Commentary

As the world seeks a recovery path out of the virus epidemic, hopes rise for a vaccine. Extraordinary efforts are underway in the Great Britain as well as the United States. In fact, one such project at Oxford University has already begun human trials.

Yet concerns have arisen as evidence suggest that the Oxford project is using tissue harvested from aborted babies. An academic paper was recently published by the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in England challenging the unethical use of human tissue derived from abortions:

“Simply as a matter of fact, use of such cell-lines in COVID 19 vaccine production is likely to create problems of conscience for some of those to whom the vaccine is offered,” wrote the Anscombe Centre.

We would frame this unethical research in starker terms: It is simply immoral to use aborted baby cells and tissue. Period. And it is even more egregious when one realizes that there are easily-obtained alternatives.

This lack of ethical standard in the medical research community was highlighted during the public scandal of Planned Parenthood’s partnership with many research hospitals and companies in America. Many states responded – as we did here in Idaho – to prohibit the use of aborted baby tissue and cells in medical research. But the practice continues in a number of states. In fact, the FDA continues to sponsor medical research using unethically-obtained tissue – though the Trump Administration has launched a review of those practices.

On a deeper level, this morbid practice illustrates yet one more area in which America’s moral standards have been sorely compromised as a result of our practice of legalized abortion. There was a day when the United States led the world in holding Nazi scientists accountable for their abusive medical experiments and research. Grandiose standards and international conventions were developed after WWII to prohibit unethical research on human subjects against their will. No more would the world tolerate “scientists” like Mengele.

But today we condone medical research which depends upon the body parts harvested from the industrialized destruction of preborn children; in fact, American taxpayers have often paid for such research.

In the midst of the rush to find a vaccine, at least one American bishop, Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, has publicly urged the Trump Administration to stand against the use of aborted baby tissue in combating the Chinese Virus:

“Just because the crime of abortion is considered legal in our nation does not mean it is morally permissible to use the dead bodies of these children to cure a global pandemic. Emphatically, this practice is evil.”