Santorum says he’d oppose any research on fetal tissue

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) said on Friday he opposes using fetal tissue in any medical research.

“You really don’t see a lot of that work being done anymore because most of that research has gone to dead ends,” the presidential candidate told host Chris Cuomo on CNN’s “New Day.”

{mosads}“I think all of the fetal tissue research that we’ve seen, there was big push on that about 20 years ago,” added Santorum. “But even before that, the morally suspect nature of how that tissue is gathered to me would say that you simply shouldn’t participate in that kind of research.”

Santorum was responding to reports of 2016 rival Ben Carson’s possible participation in studies using fetal tissue.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, vowed on Thursday evening that he has “not actually worked with fetal tissue.”

Santorum said on Friday that if he were in medicine, he would not risk involving himself in fetal tissue research on moral grounds.

At issue, he argued, is whether any samples came from abortions.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he said when asked by Cuomo if would participate in research similar to the kind Carson allegedly took part in.

“One of the things you saw in the Planned Parenthood tapes was that a lot of women are told, ‘Hey, look, if you have an abortion, good things are going to come from it,’ ” he said.

“And so it is used in some cases to, I wouldn’t say coerce, but certainly make women feel more comfortable about having abortions,” Santorum added. “And I think that is something I would not want to participate in.”

Carson is under fire after reports emerged Thursday that list him as one of four co-authors for brain tissue research in a 1992 academic paper.

The publication is controversial given research samples reportedly came from fetuses aborted at nine and 17 weeks of gestation.

Carson, who worked at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital, has made pro-life issues a focus of his Oval Office bid next year.

“To suggest that I’m in the laboratory doing the research or retrieving fetal tissue is nothing but propaganda,” he said on Thursday evening, adding that fetal tissue “can come from a variety of different places.”