Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 2, 2020 / 07:00 am
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ensure that vaccines developed to combat coronavirus are not "morally compromised" by any connection to cell lines created from the remains of aborted babies.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, chairman of the USCCB's Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said in an interview Thursday that "there's been a history in creating vaccines of-in some cases anyway-of using cell lines from aborted fetuses," and that it remains important to highlight the complicated ethical concerns in vaccine research.
"So some of the vaccines that are used today have this ethical problem," he said in an appearance on EWTN Pro-Life Weekly. "We as a Church, obviously, we see this as a moral issue, that we don't want to do anything that-in some way gives support for the idea of abortion."
"On the other hand," the bishops said, "I think in some cases where there are no other ethical choices, or for public health reasons, Catholics may be forced to use these vaccines even though we object to the way they were developed, but the Church says we have an obligation to object to that, and to advocate for ethical vaccines to be developed."