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December 1, 2020
Father Gerald Coleman
Drug makers Pfizer Inc., BioNtechSE and Moderna Therapeutics have announced a 90%-plus rate of efficiency for vaccines effective against COVID-19. Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said that vaccinations could begin as soon as late December. Roughly one in 100 Americans are contagious with COVID-19, meaning that about 3 million Americans have active infections. In the last 10 months, COVID-19 has killed more than 250,000 people in the United States, and over 1 million people worldwide.
The Catholic Church supports safe, effective, and ethically scientific research into the development of vaccines that will mitigate and end the spread of COVID-19. Many Catholics are raising ethical concerns about vaccine development and testing that makes use of cell lines derived from either the tissue of aborted fetuses or destroyed human embryos.
The moral dilemma arises between, on the one hand, an acknowledgement that widespread vaccination is a public health imperative and, on the other hand, fear that receiving the COVID-19 vaccine would render a person complicit in the evil of abortion.
The critical moral question that emerges is whether it is permissible to receive a vaccine that has been produced unethically? In June 2005, the Vatican Pontifical Academy for Life issued a document “Moral Reflections on Vaccines Produced from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Fetuses” (www.immunize.org/talking-about-vaccines/vaticandocument.htm).
This document was approved by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
This document differentiates among various degrees of the moral gravity of cooperation in evil in the act of abortion: the original abortion, the derivation of cell lines, the process of vaccine development using these cell lines, the subsequent production and sale, and finally the use of such a vaccine. Each step involves some level of cooperation with evil but in a progressively diminishing degree.
The document teaches that the connection of someone choosing to receive an ethically compromised vaccine is so remote that its use “does not signify some sort of cooperation with voluntary abortion.” When there exists a proportionately grave reason to receive the vaccine, such as the current need to halt the COVID-19 pandemic, then it is morally permissible for Catholics to receive the vaccine for the good of personal and public health.
This prudent and moral judgment must not obscure the seriousness of the evil of abortion that is the source of cell lines used in some vaccines, nor to excuse those who directly work in research or development of these cell lines from human embryonic tissue. It remains imperative that we make clear the moral objection to vaccine development derived from abortion, and to advocate for ethically produced vaccines. Those who work in the biopharmaceutical industry must be encouraged to respect the dignity and sanctity of human life from conception and find ways that lead to the replacement of morally illicit cell lines with ethically sourced ones.
Sulpician Father Gerald Coleman is adjunct professor, Graduate Department of Pastoral Ministries, Santa Clara University.