Vatican says it's ok to take COVID-19 vaccines that used aborted fetuses
The Vatican has declared that taking vaccines partly drawn from aborted fetuses is acceptable for Roman Catholics if there is lack of an alternative, but said its approval should not be taken as a blessing.
“It is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process,” the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) said.
But the CDF said that “the licit use of such vaccines does not and should not in any way imply that there is a moral endorsement of the use of cell lines proceeding from aborted fetuses.”
The CDF issued the statement in the wake of pronouncements from some church members in the United States saying that such vaccines were immoral.
In its note, the CDF said it has received “several requests for guidance” regarding the use of COVID-19 vaccines that in its research and development used cell lines drawn from tissues obtained from two aborted fetuses in the 1960s.
“Diverse and sometimes conflicting pronouncements in the mass media by bishops, Catholic associations, and experts have raised questions about the morality of the use of these vaccines,” the CDF said.
The CDF, which is the guardian of Vatican orthodoxy, hinged its statement accepting such vaccines “when ethically irreproachable COVID-19 vaccines are not available.”
The CDF said getting vaccines without ethical problems are not always available to physicians and patients in some countries.
AP has reported that last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that “in view of the gravity of the current pandemic and the lack of availability of alternative vaccines,” receiving the vaccines being distributed in the United States is justified “despite their remote connection to morally compromised cell lines.”
Much earlier, two bishops in the United States denounced the said vaccines as immorally produced.
The Catholic Church currently opposes all forms of abortion.