Posted on 10/16/2015 1:17:11 PM PDT by markomalley
Doctor, Doctor, will I die?
Yes, my child, And so shall I.
—Anonymous rhyme
Forgive me for withdrawing from the outrage over recent videos released by the Center for Medical Progress. Don’t think I am not repulsed by them. Absolutely, I am. But what inhibits me from declaring my own revulsion is a disquieting belief that whether Planned Parenthood is defunded elides the true issue. Our righteous censure attends mainly to the symptoms of a disease we are loathe to cure.
That hidden root disorder is our denial of mortality. Modern technical prowess drives the defiance with a welcome roster of desperate appliances, from pacemakers and dialysis machines to artificial hearts and lungs. Add an obsession with fitness and wellness, the Castor and Pollox of holistic mythology. We keep finitude at bay in a frenzy of diet-and-exercise regimes, herbal body wraps, and probiotic capsules from Life Force International. Hit the right formula, and we can live forever. Or pretend to.
There is a dark side to modernity’s variant of ancient quests for the elixir of life. On a policy level, there is the very real temptation to divert resources from adequate care for all onto splendid visions of medical progress that advantage only a few. But that is a different discussion for another day. Here, let me stay with the framework of values that fuels the social and medical ardor for organ transplants.
Celebrated technical successes, born of biomedical refusal to accept mortal limits, encourage us to view our bodies as machines that can be rebuilt. Not only do we have synthetic joint replacements—an undeniable boon— but living tissue, as well. Hubris prompts us to approach organ transplant with the same ease of conscience that accompanies an old Subaru into the body shop for a new carburetor or a remanufactured manual transmission.
What are little boys made of? Small change and spare parts, apparently. So long as we think of our bodies in terms of replaceable components, the harvesting of fetal tissue—entire organs—will continue. Embryonic and fetal tissue is the prima materia of modern researchers who, like alchemists of old, are engaged in the magnum opus of turning base clay—the stuff we are made of—into something more enduring.
For all the attention to grisly details of organ procurement, little was said about the purpose of that grotesque quarrying. Abolitionist rhetoric is necessarily sensational. The publicized videos intended to create a climate of disgust for abortion itself and for all desolate profit from it. Consequently, scant attention was paid to the research in organ repair and replacement that underwrites the behavior we condemn.
Traffic in the bloody fruits of abortion is inextricable from increasing popular zeal to obtain transplantable organs. It is wed to medical technology’s quest to gather and implant organs and to devise alternatives to current means. In our lifetime, organ transplant has become an accepted form of treatment for many end-stage heart, lung, kidney, and liver diseases. As a consequence of public and medical enthusiasm, waiting lists for transplants grow longer while scarcity of organs increases. At the same time, concern about methods of procurement—and allocation—continue to stalk developments.
An unsettling look at where those demands and developments point is “The Threat of Human Cloning,” the subject of this summer’s edition of The New Atlantis. Despite evidence that advances in regenerative medicine can be achieved without resorting to fetal stem cells, the article states this:
One of the long-standing goals of regenerative medicine is to build organs from pluripotent stem cells. But growing organs from stem cells in an extremely complex matter, even more so than the difficult task of differentiating stem cells into particular cell types. Instead of deriving organs from stem cells, it may be more technically straightforward to culture embryos for longer periods of time. There are already biotechnical companies developing methods for transplanting organs from aborted fetuses, but using cloning to produce genetically identical fetuses could well be a more attractive option.
It continues:
Considering the pressing need for viable human kidneys—there are more than 100,000 names on the U.S. waiting list as of this writing—it is conceivable that in the future we will see increasing pressure to create cloned fetuses for the purpose of harvesting organs.
The 2006 Fetus Farming Prohibitive Act forbids only the use of fetuses gestated for research purposes. That leaves a foothold for researchers seeking ways to grow embryos in vitro to the fetal stage. From there, the next step—already accomplished in animal experiments—takes us into what seems like science fiction: the creation of headless clones as a source of organs.
Not everyone grants full humanity, or any at all, to prenatal life. Inside or out of the transplant community, many see what begins in the womb as little more than a frail cluster of cells poised for dispersion. Brainless life, devoid of capacity for personhood, would be even more discountable in the grand economy of human flourishing. We already accept brain death as a marker for organ removal. Fabrication, then, of human goods that never had a brain could be embraced as a species of applied compassion toward living persons.
The imperative to save existing persons wields great force. In 2007, Princeton University molecular biologist Lee M. Silver stated that he saw “nothing wrong, philosophically or rationally” with creating headless clones. The new world is braver than we think.
Twenty years ago, literary critic Leslie Fiedler wondered if “perhaps this whole strategy is wrong, misguided—finally monstruous; that forestalling death indefinitely is as impious as hastening it was traditionally thought.” Only two decades later, few of us would comprehend his moral unease. Today, King Lear’s conviction finds little echo: “We must endure our going hence, even as our coming hither.”
Technology is hardly neutral. Untethered to a logic outside itself, it establishes new standards for behavior. Silver’s comment would have been unthinkable a century ago. But, as Jacques Ellul understood: “Technique never observes the distinction between moral and immoral use. It tends, on the contrary, to create a completely independent technical morality.”
This technical morality horrifies us when we see it at work on the abortionist’s operating table. Yet we want it both ways. We want to hold the moral high ground by condemning the “Moral Rot at the Core of Planned Parenthood,” as one headline shouted. At the same time, we assent to the spoils of advanced bio-technical research and those laboratory procedures that employ fetal tissue.
Mary Gatter, medical director for Planned Parenthood of Lost Angeles, wants a Lamborghini. The rest of us ache to know that when the dreaded diagnosis comes, as it surely will, some substitute might be had for what time and the hazards of living have worn away. At the end of the day, our own wants are more extravagant than Gatter’s.
If we just let them carve-up a few more babies, we could live forever.
Or perhaps, for a desperate clinging to anything earth, not acknowledging either a hell or a heaven.
I still think this fetal harvesting thing is only an excuse, though. If fetuses hypothetically proved utterly useless for anything medical the abortion facilities would still be thronged under current conditions.
1.) PP has lost their major client who bought the baby body parts. Whoops.
2.) People in Congress are making major noises about defunding which creates a drip, drip, drip. Even if Obama refuses to sign what is sent to him, hearts,minds and souls have been opened to the truth.
3.) The people of goodwill who did not know about PP before are now associating them with Nazi doctors. That is really bad for future fundraising.
All this has been a huge scab torn off the backs of the pro-death crowd and it ain't good for business.
I have been in this fight for a long time. The tide is turning decisively in our favor.
When abortionists are forced to illegally ply their trade from the back of their Cadillacs you know business is heading toward the toilet.
“We Allow Planned Parenthood Because We Hate Morality.”
Fixed.
At our youngest, most irrational ages, we were bathed (by culture) in Malthusian, Darwinist nonsense, to destroy Reason, if we were born after the 50s.
That irrational, mindset is tied to emotions only and removes Truth/God (Christian Worldview) from the public square so man can be god. Just like with the Fall of Adam. Today is no different.
The Marxists— (satanists—for no one is able to eliminate Faith from a human being)—only have this one life to live, so they do everything for “eternal” life—even drink the blood of innocents and sacrifice them to Ba’al. Skull and Bones ritual illustrates the sodomy and nihilism and degradation, and mocking of the Christ and God’s Design, for that of Lucifer—their Light, who hates mankind and God. They want billions killed and the NWO goal is just that.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
FIFY
Remove Virtue from Science and you have hell and Frankenstein. We already knew what is the result of evil scientists thousands of years ago in Western Civilization and treating humans as just “Minds in a Vat”.
Virtue is targeted and destroyed in our children by the inappropriate use of technology and removal from the Natural Family and real life human interactions. Kindergartens now allow “computers”-—which destroys actual integration of the brain and destroys individualism and thinking outside the box. Technology actually does the work for the brain—so it is truncated—shut down at critical ages where the practiced integration of the brain using all senses is essential for critical thought and essential Common Sense.
Computers/screens program the mind with someone else’s worldview (usually Satanic Marxists desires and thoughts). Waldorf schools do not allow children under the age of 13 to use computers or watch TV-—they have to use ALL their senses for true brain development in the way that creates CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS, which need to be habituated and embedded in children....like Virtue.
Common Core sexualizes children to destroy their normal sexual identity development and make them incapable of controlling the Mind by Reason. Emotions will rule for life.
All their ideas and desires are warped and irrational when sexualized in latency where fixation will occur. They will be unable to be rational and moral-—just like how the Afghani harem boys grow up to desire and “see” goats, women and pretty little boys. Virtue is learned and Freedom is incapable without it.
Immoral scientists prove this every day. Justice Systems only promote VIRTUE always. Anything that dehumanizes and removes the individual dignity of a person-—is using a person as a “Means to an End” (Marxism/Satanism) and should NEVER be condoned by a true Justice System.
Really ..??
Actually, it is allowed because all these women want to have sex (without protection), and then have a way to get rid of the evidence.
Well, along with a baby (which they kill), they have the prospect of developing breast cancer. The evidence supports that claim.
I like it. Consider that stolen.
Well, along with a baby (which they kill), they have the prospect of developing breast cancer. The evidence supports that claim.
Abortion also causes infertility; some women want to use abortion as birth control and still have a living baby at some point in the future. But they might not be able to. Or they might be able to get pregnant, but not carry to term because of the damage abortion causes.
I actually think that the high risk of becoming infertile (or at least, of becoming unable to carry a baby to term) is one of the major reasons the left pushes abortion so much. One of the basic tenets of liberalism is that there are too many people. How better to reduce the number of people, than by killing babies and leaving their mothers barren?
That is a really good point.
I’m not sure I ever had info regarding the possibility of infertility .. but because of what I consider the brutal way an abortion is carried out .. I can clearly see that could be a likely outcome.
The original intent of abortion was to rid the world of more black people. That’s really sickening when you think of it. And .. that was Margaret Sanger plan. Unfortunately, during the years when there was no such thing as birth control, many wives were having too many births; causing them to search for a way to end a pregnancy. And, sadly, there were many doctors willing to do so. Then, with the sexual revolution, as I said, the women became (so called) liberated and there became a need to get rid of the evidence of their infidelity, or unladylike activity.
But, murder is murder .. and I have always believed that was exactly what was taking place. To remove a child from the womb before it’s term is up, is to cause it to die.
I’m sorry if I’m graphic .. but it’s time to tell it like it really is .. and stop hiding this horror in the closet.
I was watching the congressional hearings today and what a clear cut difference between the parties. The Democrats were all for abortion and the Republicans were all against abortion. I quit the Democrat party when they started supporting abortion and I have not looked back since.
The Democrat party is the pro-abortion party, Democrats do not kid yourselves. If you have relatives or friends who are Democrats let them know the truth.
I agree with you, Marxism is just Satanism in disguise.
Why not take useless criminals in jails and use their livers, hearts, brains and kidneys? They are a drain on society and many of them are in the prime of life?
Can you imagine the outrage from the liberal community if someone suggested this? But it is perfectly acceptable to take an innocent harmless baby from the womb and use that baby’s body parts for “science”. Science is beginning to resemble Dr. Frankenstein more and more each day. All knowledge and no humanity.
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