KILLING NEWBORN BABIES TO HARVEST STEM CELLS

Throughout the 2006 campaign, liberals deployed a political firestorm against President Bush - because he believes that no more human embryos should be deliberately destroyed to create embryonic stem cell lines.

Now we learn that, as if to raise the ante, a hospital in the Ukraine may have been harvesting newborn babies for the same purpose.

AJ Strata reported on a series of articles that have been published by the BBC over the past year. He puts it this way:

The human race is at a critical crossroads right now. We are going to decide what kinds of creatures we will be for all time. And key to that decision is whether we kill young humans so that old and ill humans can pretend they are extending their life. The Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR) fakery has tried to argue that humans do not come from humans, but from non-human intermediary form. In this way they have convinced a lot of smart people (but uneducated in the ways of biological fact) that it is OK to destroy these mythical non-humans.

The most recent BBC story makes these startling observations:

Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests. Disturbing video footage of post-mortem examinations on dismembered tiny bodies raises serious questions about what happened to them. Ukraine has become the self-styled stem cell capital of the world.

There is a trade in stem cells from aborted foetuses, amid unproven claims they can help fight many diseases. But now there are claims that stem cells are also being harvested from live babies.

After Hospital 6 was accused of taking newborns away from their mothers, human rights campaigners were allowed to investigate:

One campaigner was allowed into the autopsy to gather video evidence. She has given that footage to the BBC and Council of Europe. In its report, the Council describes a general culture of trafficking of children snatched at birth, and a wall of silence from hospital staff upwards over their fate. The pictures show organs, including brains, have been stripped - and some bodies dismembered.

A senior British forensic pathologist says he is very concerned to see bodies in pieces - as that is not standard post-mortem practice. It could possibly be a result of harvesting stem cells from bone marrow. Hospital number six denies the allegations.

The BBC's first story, back in August, 2005, detailed an investigation into the anguished allegations of the babies' mothers:

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly is sending a rapporteur to Kharkiv as Ukraine's prosecutors delve into the cases of three mothers. "People are afraid to even give birth now," Kharkiv campaigner Tatyana Zakharova told the BBC News website. The main hospital under scrutiny has dismissed accusations against it.

Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace) rapporteur, is to visit Maternity Hospital No 6 after her arrival on Monday and will meet local parents, Ms Zakharova and Ukrainian officials. Her trip will also take her to the capital, Kiev, amid reports that babies may have been snatched at birth in other Ukrainian cities.

The alleged baby thefts go back to the autumn of 2002 but the case achieved wider publicity last year after MPs from across Europe tabled a motion at the Pace, which brings together 46 countries.

Underlining real concern over baby-trafficking from Eastern Europe, they pointed to newspaper adverts in Moldova encouraging single mothers there to sell a child for 3,000 euros.

But baby trafficking wasn't the most horrible aspect of the story:

A third mother, Tatyana Dormidontova, gave birth at a maternity ward of another Kharkiv hospital in her 32nd week of pregnancy in July 2001. Her baby was declared dead but the body was reportedly that of a much bigger baby. The mother herself died soon after birth. All three women, according to Tatyana Zakharova, were first-time mums and each was in excellent health.

This factor leads her to suspect the babies may have been stolen for illegal adoption or, even worse, for the use of their organs. There are reports that the babies' parents - or in Dormidontova's case the grandparents - were asked to sign blank pieces of paper. In their confused and fraught state they did not refuse.

The remains in the grave had allegedly had their organs and brains removed. "They were like gutted rabbits," Tatyana Zakharova told the BBC.

Larissa Nazarenko, head of Maternity Hospital No 6, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency that "not a single fact" had been proven.

The BBC later reported that the Kharkiv Hospital dismissed the allegations:

The Ukrainian maternity hospital at the centre of baby theft and organ removal allegations in the eastern city of Kharkiv has dismissed them as "lies".

Larissa Nazarenko, head of Maternity Hospital No 6, spoke out after briefing an envoy from the Council of Europe.

Evidently the story is still developing. However, the underlying ethical dimensions are perfectly clear. Once the modern, technological society of the West abandons its traditional religious commitment to the sanctity of every individual human life, human beings become nothing more than commodities. As we have blogged before, "animal rights" campaigners don't really want to give human rights to animals, they want to reduce the status of human beings to the status of domestic animals, so that the power-hungry bureaucratic elite that feels itself destined to rule the world can do with human beings as it pleases.

Heaven help us.