Killing To Be Beautiful

It used to be said that a particularly attractive person had a face "to die for." Well, now we might say that such a person has a face "to kill for."

"Aborted foetuses [sic; i.e., fetuses] from girls and young women are being exported from Ukraine for use in illegal beauty treatments costing thousands of pounds, The Observer can reveal. The foetuses are cryogenically frozen and sold to clinics offering ‘youth injections,’ claiming to rejuvenate skin and cure a raft of diseases.

"It is thought that women in the former Soviet republic are being paid £100 a time to persuade them to have abortions and allow their foetuses to be used in treatments. Most of the foetuses are sold in Russia for up to £5,000 each. Some are paid extra to have abortions late in their pregnancy."

As usual, the true horror of the story is obscured by the term foetus. (And, of course, the term becomes even more obscure for non-British, English-speaking readers more accustomed to the spelling fetus.) It comes from the Latin for "offspring," but has become a euphemism to obscure the humanity of the unborn child. Go through the story mentally replacing child and children for foetus and foetuses to get a gauge of the international outrage the story might have inspired had the less-euphemistic terms been used.

That said, one unnamed Ukrainian journalist had a particularly incisive comment on the case:

"Ukrainians, accustomed to tales of illegal privatisations [sic] and government corruption, are not surprised. ‘They used to say we were selling Ukraine,’ said one reporter. ‘Now we are selling Ukrainians; moreover, in parts.’"

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Some Have Hats for the link, and a special nod to SHH’s commenter Sr. Lorraine for this observation on the story: "It reminds me of what Jesus said in the Gospel, about people who look beautiful on the outside but inside are like dead men’s tombs.")

13 thoughts on “Killing To Be Beautiful”

  1. Was it ‘Silence of the Lambs’, that had that freakish guy in it that ‘wore’ people to make himself more attractive?…I think it was, I remember a poodle and a girl in a hole and sick-dudes latest unhappy meal (girl) pleading for her freedom…(vague) point being, if you can’t love the skin you’re in, then don’t go stealing anyone elses, because you’ll be as ugly as Hades inside, if not out.
    Despicable.
    Lord, have Mercy. Christ, have Mercy. Lord, have Mercy!
    God Bless.

  2. Ummm…not sure about this. It’s got a whiff of the stories about Elizabeth Bathory bathing in the blood of young virgins to keep herself eternally young; God knows she was a sadistic monster who killed a huge number of people, but she doesn’t seem to have had an eternal-youth fixation or used them for beauty treatments.
    Also, Russia has an enormous abortion rate already, much, much higher than ours. I doubt anyone would need to resort to bribing women 100 pounds a pop to get abortions; they’re all too willing to get them without that. Anyone who wanted baby parts for beauty treatment would be better off bribing the clinic staff for the results of their day’s work.
    Or maybe this is me just desperately trying to be optimistic. But I really hope that it’s not actually happening, or at least not in the way they describe. (Like that would really be better…)

  3. They didn’t mention this in the article about Russia that Michelle cited, but babies do have a substance on their skin called vernix that has beautifying and healing properties. Maybe that’s the attraction for the beauty salons. (In the article they just talked about stem cells, so maybe this is not relevant.) Anyway, here is an article on vernix in case anyone’s interested. In this article it says that the vernix is thickest at around 32 weeks gestation. Many babies still have vernix on their skin at birth.
    http://www.evalu8.org/staticpage?page=review&siteid=1893

  4. Sonetka, I think you made a good point about the bribing sounding unnecessary, but in the article it just says, “It is thought that women … are being paid” so maybe they’re wrong. They also said that some women may be being bribed to pospone the abortion until later in the pregnancy, which is more believable.

  5. The sad take on this story is that it focuses on the use of the fetuses for therapy as quackery and the act that is evil as opposed to the actual abortion itself being the true evil act.

  6. Cannibals.

    Inject the youngest among us into yourself to make you younger. Makes sense, in a sick, twisted, purely evil sort of way.
    It helps in times like this to remember that the Psalmist often laments God seemingly not taking action.
    Psalm 10 (ESV)
    Wh…

  7. This just takes the cake. :’-(. I cannot believe it.
    Even though it’s next to impossible to do, if I could consider for a moment that they are not human beings, I *still* would find this gruesome. Even injecting bovine material or other things I’ve heard about is gruesome enough. Question to consider: Do you think that the recipients of these treatments KNOW what is in the treatments? (Sorry if it’s in the article, I just had to skim quickly over it.)

  8. Abortion, by its very nature is a true and regularly occurring horror and abomination. It should be no surprise that those who embrace its validity should come up with something like this. The only surprise is that they did not think of it sooner.
    Killing the weak to support the living is the purpose behind this beauty treatment and even more so behind embryonic stem cell research. Christendom’s latest and greatest enemies may be this race of biological vampires.
    I think that not only would some people know the origin of the beauty treatment, but that the very thought excites them.

  9. “The sad take on this story is that it focuses on the use of the fetuses for therapy as quackery and the act that is evil as opposed to the actual abortion itself being the true evil act.”
    The public is divided in their opinions on whether abortion is a right or a sin. If the article focused on the evil of abortion itself, it would come off as overtly right wing, and lose a good deal of audience. They wouldn’t take it seriously. The article’s point is the use of fetuses, not to make push an old, overused issue that people will never agree on.

  10. That’s exactly what we have in this case;a form of Vampirism.
    If there were ever any doubts as to the existence of such unholiness,we have it now.

Comments are closed.