Most people have trouble believing even one impossible thing before breakfast, but if you’re prone to believing in conspiracy theories, you start to see them everywhere. Unfortunately, two of the most damaging conspiracy theories have support from the same person.
After Theresa Deisher received a doctorate in molecular and cellular physiology at Stanford, she worked in a lab that studied heart muscle cells. One day, representatives from a biomedical company came to her workplace to sell fetal heart tissue.
… her previous ease with a woman's right to choose was replaced by a conviction that the fetus was a human being and that, therefore, both abortion and the use of fetal tissue for research were morally wrong. "I don't care what someone's opinion is on abortion or women's reproductive rights," she says. "I just don't believe that people really could support a living baby harvested like that for their organs."
She founded Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute, a small nonprofit in Seattle dedicated to finding alternatives to vaccines that she describes as "manufactured in cell lines that were derived from electively aborted babies," and she became a prominent activist in the anti-abortion and anti-vax movements.
Deisher had been informed that the heart tissue she was being offered came from miscarriages. However, she “thought about it” and became convinced that there was a fetal organ farming industry out there peddling baby bits from elective abortions. She kept thinking and, despite the lack of any evidence, became convinced that something-something, dark wizards, and vaccines were also being manufactured from aborted babies. She then went on to pass along this insight.
She is also credited with inspiring and educating David Daleiden, the self-proclaimed "citizen journalist" who now faces a second-degree felony charge of tampering with a government record and a misdemeanor charge of illegally offering to purchase human organs from Planned Parenthood doctors in his now infamous—and discredited—undercover video recordings.
The “how” behind this story is the heart of Becca Andrews’ article in Mother Jones. What it reveals is how organizations like Sound Choice are more than just a collection of idiots who have already brought incredible misery—and mourning—through their anti-vax evangelizing. They’re also lending a pseudo-science backing to the anti-abortion movement that gives them a patina of respectability.
In the past, anti-abortion organizations focused on moral arguments to justify their position. But scientific research, much of it discredited, has been increasingly used to legitimize their opposition. … Another popular anti-abortion position that has come up in subsequent congressional hearings regarding Daleiden's videos is that fetuses developed past 20 weeks are "pain capable." The medical consensus is that the fetus must be nearly full-term before the systems necessary to sense pain are developed enough.
… Deisher explained that although she was not involved with shooting or editing any videos for the Center for Medical Progress, she had spoken to Daleiden regularly over the years and advised him in his research. "Just to make [the Center for Medical Progress] aware of how the material was being described, how the harvest was being described, and, most importantly, my suspicions that some of these babies were alive when they were being harvested," she said.
Whenever a conservative politician needs an excuse to take away a woman’s right to choose, people like Theresa Deisher are there, with an impressive academic degree… and a handy vat of nonsense.
"I don't care what someone's opinion is on abortion or women's reproductive rights," she says. "I just don't believe that people really could support a living baby harvested like that for their organs."
And of course no one is harvesting organs from babies. But you can’t prove that to Deisher. She’s already thought about it.