How Do Pro-Life Parents Deal With Pro-Abortion Vaccines?

Opinion   Rebecca Taylor   Oct 5, 2011   |   10:21AM    Washington, DC

One of the most asked about and difficult ethical issues for Catholic parents to deal with is the issue with vaccination.  Many vaccines are created with cell lines that originated from an aborted fetus.

Cell lines MRC-5 and WI-38 are common cell lines used to produce vaccines for rubella, polio, hepatitis A and chicken pox.  MRC-5 was developed from lung cells from a 14-week-old male fetus that was electively aborted in 1966.  The WI-38 line was derived from a female fetus that was aborted in 1964.  There are alternatives possible to using these cell lines that originated from abortion, but unless manufacturers are pressured to change to alternative cell lines, it is unlikely that they will.



So can Catholic parents, in good conscience, get their children vaccinated with vaccines made with cell lines like MRC-5 and WI-38?  Yes, but only if certain conditions are met.  Parents must ask their health care provider for an alternative to vaccines made with cell lines from aborted fetuses.  If there are no alternatives, then they must voice their objection.  Bishop Robert Vasa wrote the following about vaccines that used cell lines obtained through immoral means:



Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute is a Seattle company has “developed a certification program to let consumers know how their vaccines, drugs and cosmetics are manufactured so that they can make informed choices about what to purchase.”  You can contact them if you have questions about whether a certain vaccine or other drug is morally tainted. Note: Rebecca Taylor is a clinical laboratory specialist in molecular biology, and a practicing pro-life Catholic who writes at the bioethics blog Mary Meets Dolly. She has been writing and speaking about Catholicism and biotechnology for five years and has been interviewed on EWTN radio on topics from stem cell research and cloning to voting pro-life. Taylor has a B.S. in Biochemistry from University of San Francisco with a national certification in clinical Molecular Biology MB (ASCP).