‘A more radical public witness’ on the Covid vaccines

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Mar 12, 2021

Yes, you can make a plausible moral argument to justify the acceptance of an abortion-tainted Covid vaccine. But why would you want to?

My colleague Jeff Mirus has argued that the most recent such justification, issued by pro-life Catholics under the auspices of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, fails to emphasize a crucial point: Those who accept the vaccine have a moral obligation to protest the use of tissues derived from aborted children in the development of the vaccines. While I agree on that point, I would also fault the pro-life scholars’ statement for another serious failure: the inability to see the big picture.

There is tremendous public pressure already for Americans to accept the vaccines. Newspapers and television spots and highway signs and store displays urge us to make an appointment for vaccination. Legislators and public-health officials are suggesting the development of a “vaccine passport,” which could make anyone who rejected the vaccine a second-class citizen: barred from airports or arenas or other public places. The danger that faces us today is not that many Americans will reject the vaccine; the more pressing danger is that the minority who resist will be deprived of their rights.

In such circumstances—when the power of the government and the mass media and the medical establishment all push in one direction—prudent moralists might want to step back, avoid the temptation to casuistry, and address a more fundamental question. What does it say about our society when the Covid vaccines—and other vaccines, and popular medications, and processed foods, and cosmetics—are prepared with the use of abortion-tainted cell lines? Will we soothe our consciences with the assurance that our involvement—in case after case after case—is just a matter of “remote material cooperation?” Or will we finally decide that something is seriously wrong here, and must be corrected?

So I welcome the publication of a new statement, To Awaken Conscience, authored by Catherine and Michael Pakaluk, Stacy and Jose Luis Trasancos, and Bishop Joseph Strickland, which has quickly attracted hundreds of co-signers. Who say: “We resist this ‘consensus’ being foisted upon us as morally repugnant: we do not wish to benefit from abortion.”

The statement continues:

We find insufficient the accounts of moralists who lean on casuistical distinctions, originally designed to analyze private action in a Christian society, when we are crushed by a public edifice determined to protect the so-called ‘right to abortion’, and determined in addition to benefit from its byproducts in many ways beyond the current (and previous) vaccines.

As I observed a month ago, the moral arguments in favor of accepting the Covid vaccines are based on the assumption that the vaccines will successfully stop the Covid epidemic. Not even the makers of the vaccines offer any such guarantee. But again, I do not want to be caught up in the details of the argument; I want to look at the question from a longer perspective.

Nearly a year ago I called for a campaign to reject the development of vaccines using fetal tissues. To put serious pressure on pharmaceutical manufacturers, I reasoned, pro-lifers would need to take a stand, letting it be known that they would refuse to take a tainted vaccine. I took that stand myself, and if I back down now, my witness is worse than useless.

And count on this: the Covid vaccine will not be the last test of our resolve. There will be another disease, and another vaccine. In fact there already is another vaccine—many vaccines, in fact, as well as other medications—developed using the same cell lines taken from aborted children. Will we protest the next time? Or will we slide toward the cowardly conclusion that, having accepted that “remote material cooperation” once, we can accept it again and again—with less urgent reasons for each successive surrender?

Americans have been lulled into acceptance of vaccines and medications (and other products) that represent the “benefits” of abortion. The Covid epidemic, and the rush to vaccinate, have provided the opportunity for a bit of moral awakening. Realizing what we have, sadly, come to accept, we might resolve to stop the profiteering, stop our peaceful coexistence with the “culture of death” and its marketable products. To stiffen that resolve, as “To Awaken Conscience” argues, “a more radical public witness is needed today.”