John Haas: Catholics Should Use Vaccines That Have Absolutely No Connection to Abortion, If Available

COMMENTARY: According to the Vatican, in cases of significant gravity Catholics may use some vaccines with connections to abortion without incurring moral guilt, while making known their opposition to how these vaccines were manufactured.

By Joan Frawley Desmond, EWTN News, November 30, 2020

Joan Frawley Desmond Joan Frawley Desmond, is the Register’s senior editor. She is an award-winning journalist widely published in Catholic, ecumenical and secular media. A graduate of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies of Marriage and Family, she lives with her family in California.

This week, as Moderna, the biotech company that has produced one of the most promising COVID-19 vaccines, announced that it will apply for emergency FDA approval that could make the first injections available by Dec. 21, and after United Airlines Holdings Inc. said it had launched charter flights in preparation for the distribution of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine once it is approved, questions about the ethics of these vaccines and others have continued to spark concerns and debate in the Catholic Church and beyond.

During an email exchange last week with Catholic moral theologian John Haas, president emeritus and senior fellow at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, Register senior editor Joan Frawley Desmond asked him to clarify the Church’s moral teaching on the ethics of vaccine research, testing and production, and to address ongoing ethical concerns regarding the reported association of the Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines with cell lines derived from elective abortions.  …