Aborted fetal cells in COVID-19 vaccinations, a victory for religious liberty (and other stories)

Some important culture war news from around the interwebs.

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From Mercatornet, the Australian COVID-19 vaccination will likely have been created with the usage of aborted fetal cell lines:

First, the Oxford vaccine has been developed using a cell line from the kidney of an aborted foetus. This is not fake news, or an anti-vax conspiracy theory. It is a well-documented fact. According to Science magazine it uses “HEK-293, a kidney cell line widely used in research and industry that comes from a foetus aborted in about 1972”. HEK is an acronym for “human embryonic kidney”.

Read the whole thing. It is very concerning.

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According to The Christian Post, many Christians are swimming with the culture on issues of sexuality rather than against it:

In 2007, 90 percent of evangelicals said their church forbid (63 percent) or strongly discouraged (27 percent) “homosexual behaviors.” In 2020, that figure has dropped to 65 percent (33.7 percent forbid, while 31.4 percent strongly discourage). 

In 2008, 34.4 percent of evangelicals between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five supported same-sex marriage. In 2018, that figure had risen to 56.1 percent. 

This is not surprising. The influence of public schools, pornography, the entertainment industry, and social media is transforming the views of a generation.

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A very important victory for religious liberty in Kentucky:

A federal judge in Kentucky has ruled that the city of Louisville cannot force a Christian photographer to work same-sex weddings because the “Constitution does not require a choice between gay rights and freedom of speech.”

U.S. District Judge Justin R. Walker on Friday ruled that Chelsey Nelson, a wedding photographer and blogger who is a Christian, can refuse to photograph and blog celebratory messages about same-sex weddings, according to the Christian legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom.

Read the whole thing.

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Progressives are once again outraged by the social conservatism of the Trump State Department. From C-Fam:

Abortion industry and LGBT lobby groups called an internal human rights report of the U.S. State Department “deeply disturbing” and “dangerous.” The report puts into question the international legal status of abortion and LGBTQI+ rights.

“We strongly reject the Commission’s dismissal of certain rights as divisive social and political controversies,” reads a comment about the report of the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights by leading abortion industry groups NARAL Pro-Choice, the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood Federation, and LGBT powerhouses the Human Rights Campaign, OutRight International and Lambda Legal.

Read the whole thing. Of course, there is no international right to abortion, but progressive groups have been using international institutions to promote their agenda for decades. They don’t care for pushback.

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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is no friend of social conservatives, recently proposed banning so-called “conversion therapy.” This prompted an investigation into counseling for unwanted same-sex attraction by the BBC, which Christian Concern has responded to.

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The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is reporting on a tragic story of a Canadian woman who is attempting to prevent her husband from accessing the so-called “service” of assisted suicide.

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The Communist dictatorship of China continues to use abortion as a tool of genocide against the Uighur Muslims:

The AP report found that “having too many children” is a “major reason people are sent to detention camps,” that “parents of three or more [children] are ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines,” and that “police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children.” The report also contains shocking witness testimony:

  • “Tursunay Ziyawudun said she was injected until she stopped having her period, and kicked repeatedly in the lower stomach during interrogations. She now can’t have children and often doubles over in pain, bleeding from her womb.”
  • “Gulbahar Jelilova confirmed that detainees in her camp were forced to abort their children. She also saw a new mother, still leaking breast milk, who did not know what had happened to her infant. And she met doctors and medical students who were detained for helping Uighurs dodge the system and give birth at home.”
  • Gulzia Mogdia was also forced to have an abortion when she became pregnant with her third child. “Medics inserted an electric vacuum into her womb and sucked her fetus out of her body,” after which she was “taken home and told to rest, as [officials] planned to take her to a camp.”

Some survivors recalled being suddenly “force-fed birth control pills” and “injected with fluids.” One had to recite her crimes (“I gave birth to too many children”) whenever officials came near her cell. Another remembered that a pregnant woman in her camp’s “class” had suddenly disappeared.

Read the whole thing.

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This essay over at Quillette by Yoram Hazony on “The Challenge of Marxism” and our present cultural moment is an absolute must-read.

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