Aborted Baby Cells Used as a Research Base for Flavouring

Moral Outcry is the blog for the pro-life organization Bound4Life, which featured an article this morning revealing the fact that aborted baby cells are being used in the research and development of flavourings for several major food and beverage companies. Companies we probably use several products of per day, including Kraft, Nestle, and PepsiCo.

To clarify exactly what this means: Pepsi products do not contain aborted baby cells, however, PepsiCo partners, collaborates and funds the biotech company Senomyx, which uses aborted fetal cells in the research and development of artificial flavour enhancers. Pepsi funds this as well as pays royalties to Senomyx "which uses HEK-293 (human embryonic kidney cells) to produce flavor enhancers for Pepsi beverages."

When this news broke last spring ProLife groups called for a boycott of PepsiCo.

Often, people all but roll their eyes when they hear stories like this about anti-abortion groups boycotting this and making a lot of noise about that... sadly, even a lot of Christians would rater not be associated with "outrageous" statements, and even fear being perceived as being "intolerant". Does Christ tolerate it? Does God, after weaving a child together lovingly in the mothers womb, sit back and shrug when that child is ripped from the womb, aborted, and it's remains used to discover delicious alternatives to MSG and sugar? No, it angers God and in fact is forbidden in the bible (read Lev 18:21, Deu 12:31, Deu 18:10). Christ=Life. Romans 8:2, "because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death." If you have chosen to carry the name "Christian" you have chosen to be a follower of Life. You're a little Lifer.

Therefor, indignation is an appropriate and healthy response to discovering that somehow it's okay for a research company to use aborted remains of a child (the human embryonic cells are obtained from electively aborted embryos, meaning a woman has chosen to have an abortion "and one of the ways in which the remains of her baby was disposed included acquisition by Senomyx who then used parts of this baby for research into a flavor additive.")

I'll take a paragraph directly from the Moral Outcry blog as I think it is very well worded:

Pepsi, Kraft, Cadbury, Nestle, Frito-Lay, et. al. are not the antichrist, so don’t read my words wrong, but part of being a faithful witness for Jesus and standing for truth is being able to withstand what is called the spirit of the antichrist which I John 4:3 says is “already in the world.” That spirit is a precursor to the end of the age when the real antichrist will come and, though it’s become a fictionalized account for movies and something we don’t look at seriously, the power of the antichrist to cause the masses to worship him is the inability to buy and sell without his mark.

If we can’t lay down our Pepsi or Doritos now, what might it look like when our lives depend on it?

Food for thought.

Within hours of our press release, Children of God for Life received notice from Campbell Soup that they have severed their ties with Senomyx. Stated Juli Mandel Sloves, Senior Manager of Nutrition & Wellness Communications at Campbell Soup Company,

"We are no longer in partnership with Senomyx. This fact was discussed during the Senomyx conference call with its investors earlier this month."

Unlike other companies that claimed they had no relationship with Senomyx, Campbell Soup had credibility. When they were contacted by US Mail letters prior to our press release, Campbell Soup noted that "the trust we have cultivated and developed over the years with our consumers is not worth compromising to cut costs or increase profit margins."

For a list of responses from other companies in partnership with Senomyx, check here.

A Person's a Person No Matter How Small

The wise words of Horton in Horton Hears a Who. I'm copying and pasting a few paragraphs from an article entitled To the Black Church of America by Lou Engle (for those who don't know, the visionary and co-founder of 'The Call' solemn assemblies urging to end abortion). It compares the abortion crisis in many ways to the black slavery crisis that the United States had to deal with once, gives some urgent perspective on just how big the crisis is, and urges that if things could change once, they can change again. It gets quite into politics near the end, I'm assuming it was written just before the last US election, but nevertheless, potent.

The dark shadow of abortion stretches itself across the moral fabric of our nation. Since the landmark case Roe v. Wade in 1973, yearly the blood of up to 1.3 million babies has been spilled upon American soil. Undermining the basic foundational moral and societal cornerstones laid in both scripture and by our founding fathers, abortion strikes against the very life of our nation. A living, moving, feeling, and breathing child being abducted from the womb is not a “side-line” socio-political issue. We are talking about the murder of a child- a child who is just as “human” as the African American slave one hundred and fifty years ago working the cotton fields.

John Noonan, Professor of Law at the University of California says it this way, “Once or twice in a century an issue arises…So far reaching in its consequences and so deep in its foundations that it calls every person to take a stand.” In past times the forced removal of Native American Tribes from their homes was such an issue but very few took their stand. Slavery was such an issue, and the civil rights movement carried this kind of moral gravity. Undoubtedly there were many issues during the days prior to the Civil War that pressed upon the nation but God was bringing one issue to a divine apex. Based on whatever side you took in that day history now stands in judgment of you. And so it will be another forty years from now. History will stand in judgment of a nation that appallingly aborted its own children and assigned millions of her women to live lives plagued with shame, regret and devastated relationships.

This is not the end: the ready access to abortion now is fueling the worldwide proliferation of human sex trafficking in which women are kidnapped and forced to have sex with men 10-20 times a night. When these women become pregnant, they are then compelled to abort their children in order to remain economically useful. How is this for fruit of the feminist cause célèbre? We have ended up enslaving our own daughters! We are unleashing a sexual insanity into the earth in epic proportions and abortion is the atomic bomb that has cleared the way for the gradual destruction of our nation’s moral values. This is not just a social issue; this is the shedding of innocent blood. Blood affects the spiritual realm and fuels the demonization of a whole culture.

In the scriptures the shedding on innocent blood is the ultimate crime, a crime that God would not pardon. 2 Kings 24:4 records that God removed Judah out of his sight because of the sin of Manasseh, “because of the innocent blood that he had shed, for he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the Lord would not pardon.” Brothers and sisters, a great turn has been taking place in America on the ideology of Abortion. Movies are shouting adoption is a better answer than abortion. The movie Horton Hears A Who prophesies to millions that, “a person’s a person no matter how small.”

I can think of a few others off the top of my head too. The Blind Side,

Juno,

and Despicable Me...

A group of young people who have been standing for four years in front of the Supreme Court pleading the cause of the unborn with LIFE tape over there mouths were given a dream. In the dream, they were going from court room to court room to court room which then lead to a long hallway and entered into a large court room and there God was preparing to bring His own court case against Roe v. Wade and in the dream the name of that court was Appomattox Court House. Appomattox is where God finished His court case against Dred Scott. Because Americas courts did not deal with slavery in its own halls of justice God took it to the Appomattox Court House where General Lee of the South surrendered to General Grant of the North. This was after 600,000 men’s blood was poured out on the battlefield of the Civil War as the full payment for the blood shed of slavery. Brothers and sisters, what will Appomattox Court House look like if America doesn’t deal with Roe v. Wade in her own courts.