Stem cell research. How were stem cells found?

Certainly controversial if the source of the stem cells were coming from aborted fetuses -- personally, I find it despicable. But when collected after birth, stem cells are controversy free for most people, including myself. I know that Yamanaka factors are a set of genes that have the capability of turning somatic cell into pluripotent stem cell, but I'm not sure how effective they are in comparison to stem cells. Based on the article I referenced below, it seems Yamanaka induced cells are generally less effective.

Advantages and limitations of iPSCs technology.

Advantages	Limitations
Eliminates ethical issues and religious concerns associated with ESCs use	Efficiency of reprogramming is generally low (Takahashi & Yamanaka, 2006; Takahashi et al., 2007; Lowry et al., 2008; Huangfu et al., 2008b)
Risk of immune rejection is reduced (Guha et al., 2013)	Tumorigenesis (Okita, Ichisaka & Yamanaka, 2007)
Donor cell is easily and non-invasively obtained, no embryo destruction	Risk of insertional mutagenesis from virus based delivery methods (Takahashi & Yamanaka, 2006; Takahashi et al., 2007; Yu et al., 2007; Okita, Ichisaka & Yamanaka, 2007)
Accessible to large number of patients, unlike ESCs limited by ethical concerns	Increased chances of development of diseases due to factors used (Hochedlinger et al., 2005; Park et al., 2008b; Ghaleb et al., 2005; Kuttler & Mai, 2006)
Personalization of treatment with patient-specific stem cells and drugs (Chun, Byun & Lee, 2011)	Very early days in this field, more basic research are needed
Use for disease modelling-they carry the same disease-causing factor as the patient	Complex and polygenic diseases are difficult to be modeled
High-throughput screening for drugs and toxicity prediction (Wobus & Loser, 2011; Choi et al., 2013)	High costs associated with production and characterization of each cell line
Allows for gene targeting and gene editing technology to correct mutations (Choi et al., 2013)	Suboptimal standardization (Pappas & Yang, 2008). Stringent protocols are still needed

Stems cells aren't attained from the afterbirth? Only aborted fetuses? Even if only fetuses, where is the controversy if the abortion was going to happen regardless?

Certainly, my post didn't suggest otherwise I hope.

Collecting the remains of a fetus is unethical for a number of reasons. I will share a few that come to mind. Abortion clinics (or those in the pharmaceutical industry) may do everything in their power to incentivize abortions for the purpose of collecting more stem cells for research purposes. Given that pharmaceutical industry makes up a larger portion of the USA's GDP, they have a major influence to lobby for laws that promote abortions (interestingly, a lot of that is cloaked under "advancing women's rights", when in actuality only harms women and society in the long run). Thus, if more abortions are performed, this will lead to more stem cells collected, which leads to more research, and this ultimately leads to more profits for the pharmaceutical industry. The same can be said about the doctors who are performing the operation; rather than having an honest conversation with the patient regarding the outcome, they may quickly convince the soon-to-be-mother to have the abortion so that the remains can be sold to the highest bidder. Furthermore, Christianity makes up 1/7 of the world's population, and more than 60% of American; most Christians believe that human life is sacred, even if its only a few hundred cells large. Profiting from the remains of a murdered human sets a very low precedence to the importance of human life. Where I live, people are given the option to have their organs donated when they die (they may respectfully choose not to); that same dignity should be universal to all humans, including the unborn.