Opinion
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March 23, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Just like everyone else I want to love, be loved, and be accepted. It is part of our human nature. That very quest for love and acceptance are key to what for me, became a lifelong road of discernment and healing. As a pregnant unwed teenager, my fear of rejection and the loss of love was bigger than my love for my unborn child and so, abandoned by family, I caved to the pressure to abort my unborn son at over four months in utero — thinking it would restore my place in the family, but like so many who cave into the pressures it never really did.

I have spent much of my life healing from the trauma of what I saw that fateful day I passively allowed my child to be killed. I also have spent decades fighting the denial of the impact of abortion on countless people and to helping others reach healing from their own abortions. That is why, after much prayer and discernment, I concluded that I personally cannot take any of the vaccines currently available. I am totally at peace with my decision and know it is the right one for me.

While it is true that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were approved by the Church and are not made with the cells of aborted babies, it is also true that they were tested on their cell lines. Sadly, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, made from the cell lines, although discouraged by the Church, has also been approved if there is no other alternative. It is a complicated issue. For me, it seems so ironic that we would look to the very babies we kill in abortion to save our lives.

I have been told my view is selfish, that I should get a shot “for the greater good”. That the cell lines are from decades ago as if that somehow makes it okay, or as if the cells of aborted babies are not being used right now in various ways. While it is certainly the hope of science that these vaccines are safe and prevent COVID in the body, I personally am more concerned with my soul before God. I personally do not believe in the end, any good can come from the evil of abortion. I believe I am rejecting it for the greater good.

What is this “greater good”? The lives of innocent unborn babies who die to the tune of 3,000 each day in our country, over 62 million since the passage of Roe v. Wade. The refusal to accept the evil and to take a strong stance against the use of aborted babies in vaccines and other experiments. I believe this will in fact be for the “greater good” and may even save the lives of the innocent unborn who are being sold on the market for the purpose of using their parts in science.

It is a known fact that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts. Instead of cries of outrage regarding the videos by The Center for Medical Progress, which exposed this in Planned Parenthood’s own words, David Daleiden, the one who exposed them, has faced federal charges spearheaded by our new Vice President Kamala Harris.

Just this past December I read an article and saw pictures about a U.S. university that is grafting the scalps of aborted babies onto rats for hair growth. Will this in the end be to satisfy the vanity of someone who is going bald? Where does it end? Where does the original intent of legal abortion, or the myth of “safe, legal, and rare” get called out for the truth of what it is and the horrors it procures? When will we have had enough?

I know what I am saying will make people uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable and it is precisely for this reason that I am unable to take the vaccine. As a Catholic, while I respect the Church I love, it does not matter to me that the document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says it is morally acceptable or that most people are getting it. I am not judging others, but I also have the right to do what I feel in good conscience — after prayer and discernment — is right for me. I recognize with that right comes an obligation expressed in that same document, “Those who, however, for reasons of conscience, refuse vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted fetuses, must do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable.”

Just recently, someone close to me voiced frustration and a lack of understanding of why I will not take the vaccine even though she knows my experience. I get it, people are worried about COVID and about me. It was even expressed that I should hope a nurse we know well would not hear that I was not taking the vaccine. For sure, it was relayed, she would get upset and tell me all the horror she has seen treating COVID patients. I don’t doubt it. I am not minimizing the pain, suffering, and havoc of COVID, I have lost people I love to it. I prayed about this, too, and if this nurse came to hear of my decision, I would need to tell her what I have seen: my unborn son blackened because of a saline abortion. He was fully formed, born dead. An innocent baby killed in the guise of a choice no one will even verbalize except as a “women’s choice” or “product of conception”. They cannot even say the truth of what they are doing, or they gleefully rejoice in this “freedom” they protect at all costs.

In the end, I know those things I mentioned in the beginning of this article — fear, and the desire to love, be loved, and be accepted — will probably come up again as people read this. I accept I will be judged and ridiculed for my stance; it has happened already. Friends wish I would get it, so do family members, but the difference between then and now is I have learned to prayerfully discern my own road to God. Through prayer and by His grace I will stay strong, speaking out in defense of the unborn and the evils abortion brings. I know now His is the only acceptance and love I truly need.