The Covid Vaccine And Abortion Pt 3 - Guiding Attitudes And Defining The Problem

This is the final part of my three-part series on the covid-19 vaccine and abortion. Here is Part 1 and Part 2.

Taking into consideration the scientific facts, recognizing the tension between good and evil on this side of heaven, and applying* the principle of moral distance, I contend that Christians can and should take the covid-19 vaccines when it becomes available to them. Doing so would be an expression of stewardship over the body that God has given you and doing what’s necessary to protect it from harm. By the nature of how vaccines work, it will also constitute an act of love for your neighbor, since your immunity will protect those you come in contact with, especially if due to legitimate medical reasons, they themselves cannot take the vaccine (such as if they are immuno-compromised).

Christians can take this vaccine without being morally responsible for the abortions that contributed to the vaccine. They can take the vaccine without being complicit or cooperating, even passively, with abortion. And they can take the vaccine without undermining or contradicting their ability denounce the evils of abortion.

It is an unfortunate truth that modern vaccine development and production unavoidably uses cell lines that were derived from aborted human fetuses. God has produced much good from the initial act of wickedness. Countless lives have been saved. And with the global covid death count closing in on two million, we have an opportunity and duty to save many more by taking this vaccine.

Is it unethical to refuse the vaccine on the grounds of personal conscience?

God gives each Christian the freedom to determine matters of wisdom. In my opinion, refusing to take the vaccine out of fear of violating one’s conscience is also permissible. However I would strongly urge Christians to consider the benefit of taking the vaccine out of love and concern for others. Creating herd immunity in a society requires as much individual cooperation as possible, and so it is an act of compassion for the vulnerable in our society.

At the end of the day, the theological principle that drives our opposition to abortion is that of life’s sanctity. Every person is made in God’s image, even those who haven’t been born yet. It is also this very principle that should drive us to take the vaccine, even if it might harm our conscience.

Furthermore, people who seek to hold a hard line against taking the covid-19 vaccine invite on themselves other problematic ethical conundrums. Because human cell lines have been used for so many decades in vaccine productions of all varieties, including many vaccines we routinely take without a second thought, our refusing ONLY the covid one will see double-minded, contradictory, and maybe even hypocritical. In other words, if you oppose the covid-19 vaccine, you should also oppose the measles and rubella vaccine, and not many people have to conviction to live this out.

In closing, it bears emphasizing the importance of perspective and ordered passion when Christians wrestle with vital moral questions such as this one. Cooler heads must prevail. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t abhor death, vehemently oppose abortion, and passionately campaign for the dignity of human life. In fact it is BECAUSE we care so much about what God cares about that we do so with cool heads.

Disordered passion puts us in danger of fighting a culture war rather than fighting for God’s kingdom. It can arouse in us a “win at all costs” mentality. It can cause us to lose trust in God’s ability to produce good out of evil. And most vilely, it tempts us to give in to falsehoods and fake news rather than uphold truth. When that happens, we surrender all moral high ground and dishonor God rather than serve him.

For further reading

• This FAQ compiled by an editor on the Gospel Coalition argues that Christians are not morally culpable for taking the vaccine because it constitutes passive material cooperation with abortion. The article states that a useful analogy would be that of receiving a kidney transplant from someone who has been murdered in order to save another person’s life.
  
  
• This article, written by Dr Megan Best on the Gospel Coalition, makes a similar argument. Dr Best is a bioethicist who lectures on the USyd faculty, and wrote a book on the ethics of human life, currently published by Matthias Media. She writes, “If the abortion were conducted in order to harvest tissues that were to be used for the vaccine, then it would clearly be immoral. But in the case of the COVID-19 vaccines created from the HEK-293 cell line, the abortion was carried out for other reasons, and the tissue was acquired after the child’s death for the purpose medical research. The use of the vaccine now will not promote further abortions for this particular purpose. It can therefore be argued that we are not morally complicit with the original abortion.”
  
  
• The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy For Life, the Catholic organization which does research into bioethics and produces formal policy for the Catholic Church, declared in 2005 and reaffirmed in 2017 that in the absence of alternatives, Catholics could, in good conscience, receive vaccines made using historical human fetal cell lines. The stated reasoning is because there is no “morally relevant cooperation between those who use these vaccines today and the practice of voluntary abortion”
  
  
• Here are reflections from Reverend Michael Jensen, a rector in the Anglican Church and a doctor in moral theology. He offer thoughts on the concept of human dignity, which concerns itself with more than simple right and wrong. “We can say both things at once: great good came from this vaccine, but it was tragic that it was sourced in this way. We cannot now put that genie back in the bottle, as it were. But that is not enough. We cannot simply shrug our shoulders at a past evil and move on with a clear conscience. We need to recognise the tragedy and acknowledge the cost.”