Key Ingredient of Some Potential COVID-19 Vaccines Horrifies Conservatives, Christians
It’s no wonder unborn baby parts are big business among the crowd with questionable ethics — they’re useful for so many things, including creating vaccines for diseases like the novel coronavirus.
When Planned Parenthood was exposed for selling body parts in 2015, it seemed like a macabre, hyperbolic parody of the abortion giant, but the fact is that cells from aborted babies have been harvested and used for decades.
According to the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, existing vaccines for hepatitis A, chickenpox, smallpox, measles, rubella, rabies, poliomyelitis are all made using a cell line from fetuses aborted long ago.
The practice has been in place for more than half a century and utilizes several cell lines derived from babies aborted in the 1960s.
The two most commonly used originated from the lung of an unborn girl aborted in 1962 at three months gestation and from the lungs of an unborn boy aborted in 1966 at 14 weeks gestation, according to the Kennedy Institute.
In both cases, the abortions were elective, according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
These human cells are necessary to culture some vaccines in the laboratory with researchers favoring fetal cells because they have not divided as often (meaning the lines they find useful don’t die out as quickly) and are still in use due to being successfully preserved in liquid nitrogen for decades, the CHOP document stated.
The vaccines themselves don’t contain any fetal tissue and no new abortions are performed for the purpose, but cells that are derived, ultimately, from abortions are still a key ingredient. And the continued use of the cells harvested from those elective abortions can create an ethical conundrum for Christians and other conservatives who value human life.
According to Science magazine, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at least five of the potential COVID-19 vaccines being developed use cell lines from one of two aborted babies. One of the abortions was in the early 1970s, the other was in 1985, Science reported in June.
Two of the potential candidates are backed by $1.7 billion of U.S. federal funding, according to Science.
The world is unified around eradicating the virus that caused a worldwide pandemic, but that doesn’t mean vaccine manufacturers can do so with unethical means.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, representing the Catholic Church, arguably the most vocal and formidable organization opposing abortion in the country, issued a letter to Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on April 17 urging a more ethical alternative.
“We are aware that, among the dozens of vaccines currently in development, some are being produced using old cell lines that were created from the cells of aborted babies,” the letter stated.
However, it noted that some researchers are moving ahead without such troubling material, citing the work of Sanofi Pasteur, a division of the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, the American biotech company Inovio, and the John Paul II Medical Research Institute in Iowa as examples of vaccine research “not connected to unethical procedures and methods.”
“It is critically important that Americans have access to a vaccine that is produced ethically: no American should be forced to choose between being vaccinated against this potentially deadly virus and violating his or her conscience.
“Fortunately,” the letter continued, “there is no need to use ethically problematic cell lines to produce a COVID vaccine, or any vaccine, as other cell lines or processes that do not involve cells from abortions are available and are regularly being used to produce other vaccines.”
The outspoken Bishop Joseph Strickland of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler, Texas, did not mince words in his public objection.
“So sad…even with Covid-19 we are still debating the use of aborted fetal tissue for medical research…let me go on record…if a vaccine for this virus is only attainable if we use body parts of aborted children then I will refuse the vaccine…I will not kill children to live,” Strickland tweeted in early April.
So sad…even with Covid-19 we are still debating the use of aborted fetal tissue for medical research…let me go on record…if a vaccine for this virus is only attainable if we use body parts of aborted children then I will refuse the vaccine…I will not kill children to live
— Bishop J. Strickland (@Bishopoftyler) April 8, 2020
Replies to the bishop’s tweet echoed the same sentiment, showing resolve among pro-lifers to maintain moral standards even in the face of a deadly pandemic.
I would rather die than use children’s body parts. This is satanic.
— Teresa Beem (@BeemTeresa) April 8, 2020
Let’s make that a National Motto by +Bishop Joseph Strickland.
“I will NOT kill aborted children to LIVE” God bless you! @Bishopoftyler You have my support and prayers! +JMJ+— TX Pilgrim (@PilgrimTx) April 8, 2020
Absolutely, your Excellency. Too many people are focused on saving their lives and not their souls.
— Karen Patota (@KarenPatota) April 8, 2020
This is the perfect time to raise awareness of the moral wrong using aborted fetal cells in vaccines that already exists. Catholics should never be forced to vaccine children to attend Catholic schools.
— Anne Marie (@TheAmsyFiles) April 8, 2020
With ethical alternatives, there should be no reason to use dead fetuses to make vaccines for the living, and yet that seems the method of choice for some developers.
Even if detachment from the original procedure decades ago is a mitigating factor, it still is wrong to reuse cells derived from an aborted fetus over and over to make new treatments.
The dirty little secret is that fetal tissue is useful for many things, including testing flavors for companies like Pepsi, as a Forbes piece discussed in 2012 when word of that came to light.
And, even as animal rights groups continue to rail against companies using animals for testing, researchers are still OK with using aborted fetal stem cells despite sometimes better outcomes with adult cells.
If the winner of the vaccine race is one that is developed and manufactured using aborted babies’ cells, many Christians will have a hard time complying with the inevitable vaccine mandates that will come along with them.
Look no further than the public shaming and violence currently unleashed against those who refuse to wear a face mask, but instead of busybodies on a power trip, it will be government officials able to fine and imprison dissenters.
Christians are already surrounded by products from companies that support sexual perversion and insane gender theory, but the prospect of them being forced to submit to an inoculation developed and manufactured from cells that originated with aborted fetuses — however long ago — is diabolical.
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