Republican state senator, Ralph Shortey from Oklahoma City, has introduced a bill which bans aborted fetuses from being used in food. Senate Bill 1418 prohibits "..the sale and manufacture of food or products which contain aborted fetuses." Mr. Shortey said he got the idea for the bill after reading an article on the internet about an anti-abortion group which was boycotting companies that allegedly use embryonic stem cells in research designed to develop and market artificial sweeteners.

Apparently Sen. Shortey has received a fair amount of criticism about the bill for obvious reasons. His response was to say...

"People are thinking that this has to do with fetuses being chopped up and put in our burritos. That's not the case. It's beyond that. There are companies that are using embryonic stem cells to research and basically cause a chemical reaction to determine whether or not something tastes good or not. As a pro-life advocate, it kind of disturbed me that we would use aborted embryos or aborted fetuses to extract stem cells and use them for research to basically make things taste better."

I see nothing wrong in a law forbidding aborted fetuses being used as food. Although it may not be an issue now, you and I both know enough about big agri and big business and the greed, ruthlessness and heartlessness of CEOs to know that absent this law, some food exec, sometime, somewhere, will get a bright idea and we'll all be eating our neighbors' unwanted children in our Chips Ahoy.

This would be followed by a fetus farm where fetuses were grown in petri dishes to enhance Banquet Chicken Pot Pie.

And what about Baby Ruth candy bars?

Would you really put anything past big business?

But...will this mean the end of baby back ribs in Oklahoma?

No, they use Native American fetuses in Oklahoma, no problem for Oklahomans.

If the fetuses are already aborted, what should be done with them?

A funeral for each one or a medical waste bag?

Perhaps the stem cells within the fetuses could be used for non-commercial medical research. Therein lies the promise of new limbs for amputees and other repairs.

Exactly. They should be used for stem cell research. I understand why you want it to be non commercial, to prevent people becoming pregnant just to sell a fetus, but with a few exceptions, I don't think human beings have devolved enough to sell fetuses.

I think there are plenty of aborted fetuses available - the cause of so many unwanted pregnancies in the US and UK is another issue it's maybe worth discussing elsewhere.

Commercial medical research expects a bottom line result. To achieve that, you need to restrict propriety information and control distribution. The usual method of distribution control is via price. Copyright laws protect commercial research and formulae.

This method may be fine for viagra and cosmetics but it is not fine for treatment of serious conditions found worldwide. Stem cell-derived treatments may be so 'miraculous' in effect, it would be immoral to see only a few wealthy westerners benefit because of a venal medical system.

No, not at all...but they certainly do not take issue with "stealing" them. i.e. in South America, kidnapped pregnant women have lost fetuses and babies!

This map may explain the shortage of aborted fetuses in South America:



here's why:


Chocolategenii: do you think the kidnapped women's fetuses were being whipped round to a South American stem cell research laboratory? Seriously?

It's sad that only the green, yellow and blue countries on the map will be able to do any meaningful stem cell research; and then only if the local priests don't lobby to block it.