Did you know that…….
at 8 weeks in utero, a fetus’ major functions are all developed, including their heart, brain, lungs and nervous system. I have even recently learned that they already have a finger print! When an in utero procedure needs to be done, even at that young age, fetuses are shown, by ultra-sound, to recoil from needles that collect blood. Why on earth would they not feel pain? We do. They are us. Of course they can feel pain.
“If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have pluck’d the rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again,
It must needs wither:”
– Othello, Act V Scene II
Another testament to the profit river of blood.
The world headlines continue to make me physically and spiritually ill. Another Planned Parenthood video was released this week. I believe that makes 6 in all. In the videos actors have set up Planned Parenthood executives to believe that they are buyers of human tissue for research purposes. The executives are caught describing their for-profit methods for extracting intact organs, tissue and other material to sell to research facilities nationwide. They are also shown casually sifting through body parts, and the one video even reveals the sound of a cracking baby skull. One effort has run through Congress to defund the government’s $540.6 million dollars annual subsidy to Planned Parenthood, which was received as a dismal failure. Planned Parenthood claims that they are breaking no law. While it is illegal to make a profit on the sale of human infant tissue after an abortion, it is not illegal to provide this tissue to another vendor for research, with a small shipping and handling fee, which is negotiable.
There are two arguments by pro-choices and supporters of Planned Parenthood for their services; first, is that tissue, i.e. the organs of murdered babies, is most effective for “life saving medical research” of diseases that effect our modern world, including but not limited to Alzheimers, AIDS, cancer, ALS, and more. The second, is that Planned Parenthood provides women, especially those in poverty with contraception, and female medical services that they would otherwise not have access to.
Let’s delve into the first argument about scientific research.
The Deseret News released an article this week that outlines pretty thoroughly both sides of the issue.
“University laboratories that buy such cells strongly defend their research, saying tissue that would otherwise be thrown out has played a vital role in lifesaving medical advances and holds great potential for further breakthroughs. Fetal cells are considered ideal because they divide rapidly, adapt to new environments easily and are less susceptible to rejection than adult cells when transplanted. If researchers are unable to work with fetal tissue, there is a huge list of diseases for which researchers would move much more slowly, rather than quickly, to find their cause and how they can be cured,” Stanford University spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said in an email… Researchers use fetal tissue to understand cell biology and human development. Others use it to look for treatments for AIDS. Research on spinal cord injuries and eyesight-robbing macular degeneration involves transplanting fetal cells into patients. European researchers recently began putting fetal tissue into patients’ brains to try to treat Parkinson’s disease, a strategy that previously had mixed results.”
How could a modern civilization, in any form, believe they are performing a good measure by creating, “life saving” medicines from the tissue of our own unborn children? The thought to me is absolutely revolting, and devastating. Why don’t we just round up the closer group of nursery kids to extract their livers, kidneys, or brain, to give the living adult population the chance to make medicine…. It would be obscene, unthinkable to witness the death of our living children; as was seen in the tragic shooting death this past year at a local elementary school. So why, pray tell are we allowing, celebrating, and turning a blind eye to the mass slaughter of innocent and voiceless infants, and referring only to them as tissue? Had that tissue been left in tact, and allowed to grow, that tissue would be a boy, or girl. That tissue would have a cry, and a smile. That tissue might even get to celebrate birthdays, graduations and parenthood.
Would cures to these devastating diseases be wonderful and amazing, yes! Of course. Having witnessed first hand, and second hand the effects of these physical illnesses, I can appreciate the desire to alleviate pain and suffering, but does the murder of one life, its extraction from his mother’s womb give permission for the sparing of another life? No.
We are the most educated, technologically advanced civilization that this planet has ever known. Could we not use science and brain power to derive another solution?
Yes, there are problems that require merited effort to solve. Could we not push ourselves to a better option than encouraging, the sale of our own humanity by blood and suction, to alleviate suffering?
Another article, In our opinion: Planned Parenthood executive’s callous talk of abortion organ harvesting is dehumanizing, reads,
“We understand that the details of legal abortions are, by their nature, gruesome. We also understand that research using fetal tissue has led to medical breakthroughs in the treatment of various diseases. But a culture cannot begin to tolerate dispassionate talk about which parts of a fetus to crush in order to preserve hearts, lungs, livers and heads, because of their market demand, without losing an important part of its humanity. It is bad enough to pretend a fetus that is unable to survive on its own outside the womb is not human. But it is particularly appalling to hear a doctor speak of selling the parts of a fetus, using phrases such as, ‘I’d say a lot of people want liver.'”
This gruesome talk. Let’s call evil what it is. Pure and unreformed evil.
How has our government, including our judicial systems, a social infrastructure slipped so far out of reach to the laws of nature that we now as a society accept the movement of no-consequence.
Was there ever a time in history that a group of innocent humans was experimented upon for the purpose of medical advances?
Yes. During the Holocaust thousands of captive prisoners were the focus of medical experiments. The United States Halocaust Museum Memorial shares,
“During World War II, a number of German physicians conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.”
Experiments included testing how high aviators could survive parachuting to safety, freezing experiments/testing treatments for hypothermia, and the testing of making seawater drinkable. Pharmaceutical treatments included testing immunization compounds for contagious diseases such as malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis. They tested bone-grafting, the safety of sulfa drugs, and antidotes to mustard gas. Experiments were conducted to conduct wide spread sterilization of the undesirable races.
I would argue that the list of possible life saving outcomes for the WW2 experiments were similar to the the ones that abortion tissue researchers are calling for today. The victims of both the 1940s crimes and modern day’s 50 million abortions are both voiceless, but today’s outcomes for those are guaranteed more deadly.
Another frightening comparison to the Nazi regime is that of separation of parts for profit. Walking the halls of the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem made me violently ill. There were rooms of human hair, pre-shipment, to wherever one sends human hair for profit. There were rooms of leather shoes. There were rooms of hand bags and briefcases. If they could have made a profit for livers, and hearts and brains, I am sure we would have seen those as well.
How is the modern day Planned Parenthood model, of invitation to the down trodden and desperate to lay waste of their children, to sell a liver for shipping and handling of just $30, and a kidney for $100 any different than the torment of the Jews who were burned by the Nazis? Destroy what is inconvenient, undesired and sell what is left.
The second argument is that Planned Parenthood provides women’s health services to low income women, and cutting funding to Planned Parenthood in essence cuts women from their choices and their health.
Wrong. Wrong and so wrong.
Planned Parenthood, and the machine of aborted fetuses is not a good vendor to provide health options for women. If we are comparing the Nazis again, what if a young Jewish woman found herself pregnant, broke, and broken. Should she hand herself over to the Nazi physicians, who by the way, are performing life altering medical experiments? No. Is she feeling the pressure of breaking her faith’s laws, yes. Is she feeling vulnerable at the vision of her future? Yes. Is she worried about how society will treat her, if the father will stay, and how she will provide for her family? Yes. Should she be encouraged to feed her soul to the hell fire of the opposing party? No.
What if we took the same dollar amount that was donated to Planned Parenthood and gave it to pro-life clinics, and hospital subsidies that could provide STD testing, Cancer Screenings and more, without the advertising pitch from pro-abortionists to relieve them of their duplicating research tissue. What if we prevented shaming one sin by duplicating another? What if we accepted that mistakes happen, but that pre-ready pregnancy, does not indicate that a child is a mistake?
When an exception is made, and even then with discretion, it should be done with prayerful consideration, council with and from ecclesiastical leaders, and quality, ethical medical professionals.
There is a better way.
Ann Voskamp, best selling author and blogger is a women with her heart wide open, to life, to suffering, to healing. She wrote a poignant and honest post this past week about the realities surrounding abortion. What I loved in her article is the truth of today’s women. If we want to make a movement in anti-abortion regulations, and funding, we need an increase in compassion, desire for children, and support for those in need – not just in word, but in finances and time.
“And maybe for far too long we have turned away from these abortion videos because it’s us in the videos. It’s our babies, it’s our high school friends, it’s our sisters, it’s our own grief. As many as 1 out of 3 American women have had an abortion — and not one of this carries it alone. We failed them. This is our failure as a community. The tender mourning of all this is that: Abortion is always a failure of community. Every abortion is a failure of humanity: failing a human being in crisis and a human being in utero.
…To have any credibility in lobbying for laws against the abortion of babies, we must have the dependability of being the ones who open our doors for the welcoming of both hurting women and vulnerable children.The compassion of Christ-followers needs to literally and practically and sacrificially be: “We will not rest until all humans beings get to be born, because they are wanted.”
We will not rest until every single person in the church is stirred en masse to personally support one woman in need, one child in need, one family in need. Be it as a family for a woman who needs a safety net, or becoming a support for a fostering family, or becoming an adoptive family for a child.
We will not rest until there’s a pro-Human health centre in every single neighborhood, until we have not only talked about and modeled what it means not to confuse love and sex, what flourishing relationships really are, what healthy abstinence, sex education and birth control look like — and what making love really is, in the fullest sense of the word, so people don’t end up making babies they aren’t fully ready for.”
In America we solved the problem of unwanted pregnancies. We just did it in the wrong way.
What the laws and communities say is that pornography is okay, that premarital sex is okay, that the “selfie” lifestyle is celebrated. Oh, and when there is a natural consequence, like an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy, rather than stepping up, helping out, and sticking in for the long haul, the heartbeat of that mistake is wiped clean, slurped out, and sent off to provide needed material for medical experimentation.
What if instead of death, we opened our hearts to life found in Jesus Christ’s Atonement? What if we stood our ground of moral tenacity, both for ourselves and those we are concerned for? What if we opened our hearts and our wallets to support pro-life health clinics and support for women, who despite all the odds, choose the hard road of single parenting? What if we encircled mothers who choose to give their child to new parents through adoption? What if we were committed to our relationships through marriage, and even through the darkest, hardest days we worked through challenges and issues with faith, friendship and forgiveness? What if instead of burning up our choices in death, we propelled our life in light.
Elder Bruce C. Hafen shares in the Ensign Magazine historical information about the degredation of the family. In his article, “The Proclamation on the Family: Transcending the Cultural Confusion” we read,
“The doctrine is clear—and is substantiated by years of research. We don’t need to return to the family laws of yesteryear, but if we could just care more about our children and their future, people would marry before becoming parents. They would sacrifice more, much more, to stay married. Children would be raised, whenever possible, by their biological parents. Ideally, there would be no elective abortions or unwed births.
Of course, some exceptions are needed—some divorces are justified, and adoption is often heaven-sent. Yet in principle, the 1995 proclamation on the family says it perfectly: “Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.”15
But we are suffering from collective amnesia. We are not hearing the mystic chords of eternal, or even recent, memory. The enemy of our happiness wants to convince us that the sacred, long-term bonds of family affection are confining, when in fact no relationships are more liberating and fulfilling”
In ancient Israel, the king of Moab fought hard against Israel, who worked to regain their promised land. When he saw his army loosing, this is what happened.
“Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.” – 2 Kings 3: 27
So the king is faced with defeat, rather than buckling down with muscles and man power to fight back, retreat, or succomb, he burned his own son. Later on the Prophet Micah condemned the king’s actions. Can you imagine burning a own child on the alter of man for the gain of your own soul? His response is as follows,
” Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” – Micah 6:7
We have been taught, anciently and in modern days the solution to this devastating problem; rather than giving up the firstborn for the transgression of the parents as an offering of sin – on the alter of Planned Parenthood; we are commended to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God, in spite of transgression, temptation, mistakes, and heart break.
Let us not forsake the voiceless.
Let us lift up the down trodden.
Let us find courage in Christ.
References:
Deseret News: Uproar over Planned Parenthood puts focus on fetal tissue research
The United States Halocaust Museum Memorial shares,
Anne Voskamp: An Honest Conversation About Abortion
Othello
