How to protest abortion-tainted vaccines
I highly recommend this excellent article from the National Catholic Register on how and why to protest abortion-tainted vaccines , especially the recent Covid vaccines.
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The problem with Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine
Recently, the U.S. Bishops issued a joint statement regarding the complicated moral problem of taking some Covid vaccines. The summary version is that all three of the Covid vaccines currently being offered have at least indirect moral problems, but that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the one with the most serious moral problems. They are encouraging Catholics NOT to take the Johnson & Johnson vaccine if there is alternative available (such as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines). The reason is that Johnson & Johnson is the one that most directly uses cells from aborted children in the research, development and production processes. As you can see from the statement, their analysis is that taking the vaccines is morally acceptable (not morally obligatory), but that we should do what we reasonably can to prevent them from using immoral means to produce vaccines in the future.
Ethics and the Covid-19 vaccines
Amidst the suffering and fear caused by the Covid-19 epidemic, we have been reading some good news about vaccines being developed and approved that seem to be highly effective in combating the virus. They have been approved for emergency use in some countries already and may be approved very soon in the U.S. It looks quite possible that they will be available to some of the public before Christmas. There are still many ethical questions that arise about the vaccines (can the government require citizens to take them? Who should get access to them first? What about privacy? and so on). But perhaps the most important ethical question is, Is it morally permissible for Catholics to receive them? The question arises because historically some vaccines have been produced from cell lines derived from children killed by abortion, and there is a serious question about whether, by taking such a vaccine, one would be cooperating with a grave moral evil. The...