More On Using Fetal Tissue
Hugh saw in Wapo this morning the same story I saw this morning on the BBC site last night about Swiss scientists using fetal tissue to heal burns. Prof. Bainbridge saw Hugh's story and quotes from a lengthy statement from the Pontifical Academy for Life. The Prof's conclusion on that analysis:
The evil in this case starts, not always but often, with illicit sex. Sure, we're a liberal society, but illicit sex is still sin. There are degrees of sin and degrees of evil, but let's establish that the moral conundrum we're discussing has a sin-based foundation.
Even if the fetus forms as a result of matrimonial sex, the process still starts with sin because a parent or parents has decided to terminate a life. Some will make concessions for horrible, life-threatening deformities doomed to live painfully and die quickly. But some of these aborted preborns were simply aborted for convenience.
Then the real evil begins, no matter what the origin of the fetus.
The abortionist sells this aborted human life. In so doing, he or she compounds the profits already made from terminating the live. Killing, then selling, all in the name of profit; there's no other classification for that but evil.
There's probably a middleman who makes his living dropping by abortion clinics, picking up dead preborns, and taking them to scientific laboratories, pocketing a tidy sum in the process. There are many pathways one can take in choosing a career. This can only be a career for those who value possession more than morality.
Then there are the scientists. We see them in their white coats and clean labs in our mind's eye, right? Well, hit slow reverse and back up the image a bit.
There is the scientist, inspecting the terminated preborns, and if the condision of the skin tissue is adequate, the scientists gives money to the middleman. Clean enough, but then the lifeless form is treated unceremoniously, like so much meat, as the scientist redies it and cuts a patch of skin 1.5 inches square from it. As their scalpel slips into the skin, do they think that in just a few months, this flesh before them could have been a living, breathing child?
Then, done with the preborn, they toss it in the trash. Or they call the middleman and have him come by and hustle the lifeless form over to another lab to make another buck.
There is a nobility to medical science, to trying to lessen the suffering of burn victims. But hovering over an aborted child, knife in hand, looking for the best patch of skin to cut off the tiny body ... that is a vision of evil.
If I'm reading this right, the orthodox Catholic opinion would be that fetal tissue should be used to repair burn damage only where the patient faces "considerable dangers to their health" and there is no viable medical alternative. Given what I know about burn treatment, that seems unlikely to be the case very often. Hence, I don't think that exception would come into play.Be that as it may, let's consider the process for a moment; let's consider evil.
The evil in this case starts, not always but often, with illicit sex. Sure, we're a liberal society, but illicit sex is still sin. There are degrees of sin and degrees of evil, but let's establish that the moral conundrum we're discussing has a sin-based foundation.
Even if the fetus forms as a result of matrimonial sex, the process still starts with sin because a parent or parents has decided to terminate a life. Some will make concessions for horrible, life-threatening deformities doomed to live painfully and die quickly. But some of these aborted preborns were simply aborted for convenience.
Then the real evil begins, no matter what the origin of the fetus.
The abortionist sells this aborted human life. In so doing, he or she compounds the profits already made from terminating the live. Killing, then selling, all in the name of profit; there's no other classification for that but evil.
There's probably a middleman who makes his living dropping by abortion clinics, picking up dead preborns, and taking them to scientific laboratories, pocketing a tidy sum in the process. There are many pathways one can take in choosing a career. This can only be a career for those who value possession more than morality.
Then there are the scientists. We see them in their white coats and clean labs in our mind's eye, right? Well, hit slow reverse and back up the image a bit.
There is the scientist, inspecting the terminated preborns, and if the condision of the skin tissue is adequate, the scientists gives money to the middleman. Clean enough, but then the lifeless form is treated unceremoniously, like so much meat, as the scientist redies it and cuts a patch of skin 1.5 inches square from it. As their scalpel slips into the skin, do they think that in just a few months, this flesh before them could have been a living, breathing child?
Then, done with the preborn, they toss it in the trash. Or they call the middleman and have him come by and hustle the lifeless form over to another lab to make another buck.
There is a nobility to medical science, to trying to lessen the suffering of burn victims. But hovering over an aborted child, knife in hand, looking for the best patch of skin to cut off the tiny body ... that is a vision of evil.
posted by Laer at 9:37 PM
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