Is it okay to use abortion-tainted vaccines? What is there’s not other alternative? What about all the other treatments being developed using the body parts of aborted fetuses?
Samantha chats with Dr. Stacy Trasancos of Children of God for Life to get clarity on Catholic teaching surrounding the use of the unborn in medical research.
What she reveals in this interview about the state of embryonic and fetal tissue research in the US is harrowing, a call to all of us to take action.
Transcript
Samantha: Shannon Law was not opposed to vaccines in general. Her children were up to date on all the required immunizations until early 2003, when she picked up a copy of the American Life League's Celebrate Life magazine and stumbled across an article about several vaccines that were cultivated on cell lines taken from the lung tissue of aborted babies. She scanned the list quickly and her heart sank. She realized some of the vaccines she had given her children were on that list. Her children were protected because someone else’s had been sacrificed. Never again, she vowed. Later that year, her home state of Arkansas began requiring the chickenpox vaccine for all school children. Because it is cultivated on aborted fetal cell lines, Shannon refused to allow her two boys to be immunized. The school notified Shannon that her children would be expelled. Shannon called around for help. She called priests. She called the diocese. She called any one she could think of, and all she heard was crickets. With time running out, Shannon was desperate. She reached out to the American Life League, the original organization that had published the article that woke her up to the problem. She waited to hear from them. Her anxiety was mounting. Officials had informed her that the Arkansas law was formidable, maybe even impossible, to overcome. While the state did allow religious exemptions, they only applied to members of denominations that refused to accept vaccinations of any kind. In other words, because the Catholic Church does allow and even encourage vaccinations. She was out of luck. Even if she could somehow overcome the state's objections, she hadn't found anyone from the church to back her up. Not wanting to wait another minute, Shannon called up the Vatican directly to talk to the congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Much to her surprise, her call was answered immediately and in English. Monsignor Charles Brown listened to the problem and was willing to help. Soon he would hear from both the American Life League and another American pro-life organization, the Children of God, for. The representatives of these organizations explain that this problem wasn't limited to Shannon Law and her children. A Catholic ethicist had written an article stating that it was acceptable to use abortion tainted vaccines, and it was being used to deny exemptions to Catholics like Shannon across the United States. Recognizing the need for a clear voice on the topic, Monsignor Brown requested written documentation. I'll need two sets of information, he noted. One is for me and the other the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. That is Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He warned that the review might take some time and caution Shannon don't turn away from your conscience on this matter. Shannon was elated. I have God and the Vatican on my side. What else do I need? What she needed was an attorney ready and willing to stand up to the state of Arkansas. Within the week, Liberty Council, a Christian law firm that defends religious rights nationwide, sent Eric Stanley to take her case. He had his work cut out for him, the state health department had already rejected Shannon's request, and her sons had been expelled. The prosecuting attorney began his case by boldly declaring to the judge. I have an article here with comments from Catholic ethicists who say that using vaccines from aborted fetal tissue is morally acceptable. He stated his voice rather smug, undaunted defense counsel Eric Stanley addressed the judge. Your Honor, I too am holding a document in my hands, taken from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that is attested to be valid teaching of my defendants faith. He then added. You will note your Honor, mine is signed by Pope John Paul the 2nd. Stanley went on to present his arguments. The law itself was clearly in violation of the 14th amendment, giving equal protection to all religious faiths. The judge agreed and issued A provision allowing chin and sons to return to school until the law could be rectified, which it was about a year and a half later. Shannon's battle for religious freedom is admirable. Her refusal to betray her conscience, her refusal to take no for an answer, even to the point of going all the way to. The Vatican for help. But why did she need to? Why was there any uncertainty about the Catholic Church's stance on abortion, and how did these ethicists justify the use of abortion tainted vaccines? These are important questions and. We will get to them in this episode. But perhaps even more harrowing is that these questions are not just about vaccines anymore. As you'll hear, contemporary research is making use of nascent human life to develop treatments for everything from macular degeneration to diabetes. As more and more medical treatments rely on the destruction of the unborn. On victims of abortion on lab created embryos, or the million of IVF's frozen leftovers, opting out may not even be an opt. I'm Samantha Stephenson and this is Brave New Us.
[INTRO]
Stacy
I totally saw other people. It's just highly complex composite systems of atoms and molecules. I saw my own first two children that way and I didn't understand things like love.
Samantha
This is Doctor Stacy Trasancos. She's a convert to Catholicism with a pH. D in chemistry, she writes on topics of faith and science, and she and her husband run children of God for life. You'll remember they were one of the organizations that worked with the Vatican in support of Shannon.
Stacy
I didn't understand things like love and anything that wasn't reducible to atoms and molecules. I just didn't understand that I didn't understand moral code. I didn't understand relationships and kind of just live that way very materialistically until in my 30s, I had to admit it wasn't. It wasn't working, wasn't answering the biggest questions. Had about life.
Samantha
So what changed? She prayed.
And that prayer opened the door to a whole host of life changes.
Stacy
I met a tall, dark and handsome man - now my husband - became open to life and left my career to be with those kids. Those gifts, while they were young, and I do a lot of writing and speaking now.
Samantha
And one of those organizations she writes for is children of God for Life. It's headed up by her husband. She does the writing and the research. It's a real team effort, sort of. But OK, so before we go on, we have to go back and talk about how children of life got started. Where did it have its origins? Because if you do know anything about Catholic teaching on vaccines, you might know it is licit to use abortion tainted vaccines. How well, we'll let Doctor Jason cost. Explain that a little bit later. First, let's talk about how children of life got started. How did they end up in this apostolate? Children of God for Life was founded by Debbie Vinich, who realized that while moral theologians argued about licit cooperation with evil, the church asked us to fight abortion and demand ethical medicines. Parents and doctors needed help knowing how to do the right thing and stand up to the pharmaceutical. Illicit cooperation with evil was one thing, but how would there ever be an alternative to that cooperation if parents, doctors, everyday Catholics, didn't stand up and fight for something else?
Stacy
She had written letters to the Vatican asking for guidance for parents who didn't have any choice but those vaccines derived from abortion to use to protect their own children. And so she was kind of like, what do we do here? And the Vatican actually responded to her. It took her several years of pestering them, but they they were the Pontifical Academy for Life, responded to her with a very long and and thorough instruction on what parents should do. It said parents can use those vaccines if they need to, to keep their children. If it's not their fault that that's the only choice they have so you can use them. If there's a grave. Need and if it's the only choice you have, but in using them or even choosing not to use them, we're all supposed to fight to for things to change. So stand up and ask the pharmaceutical companies demand that the pharmaceutical companies stop using aborted children. To find cures and medicines for The Wanted children. It's just not right. But if you are like we were with COVID and like parents are with childhood vaccinations. If they're, if you are presented so you're a person, you're sitting there. You're like, wow, I have this grave situation. There's a pandemic. There's this virus that is that has a high mortality rate. It's killing people. I'm afraid if I get it, I I have a weakened immune system for whatever reason, and I really need this vaccine to be safe. A grave need. You need that vaccine to be safe, and I understand that is a whole nother can of worms. But let's say that you've decided you really need the. Vaccine and you learn that the only vaccines available to you. Are are made with. An abortion connection. So that gets very complicated, too. The first vaccines, the traditional kinds of of attenuated viruses that are in they they are grown, some of many of them are grown in the fetal cells themselves. So they're actually produced in the fetal cells. The and then purified from them. But there's still some. There's that what we learned with the COVID vaccines is some of them aren't grown. The RNA vaccines aren't grown in the fetal cells, but they are in vitro, tested in their preclinical trials in the fetal cells before they go to animal trials or human trials. They test them in cells, cell trials. That's just a state. Aging but but so then people had the questions is does that, does that make it OK then? And a lot of people are like, no, I don't want a vaccine that's tested or produced in fetal cells. So I mean, one way to look at it is if you have a vaccine that would not be here but for an A dependency on abortion. OK, the the vaccine wouldn't be here, but it had it had to be tested in those fetal cell lines or it had to be grown. In fetal cells. So somehow it depended on abortion. It wouldn't be here, but for the use of an aborted child. And you're sitting there and you're like, I really need it. I really don't want to take it because of the connection to abortion. I'm pro-life and this, you know, for me to personally benefit from a child who was aborted doesn't seem right. It violates my conscience. That's one choice you have is to say, even though I have a grave need. I cannot in good conscience receive this medicine vaccine. The other choice is to say that the Catholic Church has said that it is elicit passive material cooperation, and what that means. Listen, it's OK. It's not a sin. Passive means it's not your fault. You didn't do anything to make the researchers and pharmaceutical companies use. Aborted fetal cell lines is not your fault. Material means you you are there. You are part of the process that you're. You're at the very, very end of the value. Chain there, but you are part of the. Process cooperation also meaning that that you're part of the process, so you're receiving a vaccine. You're as far they call it remote cooperation because you're as far away from that choice to benefit from abortion as you possibly can be. And the way I say it to people is not your fault. You're sitting there. You got no other choice. You really need the medicine. It's not your fault. It's not a sin to receive it. And I have explained that to people who breakdown and cry because even though it's not a sin, they say I don't want to, I can't. I just can't do this like I I cannot and I know that feeling cause we did get our children vaccinated. But I sat there crying every single time they injected. Vaccine into my child knowing that another child who was unwanted and unloved had died for that vaccine to be here. I just I I cried my I broke my heart and one reason we have the children of God for Life website today is because I told God I I understand. I'm supposed to fight this practice even though it wasn't my fault. At some point it is my fault if I don't do anything to end end abortion or or speak out against abortion, defend the dignity of life. It just can't. I don't want to leave my kids a culture where our medicines. Are here because you know the medicines and treatments for wanted people are are tested and developed with unwanted people who are killed by abortion. I just don't want. I don't think that's the kind of culture we need to. That's not a pro-life culture that those are the heart. It's a very hard choice and the last thing I want to say is the Catholic Church is very, very clear. That it is a personal decision, each one of us has to discern how grave our need is and what our conscience tells us about using those medications.
Samantha
There's a lot more room, I think, than people realize for conscience and in Catholic thought about these decisions in broader way, maybe stepping back a little bit from vaccines. What are some ways that research disrespects nascent human life? And what would what would ethical research?
Stacy
That is a challenge, I really. Put to the next generation, I mean a lot of the speaking I do on faith in science is to encourage the next generation of scientists to never check their faith at the door when they enter the laboratory. If you have to let your decision, scientific research is always a decision. You decide what to experiment on. You decide what questions need to be answered. And you decide how to. Do those experiments. And you decide how to how to provide true progress for the human. Race and you need your faith for that. You need the practice of of virtue, faith, hope, and love. The theological virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The Cardinal virtues you need all of those tools to make good decisions in life, including good decisions about research. If you're a scientist, or if you run a company that does research, or. Or or a university or something. So first of all, don't ever take your faith in the door. Because what we have right now are a whole bunch of people doing really groundbreaking research and they don't have that light of faith guiding their decisions. They they don't have love in this in the way that we're talking about God and that that hope for a better world, hope for heaven and faith and things that we can't. See and the substance of things unseen, faith and and if you don't have those theological virtues, it's really hard to practice prudence and understand real justice and understand real fortitude and and self-control, temperance. The people that don't have faith don't really understand what it means to be human. They don't really understand what it means to progress the human race forward and and do things that are truly good. OK, so if you're going to be a scientist. You really do need all that stuff. But we don't have it right now. And so what's happening in the medical and the scientific community and we're way into it decades and decades into it. So I don't know how we're going to get out of it. One of you know, they call them the Gold standard lab rat aborted children because they're little tiny human bodies. They can get them right after the abortion. Some people question whether the children are even dead, yet if they're, if you know if the experiment success depends on having fresh lung, heart, eyes, brains, liver, spleens, whatever organ they want from that little tiny human body. If they need it to be fresh it, there's kind of like a missing explanation in some of the research about exactly when the child dies versus when the organs are. Harvested and they just kind of skip over that. And so a lot of people wonder, do they, do they harvest the organs while the child is still alive? Because if if they don't have an ethical problem with it in the 1st place and their goal is to have a successful experiment, it seems like they would do whatever they need to do to get the the freshest. So I'm not saying they absolutely do that. I'm saying I don't see why they wouldn't. But this scientific research using aborted children is exploding right now. There, there is an ability now to do a genetic analysis nucleic acid for nucleic acid. Like all of the the the molecules that make up the genes that make up the DNA can be determined. Millions of cells in a day by shooting them through. Through this, this new technique, they have single cell transcriptomics is what it's called but they they can analyze the complete genetics of millions of cells a day and So what scientists are doing and they're trying to understand how you know, the great mystery of how a zygote of 1 celled. The human goes from zygote to fully formed body because that zygote starts dividing and then after about day 14 the the cells start differentiating into different parts of the body. Eventually you know cells become. Heart cells, blood cells, bone cells, hair cells, eye cells like they differentiate into the whole unified Organism. And so how the genetics know to turn on and turn off to express themselves into whatever. What all it takes to grow a human body. Scientists are trying to decipher that right now, and it takes thousands and thousands of aborted children to get all their organs, chop them up. Run those cells through the instruments and they're trying to map out a complete human fetal cell Atlas where they understand what the cells are doing across the whole body over the whole trajectory of the gestational period, and by doing that, they think they will be able to cure most pediatric diseases. So we literally are looking at a day. When anything, any medical advance that we use to cure our children, our wanted children will have been developed using the unwanted children.
Samantha
That's a that's a heavy load, especially for future generations for future parents who are going to have to make those kinds of decisions.
Stacy
That's that should be part of our decision about the COVID vaccine because. When our leaders were saying ohh the vaccines, yes, they're dependent on abortion. But the church says it's OK. I was screaming. I literally was screaming at home. No, no, no, no. Because if if we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, the church says it's OK to use them, it's not a sin to use them, which is true if we just leave it at that. What we're really saying. To the scientific community and the the politicians, the leaders, what we're really saying to the non religious part. Of society is. Hey, we don't like to benefit from abortion, but it's a OK if we do, you go ahead and develop those products and it won't be our fault that you did and just know that when it gets time to to use all those cures that you found, we may not, we'll have to say out loud that we don't like it, but we're fine with benefiting from abortion. I mean, that's kind of what we're saying. If we just shrug our shoulders. Right now, that's kind of what we're saying.
Samantha
Yeah, at at some point, that individual choice that in and of itself might not be a sin. At some point the the vast numbers of people making that same choice contributes to this huge structure of injustice. That it really does it. Becomes social sin. Want to circle back on something that you said before when you were talking about this idea that you know not having a real understanding of our, of our telos, of our goal as humanity, that secular society kind of has this idea of progress, that's ultimate. And not, not truly human in that sense. What do you think? Progress would look like.
Stacy
I think all bioethical questions come down to this one point and it's something. So I'm speaking from experience here. When I was when I was. A person totally in love with chemistry and I was just fine with looking at the entire world as atoms and molecules, including people including my own children, that my highly complex composite systems who called me mom. I was totally OK with that view, but I also understood like it's so limited. Like how do you explain love? How do you explain morality and? And so I think there's a whole lot of people, maybe even a lot of Christians, who don't understand. That we are not just body, we are body and soul. And so for me becoming Catholic and that was one of the most profound things. When I learned about what it means to be body and rational soul, human beings have a rational soul. We're not like animals that are guided by instinct. You know, animals can't practice virtue. I I love my dogs, but they can't. They would still eat my sandwich if I was hungry, and I turned my head. They would not give it up for me. They you know, the other other animals among the smartest, most intelligent animals don't publish scientific papers. They don't have the intellect like humans do. So we're rational. Souls and were made in the image and likeness of God, so made an image and likeness of God. God the Father generated conceived God the Son is an act of the intellect. God the Father and God the Son together as one substance pirated 4th God, the Holy Spirit, as an act of love. So in God one God, three persons we have. Perfect intellect, perfect love. And when we are said to be made in the image and. Likeness of God. Body and soul. We have those innate powers of our spirit for thinking and loving, for thinking and willing, and that's why I never understood this as a chemist. That's why we all longed to love and to be loved and to know and to be known and to belong to our families and our communities. And to each other to be in relationship to be in communion. So you put all that down on the table and you say, OK. That's what it means to be human. That means my destiny is to get to heaven. That means I have to practice virtue, faith, hope and love. Faith in God hope for a future good, mostly heaven, all out of love, because you can't hope for. Something you don't love. And then I have to let that guide my right thinking and prudence and how to treat other people injustice and how to. Be courageous and brave, or know when to back down and fortitude and how to control myself and temperance. You have to have you have to understand that is the human person and the way we perfect ourselves as being human is to practice the virtues throughout our life and the church. Has enormous volumes written on this. To to figure out how to do those things. And you need all those. Things when you're practicing science so. That that all that I. Just explained, I know it's. Kind of long, but all. That I just explained, that's what it means to be human. If you have people in the lab who thinks all all it means to be human is that we are this collection of atoms and molecules, and when we die, we just deteriorate. And go back to the earth and become worm food. They don't care about butchering aborted children. They don't even care if unwanted children are killed before they're born. They don't they the ethical thing in their mind, is to use these little tiny human body. These instead of wasting them like it would be unethical in their mind to waste them. So we we have this dichotomy in our society then and somehow that's the evangelization work that we have to do. We have to help those scientists who who desire to to knowledge and truth. And love and want to do good things. We have to help. Help them understand what it means to be human. And once they do understand what it means to be human, they will understand what we're saying, that it's not OK to exploit the bodies of these children who are discarded. You need to know how much these children are actually used in all kinds of research, from Cancer Research, leukemia, staph infections. How to how to regenerate your eyes if they're getting old? I mean they're they're used in all kinds of things. It's not just vaccines that's just like one thing among thousands. So I just want to start exposing. Doing all the research that's going on in a in a, you know, just little. Summaries each day that will explain to people. And and it's. Just going to take time for people to start saying I don't want this. I don't want cures developed this way. I don't want to live in a world like this. We're not going to elect people who will, who will pass laws that fund this. We're not going, you know, it's just going to take a change of heart over a very long time because honestly, as long as abortion is legal. They're always going to be able to say, well, and I think some Catholics would even say this, as long as abortion is legal and somebody else killed the child, it's not your fault. I think some Catholics would. Even say I'm OK with fetal tissue research, you know, and I plan to push that point because if that's what they really think, I want them to say it out loud. Because I I don't come out there so that that's what we're looking at right now. And my strategy is just awareness and I I hope it becomes clear what more we can do.
Samantha
Yeah, well, I mean., even just spiritually speaking, if you want to think about the the works of mercy, you know to bury the dead is a work of mercy. And I think it's a beautiful thing that some adults consent to offer their bodies for medical research, but obviously when we're talking about fetal tissue, there's not. There's not a matter of consent. Or or any kind of respect for that particular person. So that's I think there's a clear precedent in Catholic thinking to protect those bodies and display respect for them.
Stacy
And it it's really hard to when I read these papers it it's it's hard on my soul. Like it feels like I'm sticking my hand down into hell to try to expose things that are going on because I read these scientific papers. They're so professional, so antiseptic. And then you read the methods section and it talks about how they determine the age. By measuring the foot length, how they dissect the organs, how they mince the tissues, and you're like, good grief, they're putting these little babies on the bench, on the lab, on the lab counter, and they're using a ruler and measuring little tiny feet. And that's how they're determining the age. And then they're and then they're cutting them open and taking out organs and mincing them with the razor blade before they put them in a blender and get the cells like. How can they do that? I don't see how they can do that and. Good Lord, I mean. It's bad enough to kill the baby and then use the organs, and it's really no different if they're going to take. The organs while the baby is still alive. The way the baby dies a brutal death. But I don't. I especially don't know how somebody can take a live little baby like that and kill it by butchering it for a scientific project. I don't see how they. Can do that. It scares me to be in. The same culture with people who do that.
Samantha
So if if people are wanting to to follow this and to learn more and to read these these stories that you're putting out, where would they go to to access that?
Stacy
They would go to the children of God for life website the it's the URL is COG stands for Children of God COG for life FORLIFE. Dot org and just go to that website right now. It's got a lot of guidance, a lot of it seems to be about vaccines, but I can tell you, you know, my husband and I are talking about vaccines because that was the issue that brought this bigger issue to the minds of. People, but we're really ready to get beyond vaccines. Like we're, we're really ready now that people are paying attention to this issue to talk about all the other ways aborted to like, if you don't want it, if you don't want fetal cell lines in your vaccines or skin care products. You need to. Know about how how much medical technology is going to depend on abortion across the board. Unless we do something.
Samantha
What are some of those areas? You know, people can already start to be aware of.
Stacy
It's on the children of God for left life website, but I published some articles one at Catholic World Report. Hurt, one at Crisis magazine, several at National Catholic Register, just on the different ways aborted children are used in research and and I. And I've got every, every other quarter I publish a commentary in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. My biggest focus right now is. What we're going to do about this, this fetal tissue research, I think that is the next big question in front of Catholics and I, I plan to push the question. And hard, you know, like, are we saying it's OK because if that's what you're saying, say it out loud if you're. If that's what? If you're saying it's not OK, then let's do something about it. But we can't just be so wishy washy, ambivalent, shrugging our shoulders and and not doing anything about it.
Samantha
Before we close, I would love to hear your thoughts on this question about can we ethically grow children in a lab? And I know you've written on that. Where is the science on that? And then what are some ethical considerations, you know, now and then down the line as that develop?
Stacy
Yeah, one reason they want to try to grow children in a lab is so they'll have, you know, a steady supply of those gold standard Lab Rats. Right. And they they want to be able to like even with the board of children, they can't get children that are very young, early embryonic stages, because a woman doesn't even know she's pregnant until a couple of weeks later. So they want to be able to grow the embryos in the lab so they can do studies on those early embryonic stages, but then even grow them later. And even since I wrote the book for Catholic answers, there's been so much research come out. Even since then, one of the most recent they they took human cells and injected them into a monkey embryo. And it grew for almost 20 days in the lab. And that's significant. Because the the rule before that was the 14 day rule like back in the 70s when IVF first. Started they kind of they made a 14 day rule ethically that said you can. It's not ethical to grow an embryo in the lab that you know one that's been IVF created in a dish. It's not ethical to grow that embryo more than two weeks, but the reason they had that ethical line was because they couldn't grow it more than two weeks. And now that they can grow. So monkey embryos more than two weeks and they've been able to grow some human embryos almost up to two weeks. They have now actually moved that line back some. I'm not sure what they where they ended up. I'm not sure if they've decided yet, but they're moving that line back and the danger about that is. The further you go, it's it's not like day 30 is harder than day 20. By the time you get to a certain point when those cells are differentiating and starting to form the the Organism. At some point, it's just a matter of keeping it alive in an artificial womb. It's it's those first few months that are really critical when all the organs are forming, but once they get formed, it's going to be much easier. And so it scares me that they're getting that close. This is like a utopia. But you can imagine if. If we have a day where they do figure out how to grow a fully formed human baby in the lab. What are they going to do then? I mean, they they will be able to genetically craft them however you want. You know, order your baby. They would be able to also just grow them for research purposes. And and you know, it sounds really weird to say it right now because people would say, oh, that'll never happen. But I think people probably said at one point it would never happen. We're doing now with. The board of. But it could get to the point. Like if you're going to grow an embryo for research and you can keep it alive for longer, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you do that? Because then you have more research subjects. And if you can grow them to to full term and let them walk around and live for five years and it's just a lab rat, why wouldn't they do that, I mean. If they keep sliding. The ethics back to accommodate what they can do in the lab. What if we have a day when there are all kinds of people who were created in the lab for no other reason than research, and nobody ever loved them walking around and they have no prayer of knowing who their parents were? I mean, I think if that day comes and we try to stop it, but it comes anyway like we are here with fetal tissue. Research it's going to fall to Catholics to figure out how to love those people and include them in society when nobody else will. So you know, we live in a fallen world and we always, you know, we we are guided by love, the greatest of all of those virtues. So if that day ever comes, you know, we can scream and yell about how wrong it is that we got to this point. But I think what we're really. Going to have to do is figure out how to love those people.
Samantha
No, and I think too, there's there's a degree of hubris there because we can, there are certain things obviously that we can mimic in an artificial environment, but there's so much that we don't know about what it means to to physically and. As an embodied person, be a mother who is gestating.
And I think if we look at the studies about the influence of touch on infants and and children and infants and children who are deprived of touch, there's they, they die even with lack of. I mean when? Everything else is provided for, So what else is there? You know there, there's probably a lot about. Being grown inside of a mother that that we just can't know or can't understand. And if we really are losing this idea that we are embodied persons, not just bodies. It's going to be really difficult to know what those people, what those people are missing out on and what those effects. Will be until. Until until we see them, and they've basically just been a human experiment.
Thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else that we haven't discussed yet that you want to add?
Stacy:
No, thank you. Just always the power of prayer that does bring the grace. Bring the grace we need. Down onto the world.
Samantha:
As this episode releases, we're approaching the one year anniversary of the historical Dobbs decision overturning Roe versus Wade and returning power to restrict abortion to the states. Since that time, the Internet has been flooded with a flurry of articles declaring that this or that procedure might be in danger. If we recognize the unborn as persons worthy of equal protection under the law.
These headlines are everywhere: embryonic research, IVF and surrogacy are now at risk and imperil. It's just too risky to recognize the unborn as persons, they argue. If what we risk are practices and procedures that dehumanize and destroy human life, while I think those things are worth putting on the chopping block, don't you? Or is it OK to sacrifice some lives so that others can come into existence? If no one consciously experiences any harm. What's the problem with something like IVF? If we want to minimize suffering, shouldn't we protect procedures that prompt? To end the suffering of infertility. What's pro-life about preventing people from maximizing their fertility? That's next time on Brave New Us.
If you enjoyed this episode, could you take one second to tap a star rating into your podcast player? It really helps people find this content and spread the pro-life message. Thank you and special thanks to Jessica Gerhardt for her. All will be well. You can find more of Jessica's music at jessicagearhart.com.