In the endless debate over abortion, finances are not a leading topic. But it is one which ought to be asked, as it might be possible to identify commercial interests in the billion-dollar industry which influence the debate. A licentiate thesis at the Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum by a San Francisco woman, Victoria Evans, has brought much of the inconclusive evidence together – although without successfully tracing the money trail from beginning to end.

Two sources of profit are often targeted in discussions of this sort: the profits on abortion procedures at clinics, and the profits on foetal body parts, anti-ageing cosmetics using foetal tissue, and drug industry research using foetal tissue. Roberts reviews evidence – most of it from the media. You can download the thesis, Commercial Markets Created by Abortion: Profiting from the Fetal Distribution Chain, here. In an interview with Catholic San Francisco, she said:

“I wanted to come up with a body of knowledge that nobody else had thought of before. In following the money and seeing who gets paid for what and how much they get paid, and how unregulated these areas are, I found a lot of facts that a lot of people wouldn’t have noticed or wouldn’t have thought to look for.”