What is Pro-life today

The worst assault on the unborn in the past two years was development of covid vaccines and mandates, which sought to normalize aborted fetal tissue use in our medical products across the board and going forward. Monoclonal antibodies were developed using humanized mice (= using aborted fetal cells). Abortion has become industrialized and institutionalized, and most of our "pro-life" leaders pay little or no attention and even seek to urge us to go along.

The worst assault on marriage, which is the surest protection of the unborn, was Amoris Laetitia and its contradiction of millennia of Catholic teaching and the very words of Our Lord in Scripture (see Mt 19). The world will go wrong if the Church doesn't clearly proclaim the truth. Most of our "pro-life" leaders are silent on the *necessity* of a return to basic morality and Christian standards on marriage, even praising the Pope's document.

This is why I have issues with many of our "pro-life" leaders. They raise money, they speak loudly, but where are they in the real fight? Before you send money to a pro-life cause or leader, check to see if it or he or she is in the fight that's going on right now. If that leader has undermined these important matters, don't give your money or spend your moral capital defending that person or cause.

One woman's journey on a medical question

I urge you to read this post from Leila Miller, on her honest and self-accusing look at how she came to face the moral and political issues surrounding the question of vaccination, something that, as a person close to many medical professionals, she took for granted as being good and trustworthy. She writes:

My first child was born in 1991, and I did not hesitate to vaccinate her on schedule, just as I did with the next two children. About a year after my third child was born, the chickenpox vaccine came out to much fanfare, and I remember hesitating about that one. I wondered why it was such an important inoculation, because all of my generation had gotten chickenpox, and it was really not a big deal (aside from the itch)...

... As the years went by, all my children received all their shots on schedule—until the HPV vaccine (GARDASIL) came out. That one was a game-changer for me, as I was finally willing to reject one of the recommended vaccines. An injection to prevent a sexually-transmitted virus that might cause a highly curable cancer was a bridge too far. The hype around it did not make sense to me. I was not alone in questioning the shot, and several other pro-vaccine friends refused it for their children as well. 

... [however,] I still sat in judgment of a couple of friends who didn’t want their kids to get any shots. I had less judgment for those who were on a “delayed schedule,” but I still thought their caution was unnecessary. The “crunchy” Catholics, I admit, made me roll my eyes. Sure, reject the shots dealing with sexual transmission. I get that. But measles? Measles was making a comeback! We needed to be smart and sophisticated, not rubes and ignoramuses. 

I believed that the “anti-vax” sentiment was dangerous to society.  

... But there was always something bothering my conscience. Throughout all the years of vaccinating my eight children (and all ten of us getting our flu shots every year), there was an underlying ethical issue that I tried—mostly successfully—to ignore. .. that most vaccines in use were morally compromised, as they were produced by using the bodies of aborted human children. In other words, produced via a sophisticated cannibalism. I also learned the Church’s stance on the use of those abortion-tainted vaccines, namely that if there is only “remote material cooperation” involved, the shot may (not must) be taken. However, for a Catholic who makes the decision to take the shot, there is a moral obligation to speak out, to object, to demand the creation of an ethical alternative, and to make it difficult for the pharmaceutical companies to continue to make unethical vaccines. 

...  And then it was just a few years ago, probably a year or two before the Covid cult and vaccine idolatry, that my dear friend Leila Marie Lawler (the “other Leila”) started telling me that certain blue states were working to make it illegal for parents to opt out of vaccines for their children. Parents’ rights would be stripped, and no religious or conscience exemptions given for those enrolling in public schools. She gently warned me that power was changing hands from the parent to the state, and I needed to get on this bandwagon, and quickly. Once this blow against freedom and parental rights was enacted, there would be no going back... 

... With horror, I understood the obvious implications, and then I proceeded to … hide my head in the sand. I did nothing and said nothing publicly. It disturbed my peace to think about it, so I pulled a Scarlett O’Hara: I’d think about it another day. 

Read the whole thing. 

And when you have finished, I ask you, beg you, to watch the seven-minute video embedded here, especially if you doubt the moral centrality of the use of aborted baby cells in the research and development of these products (and more). Watch the body language of Stanley Plotkin, "godfather [sic] of modern vaccines." Watch his hands and eyes when he says this, if you are sure that the use of aborted babies in medical products is safely in the past:

The Catholic church has actually issued a document on that which says that individuals who need the vaccine should receive the vaccines regardless of the fact and that, uh, that I think it implies that I am the individual who will go to hell because of the use of aborted tissues, which I am glad to do. (emphasis added)

 

The aborted fetal cell research world you know nothing about

This Crisis article by Monica Seeley: Why the Blackout on Fetal Tissue Research Among Pro-Lifers? offers a useful survey of the use of aborted fetal tissue in Covid vaccines. It's important to tell the truth about how these cell lines are developed and how our medical system is corrupted by them, taking our consciences with them -- to the point that even those opposed to abortion refrain from their mention.

I have posted a lot about this issue (you can see the archive here -- this post has information challenging one common assurance, that DNA from the source does not end up in the vaccine itself).  

There is much more to be done to expose what can only be described as a huge industry, one poised to exceed its already large share of the economy -- the monetization of health in all its aspects. (For more on this, unfortunately behind a paywall in the Wall Street Journal, see "Will We All Soon Live in Cancerland? New technologies promise to help us discover more cancers in time to treat them. But they also risk ushering even the well into an all-encompassing kingdom of the ill.") 

As the populace is overcome by fear of illness, the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance complex stands to gain, especially by offering -- or mandating -- products that manipulate the very genetic processes of our bodies. 

Covid vaccines have provided the pretext for forging ahead into this ghastly realm. Despite protests from self-appointed ethical gate-keepers like Fr. Matthew Schneider, LC, it really is this particular virus and no other that has incentivized aborted fetal tissue. This shift is distilled in a March 16, 2021 -- and the date is significant, as it marks the rollout of the Covid vaccines -- article in the MIT Technology Review: Scientists plan to drop the 14-day embryo rule, a key limit on stem cell research. 

Because this article is technological, not polemical, it contains information that is normally kept away from the public. I urge you to read it, as it reveals a world far from the emotion-laded one we are carefully restricted to when we discuss abortion, the world of difficult choices made by suffering women in hard situations, the world of abortion as a misguided remedy for a personal problem. Instead, it puts us squarely in a different world of trafficking in human flesh, of the life and death of little ones in the clinics and in the labs, for medical research purposes:

Because embryo research doesn’t receive federal funding in the US, and laws differ widely around the world, the ISSCR [International Society for Stem Cell Research, "an influential professional society" that sets voluntary guidelines] has taken on outsize importance as the field’s de facto ethics regulator. The society’s rules are relied on by universities and by scientific journals to determine what kinds of research they can publish...

 The 14-day limit arose after the birth of the first test-tube babies in the 1970s. “It was ‘Oh, we can create human embryos outside the body—we need rules,” says Josephine Johnston, a scholar with the Hastings Center, a nonprofit bioethics organization. “It was a political decision to show the public there is a framework for this research, that we aren’t growing babies in labs.”

The rule stood unchallenged for many years. That was in part because scientist couldn’t grow embryos more than four or five days anyway, which was sufficient for in vitro fertilization.

Note that although the scientists are discussing embryo use, what is really happening, ultimately, is abortion, the deliberate ending of human life.

According to Ishii, new experiments “might ignite abortion debates,” especially if the researchers develop human embryos to the point where they take on recognizable characteristics like a head, beating heart cells, or the beginning of limbs.

During the Trump administration, embryologists endeavored to keep a low profile for the startling technical advances in their labs. Fears of a presidential tweet or government action to impede research helped keep discussion of changing the 14-day rule in the background. For instance, the ISSCR guidelines were complete in December, according to one person, but they still have not been published...

“I agree the rule has to be changed, but it should be done in an incremental manner, on a case-by-case basis,” says Alfonso Martinez Arias, a developmental biologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, who thinks researchers should ease their experiments forward a day or two at a time so they don’t lose public support. “My view is opening up too fast could allow very poor science,” he says. “I do worry about getting a flood of experiments that do not help us.”...

“We would have to ensure they develop normally, and to do that you have to study them beyond 14 days,” says Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University, who has argued in favor of easing the rule. “You need to study that embryo as long as you can.”

You should know that this is just one small corner of this industry. It's so vast, so global, that a dedicated, hidden supply chain exists just to keep it in motion. This is the industrial reality that even pro-lifers are ignorant of, and that apologists for the system shore up (such as, prominently, Fr. Matthew Schneider, LC, whose articles have provided cover to the leaders in the Catholic Church for support for participation in vaccine mandates, and to whom I have conveyed all this information on numerous occasions). 

As Seeley's article makes clear, the use of harvested organs will only grow. The technology to do so is very much in place and has been for a while; as the MIT article demonstrates, it was somewhat restrained by a combination of self-limitation and perceived political pressure. With Covid mandates in place, imposing a demand for gene therapies derived from fetal cells, the financial incentives are bursting the seams of the corporations and institutions that benefit. 

There is only one way to restrain this growth industry that depends on death, and that is to remove the demand. The horrors will stop only when information about what is going on is no longer kept from people of good will, and when they -- we --  are moved to refuse to participate -- to refuse to benefit from evil.

Cooperation with evil, a parable

I've been trying to find an example that would illuminate the aborted fetal cell issue and our responsibility towards it, the issue of what Don Pietro Leone calls "a social and universal structure of sin: that of the treatment of man as an object to be used, abused, and disposed of at will." 

For your consideration: The Mafia. 

Suppose your village is run by an organized crime mob. You are a truck driver and you must support your family. Your friends are butchers and bakers and grocers and teachers and construction workers; they must all support their families.

You all try to stay away from the main workings of the crime family, yet to get along you must do things ("cooperate") with their plans. Deliveries have to be made, houses have to be built, and so on. 

Normally you manage to stay away from criminal activity, but sometimes you are asked to drive your truck and it is not an offer you can easily refuse, so to speak. 

Your conscience troubles you occasionally, so you talk to the priest. 

He too is maintaining his position in this village by having a church for people to go to; and he too has to get along with the crime family on a certain level. He sees the good in baptizing their children and giving the Last Rites to the elderly. He tries to give homilies that are not too vague, but these do end up being about the importance of loving God and giving to charity; not very often does he mention the sin of stealing, for instance. One thing is that sometimes he receives quite lavish gifts from The Family, especially after a big wedding. His life is not uncomfortable.

When you go to confession with this priest, he assures you that you are doing your best. "God will forgive you, and it's not as if YOU are committing these sins; you are only driving the truck, and only rarely for them."

He may even explain to you that there are various ways of cooperating with evil, and some are so remote as to not involve the person in complicity with that evil. Besides, there is the good of supporting your family, carrying on your good work of being an important part of the supply chain for the village, and living your life undisturbed. Besides, we are meant to live in the world, and if we try never to have anything to do with any evil, we simply can't function.

This is why the Church has developed a way of thinking about getting along in a world full of ambiguities, he says.

But the truth is that this village is not thriving. The Family has gotten really strong as its younger members have stepped up and claimed their own share in the spoils. There are now multiple centers of control that have to be juggled and fewer places to hide. As time has gone on, more and more of the businesses are run by or receive backing from The Family. The schools too -- the high school just got a beautiful new playing field, financed by the Don.

People live in fear and this fear plays out in different ways, none of them doing anyone much good. Some people simply cower, really afraid that they will become victims. Others, wishing to have peace, go about their business but live with the knowledge that their children may very well be drawn into a bad life. Some want to advance in comfort or position and engage in flattery, sometimes carrying out the more peripheral of the criminal activities going on. These then take out their petty worries and troubles on the others, those weaker than they, or further from the inner circle they wish to inhabit; in short, they become bullies in the service of the mobsters. There is a definite predatory tone, a real but unspoken power structure, to life in this village.

You realize one day while you are driving down the road that while it is true that you are not to blame for the crime family's deeds, without people like you they could not continue -- if enough of you decided not to cooperate. And without doing something, your village will descend into rather a hellish situation. You can already see it happening, now that your children are older. 

But this is the problem! How can a village go from one or two people listening to conscience to a large enough group being willing simply to stop living in a way that harms the common good? How to gain enough numbers to be effective against so much power? How can you, how can one person, do anything when the evil is so much a way of life?

There is no other way than for the one person to decide not to go along, no matter what the consequences. He must abandon the "levels of cooperation" way of looking at things because the situation is not anymore about needing to get along with all sorts of people; it has become a matter of having nowhere to turn without coming up against real wrongdoing. 

Having decided, he can then speak to the others if he has the opportunity, but they will not be convinced unless he actually does something that goes against his short-term well being. He doesn't have to have every step figured out and he may be surprised at how God guides him. It starts with the conviction, though, not to cooperate if he can help it. If he can find friends, they can accomplish right action and the defeat of evil.

Or he may convince no one and change nothing, but at least he has followed God's Law.

Thus do the saints act; thus did Our Lord act in His Passion. We are not here to go along with evil but to bring good into the world and to be with the Good God in heaven. 

Chains of evil

Don Pietro Leone: The COVID 19 Vaccination Debate: Chains of Evil

1.   Extraction of a child from the womb before birth;

2.    Denial of baptism, so debarring him or her from Heaven;

3.     Torture;

4.     Theft of body parts;

5.      Murder of the child; [yes; the child must be alive for his tissues to be useful -- LML]

6.      Disposal of the rest of the body;

7.      Manipulation of body parts;

8.      Marketing of body parts;

9.      Desecration of the child in instances (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) and (viii);

10.     Violation of the child’s rights in all instances.

 

In a word, we are speaking of a social and universal structure of sin: that of the treatment of man as an object to be used, abused, and disposed of at will. This structure, which is the materialistic, hedonist legacy of the ‘self-deifying atheism’ of the present age, is being built, like some defiant monster of modern architecture, on the ruins of what was once that resplendent mansion of holy matrimony, established by Christ Himself  to perpetuate His love for the Church in Christian couples, for the procreation and sanctification of children.

Of this mansion there now remains little more than the sexual instinct, together with its delicate, fragile, and ever more rarely blossoming flower of human life: both increasingly channelled to inhuman, heinous abuse. It is to protect this inchoate human life and to rebuild holy matrimony to its former glory that we must stand up, strong in the Faith and in the trust in Divine Providence 16: to break the world free from the ‘money-changers of dead bodies’ 17 and from the paralysing chains of Satan.

As to #10: the child's rights are violated and those complicit are also harmed; it harms them to be part of this chain of sin. 

It's a good essay -- read it all.

Do we proceed under the right method?

An important essay that examines the reasons given to accept vaccines (and any product) that uses aborted fetal cells, from Michael Pakaluk: 

Why I Signed “To Awaken Conscience”

In ethical questions, one has to follow the right method. Right method does not mean coming up with an argument that seems obvious to you, even if it implies that lots of thoughtful people are deluded. This is how the EPPC signatories proceed. It’s obvious to them that only the abortions in the past could be wrong; these are remotely distant. Therefore, only forward-looking effects can be ethically relevant now. And, so long as one limits oneself to using “immortalized cells,” there can be no such effects.  

So they say. I hold that every step of this reasoning is flawed. But more importantly, their method is flawed. If, on their view, past statements of the Pontifical Academy of Life, the CDF, the U.S. Bishops, and many other thoughtful “pro-life scholars,” such as those at the Charlotte Lozier Institute and the National Catholic Bioethics Center, end up being not simply mistaken but actually insanely deluded, then they’ve made a wrong turn. Their view cannot be correct, because it does not “save the appearances,” as Aristotle would say.  

We are somewhat hemmed in by the insistence on a certain approach of theologians who are bound and determined that we take the vaccines. But is their framework valid? Before we assent to the discussion, we have to decide if it's the discussion that offers answers:

First, we need to clear up some confusions involving Liguori’s distinction, from his Theologia Moralis, between “formal” and “material” cooperation. That distinction is useful only when cooperation is verified, and one wants to know what sort of cooperation it is. 

Michael thinks they have the wrong end of the stick: 

For Catholic ethicists to assure us solemnly, as some have done, that we can licitly take the “abortion tainted” vaccines, for the reason that our material cooperation with abortions in the past would be “very very remote,” is philosophical foolishness of the highest order.

Read the whole thing to find out why from a philosophical point of view.

I believe the theologians err by falling into the trap of legalism, which takes as given that the thing will be done, and merely seeks a path of reasoning that shows that it can licitly be done. Is this how we want to live? Or do we want to do good.  

Bishop Schneider clarifies the moral issue

Today Crisis has a powerful article by Bishop Athansius Schneider: Resisting Abortion-tainted Vaccines and the Culture of Death.

Anti-Christian world powers that promote the culture of death are seeking to impose on the world’s population an implicit—though remote and passive—collaboration with abortion. Such remote collaboration, in itself, is also an evil because of the extraordinary historical circumstances in which these same world powers are promoting the murder of unborn children and the exploitation of their remains. 

When we use vaccines or medicines which utilize cell lines originating from aborted babies, we physically benefit from the “fruits” of one of the greatest evils of mankind—the cruel genocide of the unborn. For if an innocent child had not been cruelly murdered, we would not have these concrete vaccines or medicines. We should not be so naive to not see that these vaccines and medicines not only offer a health benefit but also promise to promote the culture of death. 

Bishop Schneider states the situation clearly. 

When one uses an abortion-tainted vaccine, one is standing directly and very personally before the vaccine syringe. In paying taxes, one is not directly and personally confronting the process of a specific abortion. A government is not asking you concretely to give your money to “this” concrete act of abortion now. The government often uses our money against our will. Therefore, the use of an abortion-tainted vaccine is a much more personal confrontation and a much closer meeting with the monstrous crimes involved in its production, than paying taxes or benefitting from the evil acts of another person. Should the government tell a citizen directly and personally, “I am taking your money to pay for this concrete abortion,” one has to refuse, even if it means confiscation of one’s home and imprisonment.

We shouldn't act as if there are no alternatives. I wonder how many know that there were alternatives to morally tainted vaccines in the US in the 80s. How did they disappear? It's simple supply and demand.

We have to resist the myth that there is no alternative—and by using these vaccines or medicines, we cooperate in further propagating this myth. Yet, there are alternatives! The anti-Christian world powers will surely not admit that alternatives exist, and will continue to push abortion-tainted vaccines. But we must resist. 

Read it all!  

Human DNA in the Covid vaccines

Eugenio Derbez interviews Dr. Fauci. (The introduction is in Spanish but actual video is in English.)

Eugenio Derbez: "Is that true that there is residual DNA from an aborted baby in the Johnson and Johnson?
Anthony Fauci: "No, there is no residual DNA that gets injected into you at all....there's no residual human fetal DNA at all."

Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine FDA insert, page 17: "Each dose may also contain residual amounts of host cell proteins (≤0.15 mcg) and/or host cell DNA (≤3 ng)."

For the layman, this question of human DNA in injections is not an easy one to navigate, especially when any discussion is scoffed at by vaccine promoters. But it is a question, a valid one. We can't be satisfied with "the experts know" -- we have a right to be informed before we consent to an injection for ourselves or for our children.

Dr. Theresa's Deisher’s letter on human DNA in the MMR states,

“Levels in our children can reach up to 5 ng/ml after vaccination, depending on the age, weight and blood volume of the child. That level is known to activate Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9), which can cause autoimmune attacks.”

For comparison labor is induced by the child’s DNA mixing with her mother’s blood at lower levels:

“When they reach between 0.46– 5.08 ng/mL, they trigger labor via the TLR9 mechanism”

“The rubella portion of the MMR vaccine contains human derived fetal DNA contaminants of about 175 ngs, more than 10x over the recommended WHO threshold of 10 ng per vaccine dose[x].”

[x] Series, WHO Technical Report. WHO EXPERT COMMITTEE ON BIOLOGICAL STANDARDIZATION 941; Deisher et al. Issues Law Med. 2015 Spring;30(1):47-70

Dr. Fauci asserts these vaccines do not contain human DNA; the insert of the vaccine says it may. 3 ng is not zero. The FDA requires that these injections need only contain levels that equal a third of what is acceptable in the MMR. Levels, however, which are more than sufficient to induce an autoimmune response in infants. (Covid vaccine trials are beginning on babies as young as 6 months.) Who verifies that these levels are even met?

Why are we satisfied with a vague protest?

 Animal rights activists: No testing on animals.

Governor Ralph Northam has signed the Humane Cosmetics Act, which prohibits those who manufacture cosmetic products from contracting or conducting their product testing to be done on animals in Commonwealth areas after January 1, 2022. This law will also end the sale of cosmetics that have been tested on animals for profit.

https://www.klkntv.com/virginia-is-now-the-4th-state-to-ban-cosmetic-animal-testing/

Catholics on aborted fetal tissue use in (apparently all, including medical) products: "There is still such a thing as a stiff letter to the Times! I'll take that vaccine now."

Statement of conscience, to awaken conscience

 I urge you to read (and click through to sign if you agree that conscience must be protected) this statement on the morality of Covid vaccines.

It's disheartening to see fellow people of good will acquiesce to the premise of the vaccines -- that the situation is grave and warrants such a response, and that a morally tainted response is the right one. 

Statement of Conscience to Awaken Conscience (when you click through you will also see embedded links to support statements)

“Abortion has become the greatest destroyer of peace, because it destroys 

two lives, the life of the child and the conscience of the mother.” 

Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1988)

“She is the human and sacred image; all around her the social fabric

shall sway and split and fall; the pillars of society shall be shaken, and the 

roofs of ages come rushing down, and not one hair of her head shall be harmed.”

G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

We the undersigned, men and women in solidarity with the weakest among us, wish to respond publicly to what appears to be a growing consensus among Catholic ethicists that vaccines derived from aborted fetal tissue are not only morally permissible (licit), but also (nearly) morally obligatory for the sake of the common good. Examples include, among others, this statement organized by EPPC, the steady position of the Catholic Health Association (CHA), and a December statement of the USCCB which says that receiving the (abortion-tainted) COVID-19 vaccine “should be considered...part of our moral responsibility for the common good.” These statements are troubling to us, and seem to run afoul of our rights of conscience to refuse such vaccines, clearly defended by the Church, in Dignitas Personae (CDF 2008) and Note on the morality of using some Covid-19 vaccines (CDF 2020). We now fear the circling of the wagons around abortion-tainted vaccines, advanced by powerful voices which seem ready to silence our moral intuitions. 

We resist this “consensus” being foisted upon us as morally repugnant: we do not wish to benefit from abortion. We deplore the lack of moral imagination displayed by public health officials, politicians, and all those who disregard the natural disgust felt by persons who wish to remain separate from the crime of abortion in every way possible. And we lament a “soulless scientism” that fails to account for the unique dignity of the human person and the role of suffering in human life.

We are puzzled and pained by the lack of reasonable skepticism which pro-life persons ought to show for the scientific-industrial complex (SIC). A distortion of medical and scientific standards so often accompanies questionable ethical practices, and a “science” which denies life inevitably takes life. Consequently, there are many reasons why a person may feel duty-bound to avoid these vaccines besides religious conviction, such as the experimental nature of them (FDA “emergency use”) and the unknown effects, especially on children and pregnant women. 

We hereby urge, by our witness and testimony, that people who agree with us—and also those who disagree but who admire our stance, and who wish to defend our right to hold it—join together to claim the freedom in conscience to refuse vaccines derived from aborted fetal cell lines.

“There is a grave responsibility to use alternative vaccines and to make a conscientious objection with regard to those which have moral problems,” wrote the Pontifical Academy for Life in 2005, in guidance confirmed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; abortion-tainted vaccines create a ”context of moral coercion of the conscience of parents, who are forced to choose to act against their conscience.” Indeed, many of us have spent decades trying to resist the abortion-tainted varicella and MMR vaccines, which were produced in the same compromised way, meeting resistance everywhere, being ‘fired’ by our physicians, and opposed even by leaders of our own churches. Many Catholic schools even require students to obtain the morally objectionable vaccines in order to attend.

These failures make us now question whether earlier capitulations (on the grounds that there was ‘no alternative’) were the right courses of action. The threats grow by the moment. Even now, there is pending legislation which would allow children the right to consent to vaccines without parental knowledge. Such a policy has implications far beyond the present crisis. We wish to call attention to the unintended consequences of a ‘soft opposition’ of words and not of deeds. Coercion in these and other matters hostile to life is coming.   

We are told there is nearly ubiquitous use of HEK-293 cells in the scientific and medical industry. If this is so, we take it to be evidence of structures of sin surrounding abortion. We invite (and call upon our lawmakers to require) all product manufacturers to reveal publicly and label their use of these cells, so that we can go forward avoiding such products. More has been done to resist animal cruelty and the use of genetically modified organisms than to resist the benefiting from the murder of a child. (The very same papers which report tests of vaccines using HEK-293 cells take pains in their disclosures to say that no animals were mistreated in the course of their research!) We lament that we have been led to use compromised products and medicines in the past without knowledge. Let all that has been hidden be brought into the light. 

We find insufficient the accounts of moralists who lean on casuistical distinctions, originally designed to analyze private action in a Christian society, when we are crushed by a public edifice determined to protect the so-called ‘right to abortion’, and determined in addition to benefit from its byproducts in many ways beyond the current (and previous) vaccines. We know that trafficking in aborted fetal body parts exists and amounts to an industry. The acceptance of the use of tissues derived in the past does have implications for incentivizing this industry. While no attention is given to the truth about human life in the public square, and while academia, the media, and elite institutions remain in the grips of a “culture of death,” we believe a more radical public witness is needed today.

We remember the holy mother in 2 Maccabees, a type of Our Lady, who urged her sons to resist violating God's law even if it meant their death, saying, "Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws.” We expect great public good to arise if her example of witness to higher goods and God’s sovereignty inspires our actions today. The march of science, the treatments it pursues, the political incentives it responds to, are none of them are immune from moral witness. Without our courage we fear that pinches of incense will continue to be extracted from us, rendering us insensitive to what should cause our indignation, sorrow, and determination to change. 

The abortions from which the cell lines are derived are said to be so “remote” as to be like roads constructed by slave laborers hundreds of years ago. Surely remoteness is a judgment in conscience. How “remote” is a cell line connected by continuous life with the murdered child? How “remotely” long ago is the abortion of a child who would be only 50 years old today? It is urged, as if it mattered, that the abortions were not carried out in order to create the cell lines—and yet the tissue of the aborted child (which no lab scientist had authority to use) did not miraculously give rise to cell lines but instead was manipulated deliberately, precisely in order to create the cell lines. Therefore, the use of these cell lines exactly corresponds to and complements the depraved intention to create them.

“Protect unborn man from born man!” St. John Paul II exhorted us. We live in a world divided into a Way of Life and a Way of Death. The Way of Death is this: born man subordinates unborn man to himself, for his own advantage. The Way of Life is this: born man unwaveringly and resolutely protects unborn man, even to his own disadvantage. To which culture do we wish to belong? With which do we identify? “What does it profit a man to gain his life but lose his soul?”

We therefore urge our ethicists to resist a premature “consensus” about abortion-tainted SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. We insist on our freedom of conscience in this matter, to witness to life as we judge we are being called to do.  We also urge a reconsideration of earlier “consensus” views about previous abortion-tainted vaccines. And we urge a public reckoning as regards every secret use of these cells derived from an abortion. 

We reiterate in closing: even if, as a matter of general principles, it is not always morally illicit to use such abortion-tainted vaccines temporarily, in extreme necessity, and even then under strenous protest, the use of such vaccines must never be advanced as mandatory, or as a universal duty.  Because some of us in conscience believe that we are called to refuse to take them.

St. Gianna Beretta Molla, pray for us!

Signed by,

Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, Ph.D. 

The Catholic University of America

Washington, DC

[Corresponding Author: pakalukc@cua.edu]

And by,

Stacy Ann Trasancos, Ph.D.

St. Philip Institute of Catechesis and Evangelization

Tyler, TX

[Correspondence: strasancos@stphilipinstitute.org]

Michael Pakaluk, Ph.D.

The Catholic University of America

Washington, DC

Jose Luis Trasancos, Ph.D. 

Children of God for Life

Tyler, TX

Most Rev. Bishop Joseph E. Strickland, J.C.L.

Bishop of Tyler

Tyler, TX

Media Inquiries: ysosa@stphilipinstitute.org

Cruelty-free shampoo but not medicine

From the Unilever website (a company I chose at random): 

Making sure our products are safe without testing on animals

Every product Unilever makes must be safe for people to use and safe for our planet. We believe that animal experiments should not be used to make sure that our products are safe.

**** 

We also work closely with researchers in the EU ToxRisk programme, which is driving changes in safety science away from animal testing. 

Surely you have contemplated your bottle of shampoo during your morning shower, as I have done. You must have noticed a disclaimer: Cruelty-free shampoo -- no animal testing.

Why should we accept testing (not to mention development and production) using tissue derived from human babies, procured in abortion, for any product? 

If this much effort can be put into preventing cruelty to animals, why cannot a commensurate effort be put into developing ways of bringing medical (and other) products to market without the taint of immorality? 

Thou Shalt Not Kill refers to other human beings, not to animals. Let's get our priorities straight. If we can be delicate about animals, let's clear our consciences about babies.

Do only hypocrites object to testing vaccines using aborted fetal tissue?

Some hold that it is immoral to test vaccines using aborted fetal tissue, and that this moral taint makes it impossible for them to take the vaccine (especially considering that the need for it is not grave).  

One argument against those with this position (not, notice, an argument saying it is moral to test using aborted fetal tissue) is that many if not most of the drugs we use are tested this way.

I have been one of the more aware observers on the issue of aborted fetal cells in the production of medical products. I don't say I'm an expert -- I am not. I just say that I am what could be called a "high-information" reader on the topic.

And I had not known that this was the case. (*see UPDATE below)

I think it safe to say that most people don't know that vaccines or any other medical product is tested (leaving aside other steps) using aborted fetal cells.

Therefore, it is not correct to state or even imply some sort of double standard on the topic. I'd say it's information that is only now becoming known. 

The position that there is some sort of hypocrisy in refusing such vaccines while taking, say, a heart medication is an example of the "tu quoque" logical fallacy. 

You know who indulges in this fallacy on a regular basis? Fr. James Martin, SJ. He often faults Catholic institutions for dismissing employees in "same-sex marriages" on the basis of the same institutions allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to continue to be in their employ.

The two instances (vaccines and irregular unions) differ in this way: No one, as I say, in the general public knew until very recently that most medicines are tested using aborted fetal products, while many Catholic institutions do wink and nod at divorced and remarried couples. 

But in both cases, the appropriate response (and the one that anyone committed to following Our Lord's teachings on the Commandments is ready to give) is simply to conclude that something is also very wrong in the prior case.

We have been too lax in allowing the divorced and remarried to hold positions where they present a bad example and present a scandal, especially to young people. Only a person bent on the destruction of the common good would say, "Oh, right, we've broken God's Commandment in one way, therefore let us go ahead and break it in some other ways as well!"

Likewise, the proper conclusion to draw from this discovery that aborted fetal cells are used broadly in medical production is to begin holding our medical system accountable and to require changes in how medications are tested, derived, and produced -- certainly not to say that our previous ignorance now makes this heinous activity acceptable.

On the contrary. Vaccines represent a challenge, a line we will not cross, when we can call a halt to a practice we oppose. We can seize this opportunity and then begin to address the rest. My husband called for us to do this when we were able, and sadly, the opportunity passed. Nevertheless, better late than never. 

And you know, Providence is actually making it easy for us. We have very little to lose by refusing this vaccine. As far as any risk is concerned, the odds are overwhelmingly in our favor.**

____

*UPDATE: Please read this article by Dr. Brian Kopp to understand how Fr. Matthew Schneider LC uses spurious methods to arrive at the conclusion that most objecting to the aborted fetal tissue use are hypocrites: Not so fast. The Very Misleading Article By a Priest on Drugs And Abortion Testing

"The author simply searched an over the counter or prescription medication name plus “Hek 293” cells and if they came up positively associated in medical or scientific literature, he claimed they too were “ethically tainted” and all us pro lifers had to abandon the use of those drugs too, if we were going to oppose fetal stem cell tainted Covid vaccines on those grounds.

"However, when he researched these medications, he failed to distinguish those that were tested on, developed with and/or manufactured with fetal cells before or during their initial introduction, from those that, for academic reasons, years later were tested on fetal stem cell lines." 

The article goes on to show how most of the medications cited by Fr. Schneider LC do not meet the criterion of taintedness. 

**Manufacturers of the vaccines do not recommend them for those at risk; those not at risk are... not at risk. I'm not going to argue about this, as it's all a matter of record and can be read in their own material (as opposed to the propaganda put out by the so-called experts who have a vested interest in our overlooking what the manufacturers themselves claim for their products). In addition, every medical intervention, including vaccination, carries risks. The key is to evaluate relative risk.