The other day, I told you about a member of the Coast Guard who refused to be vaccinated for Hepatitis-A because the only vaccine available in the US involves an aborted fetus.
Apparently, this vaccine was derived initially from an aborted baby. However, does it matter whether the unborn are destroyed and used in the production of vaccines over and again, or if it was a single aborted child? Certainly, this can be a distressing and confusing moral dilemma for Catholic or Christian parents to sift through without some guidance.
WHAT DOES THE CHURCH TEACH?
I asked myself a question we should always ask: What does the Catholic Church teach? When we embark on such a quest, we should do so with prayer and humility, asking God to send the Holy Spirit to enlighten us with what we find written by Holy Mother Church. Faith seeks understanding and understanding is not, and should not, be a prerequisite for faith. Anyone can have faith in something they understand. A true measure of faith is accepting something we don't understand. Certainly, Our Blessed Mother could not fully understand how she could be with Child, but she placed her trust in God and said to the angel Gabriel, "let it be done unto me."
I found an extensive article at Catholic Online which contains a letter dated June 9, 2005, from Bishop Elio Sgreccia to Mrs. Debra Vinnedge, executive director, Children of God for Life. The letter included a study entitled, "Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Fetuses."
I have read this in it's entirety and it is one of those things you need to read in a quiet area, two or three times, to fully digest. However, if you follow my links below to the NCBC, you will find some helpful explanations on this complex document, which is heavily referenced there.
Also, don't hesitate to ask a trusted priest for help in understanding it. Unfortunately, there are still priests out there who are not well catechized themselves, or were malformed in such a way to even reject Humanae Vitae. If a priest supports contraception or rejects any part of Humanae Vitae, find another priest!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC)
To further help readers, I turned to another fantastic resource for moral matters of a bioethics nature: The National Catholic Bioethics Center, which has an entire page full of links pertaining to vaccines.
More Links...
Chart: Vaccines made from aborted fetuses (ChristianPatriot.com)
Article: Vaccines from aborted children (Yvonne Bontkowski)
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