Ryan C. MacPherson, “Aborted Human Fetal Tissue in Vaccines: Ethical and Legal Considerations amid the Race to a COVID-19 Vaccine," Life and Learning XXX, Proceedings of the Thirtieth University Faculty for Life Conference (2020): 89–112.
Abstract
For over fifty years, aborted human fetal tissue has been instrumental to the development and mass production of vaccines commonly administered to children. Several candidates in the race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine also utilize aborted human fetal tissue cell lines. Leading scientists involved in vaccine development openly affirm the dependency of their medical breakthroughs upon aborted (even vivisected) human fetuses and defend this practice by appealing to utilitarian ethics. Informed consent, both as an ethical principle and as a legal guarantee, generally affords competent adults the right to conscientiously refuse medical treatment and, to some degree, the right also to refuse on behalf of their minor children. Although the Jacobson (1905) ruling strongly favors the state’s authority to mandate vaccination, subsequent developments in fundamental rights jurisprudence should tilt the balance in favor of conscientious pro-life objections to abortion-derived vaccines. In the context of a pandemic emergency, however, the exercise of those rights may entail involuntary isolation or quarantine for thirty days or longer. In addition to asserting the rights to conscience, religious liberty, and bodily integrity, those who object to receiving an abortion-derived vaccine would also do well to expose the false assumption that nothing but a vaccine can protect the population against contagious disease.
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Dr. Ryan MacPherson holds a PhD in history and philosophy of science from the University of Notre Dame. After serving for twenty years as a professor at Bethany Lutheran College, he served as the founding academic dean of Luther Classical College for three years. He is author of Rediscovering the American Republic, a two-volume anthology of primary sources in American history, as well as several other books on topics ranging from theology to politics to bioethics. Dr. MacPherson has testified in court in defense of a homeschool father and for the protection of traditional American civics curricula, contributed to legal briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of marriage and the rule of law, appeared regularly on a variety of radio shows, and taught seminars for pastors and educators in Canada, Denmark, and Ecuador. The MacPherson homeschool family offers online enrichment courses through Lifelong Lyceum.
