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Shots Developed from Fetus Tissue OK for Catholics—Any South Dakotans Returning to Norway?

My neighbors at Aberdeen Roncalli rebuff some anti-abortion anti-vaxxers and stir up some complicated moral questions.

Aberdeen’s private Catholic school says in my morning paper that its students must have their shots, even if their good Catholic parents oppose the use of vaccines developed from tissue from aborted fetuses.

What? You’re injecting fetus bits into my child? Nooooooo!!!

No, says the state Department of Health. That’s not what’s happening:

Derrick Haskins, communications director for the South Dakota Department of Health, noted in a statement that none of the required vaccines contain actual human cells or tissue.

“Human cell lines are used in the early stages of production of some vaccines because viruses need a living cell in which to grow. These cell lines were derived from fetal tissue more than 40 years ago,” he wrote. “The same two cell lines are reproduced and used repeatedly so that no new fetal tissue is required in the ongoing production of vaccines. As with all viral vaccines, multiple purification steps ensure that cells are not in the final vaccine product. The polio component of Pentacel, the rubella component of (measles, mumps and rubella), Hepatitis A, Varicella, and Rabies vaccine all were propagated on some form of human cell line” [Kelda J.J. Pharris, “Religious Objections to Vaccine Origins Don’t Qualify at Roncalli,” Aberdeen American News, 2018.04.03].

Roncalli and the Sioux Falls diocese say that since the Pope hasn’t declared vaccines immoral, they can’t grant exemptions from the vaccine requirement. Responding specifically to this fetus/vaccine question in 2005, the Pontificia Academia pro Vita—Pontifical Academy for Life—framed the moral quandary thus:

If someone rejects every form of voluntary abortion of human foetuses, would such a person not contradict himself/herself by allowing the use of these vaccines of live attenuated viruses on their children? Would it not be a matter of true (and illicit) cooperation in evil, even though this evil was carried out forty years ago? [Pontificia Academia pro Vita, “Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Foetuses,” 2005.06.09]

The Academia says any formal cooperation with the process that led to these fetus-derived vaccines constitutes the same moral evil as whoever performed the abortions. The folks who now make and sell these vaccines can get out of dutch, somewhat, by declaring these vaccines bad and “dedicat[ing] themselves together to research and promote alternative” vaccines. Folks who give their kids these shots get a pass if there are no alternatives, because the health risks to children, moms, and the general population outweigh the remote past harm:

…there remains a moral duty to continue to fight and to employ every lawful means in order to make life difficult for the pharmaceutical industries which act unscrupulously and unethically. However, the burden of this important battle cannot and must not fall on innocent children and on the health situation of the population—especially with regard to pregnant women [PApV, 2005.06.09].

The National Catholic Bioethics Center puts it this way:

One is morally free to use the vaccine regardless of its historical association with abortion. The reason is that the risk to public health, if one chooses not to vaccinate, outweighs the legitimate concern about the origins of the vaccine. This is especially important for parents, who have a moral obligation to protect the life and health of their children and those around them [National Catholic Bioethics Center, FAQ, retrieved 2018.04.04].

Catholic teaching lets strict anti-abortion Catholics off the hook by citing a an overriding moral obligation. In other words, even the Pope will back me up when I say opposing all abortions at all costs is not an acceptable moral position.

My Catholic neighbors and the Pope’s thinkers lead me to wonder if the Catholic parents coming at the anti-vaccine position from an anti-abortion position would apply their ethics similarly to social historical questions. Consider:

The United States was founded on enslavement of Africans and radical displacement and extermination of Native Americans. Our treatment of Africans and Native Americans constituted grave moral evil.

I’ve never held a black man as property, kicked an Indian out of his home, or murdered an Indian family. Yet I live in and enjoy the fruits of a nation that would not exist were it not for the economic advantages derived from the sins of my ancestors.

Like the Roncalli parents who want not to stain their conscience with the fruits of past medical sin and thus would forsake the advantages of vaccines created with fetal tissue, am I obliged to forsake the advantages of life in modern America due to the sins on which those advantages were built? Do we South Dakotans all go back to Germany and Norway?

17 Comments

  1. Porter Lansing 2018-04-04 12:39

    Cory asks if ancestral sin and collective guilt are a burden we must bear? Jesus died for all of our sins, so no. However, our duty is not to recreate those sins that burdened those who were and still are oppressed by them.

  2. Ryan 2018-04-04 14:57

    I am a fan of personal responsibility, so I don’t think people should feel guilty about something they didn’t do, whether that “something” is allowing slavery centuries ago or aborting a fetus decades ago.

    However, I think being born in a country with a history of problems and not leaving that country when you learn of the problems is different than voluntarily joining a cult that has certain rules, and then skirting those rules because you are afraid to get sick.

    That’s the hypocrisy I see in lots of cults: “We know what is right and wrong because our god told us and our god is infallible, but don’t read that one part there…or that part there…or that part there…those parts doesn’t work for us…god is infallible unless we disagree…” Blah Blah Blah. Idiots.

  3. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2018-04-04 15:26

    Don’t recreate the sins for which Jesus died—that should be easy!

  4. mike from iowa 2018-04-04 17:57

    Throw all religion in the trash bin of history and voila, no more ethics or morality plays that waste valuable resources while people are dying.

  5. Joe Nelson 2018-04-04 20:34

    I encourage you all to read the info in the links Cory provided; it is much more in depth and gets into the nitty-gritty of cooperation in evil. These ethical distinctions are great, and apply to many things (such as distinguishing how an American cooperates in the evil perpetrated by the US government’s torture of detainees via paying taxes).

    Cory, I must point out that you may be slightly off when you say “even the Pope will back me up when I say opposing all abortions at all costs is not an acceptable moral position.”

    To be clear:

    Firstly, one must consider morally illicit every form of formal cooperation (sharing the evil intention) in the action of those who have performed a voluntary abortion, which in turn has allowed the retrieval of foetal tissues, required for the preparation of vaccines. Therefore, whoever – regardless of the category to which he belongs — cooperates in some way, sharing its intention, to the performance of a voluntary abortion with the aim of producing the above-mentioned vaccines, participates, in actuality, in the same moral evil as the person who has performed that abortion.

    However, using the term “at all costs” is very general; it would include things like global thermo- nuclear war. The Catholic Church is pretty solid with the idea of the means not justifying the ends. But maybe I am misinterpreting what you mean there.

    You bring up good questions regarding slavery, and to what extent are we cooperating in its evil. But I am not sure that living in South Dakota would even constitute “very remote mediate material cooperation with evil”. The moral agent committing the sinful slave ownership and the citizen living in Aberdeen are very far removed temporally. Perhaps a more timely question would be what is the cooperation in evil when it comes to buying clothes produced in third-world countries in slave-like systems. Many articles and books have been written on this.

    As an aside, my beautiful wife is actually working on a certificate from the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and may go on for a masters degree. She is actually writing a paper on the moral obligation of Catholics to vaccinate their children.

  6. T 2018-04-04 20:58

    Mike from Iowa
    I think I know what your saying but technically
    One can have morals and ethics without the religion
    Or visa Versa When was last time you saw an extreme religious person with any morals or ethics

  7. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2018-04-04 21:20

    We have two avenues of moral inquiry here.

    One is answering the moral question for ourselves: do we buy the moral distinctions laid out in the Vatican’s explanation of the issue? How do we apply those distinctions to our status as Americans, beneficiaries of empire?

    The second is the analysis of the concerned parents’ application of their moral principles. If they disagree with the Vatican and say that they cannot justify using a vaccine created in evil, are they obliged to forswear all the benefits that accrue from citizenship in an empire built on past evils?

  8. Debbo 2018-04-04 21:31

    This quote led me in a different direction:
    “there remains a moral duty to continue to fight and to employ every lawful means in order to make life difficult for the pharmaceutical industries which act unscrupulously and unethically.”

    Big Pharma’s sky high prices and massive profits are unscrupulous and unethical. People are literally suffering, and some are dying because they cannot afford the medications that would improve their lives. So are Roman Catholics going to “employ every lawful means in order to make life difficult” for them for that reason?

  9. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2018-04-04 21:34

    Joe, I appreciate the precision of the Vatican’s argument. Everyone should read it and then weigh whether it is an accurate distinction of moral culpability or just some tortured hair-splitting to reach a desired result (I lean toward the former but am open to rhetorical attacks).

    I may have used sloppy words in, “opposing all abortions at all costs…” Maybe what I meant was that the Pope and I appear to agree that making opposition to abortion one’s sole, absolute moral principle and using that principle to decide every moral question doesn’t work.

    Joe, to check: does the Vatican’s statement here make clear that women who abort their pregnancies commit the same degree of moral evil as whoever performs the abortion?

    I would agree that South Dakota’s moral culpability for slavery is relatively remote. Slavery did not exist on our soil in Euro-settlement days. Native displacement and extermination did.

    Joe gets me thinking of analogies that take us down all sorts of spinning trails of moral culpability. Suppose a doctor conducts abortions. Upon retirement, that doctor turns philanthropist and donates money to civic organizations. What moral blame do those organizations bear for taking that money and using it to do good? What moral blame does a poor man bear for accepting a meal from a soup kitchen funded by that doctor?

    Or a touch more immediately, if a doctor who performs abortions tosses money in the collection plate on Sunday, must the priest throw that money back?

    Dang, there might be a whole philosophy class in this one Vatican paper… or at least a really good unit.

    Christine is studying at/through the NCBC and writing on this topic? Kismet! I’d love to hear her conclusions! So might the board at Roncalli. Does her paper revolve around the above Vatican source, or are there other sources that take the issue further?

  10. Joe Nelson 2018-04-04 22:27

    Cory,

    does the Vatican’s statement here make clear that women who abort their pregnancies commit the same degree of moral evil as whoever performs the abortion?

    Depends on what you mean by same degree. A woman who has an abortion, intends that abortion, and a doctor performs the abortion, then the woman is formally cooperating with the evil action of the doctor, and that cooperation is morally illicit. Whether to the same degree as the doctor? The Church teaches:

    2272 Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. “A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae,” “by the very commission of the offense,” and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law. The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

    This actually includes the doctors and nurses who actually do it, husbands, family and others whose counsel and encouragement made it morally possible for the woman, and those whose direct practical support made it possible (financially, driving to the clinic etc.).

    Christine might chime in later with her thoughts. She has been working on the paper for a couple weeks, and I believe the Vatican response is one of her sources. But she was not aware of the Roncalli situation.

    More to follow later, I am taking my kids to the park!

  11. Jason 2018-04-05 00:11

    Cory wrote:

    Slavery did not exist on our soil in Euro-settlement days.

    Yes it did Cory. It was done by Native Americans even before the Euro-settlement days.

    I can’t believe you didn’t know this and you are teacher?

    You never answered my question. What do you teach?

  12. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2018-04-05 08:05

    Jason, again, committed to distraction and word games.

    Let me clarify: our European ancestors had outlawed slavery by the time most of them came to South Dakota. Even the early Medary settlers who came before the Civil War did not bring slavery here.

    I know you’re obsessed with laying verbal traps and undermining the reputation of your interlocutors, Jason, but your obsession here caused you to miss the topic of the moral question posed in the original post of whether the principles that would lead a family to forswear medical advantages achieved through immoral past research would also have an obligation to forswear economic advantages achieved through immoral past social/governmental policies. If you would like to explore whether the Lakota or Cheyenne or other descendants of tribes who once practiced slavery have an obligation to give up the wealth built on their ancestors’ sins, you may explore that concept as well.

    But instead of always distracting us to personal attacks, why not stay on topic? You might learn something.

  13. Jason 2018-04-05 08:16

    Cory,

    What personal attacks? You “misspoke” and I corrected it..

  14. John W 2018-04-05 09:12

    Cory: I believe they call Jason’s style “baiting”. From what I’ve seen on here, and a couple of other places; he’s a master baiter. It’s a manipulative, loathsome practice that none of us should tolerate simply because such mental gymnastics contribute nothing to a discussion nor do they inform the debate in a way that might possibly allow anyone to change their position on an issue. He has yet to show any purpose in his dull witted contributions other than to confuse people rather than persuade them……….. sadly, a man without a mission…………

  15. Jenny 2018-04-05 09:23

    Well, I would consider it an honor to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church. They are so full of themselves even after all of the abuse and corruption have come to light. Get over yourselves, Catholics!

  16. Debbo 2018-04-05 15:09

    Jenny, theyre still protecting the pedophiles too. Ugh.

  17. Roger Cornelius 2018-04-05 15:32

    John W.
    I agree with you, Jason is a “masterbaiter.

Comments are closed.