By Debi Vinnedge

There are times when God has a way of quietly speaking to the soul, revealing a specific plan He has for us.  So it was with a humble nun in a contemplative community who recently discovered the use of aborted fetal material in several vaccines and adult medicines.  Her name and community will be kept private to protect them from both the press and the world, for how can either understand the workings of a soul given to the Lord?

When she contacted me at Children of God for Life several months ago with numerous questions, eager to learn the truth, over time I would reveal to her gentle soul perhaps more than she could bear or cared to know.  But she confided in me that God had put it in her heart to do something about this.  She was not exactly sure what or how or why – but she did know that she would at all costs, be obedient to His instruction.

And during those long hours of conversation we shared I was about to learn how one very pious nun would elevate the life of one of our forgotten, aborted, children to the dignity he so justly deserved. For you see, one of these babies exploited by the pharmaceutical industry for years was about to become more than just a numbered ingredient in a science patent or package insert.

Now it happened that one of the other sisters in her order had been unknowingly taking a medication that was produced using this aborted little boy, dubbed by scientists as WI-26 (Wistar Institute, specimen number 26).  Unlike many of the aborted fetal products, this one had a moral alternative and the fellow nun decided to use it. But there was still another obstacle to overcome – one that did not settle well with my new friend.  For in their refrigerator was a drug containing the partial remains of this aborted child.

Granted, the drug contained a small amount of fetal DNA and while some may have seen it as inconsequential, such was not the case with our dear nun.  She would later tell me that having the medication present in their midst so deeply disturbed her conscience she was willing to move to another convent if needed.

The solution to her dilemma would come through prayer and what would transpire can only be attributed to the grace of God and the firm conviction He had laid on her heart.  In the course of our conversations I had mailed her the 2008 Vatican document, Dignitas Personae.  She told me that the citations in paragraph’s 34 and 35 under The use of human “biological material” of illicit origin struck her deeply, particularly where it stated:

“The Instruction Donum vitae formulated the general principle which must be observed in these cases: “The corpses of human embryos and fetuses, whether they have been deliberately aborted or not, must be respected just as the remains of other human beings.” (emphasis added)

Sister knew exactly what needed to be done.  The baby’s remains, present in that drug would have to be given proper burial in a cemetery with a Catholic Mass.  Would such an unusual request be allowed?  Could she put to rest this poor child and the tugging at her heart to give this baby the honor he deserved?

She sought the counsel of her superior who agreed that it seemed the proper thing to do.  This child had been rejected, unwanted and unloved.  And he deserved to be accepted and raised to the dignity God had intended.  To be certain, the deliberate murder of an innocent baby is an abhorrent act of violence, but to then continuously exploit his/her remains for profit as the pharmaceutical industry has done with hundreds –  if not thousands of babies – compounds that crime over and over again.  And so our dear nun sought to somehow alleviate the injustice that had been inflicted on at least, this one little boy.

With permission to proceed granted, she began making arrangements for his memorial service by first giving this child a name.  A beautiful small wooden urn would be engraved– but what name should she choose, she wanted to know?  I gently suggested “Victor”, in honor of her mother, Victoria who had passed away two days earlier and she happily agreed.  The middle name would come to her in an equally tender way as she told me of a conversation with a young woman she had met the previous day.

This woman had confessed to Sister that she had aborted her baby, an action she deeply regretted. But she could never give her little girl a proper burial since the remains were lost, and this deep sorrow haunted the mother’s memory. But when Sister told her about her plans for Victor and that she could include her baby’s name, Marie, with his, it greatly consoled her.

And so the service was held on Thursday May 2, 2013 – the same day Sister’s mother was buried miles and miles away. A fellow nun, a lay associate, two deacons, a priest and a bereaved family mourning the recent loss of their own stillborn child gathered around the altar for Holy Mass with little Victor Marie in their center.

A large bouquet of freshly cut bleeding heart flowers from their garden was lovingly placed beside him as they sang “Isaiah 49”, “On Eagles Wings” and “Mother of God’s Child”.  The priest himself was so deeply moved by their loving piety that he spoke against the evils of embryonic and aborted fetal research in his homily, something he later told the nun he felt compelled to do in honor of thousands of other nameless babies exploited in the name of science.

And as Sister tenderly placed the only remains she had of little Victor Marie in his permanent resting place beneath a lovely tree in the cemetery, she has given him something none of these other little children have yet had: love, acceptance, a name instead of a number and a permanent reminder that this abomination must stop.

In sharing what this quiet, holy nun has done with other prolife organizations and friends, each has confirmed that this was a profound act of love and should help raise awareness of an atrocity that we as a nation have allowed to continue far too long.

Timing is everything and coming as it does on the heels of the Kermit Gosnell abortion/murder trial, it is meaningful in more ways than one, noted one pro-life leader.

“The fact is that all of these babies deserve respect and recognition,” stated Judie Brown of American Life League. “With the Gosenell trial exposing the horrors of late term abortions, we seem to forget those whose screams are never heard audibly, but nonetheless, exist.”

Indeed, while even the most hardened pro-abortion leaders are distancing themselves from the late term and newly born babies butchered at his clinic, millions more will never be seen or heard of, but are in fact, as dead as those whom Gosnell and his staff murdered.

And as Fr Frank Pavone at Priests for Life has asked the Medical Examiner in the Gosnell case to allow him to give these babies proper burials, one small quiet nun has already seen to it that Victor received the same dignity. Yet I could not help but wonder would there ever be so fitting an end for the other aborted tiny boys and girls, ranging in ages from 14-18 weeks gestation and who are used in medical products known only as WI-38, MRC-5, HEK-293 and PER C6?

For as the nation recoils in horror over those babies whose spinal cords were snipped by Gosnell after being born alive, many of these babies used in vaccine research also survived prostaglandin abortions and were then dissected live. (See End Notes) So we must ask ourselves: Is this ghastly death of slightly earlier-term children any less significant?

The fact is that casually accepting the use of aborted fetal cell lines in medical treatments has led to a despicable sullying of the value and dignity of human life and has leant credibility to the gross commercialization of aborted babies, ripped from their mothers’ wombs – so that someone could turn a profit.

Somewhere along the way, we have been lulled into believing that this barbaric and utilitarian practice is somehow the right thing to do – alas, we have no choice – we must protect society from infectious disease at all costs – we must become slaves to the Culture of Death.

But make no mistake: using aborted babies as products to help those children fortunate enough to not have their lives snuffed out pre-birth is akin to the most depraved form of cannibalism imaginable.  Yet we are asked to accept it for every polite reason except one that begs the question:

What kind of a civilization have we really progressed to when we can find no better way to protect ourselves from disease than by using the remains of murdered children? 

Little Victor Marie, pray for us!

– End Notes –

Dr Bernard Nathanson discussing Dr Peter McCullough, Immunologist, book The Fetus As Transplant Donor : The Scientific, Social, and Ethical Perspectives,   – on the methods used in harvesting fetal tissue in Sweden:  (where WI-26, WI-38, et al, originated)

“They would puncture the sac of a pregnant woman at 14 to 16 weeks,  put a clamp on the head of the baby, pull the head down into the neck of the womb, drill a hole into the baby’s head and attach a suction machine to remove the brain cells….. At 16  to 21 weeks, they would do prostaglandin abortions where a chemical is injected into the womb causing the woman to go into mini-labor and pass the baby. Fifty percent of the time, the baby would be born alive, but that didn’t stop them. They would simply open up the abdomen of the baby with no anesthesia, and take out the liver and kidneys, etc.”

Journal Med Sci, 1949:  Dr Thicke, Duncan, Franklin & Rhodes:

“Human embryos of 2 ½ to 5 months gestation were obtained from the gynecological department of the Toronto General Hospital…  In many of the embryos the heart was still beating at the time of the receipt  in the virus laboratory.”

Dr. Gonzalo Herranz, Professor of Histology and General Embryology, University of Navarra, Spain, Pietro Croce, MD, “Vivisection or Science – a choice to make, Fetal Experimentation-Over the top”; Part 1, p. 99-108.CIVIS, 1991, Hans Ruesch Foundation

“The correct way consists in having recourse to Caesarian section or to the removal of the uterus. Only in this way can bacteriological sterility be guaranteed. In either case, then, to obtain embryo cells for culture, a programmed abortion must be adopted, choosing the age of the embryo and dissecting it while still alive to remove tissues to be placed in culture media.”

Fr Paul Marx, past President of Human Life International writes from Dr Ian Donald who described the experiments he had personally witnessed at Karolinska Institute (where WI-1- WI38 and beyond were done)

“Experiments were being performed on near-term alive aborted babies who were not even afforded the mercy of anesthetic as they writhed and cried in agony, and when their usefulness had expired, they were executed and discarded as garbage.”