Precious baby fingers

This blog post was started several days ago. It was supposed to be an introductory and probably rather dry educational piece on the components that many cosmetic companies use in their products. Including in some specific anti aging products components grown and cloned from the cells of an electively aborted baby.

But, I got bogged down in research. Not unusual. This time though I kept putting off digging back into it too deeply. I’ve been a mainstream makeup consumer since my teens. Although thankfully, due to my still on the mid-range to young age  most of those products have not been anti aging specific. But, there is still a chance that I have unwittingly used one of these products. Every time I pulled up a new article to read or news report a lump would grow in my throat, my eyes would fill with tears and I’d inwardly cringe and scoop my precious 3 month old little baby closer. The tab would be closed with a mental promise to myself to go back and read it later.

You see, a friend of mine just had a little baby this week. With a chubby little newborn body and a shock of black hair to top off a scrunchy little face he looked perfect. They named him Caleb.  The whole pregnancy they had been told that he was a she based upon sonograms so the fact that he was indeed very much a he upon arrival was a surprise. Friends from around the world celebrated his arrival. A few hours after birth he was whisked away for emergency surgery. Although all seemed to go well he quit breathing unexpectedly and had to be medically revived and then passed away a few hours later.

The grief I have felt for my friends has been indescribable.

Maybe it’s because our babies shared names.

Maybe it’s because my own worries for the health of our little guy is still so fresh in my memory.

Maybe it’s because he was so real and so alive and everything was supposed to be Ok and it wasn’t.

Maybe it’s because it just feels so wrong that a baby so loved, prayed for and wanted was taken.

Intermingled with sheer grief over this tiny babies death has been an underlying outrage at what seems to me an abuse of the resource represented by an infants body. That this topic of necessary research has coincided with the loss of my friends precious baby C has thrown all shred of neutrality or pragmatism in my perspective out the window.

The data laden info post will have to wait. My visceral reaction to the concept of a baby being electively killed is too strong. One account I read said that the Dr.’s told the parents the baby had defects and it would not live long if allowed to go to term.  So the parents made (what I would assume to have been a very difficult and painful decision) to terminate the pregnancy at 14 weeks. A cell bank was created in Switzerland from the infants 14 week old body and cosmetic companies have bought cells from this “bank”  and used them as a base to grow some of the most effective skin rejuvenating components available on the market today.

The concept of companies profiteering off of the body of a dead baby leaves me grasping for words strong enough to convey the depth of my horrified reaction.

Those things we all love about baby skin. It’s smoothness, sweetness, how fresh and new it is with that marvelous ability to rapidly heal are the very precious components that make the cells from a very young baby so valuable. For this reason human placentas are also at a premium. The rich base of concentrated healing and growing power is literal gold amongst our societies eager for anything resembling the fountain of youth. For the pursuit of beauty and youthful appearance there are virtually no ethical bounds that cannot be crossed or readily justified.

In the coming days and probably weeks I will be blogging and attempting to offer information that I wish I had access to years ago. My hope is to help educate you as a consumer so that you can choose cosmetic products that are pure and safe enough for your baby…without being sourced from a baby bi-product.

My hope is that you will take the time, effort and energy to become an educated consumer. That you will not be satisfied to just not know for sure what is in the makeup  and skincare products you put on your skin on a weekly if not daily basis. As careful as many of us are trying to be with what we consume with our mouths, wanting to make sure what food we buy is grown, raised and processed in a respectful, responsible and ethical way it is the worst of double standards to give next to no care to what we purchase for use on our skin.

I am personally committing myself to this new learning curve even if it makes me cringe, wince, get frustrated and at times want to cry. There are no excuses for being an ignorance consumer anymore.

Hopefully I’ll be able to be less emotional and get some data together for you in the next post. Just to get you started here is an interesting article on this topic published in the Washington Times.

Please pray for my friends as they continue to mourn the loss of their sweet son and also for their other two children who are grieving the loss of the brother that didn’t get to come home.