MMR Vaccines and Abortion
THE PROBLEM
The vaccine for Measles, Mumps and Rubella was created using cells from aborted fetuses in the 1960s. While subsequent vaccines have not been created through the direct death of an unborn baby, many of them are created using the cell lines from the same aborted fetuses from which the MMR vaccine originated. So, the question arises – if I have my children vaccinated with vaccines developed from aborted fetuses, am I not cooperating in the death of these unborn victims? Yet, to leave my children unprotected from serious diseases cannot be morally acceptible, can it?
It is exactly such moral dilemmas for which principles such the principle of legitimate cooperation with evil and the principle of double effect exist.
Read about these principles first – in order to understand how they are applied here!
Some well-meaning Catholics reject these principles because the principles seem to lean too far toward our culture’s philosophy of moral relativism. They forget that applying moral principles in a fallen world can be messy and sometimes confusing. True, these principles are often misused by those who want to appear to remain within the norms of Catholic morality while living as if the moral law does not exist. However, when they are properly used, these principles are valuable tools for those who truly seek what is objectively right.
APPLYING THE MORAL PRINCIPLES
Examine the moral object of your action – are you choosing a morally good action?
The first principle of morality is to always choose good and avoid evil. Your choice to vaccinate your children against potentially dangerous illnesses is a fundamentally good choice. You are exercising your parental responsibility to protect your children.
Examine your intentions for performing the action – are you acting for a good reason?
In this case, your intentions mirror the moral object. You are choosing to protect your children against diseases. The murder of innocent life is definitely evil, but it is not an evil that you choose or that you agree with. You would avoid it if you could. It is only tolerated as unavoidably intertwined with the good you are choosing to do.
Your action is material cooperation with the evil, not formal cooperation. Now determine how proximate your action is to the evil. Is it immediate, proximate or remote?
There is no minimizing the evil of the murder of unborn babies. However, getting our children vaccinated does not contribute to the evil that has already been performed. If the demand for the vaccine contributed to the ongoing death of unborn children, our cooperation with evil would be more immediate because the evil would be contingent on our action. However, in this case getting our children vaccinated does nothing to contribute to the death of unborn children. Our action is further removed from the evil. The fetuses that were killed to produce the MMR vaccine were killed in the 1960s. These same cell lines are used to develop all vaccines. All things considered, our action is definitely remote cooperation with evil.
There should be sufficient proportionate reason for performing the action
Measles, Mumps and Rubella are fairly serious illnesses, and our responsibility to children and to public health makes the decision to get our children vaccinated a serious one. Can the same be said for Chicken Pox? Hmmm . . . You’d have to convince me.
Your action should not produce scandal
Does getting our children vaccinated make others believe that abortion or benefitting from the death of unborn babies is morally acceptable? Since our cooperation with evil is so remote, chances are fairly small that it will scandalize others. It would be important to let our opposition to abortion be publicly known. It would also be good to seek out alternative vaccines that do not use human cell lines. There are modern methods for making vaccines from animal cell lines rather than human. Currently, vaccines for Mumps, Measles, Small Pox, Rabies, and Hepatitis A are available. It would be good for Catholics to take action to promote these new methods. Write the FDA and petition the major drug companies. However, if it is not possible to get the alternative vaccines, using the available vaccines would be morally justified.
In conclusion, your action is remote material cooperation with evil that does not permit scandal. Getting your children vaccinated is a morally good act that legitimately cooperates with a past evil.