As the British government has continued its rollout of coronavirus vaccines, a number of Christians have become concerned about the use of fetal cell lines in the development of some of the vaccines being offered.
There is plenty of misinformation and confusion about what exactly the entanglement between the vaccines and aborted fetuses – for an explanation of the facts and my thoughts on the ethics involved please read this article.
To help elucidate some of the important issues at stake here and to help believers make up their own minds whether to accept these vaccines, I took part in a debate with Dave Brennan, from Brephos, on the issue. Dave believes the involvement of fetal cell lines means Christians should not take these vaccines, whereas I argued it was right for Christians to save lives by being vaccinated. You can watch our debate below:
This Post Has One Comment
The matter of intent seems ethically of vital importance. As I understand it, the abortion in 1973 was not performed for the purpose of harvesting organs or producing cell lines to support vaccine production. So, this fact, together with the distance in terms of time suggests to me that in receiving, say, the AZ vaccine I cannot be considered complicit in the original evil. However, to receive a vaccine produced by the Chinese procedures described by Dave Brennan, which were intended specifically to harvest organs to use in vaccine production, would, I think, make one complicit in that evil. In determining complicity, I don’t think issues of time and intention can be ignored.