Just for fun (of a sorts), I decided to see what the infamous Project 2025 document has to say about abortion. My curiousity was piqued by a news article wherein someone from the Heritage Foundation said that the claim of Democrats that Project 2025 calls for banning abortion nationwide is a lie. Sometimes I like to do spot checks to see who is telling the truth.
The first thing I will say is that if you download a copy and do a word search on the word "abortion," there are a LOT of hits. In fact, if all you did is click through each hit, you could be forgiven for thinking that abortion is the main topic addressed in the document. Anyway, right up front on page 6 the document says this:
But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning. Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. In particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion.
I'll let you decide if that sounds like a call for a national ban. In spite of the many references to abortion, I was unable to find any position on what limits there should be or whether there should be any exceptions to abortion bans [1]. Just this follow-up sentence:
Conservatives should ardently pursue these pro-life and pro-family policies while recognizing the many women who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and the heroism of every choice to become a mother.
Sounds a bit like empty "thoughts and prayers" to me [2], but maybe I'm being too cynical.
As I browsed further, I was disheartened to see this kind of inflammatory language about vaccines.
The CDC oversaw and funded the development and testing of the COVID-19 vaccines with aborted fetal cell lines, insensitive to the consciences of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people who objected to taking a vaccine with such a link to abortion....There is never any justification for ending a child’s life as part of research, and the research benefits from splicing or growing aborted fetal cells and aborted baby body parts can easily be provided by alternative sources.
And later, this:
Thousands of Americans of faith and conscience wish to receive various childhood vaccinations for themselves and their families but are not allowed to receive vaccines that are derived through or tested on aborted fetal cells. For example, the chickenpox, Hepatitis, and MMR vaccines in the U.S. are all linked to abortion in this way. There are ethically derived alternatives abroad that have been used safely there for decades, but the FDA makes it exceedingly difficult for Americans to import them....To avoid future moral coercion of the sort experienced with the COVID-19 vaccines, the FDA and NIH should require the development of drugs and biologics that are free from moral taint and switch to cell lines that are not derived from aborted fetal cell lines or aborted baby body parts.
There is a lot to say about this, but I will try to be brief.
1. It is true that a handful of cell lines (like, four) in vaccine production and research were originally derived from aborted fetuses in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Importantly, these fetuses were not aborted for the purpose of obtaining cells. Rather, the abortions were happening anyway and the fetal tissues were donated to medical use. The cells derived from these fetuses were useful because they were unlikely to be contaminated with any other undetectable viruses, they were human-derived and supported the growth of the vaccine strains of virus well, and they could be propagated and expanded to meet production needs for the foreseeable future. Two of those cell lines were further genetically modified to better support virus growth and transformed such that they can propagate indefinitely--at this point you could think of them as cancer cells. One of them is ubquitous in biomedical research.
2. There is no need for new human fetal cells for the production of these vaccines. We are talking about cell lines that have been in use for decades. And the references to "ending a child's life for research" and "aborted baby body parts" are just prejudical inflammatory language.
3. The vaccines produced from these cell lines have benefited millions of children by saving them from death and disability resulting from these diseases. Moreover, since rubella (the "R" in MMR) can cross the placenta and damage a fetus, we can also say that a great many fetuses have been protected as well.
4. The Catholic Church is famously conservative on reproductive issues (even more so than our Church), and even the Vatican has considered this history and repeatedly affirmed that these vaccines are acceptable for use. Obviously we don't all take our marching orders from the Vatican, but it shows that Project 2025 is not entitled to the presumption of moral superiority on this issue.
5. The most popular COVID-19 vaccines (mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna) were not produced using these cell lines. So the complaint that conscientious objectors to the COVID-19 vaccines, on the grounds of abortion, were morally coerced is weak at best. (Too bad rightwingers stirred up prejudice and distrust against mRNA vaccines [3]. Nothing seems to make them happy.)
6. Switching cell lines for mass production of vaccines, especially vaccines that have decades of safety and efficacy data behind them, is not a casual decision. It would be a lengthy and costly process. For the adenovirus-based COVID-19 vaccines, in fact there are no other options that I am aware of. And while it's nice and easy to blame FDA for making it difficult, if FDA were to relax their process I have a feeling that the Heritage Foundation would be right there to criticize them on the other side for lowering standards and approving insufficently tested vaccines.
7. I get the feeling that Project 2025 is not the work of serious, responsible thought.
Like I've said
previously, people generally view the donation of bodies, organs, and tissues to medical science favorably, but for some reason the word "fetus" gives people the vapors and conjures up all kinds of lurid imagry. We need not celebrate the abortions that made these vaccines possible, but we can be greatful for the immeasurable good that has come from the cells they produced. Attempts to taint vaccines in the eyes of people will only end up multiplying harm.
Notes:
1. To their credit, they do not consider removing an ectopic pregnancy to be an abortion. On the other hand, emergency contraception gets sort of lumped in with abortion. The reasons are not air tight, but it's the same contradiction that plagues those who want to declare a fertilized egg to be fully human and somehow avoid the problematic ramifications that flow from that.
2. Maybe we could honor them at football games or something.
3. You can sense a trace of this in a different section of the document where it refers to the COVID-19 "vaccine", complete with quotes as if the fact that it is a vaccine is questionable.
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