The following comes from an October 12 Federalist article. John-Henry Westen is a co-founder of Voice of the Family, an influential international coalition of pro-life and pro-family groups that defends life and family in the media. He is also a co-founder of LifeSiteNews.com, a leading daily news website on life and family issues.

Harvesting isn’t just for research

Planned Parenthood and its former partner StemExpress have argued that using dead babies for research is necessary work. This sympathetic Boston Globe expose highlights how this research has led to great strides in vaccines and other areas of medicine, though pro-life researchers correctly told my news agency LifeSiteNews that no altruistic end goals justify immoral means.

However, babies aren’t just harvested for “research.” Furthermore, harvesting isn’t just done by Planned Parenthood, or just in America. Indeed, it’s a standard practice of the worldwide abortion industry.

For example, a clinic in Ukraine was found to be using 12-week-old fetuses for cosmetics and beauty treatments for Russian women. Reports also indicate that in Ukraine, prematurely born babies have been sold for parts, and whistleblowers who exposed the cosmetics scandal were targeted by their colleagues. An investigator into the scandal—which may have included taking living born babies for experimentation—says she was fired for expanding her investigation.

Likewise, in 2006, a clinic in the Netherlands was found to be harvesting babies at 12 weeks’ gestation for beauty treatments for wealthy British women. The Karolinska Institute in Sweden has been experimenting on babies since at least the 1970s, according to various accounts, and a pro-abortion Latin America coalition may be involved in harvesting, as well.

Things aren’t any better domestically. Vicki Evans told me her dissertation showed a strong link between the cosmetics and abortion industries, and the pharmaceutical industry has used fetal cells for vaccines even as drug companies engage in similarly horrifying practices.

In 2010, pro-life groups raised concerns about a University of Wisconsin late-term abortion program that may have been engaging in experimentation. Most horrifyingly, aborted babies from Canada were used as a source of energy as abortionists shipped them to an incinerator in Oregon. These unborn children were qualified as “medical waste.” Once the media exposed this program, officials quickly shut it down. Similar practices have been found in Great Britain, and most recently in Indiana.

Numerous Planned Parenthood affiliates have failed to report sexual abuse of minors—minors whom their abusers often forced to have abortions.

Approximately 86 percent of Planned Parenthood’s non-government revenue that it defines as ‘health services’ comes from abortions.

Last week, Cecile Richards was forced to admit under direct questioning that Planned Parenthood doesn’t conduct mammograms.

The annual number of cancer screenings by Planned Parenthood have dropped by more than 50 percent since 2006, while the number of abortions has increased by nearly 50,000.

Congress isn’t going to defund anytime soon

Sorry, folks. Republicans don’t have the guts to take a hard line, Democrats are obsessed with forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions, and the funding process itself is a complete mess. Additionally, Republicans who rightly see government’s first responsibility as one to protect life seem to lack a long-term strategy.