During these surreal times, the strength and resiliency of Americans in every sector shines.
The working mother who has adjusted to a new normal, juggling working from home while unexpectedly becoming a homeschool teacher. The manufacturing worker who takes life one day at a time, social distancing with the uncertainty of having work to return to in the near future. The small-business owner mapping out various contingencies to prevent closing the doors on his or her business for good. The medical professionals and first responders setting their own lives and families aside to respond to their calling to serve and protect their fellow man.
Americans from every walk of life are continually discerning what a new normal looks like amid the SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease) global pandemic.
Many in the mainstream media have taken to politicizing this current crisis. However, now is the time for our country to unite. Now is the time for us to put politics aside.
Recently, Amy Goldstein published a piece in The Washington Post titled “Trump ban on fetal tissue research blocks coronavirus treatment effort.”
Goldstein writes, “A senior scientist at a government biomedical research laboratory has been thwarted in his efforts to conduct experiments on possible treatments for the new coronavirus because of the Trump administration’s restrictions on research with human fetal tissue.”
Let me add in one clarifying word: unethical research with human fetal tissue.
The intent behind President Donald Trump’s restrictions signed into law in 2019 was to hold our scientists, researchers, and medical professionals to a high standard of ethics which respect the dignity of human life.
To this day, the ban passed in 2019 is about the dignity of human life.
And the Catholic Medical Association reaffirmed that position April 3, stating its opposition to using cells from aborted babies to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.
“We need to ensure vaccinating as many people as possible. To achieve this goal, we must ensure the availability of an equally efficacious vaccine be produced that would not dissuade a pro-life individual or person of faith from receiving a life-saving medication due to immoral methods of production,” said Dr. Michael Parker, CMA’s president. “We should not have to use vaccines from aborted stem cell lines when other morally acceptable alternatives exist.”
Fetal tissue research, by its nature, is unethical. Fetal tissue research is conducted on the human tissue of a little boy or girl whose life was ended at the hands of the abortion industry, an industry replete with predatory practices.
If you knew your favorite restaurant was running a heinous human trafficking operation out of their back room, you could not in good conscience continue to patronize that restaurant, no matter how delicious their chicken alfredo tastes.
The ends do not justify the means.
Knowing that innocent human life is ended in elective abortions, we cannot in good conscience poke and prod at the tissue of those innocents after their death.
Nationally, our civic and healthcare leaders have mobilized to put every resource—federal, state, and private—toward stopping the spread of the virus and protecting the safety and health of the American people.
Vaccine development takes months, years even. Often a vaccine is never discovered. Vaccine research is well underway for the COVID-19 disease, but we cannot in good conscience compromise our ethics in this process.
While I hunker down at home, like so many of the rest of you, ensuring that my vulnerable elderly mother is safe and protected, I implore all of my fellow Americans: Don’t politicize this medical emergency. Focus on what we can do together to curtail the spread of this devastating virus.
United together, we will get to the other side of this pandemic.
This commentary was submitted and published with the author’s permission. If you wish to submit a commentary to Texas Scorecard, please submit your article to submission@texasscorecard.com.
