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Live Action President Lila Rose in one of their investigative videos into Planned Parenthood

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WASHINGTON D.C, December 17, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Prominent pro-life activist Lila Rose has posted a tweet questioning President Donald Trump for his support of COVID-19 vaccines which have used cell lines from aborted babies in their development or testing.

The founder and president of pro-life group Live Actionposted the message on Twitter yesterday, and called upon both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to address the issue of aborted babies being used so prolifically in the COVID-19 vaccinations.

“Nearly ALL the Covid vaccines are being created either with aborted babies, or being tested on aborted babies. I don’t expect pro-abort bankrollers to care but where was the supervision by the pro-life government entities backing this?? This is an atrocity.” Rose tagged Trump and Pence in the post.

The Pfizer vaccine, which has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration less than a week ago, is linked to abortion through its testing. Dr. Helen Watt of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, England, told the Catholic Herald that the Pfizer vaccine “makes no use of a foetal cell line in the production process itself, and no use in the design,” but that “[one] of the confirmatory lab tests on the vaccine did sadly involve an old foetal cell line.” 

The Children of God for Life organization confirmed this by saying that the Pfizer vaccine is tested using the HEK 293 cell line, which is derived from kidney tissue taken from a healthy baby who was aborted in the Netherlands in the 1970s.

At the time of writing, Moderna’s vaccine is also expected to receive an EUA imminently, making it another vaccine developed through Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which is also linked to abortion. Children of God for Life compiled research to show that Moderna “extensively” uses the “aborted fetal cell line HEK-293” in the “fundamental design of mRNA technology, their Spike protein and in the research, development, production and testing.” The proteins used in the vaccine itself and the mRNA “were built on technology that extensively used aborted fetal cells, rendering the vaccine absolutely immoral from start to finish.”

It seems that an appeal earlier in the year by over 130 pro-life Congressmen, asking Trump to “redirect funds toward ethical, successful alternatives to combat COVID-19,” was not heeded. As part of Operation Warp Speed (OWS), the U.S. federal government signed an agreement with Pfizer in July awarding them almost $2 billion in funding for up to 600 million doses of their COVID-19 vaccine. Moderna has been given$1 billion through OWS for design and testing, with another $1.5 billion promised should the vaccine be deemed safe and effective.

Trump is considered by many veteran pro-life activists to be the most pro-life president in history.

As president, Trump has reinstated and expanded the ban on foreign aid to abortion-involved groups (including International Planned Parenthood Federation), banned groups that commit or refer abortions from Title X family planning funds, overturned Obama-era regulations that barred states from defunding Planned Parenthood, and issued rules protecting Americans from being forced to subsidize abortion in government-mandated health insurance plans.

The president has also forcefully denounced abortion, calling attention to Democrats’ opposition to anti-infanticide legislation and calling on Congress to send him a ban on late-term abortion to sign. Most of his judicial nominees have pleased pro-lifers as well.

In addition, the administration has consistently worked to defend life and oppose abortion at the United Nations, from resisting pro-abortion agenda items and resolution language to affirming that abortion isn’t a human right and promoting abstinence education. Last month, Trump announced that the U.S. is cutting ties with the pro-abortion World Health Organization (WHO) due to its handling of the coronavirus crisis.

This year, Trump declared January 22, the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision imposing abortion on demand across the country, to be “National Sanctity of Human Life Day.” A few days later, he became the first U.S. president to attend the annual March for Life in Washington D.C.

In a proclamation issued prior to the march, Trump declared that “every person — the born and unborn, the poor, the downcast, the disabled, the infirm, and the elderly — has inherent value” and said the U.S. “proudly and strongly reaffirms our commitment to protect the precious gift of life at every stage, from conception to natural death.”

However, Trump has pioneered the move to develop COVID vaccines and then welcomed their arrival, despite almost all of the potential vaccines being linked to abortion. 

Just today, Trump tweeted a message to show his latest approval of the vaccines and their distribution: “The Vaccine and the Vaccine rollout are getting the best of reviews. Moving along really well. Get those “shots” everyone!”  His words are no novelty, for he has frequently hailed progress of the vaccine development. 

On the day of the first dose given in America, Trump tweeted: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”

When Trump was treated for his own COVID-19 diagnosis, he used the antiviral drug Remdesivir which was tested using the HEK 293T cell line – aslightly modified version of the HEK293 cell line. 

He also used a new “antibody cocktail” developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which HEK 293T in its testing, although MIT Technology Review suggested that it “would have taken an expert” to know that the cell line was being used in any way by Regeneron.

Decisions by the Trump administration have removed funding from some projects using human fetal tissue (HFT) from aborted babies and instituted policies which have had the effect of making it more difficult for projects which use HFT from aborted babies to receive federal funding. However, federal funding applications for projects using already established human fetal cell lines, such as HEK293, were not impacted by the new policy on HFT funding brought in by the Trump administration. In fact, the policy specifically excluded such cell lines from its definition of research involving HFT, along with embryonic stem cells or embryonic cell lines.

LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.