House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is attempting to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a ruse to lift Trump Administration bans on federally funded fetal tissue research. According to the Washington Times, Nadler accused the administration of being “anti-science” and “political” at the cost of saving “millions of lives.”
The New York Times printed a similar opinion piece in late March stating that, “this denial of science and critical thinking among religious ultraconservatives now haunts the American response to coronavirus.”
But, the “Christians and Trump are ‘anti-science'” narrative contradicts a number of key data points. Though the New York Times accuses Christians of being more committed to their cause than “fidelity to the facts,” what seems truer is that abortion activists are unswervingly committed to their own agenda even amidst the Coronavirus crisis. No matter the cost.
For example:
1) “Elective abortions” are still being done in several states. There’s rising concern that because some abortion facilities are staying open, women will travel from COVID-19 hotspots to these locations, potentially spreading the virus through their travels and through their interactions in the abortion facility. Evidence abounds of patients who can’t get potentially lifesaving cancer surgery during this pandemic, yet abortion activists call on the courts to order states to allow abortion services to continue. Even a rudimentary understanding of science and mathematics would demonstrate that during a time of shortages of both personal protective equipment and qualified medical staff, saving someone’s life should be prioritized over an elective procedure that ends a life.
2) According to David Prentice, who holds a Ph.D. in cellular biology and serves as Vice President and Director of Research at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, there are many ethical alternatives to using fetal tissue for research. Prentice claims that these other alternatives are actually better and “more modern science compared to the old thing of doing aborted fetal tissue.”
3) Likewise, according to the same Washington Times piece (cited above) the Lozier Institute confirmed that none of the more than 60 potential treatments for COVID-19 that are under investigation require fetal tissue for development.
4) According to the Lozier Institute, it’s adult stem cells that have actually played the biggest role in developing therapies for diseases such as Parkinson’s. Fetal tissue has not recently been used effectively in vaccine production. Many modern vaccines are tested more effectively on animal or insect cells. The Ebola vaccine was produced using a vero monkey cell line and a recently approved shingles vaccine was produced using engineered hamster cells.
5) Science itself proves that life begins at conception. Every passing year science reveals more of what is actually taking place within the womb as a baby grows and develops inside his or her mother. An unborn baby’s heart is beating by three weeks, brain waves are detected as early as five weeks, and all of the baby’s organs are fully developed by 24 weeks of gestation. Other data shows that a baby in the womb can feel pain as early as 12 weeks old. The more science reveals of a baby’s humanness, the more difficult it becomes for abortion-activists to rely on an antiquated “life begins at birth” argument.
COVID-19 is an opportunity for us to affirm the hard work of government epidemiologists and immunologists. We should support the scientific community by staying home and following CDC guidelines. As we cancel elective procedures and support more modern methods of vaccine development than fetal tissue research, perhaps it’s the abortion lobby who should pay attention to the science.