Michigan lawmakers have tied a COVID funding bill to an informed consent law, which would require medical professionals administrating the COVID vaccine to advise patients if that specific drug utilized aborted preborn tissue in the development process.
The decision to use aborted preborn tissue in the making of certain vaccines has been a point of contention for pro-life advocates for decades, and pro-life groups have suggested and encouraged lawmakers to embrace informed consent laws. These would allow families to know whether a certain vaccine was made from aborted preborn tissue at some point in the development process and provide families with the information to make informed medical decisions.
To help with some of this process, the pro-life research group Charlotte Lozier has produced a report explaining to Americans how preborn tissue was used, if at all, in the development of various vaccines. While the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines utilized preborn tissue in confirmation testing, the connection is considered remote by most and deemed “morally permissible” by seven of Michigan’s Catholic bishops. However, the Oxford University and Astra Zenca developed vaccine did use cell lines originating from aborted preborn tissue.
It’s important for families to have this knowledge when making a decision about whether or not to pursue getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
In a recent funding package, Michigan lawmakers are attempting to include this informed consent practice in a COVID funding bill.
“It’s no different than the objection to using any body part from someone who was killed,” Genevieve Marnon of Right to Life Michigan said. “We don’t do that, ethically, in America. We don’t kill people that then utilize their body parts, and that’s exactly what’s going on with these aborted fetal cell lines.”
This is a good analogy, as there have been several instances of questionable and unethical measures taken in order to test and develop various treatments. For example, Josef Mengele and other Nazi doctors tortured concentration and death camp prisoners, political prisoners, Soviet POWs and the developmentally disabled under the guise of medical discovery. Due to the highly unethical nature of those experiments, any results, even if they could be considered beneficial, have been rightly ignored or sometimes even destroyed.
The highly duplicitous nature of acquiring the remains of an aborted baby from a vulnerable woman, especially Planned Parenthood’s alleged practice of selling the remains of aborted preborn babies for profit, necessitates that Americans have a right to know how any vaccine is developed.
Certain medical professionals disagree.
“There are a lot of people who have a lot of very strong and sincere beliefs about this, but I think there is also a lot of rumor and misplaced concern here,” Jeffrey Byrnes, a medical ethicist and professor at Grand Valley State University, said.
However, the rush to inoculate the American public should not come at the expense of the conscience of pro-life Americans.
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