.

Currently scientists are able to culture mouse ovarian tissue and produce fully mature fetal eggs, fertilize them in a test tube, implant the developing embryo in an adult mouse and produce offspring.

The same process will be possible for humans.  The ovarian tissue from these 'unborn mothers' will be used to produce human eggs that can later be fertilized with human sperm to obtain offspring. 

Because it is complicated to "harvest" eggs from female egg donors, scientists are advocating the use of aborted fetuses for ovarian tissue.  With a human egg donor they have to pump the woman full of hormones to get six eggs at each cycle versus with aborted fetuses it is possible to get 100,000 eggs.

Scientists have removed ovarian tissue from four month old fetuses. This tissue will be stimulated to produce mature eggs which will then be fertilized using the same techniques they used for mice.  It will be possible to create children whose "mother" was never born, because she was an aborted fetus. 

In a normal adult female, a human egg goes through four stages in its development {primordial, primary, secondary and pre-ovulatory stages).   After the last phase a mature oocyte (egg) is released from the ovarian follicle and sent down through one of the fallopian tubes to the uterus.

Currently scientists have cultured fetal ovarian tissue to produce eggs as far as the secondary stage.  At this stage is when the ovarian follicles start producing the sex hormones necessary in order to mature the eggs.

"We didn't have mature oocytes, we had follicles that changed from primordial follicles and survived. We had E2 [estradiol] secretion which means that we had more secondary follicles which means there was a development," said Dr Biron-Shental, a gynecologist from Meir Hospital-Sapir Medical Center in Kfar Saba, Israel.  The findings of this research were released at the yearly meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology in Madrid this week.

"This is the first report showing survival of second and third trimester human fetal ovarian follicles in culture with E2 production. E2 was probably secreted from the few secondary follicles in the cultured slices," she said.

Many people are outraged at this new research. 
Anti-abortion groups were quick to denounce the research. Nuala Scarisbrick of the organization Life said the study was morally repugnant. "Who would want to know that their mother was an aborted baby?" she said.

Scientists have achieved another "breakthrough" by mixing human cells from males and females to create "she-males".