Have Ukrainian Babies Been Stolen to Supply Body Parts?

This is a very disturbing story from the London Times. It seems that some Ukrainian women have charged that their babies were stolen at birth either to be sold for adoption, or worse, used as crops for body parts. I usually don’t post stories such as these, since they often represent urban legends. But the London Times is not a sensationalist publication. And this paragraph from the Times story gives me great pause.

“Video footage seen by The Times shows four foetuses which have clearly had their insides and brains surgically removed, and fragments of a larger baby, about one month old, also with many organs removed.”

If true, this is beyond criminal. And it raises an important question: Should human life ever be reduced to the status of a natural resource to be exploited? That is what therapeutic cloning does, currently at the early embryo stage. But what prevents the same arguments heard today for using embryos made for research to be adopted also for later-stage embryos and even fetuses? And as I remind readers at every chance because it is so important, New Jersey has legalized cloning, implantation of cloned embryos, and gestation through the ninth month—surely not a case of poor drafting or unintended effect.

It strikes me that this fundamental principle must hold at all stages of human life, from beginning to end: Humans are not objects. They are not harvestable. Human exceptionalism demands no less.