Cleveland Reporter

GOP U.S. Senate hopeful Bernie Moreno (R-Westlake) sat on the governing board of the Cleveland Foundation when it made major grants to a Pennsylvania university research hospital conducting large-scale experiments with aborted fetal tissue, federal filings show.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) received a total of $660,398 from the Cleveland Foundation over four of six years Moreno served on its board, according to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 990 forms.

The Cleveland Foundation reported giving UPMC $363,699 in 2014, $68,010 in 2015, $73,322 in 2016, $76,087 in 2017 and $79,280 in 2018, all years in which it was doing public experiments in partnership with Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading provider of abortions.

“Pitt/UPMC has multiple Planned Parenthood abortion providers on staff performing abortions and training medical students to do so,” a Pennsyvania Family Institute (PFI) report said. “Planned Parenthood abortion providers admitted on undercover camera that they provide fetal tissue to the Pitt/UPMC fetal tissue bank.”

In an application for additional federal funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disesases (NIAID), run by Dr. Anthony Fauci, UMPC asked for $3 million "to significantly ramp up its fetal tissue collections," positioning Pitt as an ideal regional "distribution hub" for aborted fetal body parts, the report said.

"If that’s not alarming enough, Pitt has set racial quotas on their tissue orders. In their application, Pitt indicates their desire for half of the babies being experimented on to be minorities," it said.

Moreno is publicly "pro-life" and says he opposes abortion.

"Humanized Rodents"

A 2020 UMPC study published in Nature detailed one of the experiments, in which “scalps taken from humans aborted at the gestational age of 18 to 20 weeks of pregnancy at the Magee-Women’s Hospital and the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Tissue Bank" were grafted to rodents.

Campus Reform called the experiment "disgusting," reporting that the scalp tissue was obtained from “medically or elective indicated termination of pregnancy” at Magee-Womens Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), with the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Tissue Bank."

The Pennsyvania Family Institute described the baby-rodent experiments as "scalping babies."

“In the scalp grafts, fine human hair can be seen growing long and dark surrounded by the short white hairs of the mouse. The images literally show a patch of baby hair growing on a mouse’s back," it wrote.

The Cleveland Foundation has been a leading financial supporter of abortion clinics and pro-abortion political advocacy across Ohio.

Last month, a Cleveland Reporter analysis detailed 22 Cleveland Foundation grants to pro-abortion groups during the tenure of Moreno on its board.

The Republican Ohio U.S. Senate Primary, which pits Moreno against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R-Akron) and State Senator Matt Dolan (R-Chagrin Falls), is March 19.