Religion and law

"Matters of orthodoxy and heterodoxy should be left to theologians, clerics, and philosophers—not to state authorities, bureaucrats, or courts. When a government attempts to dictate the content of religious beliefs and restricts the liberties of its citizens based on this, it undermines the fundamental right of every individual to the essential freedom of religion, belief, or creed (FoRB), as well as the freedom of conscience."

"King Piyadasi (Ashok) dear to the Gods, honours all sects, the ascetics (hermits) or those who dwell at home, he honours them with charity and in other ways. But the King, dear to the Gods, attributes less importance to this charity and these honours than to the vow of seeing the reign of virtues, which constitutes the essential part of them. For all these virtues there is a common source, modesty of speech. That is to say, One must not exalt one’s creed discrediting all others, nor must one degrade these others Without legitimate reasons. One must, on the contrary, render to other creeds the honour befitting them."

"The King allows such freedom that every man may come and go and live according to his own creed, without suffering any annoyance and without enquiry whether he is a Christian, ‘Jew’, Moor or Heathen. Great equity and justice is observed to all, not only by the rulers, but by the people one to another."

"The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation between Church and State"."

"… I learned something I’ll never forget: You’re never too young for your voice to matter. If I had stayed silent, nothing would’ve changed. But because we spoke up, now other students can wear messages of faith and love without fear of being silenced."

"When Servetus fought with reasons and writings, he should have been repulsed by reasons and writings."

"It is true that Calvin and his fellow pastors in Geneva were involved in the death of Servetus. However, it would be difficult to find any church leader in the 16th century who advocated a more gentle approach. Luther called for attacks on German peasants and wrote an angry tract against the Jews, called ‘On the Jews and their Lies'. Zwingli, the Reformer of Zurich, supported the execution by drowning of the Anabaptist leader, Felix Manz. Sir Thomas More, England's Catholic Lord Chancellor, presided over the execution of those he viewed as “heretics” in England during the reign of Henry the VIII. Each country of Europe in the sixteenth century felt that defending its religious views involved taking strong measures against those who disagreed. Toleration and acceptance of doctrinal differences were simply not sixteenth ­century concepts."

"I for one would never be a party, unless the law were clear, to saying to any man who put forward his views on those most sacred things, that he should be branded as apparently criminal because he differed from the majority of mankind in his religious views or convictions on the subject of religion. If that were so, we should get into ages and times which, thank God, we do not live in, when people were put to death for opinions and beliefs which now almost all of us believe to be true."

"When we, Constantine and Licinius, emperors, had an interview at Milan, and conferred together with respect to the good and security of the commonweal, it seemed to us that, amongst those things that are profitable to mankind in general, the reverence paid to the Divinity merited our first and chief attention, and that it was proper that the Christians and all others should have liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each of them appeared best; so that that God, who is seated in heaven, might be benign and propitious to us, and to every one under our government. And therefore we judged it a salutary measure, and one highly consonant to right reason, that no man should be denied leave of attaching himself to the rites of the Christians, or to whatever other religion his mind directed him, that thus the supreme Divinity, to whose worship we freely devote ourselves, might continue to vouchsafe His favour and beneficence to us. And accordingly we give you to know that, without regard to any provisos in our former orders to you concerning the Christians, all who choose that religion are to be permitted, freely and absolutely, to remain in it, and not to be disturbed any ways, or molested. And we thought fit to be thus special in the things committed to your charge, that you might understand that the indulgence which we have granted in matters of religion to the Christians is ample and unconditional; and perceive at the same time that the open and free exercise of their respective religions is granted to all others, as well as to the Christians. For it befits the well-ordered state and the tranquillity of our times that each individual be allowed, according to his own choice, to worship the Divinity; and we mean not to derogate aught from the honour due to any religion or its votaries."

"They [the Pilgrims] believed in freedom of thought for themselves and for all other people who believed exactly as they did."

"Usbek can be as brilliant and satirical on occasion as his younger companion, but his aim is to probe to the heart of things, and he knows that truth will only reveal itself to a reverent search. To him all religions are worthy of respect, and their ministers also, for “God has chosen for Himself, in every corner of the earth, souls purer than the rest, whom He has separated from the impious world that their mortification and their fervent prayers may suspend His wrath.” He thinks that the surest way to please God is to obey the laws of society, and to do our duty towards men. Every religion assumes that God loves men, since He establishes a religion for their happiness; and since He loves men we are certain of pleasing Him in loving them, too. Usbek’s prayer in Letter XLVI. Is not yet out of date. “Lord, I do not understand any of those discussions that are carried on without end regarding Thee: I would serve Thee according to Thy will; but each man whom I consult would have me serve Thee according to his.” He insists that religion is intended for man’s happiness; and that, in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to our beliefs – not necessary even to attempt to convert them. Indeed, he holds that variety of belief is beneficial to the state. A new sect is always the surest means of correcting the abuses of an old faith; and those who profess tolerated creeds usually prove more useful to their country than those who profess the established religion, because, being excluded from all honours, their endeavour to distinguish themselves by becoming wealthy improves trade and commerce."

"Among Madison’s 15 points was his declaration that “the Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every...man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an inalienable right.” Madison also made a point that any believer of any religion should understand: that the government sanction of a religion was, in essence, a threat to religion. “Who does not see,” he wrote, “that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?” Madison was writing from his memory of Baptist ministers being arrested in his native Virginia. As a Christian, Madison also noted that Christianity had spread in the face of persecution from worldly powers, not with their help. Christianity, he contended, “disavows a dependence on the powers of this world...for it is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them.”"

"The much-ballyhooed arrival of the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England in the early 1600s was indeed a response to persecution that these religious dissenters had experienced in England. But the Puritan fathers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony did not countenance tolerance of opposing religious views. Their “city upon a hill” was a theocracy that brooked no dissent, religious or political. The most famous dissidents within the Puritan community, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, were banished following disagreements over theology and policy. From Puritan Boston’s earliest days, Catholics (“Papists”) were anathema and were banned from the colonies, along with other non-Puritans. Four Quakers were hanged in Boston between 1659 and 1661 for persistently returning to the city to stand up for their beliefs."

"Superman: Remember this as long as you live: Whenever you meet up with anyone who is trying to cause trouble between people-anyone who tries to tell you that a man can’t be a good citizen because of his religious beliefs-you can be sure that the troublemaker is a rotten citizen himself and a rotten human being. Don’t ever forget that!"

"The need of the moment is not one religion, but mutual respect and tolerance of the devotees of the different religions. We want to reach not the dead level, but unity in diversity. Any attempt to root out traditions, effects of heredity, climate and other surroundings is not only bound to fail but is a sacrilege. The soul of religions is one, but it is encased in a multitude of forms. The latter will persist to the end of time."

"Religion cannot be separated from people’s lives. Religious faith is human life. Faith is where people live!"

"I hope [the book Desperate Struggle: Survival from 4,536-day Confinement /『死闘 監禁4536日からの生還』] will serve as an opportunity for people to think about what religious freedom really means."

"[The Putin regime] is serving notice to the world that not only the practice of religious liberty, but even the possibility of discussing about freedom of religion or belief have been abrogated in the [Russian Federation]."

"China, Russia, North Korea, Iran… When we consider the worst situations of systematic violation of religious liberty we tend to forget one country, Cuba. The crimes of the Cuban [Communist] regime are somewhat overshadowed by the more bloody deeds of other governments, some of them sharing with Cuba a Communist and Marxist ideological background. Yet, Cuba should not be forgotten."

"… when religious liberty is under siege, doctrinal differences must be set aside. Churches must unite in defense of the freedom to worship, preach, and live by their convictions. … when values become crimes, liberty is already lost."

"We do not believe that anti-FoRB and pro-FoRB positions should be considered as equally respectable in a report about religious liberty. Frankly, we would have preferred a coverage of the Japanese situation consistent with the traditional American position that regards stigmatization of certain groups as “cults” as bigotry, a position reiterated on the sections on Russia and China of the same 2023 report."

"Why did a reaction hostile to religious liberty manifest itself almost at the same time in France, Japan, Taiwan, and other democratic countries (but not all) in the late 1980s and 1990s? Obviously, there is not a single answer, but a look at the context may help."

"Prosecutors, judges, and tax bureaucrats [and other secular authorities] cannot evaluate the truth or quality of spiritual doctrines. In a democratic society, citizens should be free to join the spiritual movements they like, and if they contribute money to them, these should be considered as tax-exempt gifts. Affirming these principles is essential to protect freedom of religion or belief. California courts understood this more than ninety years ago. Taiwan authorities should do the same in the Tai Ji Men case."

"When a national or local government calls a religious group “antisocial” [or “cultic” or “dangerous” or the like], it jeopardizes [that religious group's] right to honor and reputation, incites [unreasonable] discrimination, and interferes with the citizens’ right of deciding which religion they want to join free from governmental pressures—who would want to bear the stigma connected with joining a religion officially declared “antisocial”?"

"Today, in my decade-long experience of studying them, Jehovah’s Witnesses interact respectfully with people of all religions. However, as most other religionists, they are persuaded that their own religious organization offers the genuine path to salvation devised by God. If believing this is a crime, then it is a crime committed by most if not all religions."

"Certainly, religions have called each other “false” and “heretic” for centuries. We live in an era of interreligious dialogue and civility, but conservative groups remain outside of it. …one religious leader’s religious liberty in criticizing other religions is another’s hate speech. The border is not well defined by the law, and difficult to grasp. These cases can only be decided on a case-by-case basis and taking context into account. Perhaps a Catholic priest in 2016 was treated in a kindlier way by [the] Brazilian courts than an Evangelical minister in 2023. But it is also possible that [the] Brazilian judges are taking into account the widespread violence and [undue] discrimination against Afro-Brazilian religions, fueled by hate speech, prevailing in Brazil in the last few years."

"As Europeans with experience in the field of promoting freedom of religion or belief, we cannot tell Africans what is needed in their beautiful and special context. They will find solutions and practices based on their own culture and traditions. But we can express our appreciation for [the African Forum for Religious and Spirituality Liberty (AFRSL)] and for its young and energetic African Coordinator and his team, and our warning that the same forms of intolerance and discrimination we combat in Europe may raise their ugly head in Africa too. Now, however, they will find AFRSL to oppose and resist them."

"…history has taught us, again and again, that once a state claims the authority to decide which beliefs are legitimate, no one—not even the majority religions who cheer today—can be sure they will not be tomorrow’s heretics."

"The effect of the religious freedom Amendment to our Constitution was to take every form of propagation of religion out of the realm of things which could directly or indirectly be made public business, and thereby be supported in whole or in part at taxpayers' expense. That is a difference which the Constitution sets up between religion and almost every other subject matter of legislation, a difference which goes to the very root of religious freedom … This freedom was first in the Bill of Rights because it was first in the forefathers' minds; it was set forth in absolute terms, and its strength is its rigidity. It was intended not only to keep the states' hands out of religion, but to keep religion's hands off the state, and, above all, to keep bitter religious controversy out of public life by denying to every denomination any advantage from getting control of public policy or the public purse."

"The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion — except for the sect that can win political power."

"Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens … are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion … No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively."

"That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."

"I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another, for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents."

"Constantine fostered an atmosphere of religious liberty … Since it favored all religions equally, the edict expressed a policy of religious liberty, not toleration...All should try to share the benefits of their religious understanding with others, but no one should force his or her truth upon another. … (for according to Constantine)..."it is one thing acting with free will to enter into contest for immortality, another to compel others to do so by force through the fear of punishment. No one should greatly trouble another, rather, everyone should follow what his soul prefers...This edict is a paradigmatic statement of concord. … Since Constantine hopes that common fellowship and the persuasion "of those who believe" will lead everyone freely to choose (what he called) the straight path, he indicates his wish that religious unity will ultimately evolve."

"In both countries, Taiwan and Poland, the newly established democratic systems resulted in the development of associations and other civic initiatives, but also in the emergence of new religious and spiritual groups. In both countries religious liberty was officially proclaimed in late 1980s. Yet, in Poland, the initial thaw and ease of registering new religious communities significantly slowed down over the years, and currently—for various reasons—registering a new group is more challenging than three decades ago. Previously, the political climate made similar activities difficult, various groups operated unregistered, and everything was monitored by the secret security services."

"Sikandar Lodi’s “empire” was much smaller than that of Firuz Shah Tughlaq. But he enforced the “law” of Islam with no less zeal. A typical case of his reign is recorded by Abdulla in his Tarikhi-i-Daudi: “It is related in the Akbar Shahi that there came a Brahman by name Bodhan who had asserted one day in the presence of Musulmans that Islam was true, as was also his own religion. This speech of his was aired abroad, and came to the ears of the ulema… Azam Humayun, the governor of that district, sent the Brahman into the king’s presence at Sambal. Sultan Sikander …summoned all the wise men of note from every quarter… After investigating the matter, the ulema determined that he should be imprisoned and converted to Islam, or suffer death, and since the Brahman refused to apostatize he was accordingly put to death by the decree of the ulema. The Sultan after rewarding the learned casuists, gave them permission to depart.”"

"He summoned to the palace the bishops of the Christians, who were of conflicting opinions, and the people, who are also at variance, and politely advised them to lay aside their differences, and each fearlessly and without opposition to observe his own beliefs. On this he took a firm stand, to the end that, as this freedom increased their dissension, he might afterwards have no fear of a united populace, knowing as he did from experience that no wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of one another."

"The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale."

"Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it."

"[The] unique ability to deal with the spiritual, needs to be cherished, not destroyed by technocracy, or suppressed by ridicule or totalitarian governments."

"People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind, and the heart, and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it is being challenged in many different ways. … Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together."

"Our nations are strongest when we see that we are all God’s children — all equal in His eyes and worthy of His love. Across our two great countries we have Hindus and Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, and Jews and Buddhists and Jains and so many faiths. And we remember the wisdom of Gandhiji, who said, “for me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree.” Branches of the same majestic tree. Our freedom of religion is written into our founding documents. It’s part of America’s very first amendment. Your Article 25 says that all people are “equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.” In both our countries — in all countries — upholding this fundamental freedom is the responsibility of government, but it's also the responsibility of every person."

"No society is immune from the darkest impulses of man. And too often religion has been used to tap into those darker impulses as opposed to the light of God. Three years ago in our state of Wisconsin, back in the United States, a man went to a Sikh temple and, in a terrible act of violence, killed six innocent people — Americans and Indians. And in that moment of shared grief, our two countries reaffirmed a basic truth, as we must again today — that every person has the right to practice their faith how they choose, or to practice no faith at all, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination."

"Religious freedom does not mean that all religions are the same: it means that truth matters, and this is what religion and the sense of the sacred are all about. Every man and woman has the right to know the truth, but only full freedom allows them to progress in that direction."

"The same truth we trust to finally prevail is the same truth [Freedom of Religion or Belief] is made of. Religions and spiritual ways are not all the same. What is the same is the honest spirit that animates all believers in different religions. What is really true of all religions, including religions that a believer in another religion may regard as false, is the afflatus for truth that motivates them. No matter how different beliefs and believers may be, no matter how many conflicts they may have between each other, that single element, a thirst and hunger for truth, makes them similar, make their devotees sisters and brothers, make them human and unique."

"Religious liberty is concerned not with beliefs and doctrines, but with human beings and persons. It comes before any deed human beings may do, even in the name of their own right to truth gone astray. A person’s fundamental right to the truth of facts and to ultimate truth does not cease to exist because some people misunderstand or misuse it. This is why laws and judicial procedures of societies that aim at being civilized struggle to grant fair trials, proportionate sentences, and humane treatment even to inmates in prison cells—and differ from rogue states and regimes."

"Is there a risk that reducing the debate on religious liberty to different forms of state recognition, including the Italian “,” may implicitly or inadvertently confer to the state the power to grant to religious groups the right to exist? In practice, states do have such power in different countries. The question is whether giving such an authority to the state is morally and philosophically correct. Perhaps, a state should just watch over the compliance of its citizens with the laws (assuming the laws are just), regardless of their religious persuasion, and leave religious groups alone to live and self-regulate their lives. The state is not the source of religious liberty, although it should acknowledge and protect it."

"Religious liberty is the first need of human beings―and one much threatened in the contemporary world, even in places that one would never suspect: democratic countries."

"The enemies of religious liberty are not mysterious. They are the secularist states and their bureaucratic appendages—governments, fiscal agencies, administrative bodies; terrorist groups, that persecute in the name of some purity; mainline churches and movements that politicize faith and weaponize numbers to marginalize dissent; and the self-appointed anti-cultists, who brandish the word “cult” like a gun, firing it at anyone they happen to dislike—“cult” being a convenient label, endlessly reusable, infinitely abusable. But their power would be far weaker were it not for the media—the great amplifiers of prejudice, always ready to trade nuance for noise."

"The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect. On the one hand, it forestalls compulsion by law of the acceptance of any creed or the practice of any form of worship. Freedom of conscience and freedom to adhere to such religious organization or form of worship as the individual may choose cannot be restricted by law. On the other hand, it safeguards the free exercise of the chosen form of religion. Thus the Amendment embraces two concepts,-freedom to believe and freedom to act. The first is absolute but, in the nature of things, the second cannot be. Conduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society."

"Yes, even our right of worship would be threatened. The Nazi world does not recognize any God except Hitler; for the Nazis are as ruthless as the Communists in the denial of God. What place has religion which preaches the dignity of the human being, the majesty of the human soul, in a world where moral standards are measured by treachery and bribery and fifth columnists? Will our children, too, wander off, goose-stepping in search of new gods?"

"The demand for a statement of a candidate’s religious belief can have no meaning except that there may be discrimination for or against him because of that belief. Discrimination against the holder of one faith means retaliatory discrimination against men of other faiths. The inevitable result of entering upon such a practice would be an abandonment of our real freedom of conscience and a reversion to the dreadful conditions of religious dissension which in so many lands have proved fatal to true liberty, to true religion, and to all advance in civilization."

"To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against that liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life. You are entitled to know whether a man seeking your suffrages is a man of clean and upright life, honorable in all of his dealings with his fellows, and fit by qualification and purpose to do well in the great office for which he is a candidate; but you are not entitled to know matters which lie purely between himself and his Maker."

"One of the most important things to secure for him is the right to hold and to express the religious views that best meet his own soul needs. Any political movement directed against anybody of our fellow- citizens because of their religious creed is a grave offense against American principles and American institutions. It is a wicked thing either to support or to oppose a man because of the creed he professes. This applies to Jew and Gentile, to Catholic and Protestant, and to the man who would be regarded as unorthodox by all of them alike. Political movements directed against men because of their religious belief, and intended to prevent men of that creed from holding office, have never accomplished anything but harm."

"There should never be any union of Church and State; and such union is partially accomplished wherever a given creed is aided by the State or when any public servant is elected or defeated because of his creed. The Constitution explicitly forbids the requiring of any religious test as a qualification for holding office. To impose such a test by popular vote is as bad as to impose it by law. To vote either for or against a man because of his creed is to impose upon him a religious test and is a clear violation of the spirit of the Constitution."

"Moreover, it is well to remember that these movements never achieve the end they nominally have in view. They do nothing whatsoever except to increase among the men of the various churches the spirit of sectarian intolerance which is base and unlovely in any civilization, but which is utterly revolting among a free people that profess the principles we profess. No such movement can ever permanently succeed here. All that it does is for a decade or so to greatly increase the spirit of theological animosity, both among the people to whom it appeals and among the people whom it assails. Furthermore, it has in the past invariably resulted, in so far as it was successful at all, in putting unworthy men into office; for there is nothing that a man of loose principles and of evil practices in public life so desires as the chance to distract attention from his own shortcomings and misdeeds by exciting and inflaming theological and sectarian prejudice."

"I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian. As a necessary corollary to this, not only the pupils but the members of the teaching force and the school officials of all kinds must be treated exactly on a par, no matter what their creed; and there must be no more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or Protestant than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protestant. Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of the public schools."

"We must recognize that it is a cardinal sin against democracy to support a man for public office because he belongs to a given creed or to oppose him because he belongs to a given creed. It is just as evil as to draw the line between class and class, between occupation and occupation in political life."

"The line of cleavage drawn on principle and conduct in public affairs is never in any healthy community identical with the line of cleavage between creed and creed or between class and class. On the contrary, where the community life is healthy, these lines of cleavage almost always run nearly at right angles to one another. It is eminently necessary to all of us that we should have able and honest public officials in the nation, in the city, in the state. If we make a serious and resolute effort to get such officials of the right kind, men who shall not only be honest but shall be able and shall take the right view of public questions, we will find as a matter of fact that he men we thus choose will be drawn from the professors of every creed and from among men who do not adhere to any creed."

"The antagonist in the major struggle of mankind for religious freedom has been Christianity, which accentuated the elements of intolerance included in its Hebraic heritage and supplemented them by the introduction of two new and potent incentives-the idea of a universal mission, a rigid dogma, the conception of the Church as an indispensable mediator between God and man."

"The proposition that the several States have no greater power to restrain the individual freedoms protected by the First Amendment than does Congress is firmly embedded in constitutional jurisprudence. The First Amendment was adopted to curtail Congress' power to interfere with the individual's freedom to believe, to worship, and to express himself in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience, and the Fourteenth Amendment imposed the same substantive limitations on the States' power to legislate. The individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority. Moreover, the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all."

"Nec religionis est cogere religionem."

"When schools cloak spiritual practices in the language of science, they bypass parental authority and compromise the religious freedom of students."

"For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support…. May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."

"A genuinely democratic society requires a secular ethos: one that does not equate morality with religion, stigmatize atheists, defer to religious interests and aims over others or make religious belief an informal qualification for public office. Of course, secularism in the latter sense is not mandated by the First Amendment. It's a matter of sensibility, not law."

"If believers feel that their faith is trivialized and their true selves compromised by a society that will not give religious imperatives special weight, their problem is not that secularists are antidemocratic but that democracy is antiabsolutist."

"For democrats, it's as crucial to defend secular culture as to preserve secular law. And in fact the two projects are inseparable: When religion defines morality, the wall between church and state comes to be seen as immoral."

"Freedom of the press and freedom of religion are not only parallel rights—they are intertwined. When the media fail to investigate or challenge government[-initiated] narratives, especially against minority religions, it enables abuse. It’s easy to sell headlines that reinforce fear or prejudice. It’s harder to tell the more profound truth. But that is our moral duty as journalists."

"We must demand a journalism rooted in truth, not [in] tribalism; in context, not [in] caricature. Only then can freedom of expression and freedom of belief coexist—not in conflict, but in common cause for justice."

"If we turn to the Pratimokska Sutra and other religious tracts of the Buddhists, we read the ten following commandments:"

"Good master, what shall I do that I may have eternal life?" asks a man of Jesus. "Keep the commandments." "Which?" "Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,"(Matthew xix. 16-18) is the answer. "What shall I do to obtain possession of Bhodi? (knowledge of eternal truth)" asks a disciple of his Buddhist master. "What way is there to become an Upasaka?" "Keep the commandments." "What are they?" "Thou shalt abstain all thy life from murder, theft, adultery, and lying," answers the master. ("Pittakatayan," book iii., Pali Version) Identical injunctions are they not? Divine injunctions, the living up to which would purify and exalt humanity... In seeking a model for his system of ethics why should Jesus have gone to the foot of the Himalayas rather than to the foot of Sinai, but that the doctrines of Manu and Gautarna harmonized exactly with his own philosophy, while those of Jehovah were to him abhorrent and terrifying? The Hindus taught to return good for evil, but the Jehovistic command was: "An eye for an eye" and "a tooth for a tooth."

"Thou shalt have one God only; who Would be at the expense of two? No graven images may be, except the currency: not at all; for for thy curse Thine enemy is none the worse: church on Sunday to attend serve to keep the world thy friend: thy parents; that is, all whom advancement may befall: Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive Officiously to keep alive: Do not adultery commit; Advantage rarely comes of it: Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat, When it's so lucrative to cheat: Bear not false witness: let the lie Have time on its own wings to fly: Thou shalt not covet; but tradition Approves all forms of competition. The sum of all is, thou shalt love, If any body, God above: At any rate shall never labour More than thyself to love thy neighbour."

"DECALOGUE, n. A series of commandments, ten in number -- just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice. Following is the revised edition of the Decalogue, calculated for this meridian. Thou shalt no God but me adore: 'Twere too expensive to have more. Take not God's name in vain; select A time when it will have effect. Work not on Sabbath days at all, But go to see the teams play ball. Honor thy parents. That creates For life insurance lower rates. Kill not, abet not those who kill; Thou shalt not pay thy butcher's bill. Kiss not thy neighbor's wife, unless Thine own thy neighbor doth caress Bear not false witness -- that is low -- But "hear 'tis rumored so and so." Covet thou naught what thou hast not By hook or crook, or somehow, got."

""Thou shalt not get found out" is not one of God's commandments, and no man can be saved by trying to keep it."

"For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!"

"Here's my problem with the Ten Commandments: why are there ten? ... Why not nine, or eleven? I'll tell you why: because ten sounds official. Ten sounds important! Ten is the basis for the decimal system, it's a decade, it's a psychologically satisfying number: the top ten, the ten most wanted, the ten best dressed. So having ten commandments was really a marketing decision. ... I give you my revised list of the Two Commandments: "Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie", and "thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than the one you pray to". Two is all you need. Moses could have carried them down the hill in his pocket, and I wouldn't mind those folks in Alabama posting them on the courthouse wall, as long as they provided one additional commandment: "Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.""

"Jacob’s descendants, the Israelites, find their way to Egypt and become too numerous for the Pharaoh’s liking, so he enslaves them and orders that all the boys be killed at birth. Moses escapes the mass infanticide and grows up to challenge the Pharaoh to let his people go. God, who is omnipotent, could have softened Pharaoh’s heart, but he hardens it instead, which gives him a reason to afflict every Egyptian with painful boils and other miseries before killing every one of their firstborn sons. (The word Passover alludes to the executioner angel’s passing over the households with Israelite firstborns.) God follows this massacre with another one when he drowns the Egyptian army as they pursue the Israelites across the Red Sea. The Israelites assemble at Mount Sinai and hear the Ten Commandments, the great moral code that outlaws engraved images and the coveting of livestock but gives a pass to slavery, rape, torture, mutilation, and genocide of neighboring tribes. The Israelites become impatient while waiting for Moses to return with an expanded set of laws, which will prescribe the death penalty for blasphemy, homosexuality, adultery, talking back to parents, and working on the Sabbath. To pass the time, they worship a statue of a calf, for which the punishment turns out to be, you guessed it, death. Following orders from God, Moses and his brother Aaron kill three thousand of their companions."

"Were the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all?"

"Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order."

"Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for your guidance in the battlefield. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone."

"Alice: Arrest him! More: Why, what has he done? Margaret: He's bad! More: There is no law against that. Roper: There is! God's law! More: Then God can arrest him."

"And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper, and shall be led to a land of promise; yea, even a land which I have prepared for you; yea, a land which is choice above all other lands."

"And it came to pass that the prophets of the Lord did threaten the people of Nephi, according to the word of God, that if they did not keep the commandments, but should fall into transgression, they should be destroyed from off the face of the land. Wherefore, the prophets, and the priests, and the teachers, did labor diligently, exhorting with all long-suffering the people to diligence; teaching the law of Moses, and the intent for which it was given; persuading them to look forward unto the Messiah, and believe in him to come as though he already was. And after this manner did they teach them. And it came to pass that by so doing they kept them from being destroyed upon the face of the land; for they did prick their hearts with the word, continually stirring them up unto repentance."

"But men never violate the laws of God without suffering the consequences, sooner or later."

"A difficult form of virtue is to try in your own life to obey what you believe to be God's will. It is not easy to do, and if you do it, you make but little noise in the world. But it is easy to turn on some one who differs from you in opinion, and in the guise of zeal for God's honour, to attack a man whose life perhaps may be much more pleasing to God than is your own."

"The wildest scorner of his Maker's laws Finds in a sober moment time to pause,"

"Be just,--not like man's law, which seizes on one isolated fact, but like God's judging angel, whose clear, sad eye saw all the countless cankering days of this man's life, all the countless nights, when, sick with starving, his soul fainted in him, before it judged him for this night, the saddest of all."

"Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men."

"A woman cannot be a pastor by the law of God. I say more, it is against the law of the realm."

"The laws of the realm do admit nothing against the law of God."

"God's service in this name is the service of God's house, and therefore they are convertible. And who sees not, that whosoever ministers to the poor, ministers to God ? As it appears in that solemn sentence of the last day, inasmuch as you did feed, clothe, lodge the poor, you did it unto me."

"One sole God; One sole ruler,—his Law; One sole interpreter of that law—Humanity."

"Knowing that all things contrary to God's laws are transient, let us avoid despair and radiate hope for a warless world."

"It is my interpretation from the Koran that all people have equal rights. That means men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims too, and in a society where all people have equal rights, that means all people should make decisions equally. … This doesn't mean that we're changing God's law, It just means we're reinterpreting laws according to the development of science - and the realities of the times."

"As a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practise or neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity. The free-labor system conforms to the divine law of equality, which is written in the hearts and consciences of man, and therefore is always and everywhere beneficent."

"Therefore, prepare thy heart to receive and obey the instructions which I am about to give unto you; for all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same."

"Prophecy really includes ordinary knowledge; for the knowledge which we acquire by our natural faculties depends on knowledge of God and His eternal laws; but ordinary knowledge is common to all men as men, and rests on foundations which all share, whereas the multitude always strains after rarities and exceptions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature; so that, when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not supposed to be included. Nevertheless it has as much right as any other to be called Divine, for God's nature, in so far as we share therein, and God's laws, dictate it to us; nor does it suffer from that to which we give the preeminence, except in so far as the latter transcends its limits and cannot be accounted for by natural laws taken in themselves."

"Just as it is forbidden to permit that which is prohibited, so it is forbidden to prohibit that which is permitted."

"And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws."

"One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you."

"When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws."

"And in every work that he began in the service of the house of God, and in the law, and in the commandments, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart, and prospered."

"And what cause soever shall come to you of your brethren that dwell in your cities, between blood and blood, between law and commandment, statutes and judgments, ye shall even warn them that they trespass not against the LORD, and so wrath come upon you, and upon your brethren: this do, and ye shall not trespass."

"Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son: but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father. He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor. He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination."

"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."

"But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night."

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."

"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."

"Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

"If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors. For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."

"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law."

"For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves."

"Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law."

"Original: 48"

"Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all tilings in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempt from her power."

"The law of God is not the conflict of will with will, but of wisdom with folly, knowledge with ignorance, right with wrong — the announcement out of parental love, of the conditions of spiritual life, happiness, immortality. The punishment of sin, therefore, may be contemplated, not as the overflowing of wrath, but the outworkings of natural law, coincident with the judgment of infinite righteousness."

"Law, meaning obedience to a holy God, passes by a natural transition into the gospel; that is, reverential duty to a person, to the obedience of love at last, which obeys, because the beau- tifulness of obedience is perceived."

"The law showed what man ought to be. Christ showed what man is, and what God is."

"The law discovers the disease. The gospel gives the remedy."

"The law is what we must do; the gospel what God will give."

"The law sends us to Christ to be justified, and Christ sends us to the law to be regulated."

"Though the moral law has ceased as a covenant, it remains as a rule of life. It will forever continue as the standard of holiness."

"No one walks together with him or directs their steps towards him. Life passes him by like water. He is dear to no just man, plague prevails over him. Like a worthless penny. [...] He is clothed with a garment as if a heavy punishment were assigned to him. Who is he? His name? A man sleeping with someone's wife."

"If a man's wife be surprised with another man, both shall be tied and thrown into the water, but the husband may pardon his wife and the king his slaves. ¶ If a man violate the wife [betrothed or child-wife] of another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleep with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless. ¶ If a man bring a charge against one's wife, but she is not surprised with another man, she must take an oath and then may return to her house. ¶ If the "finger is pointed" at a man's wife about another man, but she is not caught sleeping with the other man, she shall jump into the river for her husband."

"Thou shalt not commit adultery."

"And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death."

"The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguiseth his face."

"For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: ¶ But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. ¶ Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. ¶ Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them."

"But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul."

"Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness."

"Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; ¶ Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst."

"They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker, who ceaseth from raising after he hath kneaded the dough, until it be leavened."

"Οὔ τοι σύμφορόν ἐστι γυνὴ νέα ἀνδρὶ γέροντι: οὐ γὰρ πηδαλίῳ πείθεται ὡς ἄκατος, οὐδ᾽ ἄγκυραι ἔχουσιν ἀπορρήξασα δὲ δεσμὰ πολλάκις ἐκ νυκτῶν ἄλλον ἔχει λιμένα."

"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

"It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

"Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. ¶ And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. ¶ And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, ¶ They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. ¶ Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? ¶ This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. ¶ So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. ¶ And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. ¶ And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. ¶ When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? ¶ She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."

"Curam Clymene narrabat inanem Vulcani Martisque dolos et dulcia furta, aque Chao densos divum numerabat amores."

"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Cauta est et ab illis incipit uxor."

"And come not near unto adultery. Lo! it is an abomination and an evil way."

"In flagrante delicto."

"Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice ne la miseria."

"Ȝyf weddyd man, sengle woman takeþ, Forsoþe spousebrechë þere he makyþ. Ȝyf weddyd wyfe take sengle man, Alle spousebreche tel y hyt þan; For þey haue broke with-outë fayle Þe chastë bondë of spousayle."

"I am possess’d with an adulterate blot; My blood is mingled with the crime of lust."

"Adultery? Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: The wren goes to’t, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; For Gloucester’s bastard son was kinder to his father Than my daughters got ’tween the lawful sheets."

"And then they called me foul adulteress, Lascivious Goth."

"When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom—is to die."

"What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, Is much more common where the climate’s sultry."

"Do not adultery commit; Advantage rarely comes of it"

"Adultery it is not fit Or safe, for women, to commit."

"I saw a little burnished fly Within my Mistress’ bodice lie, Sipping lovely stolen sweets From her ample rosy teats. ‘Small adulterer,’ said I, ‘Dost thou know where thou dost lie? ‘’Tis my lady’s bosom fine, ‘And thou dost sip what is not thine.’"

"Kiss not thy neighbor's wife, unless Thine own thy neighbor doth caress."

"I'll match my private wife against any man's."

"Adultery is the application of democracy to love."

"Adultery is treason to the family; adulterers should be put to death."

"I want to have it all. I want to have a family, a career, and a side piece."

"Zeus: , you are a king, and it's to your sense of king-ship I appeal, for you enjoy wielding the scepter. Aegistheus: Continue. Zeus: You may hate me, but we are akin; I made you in my image. A king is a god on earth, glorious and terrifying as a god. Aegistheus: You, terrifying? Zeus: Look at me. [A long silence.] I told you you were made in my image. Each keeps order; you in Argos, I in heaven and on earth — and you and I harbor the same dark secret in our hearts. Aegistheus: I have no secret. Zeus: You and I harbor the same dark secret in our hearts. Aegistheus: I have no secret. Zeus: You have. The same as mine. The bane of gods and kings. The bitterness of knowing men are free. Yes, Aegistheus they are free. But your subjects do not know it, and you do."

"Zeus, who guided mortals to be wise, has established his fixed law— wisdom comes through suffering. Trouble, with its memories of pain, drips in our hearts as we try to sleep, so men against their will learn to practice moderation. Favours come to us from gods seated on their solemn thrones— such grace is harsh and violent."

"ὦ Ζεῦ͵ πάτερ Ζεῦ͵ σὸν μὲν οὐρανοῦ κράτος͵ σὺ δ΄ ἔργ΄ ἐπ΄ ἀνθρώπων ὁρᾶις λεωργὰ καὶ θεμιστά͵ σοὶ δὲ θηρίων ὕβρις τε καὶ δίκη μέλει."

"Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and . . . fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. Don't any of you be surprised in future if land beasts change places with dolphins and go to live in their salty pastures, and get to like the sounding waves of the sea more than the land, while the dolphins prefer the mountains."

"Zeus, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names."

"Well, what if I'm wrong, I mean — anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot. You happen to have been brought up, I would presume, in a Christian faith. You know what it's like to not believe in a particular faith because you're not a Muslim. You're not a Hindu. Why aren't you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in America, not in India. If you had been brought up in India, you'd be a Hindu. If you had been brought up in Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you'd be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece, you'd be believing in Zeus. If you were brought up in central Africa, you'd be believing in the great up the mountain. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian god, in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up and ask me the question, "What if I'm wrong?" What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea?"

"Those who seek great prosperity and happiness should never inflict pain on women. Where women are honored, in that family great men are born, but where they are not honored, all acts are fruitless. Where women pass their days in misery and sorrow because of the misdeeds of their husbands, that family soon entirely perishes, but where they are happy because of the good conduct of their husbands, the family continually prospers."

"पूजयेदशनं नित्यं अद्याच्चैनमकुत्सयन् । दृष्ट्वा हृष्येत् प्रसीदेच्च प्रतिनन्देच्च सर्वश: ॥ पूजितं ह्यशनं नियं बलमूर्जं च यच्छति । अपूजितं तु तद्भुक्तं उभयं नाशयेदिदं ॥"

"अनारोग्यमनायुष्यं अस्वर्ग्यं चातिभोजनं । अपुण्यं लोकविद्विष्टं तस्मात् तत्परिवर्जयेत् ॥"

"इन्द्रियाणां विचरतां विषयेष्वपहारिषु । संयमे यत्नमातिष्ठेत् विद्वान् यन्तेव वाजिनां॥"

"Evil actions performed in this world do not bear fruit immediately like the cow, which gives milk after being fed, but gradually gnaw the roots of him who commits them."

"Meat can never be obtained without injury to living creatures, and injury to sentient beings is detrimental to (the attainment of) heavenly bliss; let him therefore shun (the use of) meat. Having well considered the (disgusting) origin of flesh and the (cruelty of) fettering and slaying corporeal beings, let him entirely abstain from eating flesh."

"धर्मो रक्षति रक्षितः"

"Learn that sacred law which is followed by men learned (in the Veda) and assented to in their hearts by the virtuous, who are ever exempt from hatred and inordinate affection."

"When a man has studied the Veda in accordance with the rules, and begotten sons in accordance with his duty, and sacrificed with sacrifices according to his ability, he may set his mind-and-heart on freedom. (MS 6.36)"

"That land where the black antelope naturally roams, one must know to be fit for the performance of sacrifices; (the tract) different from that (is) the country of the Mlekkhas."

"Where women are honored there the gods are pleased; but where they are not honored no sacred rite yields rewards."

"[Brahmāvarta or] ―the district between the Sarasvatī and Dṛṣadvatī is the home of the Veda."

"Only in the case of a girl is the whole body pure."

"Circumcision, was prescribed for male children and the removal of the small labia from the females."

"They are forbidden to write from left to right or to use their right hand in writing: the use of the right hand and writing from left to right are reserved to people of virtue, to people of race."

"I cannot oversee whether the Semites have not already in very ancient times been in the terrible service of the Hindus: as Chandalas, so that then already certain properties took root in them that belong to the subdued and despised type (like later in Egypt). Later they ennoble themselves, to the extent that they become warriors […] and conquer their own lands and own gods. The Semitic creation of gods coincides historically with their entry into history."

"One thing I want to impress upon you is that Manu did not give the law of caste and that he could not do so. Caste existed long before Manu. He was an upholder of it and therefore philosophized about it, but certainly he did not and could not ordain the present order of Hindu Society [...] The spread and growth of the caste system is too gigantic a task to be achieved by the power or cunning of an individual or of a class [...] The Brahmins may have been guilty of many things, and I dare say they were, but the imposing of the caste system on the non-Brahmin population was beyond their mettle."

"In the opinion of the best contemporary orientalists, it [Manusmriti] does not, as a whole, represent a set of rules ever actually administered in Hindustan. It is in great part an ideal picture of that which, in the view of a Brahmin, ought to be law."

"[Calling it a law book] skews it towards what the British hoped to make of it: a tool with which to rule the Hindoos. A broader title like 'teaching' would better suggest what the text is."

"There is no historical evidence for either an active propagation or implementation of Dharmasastra [Manusmriti] by a ruler or any state – as distinct from other forms of recognizing, respecting and using the text. Thinking of Dharmasastra as a legal code and of its authors as lawgivers is thus a serious misunderstanding of its history."

"The Manu Smrti is usually referred to, especially by its modern leftist critics in India, as the casteist manifesto pure and simple. This is fair enough in the sense that there is no unjustly disregarded anti-caste element tucked away somewhere in Manu’s vision of society; the text is indeed casteist through and through. However, the scope of the Manu Smrti is broader, dealing with intra-family matters, the punishment of crime, the king’s (in the sense of: the state’s) duties, money-lending and usury, et al."

"“The cosmogony of the Manava Dharmashastra is the broadest and most comprehensive we have thus far encountered.”"

"We know nothing more interesting than to read Manu with the Bible in front of us. The latter book, a code of pillage and debauchery, which never knew the immortality of the soul, can not sustain the tiniest comparison with the ancient law book of the Hindus."

"The laws of Manu very probably were considerably older than those of Solon or even of Lycurgus, although the promulgation of them, before they were reduced to writing, might have been covered with the first monarchies established in Egypt and India."

"Manu Smriti was the foundation upon which the Egyptian, the Persian, the Grecian and the Roman codes of law were built and that the influence of Manu is still felt in Europe."

"Even the much-maligned Manusmriti (commonly known in the West as the Laws of Manu) was never enforced as the divine and all-encompassing law of Hindus – except by the British rulers who enforced it to show that the colonizers were ruling in accordance with 'Hindu Law' (a canon they had constructed themselves). Moreover, Manu's code is explicit in stating that it is not universal. It calls for updates, amendments and rewrites in order to suit different circumstances."

"Nelson in 1887, in a legal brief before the Madras High Court of British India, had stated, "there are various contradictions and inconsistencies in the Manu Smriti itself, and that these contradictions would lead one to conclude that such a commentary did not lay down legal principles to be followed but were merely recommendatory in nature.""

"What a yes-saying Aryan religion, born from the ruling classes, looks like: Manu’s law-book. What a yes-saying Semitic religion, born from the ruling classes, looks like: Mohammed’s law-book, the Old Testament in its older parts. What a no-saying Semitic religion, born from the oppressed classes, looks like: in Indian-Aryan concepts; the New Testament, a Chandala religion. What a no-saying Aryan religion looks like, grown among the dominant classes: Buddhism."

"I owe to these last weeks a very important lesson: I found Manu's book of laws in a French translation done in India under strict supervision from the most eminent priests and scholars there. This absolutely Aryan work, a priestly codex of morality based on the Vedas, on the idea of caste and very ancient tradition-not pessimistic, albeit very sacerdotal-supplements my views on religion in me most remarkable way. I confess to having the impression that everything else that we have by way of moral lawgiving seems to me an imitation and even a caricature of it-preeminently, Egypticism does; but even Plato seems to me in all the main points simply to have been well instructed by a Brahmin. It makes the Jews look like a Chandala race which learns from its masters the principles of making a priestly caste the master which organizes a people."

"Now let us consider the other case which is called morality, the case of the rearing of a particular race and species. The most magnificent example of this is offered by Indian morality, and is sanctioned religiously as the “Law of Manu.” In this book the task is set of rearing no less than four races at once: a priestly race, a warrior race, a merchant and agricultural race, and finally a race of servants—the Sudras. It is quite obvious that we are no longer in a circus watching tamers of wild animals in this book. To have conceived even the plan of such a breeding scheme, presupposes the existence of a man who is a hundred times milder and more reasonable than the mere lion-tamer. One breathes more freely, after stepping out of the Christian atmosphere of hospitals and prisons, into this more salubrious, loftier and more spacious world. What a wretched thing the New Testament is beside Manu, what an evil odour hangs around it!—But even this organisation found it necessary to be terrible,—not this time in a struggle with the animal-man, but with his opposite, the non-caste man, the hotch-potch man, the Chandala. And once again it had no other means of making him weak and harmless, than by making him sick,—it was the struggle with the greatest[Pg 47] “number.” Nothing perhaps is more offensive to our feelings than these measures of security on the part of Indian morality. The third edict, for instance (Avadana-Sastra I.), which treats “of impure vegetables,” ordains that the only nourishment that the Chandala should be allowed must consist of garlic and onions, as the holy scriptures forbid their being given corn or grain-bearing fruit, water and fire. The same edict declares that the water which they need must be drawn neither out of rivers, wells or ponds, but only out of the ditches leading to swamps and out of the holes left by the footprints of animals. They are likewise forbidden to wash either their linen or themselves since the water which is graciously granted to them must only be used for quenching their thirst. Finally Sudra women are forbidden to assist Chandala women at their confinements, while Chandala women are also forbidden to assist each other at such times. The results of sanitary regulations of this kind could not fail to make themselves felt; deadly epidemics and the most ghastly venereal diseases soon appeared, and in consequence of these again “the Law of the Knife,”—that is to say circumcision, was prescribed for male children and the removal of the small labia from the females. Manu himself says: “the Chandala are the fruit of adultery, incest, and crime (—this is the necessary consequence of the idea of breeding). Their clothes shall consist only of the rags torn from corpses, their vessels shall be the fragments of broken pottery, their ornaments shall be made of old iron, and their religion shall be the worship of evil spirits; without rest they shall wander from place to place.[Pg 48] They are forbidden to write from left to right or to use their right hand in writing: the use of the right hand and writing from left to right are reserved to people of virtue, to people of race.”"

"These regulations are instructive enough: we can see in them the absolutely pure and primeval humanity of the Aryans,—we learn that the notion “pure blood,” is the reverse of harmless. On the other hand it becomes clear among which people the hatred, the Chandala hatred of this humanity has been immortalised, among which people it has become religion and genius. From this point of view the gospels are documents of the highest value; and the Book of Enoch is still more so. Christianity as sprung from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as grown upon this soil, represents the counter-movement against that morality of breeding, of race and of privilege:—it is essentially an anti-Aryan religion: Christianity is the transvaluation of all Aryan values, the triumph of Chandala values, the proclaimed gospel of the poor and of the low, the general insurrection of all the down-trodden, the wretched, the bungled and the botched, against the “race,”—the immortal revenge of the Chandala as the religion of love."

"The morality of breeding and the morality of taming, in the means which they adopt in order to prevail, are quite worthy of each other: we may lay down as a leading principle that in order to create morality a man must have the absolute will to[Pg 49] immorality. This is the great and strange problem with which I have so long been occupied: the psychology of the “Improvers” of mankind. A small, and at bottom perfectly insignificant fact, known as the “pia fraus,” first gave me access to this problem: the pia fraus, the heirloom of all philosophers and priests who “improve” mankind. Neither Manu, nor Plato, nor Confucius, nor the teachers of Judaism and Christianity, have ever doubted their right to falsehood. They have never doubted their right to quite a number of other things To express oneself in a formula, one might say:—all means which have been used heretofore with the object of making man moral, were through and through immoral."

"In the last analysis it comes to this: what is the end of lying? The fact that, in Christianity, "holy" ends are not visible is my objection to the means it employs. Only bad ends appear: the poisoning, the calumniation, the denial of life, the despising of the body, the degradation and self–contamination of man by the concept of sin—therefore, its means are also bad.—I have a contrary feeling when I read the Code of Manu, an incomparably more intellectual and superior work, which it would be a sin against the intelligence to so much as name in the same breath with the Bible. It is easy to see why: there is a genuine philosophy behind it, in it, not merely an evil–smelling mess of Jewish rabbinism and superstition,—it gives even the most fastidious psychologist something to sink his teeth into. And, not to forget what is most important, it differs fundamentally from every kind of Bible: by means of it the nobles, the philosophers and the warriors keep the whip–hand over the majority; it is full of noble valuations, it shows a feeling of perfection, an acceptance of life, and triumphant feeling toward self and life—the sun shines upon the whole book."

"I know of no book in which so many delicate and kindly things are said of women as in the Code of Manu; these old grey–beards and saints have a way of being gallant to women that it would be impossible, perhaps, to surpass. "The mouth of a woman," it says in one place, "the breasts of a maiden, the prayer of a child and the smoke of sacrifice are always pure." In another place: "there is nothing purer than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow, air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden." Finally, in still another place—perhaps this is also a holy lie—: "all the orifices of the body above the navel are pure, and all below are impure. Only in the maiden is the whole body pure.""

"One catches the unholiness of Christian means in flagranti by the simple process of putting the ends sought by Christianity beside the ends sought by the Code of Manu—by putting these enormously antithetical ends under a strong light. The critic of Christianity cannot evade the necessity of making Christianity contemptible.—A book of laws such as the Code of Manu has the same origin as every other good law–book: it epitomizes the experience, the sagacity and the ethical experimentation of long centuries; it brings things to a conclusion; it no longer creates. The prerequisite to a codification of this sort is recognition of the fact that the means which establish the authority of a slowly and painfully attained truth are fundamentally different from those which one would make use of to prove it. A law–book never recites the utility, the grounds, the casuistical antecedents of a law: for if it did so it would lose the imperative tone, the "thou shall," on which obedience is based. The problem lies exactly here."

"To draw up such a law–book as Manu’s means to lay before a people the possibility of future mastery, of attainable perfection—it permits them to aspire to the highest reaches of the art of life."

"It is not Manu but nature that sets off in one class those who are chiefly intellectual, in another those who are marked by muscular strength and temperament, and in a third those who are distinguished in neither one way or the other, but show only mediocrity—the last–named represents the great majority, and the first two the select."

"The belief in the authenticity of Kulluka's text was openly articulated by Burnell (1884, xxix): "There is then no doubt that the textus receptus, viz., that of Kulluka Bhatta, as adopted in India and by European scholars, is very near on the whole to the original text." This is far from the truth. Indeed, one of the great surprises of my editorial work has been to discover how few of the over fifty manuscripts that I collated actually follow the vulgate in key readings."

"[The Aryan] religion was, in its poetic fancies, as far exalted above [the native's] crude systems of worship as the sublime teachings of Christianity soar above the doctrines of the code of Menu."

"Hindu Sashtras also contain a Sanitary Code no less correct in principle, and that the great law-giver, Manu, was one of the greatest sanitary reformers the world has ever seen."

"The other side of the coin is equally important. Before using hyperbolic pejoratives to describe how oppressive Indian society has been for ‘thousands of years’, and basing the most far-reaching policy prescriptions on that construction, should the judges, who quote a sentence or two from Manusmriti, not adduce evidence to establish, first, that the half a dozen verses that are cited again and again are representative of the work; second, that the smritis are intrinsic to Hinduism; third, that the kind of oppression and differentiation that these verses imply actually prevailed in practice? Manusmriti is said to have been compiled over seven to eight hundred years. Which verse is authentic and which an interpolation? Second, what is the evidence that this text was in fact being lived out in practice? Even the ‘eminent historians’ who have built their careers on such assertions have not been able to point to any evidence that even vaguely suggests that Indian society was characterized by the tales of caste oppression that are their stock-in-trade.50 With these ‘historians’ unable to adduce any evidence to substantiate their assertions, on what do the judges base their characterizations? And yet, not only do our judges repeat the assertions, they do so in grandiloquent prose, and they base their policy prescriptions on those very assertions."

"Should the judges, who quote a sentence or two from Manusmriti, not adduce evidence to establish, first, that the half a dozen verses that are cited again and again are representative of the work; second, that the smritis are intrinsic to Hinduism; third, that the kind of oppression and differentiation that these verses imply actually prevailed in practice?"

"More serious is Nietzsche’s uncritical reliance on the flawed translation of the text by Jacolliot, an amateur openly denounced by leading philologists like Friedrich Max Muller. Uncritical reading of this text led Nietzsche to quote mistranslations and later insertions in support of the claim concerning the Chandala (low caste) origins of the Semites, used to attack Christianity in TI and AC. Elst goes on to highlight what Nietzsche missed or omitted in his reading of the text, including not just the actual politics and institutions of the caste system, but also some striking affinities with his own views and teachings. Despite these philological blunders and misjudgements, however, Nietzsche seems to have landed on his feet after all; for in Elst’s view, he did succeed in grasping Manu’s view of man and society."

"Says our great law-giver, Manu, giving the definition of an Aryan, "He is the Aryan, who is born through prayer". Every child not born through prayer is illegitimate, according to the great law-giver. The child must be prayed for."

"A child materially born is not an Aryan; the child born in spirituality is an Aryan."

"He is of the 'aryan' race, who is born through prayer, and he is a nonarian, who is born through sensuality."

"According to Manu a child who is born of lust is not an Aryan. The child whose very conception and whose death is according to the rules of the Vedas, such is an Aryan. Yes, and less of these Aryan children are being produced in every country, and the result is the mass of evil which we call Kali Yuga."

"The American Revolution began with certain latent hopes that it might turn into a genuine break with the State ideal. The Declaration of Independence announced doctrines that were utterly incompatible not only with the century-old conception of the Divine Right of Kings, but also with the Divine Right of the State. … If revolution is justifiable a State may even be criminal sometimes in resisting its own extinction."

"For a long time there have been no true sovereigns, monarchs by divine right capable of wielding sword and scepter, and symbols of a higher human ideal. More than a century ago, Juan Donoso Cortés stated that no kings existed capable of proclaiming themselves as such except "by the will of the nation," adding that, even if any had existed, they would not have been recognized. The few monarchies still surviving are notoriously impotent and empty, while the traditional nobility has lost its essential character as a political class and any existential prestige and rank along with it. Its current representatives may still interest our contemporaries when put on the same plane as film actors and actresses, sport heroes and opera stars, and when through some private, sentimental, or scandalous chance, they serve as fodder for magazine articles."

"In order to subsist, then, temporal power needs a consecration that comes from spiritual authority; it is this consecration that confers upon it legitimacy, that is to say conformity with the very order of things. Such was the raison d'être of the 'royal initiation' […] and it is in this that the 'divine right' of kings properly consists, what the Far-Eastern tradition calls the 'mandate of Heaven'."

"The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth, for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods. There be three principal [comparisons] that illustrate the state of monarchy: one taken out of the word of God, and the two other out of the grounds of policy and philosophy. In the Scriptures kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to the Divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families; for a king is truly parens patriae [parent of the country], the politic father of his people. And lastly, kings are compared to the head of this microcosm of the body of man."

"10Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?So Pilate said to him, "Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?""

"15Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk.Then the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap him in speech."

"Si l’on s’avise, en effet, de penser que les conducteurs de peuples ne reçoivent pas directement leurs inspirations de la Providence même, qu’ils obéissent à des impulsions purement humaines, le prestige qui les environne disparaîtra, et l’on résistera irrévérencieusement à leurs décisions souveraines, comme on résiste à tout ce qui vient des hommes, à moins que l’utilité n’en soit clairement démontrée."

"Le libre examen a démonétisé la fiction du droit divin, à ce point que les sujets des monarques ou des aristocraties de droit divin ne leur obéissent plus qu’autant qu’ils croient avoir intérêt à leur obéir."

"1Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God."

"13Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme;Be subject to every human institution for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to the king as supreme"

"Anarchists hold that morality must be upheld in all cases, and not abandoned whenever State actions are involved. Men have long since rejected the Divine Right of Kings; surely it is now past time to do the same with all claims that the State is Extra-Human or Extra-Moral. The State must be judged on the same level and by the same principles as all other human actions and institutions; one rule applies to all."

"Meyer begins with the complaint that libertarians are really "libertines" (hedonists? sex-fiends?) because we "reject" the "reality" of five thousand years of Western civilization, and propose to substitute an abstract construction. Very true; in other words, we, like Lord Acton, propose to weight the growth of encrusted tradition and institutions in the light of man's natural reason, and of course we find these often despotic institutions wanting. To Meyer, we propose to replace God's creation of this multifarious, complex world . . . and substitute for it their own creation". Very neat. The world as it is, in short the status quo of statism and tyranny, is, in the oldest theocratic trick in history, stamped with the approval of being "God's creation", while any radical change from that tyranny is sneered at as "man's creation". Meyer, the self-proclaimed fusionist and "conservative libertarian", thus stamps himself as simply another incarnation of Sir Robert Fillmer and Bishop Bossuet, another intellectual apologist for the divine right of kings."

"The witness must take an oath before deposing. Single witness normally does not suffice. As many as three witnesses are required. False evidence must face sanctions."

"He should not spend the morning, midday or afternoon fruitlessly, but pursue righteousness, wealth and pleasure, to the best of his ability, but among them he should attend chiefly to righteousness."

"The Dharma-Shâstras give a completely far-fetched theory of the origins of the castes, e.g. the Gautama-Dharma-Shâstra (4.17) relays the view that the union of a Shûdra woman with a Brâhmana, a Kshatriya or a Vaishya man brings forth the Pârashava c.q. the Yavana (‘Ionian’, Greek or West-Asian) and the Karana jâti."

"He who confirms or contradicts what is uttered, who enters Nance's house from outside, and does not leave it, the caretaker of Nance's house, the child born to Utu, lord Hendursaja. [...] The king discriminates between the good and the evil deeds, Hendursaja discriminates between the good and the evil deeds."

"He who extends his staff of office, the one respected within the abzu, the lord who has no opposition in the terraced tower of Nance's house, the king, lord Hendursaja, promulgates the decrees of Nance's house. They are heavy smoke settling on the ground; the commands of the house are thick clouds covering the sky as if they were joined together with the needle of matrimony, yet the king, lord Hendursaja, tears them apart. He can discriminate between the just and the wicked, and he can bring justice to the orphan as well as to the widow."

"[T]he king who loves justice, Hendursaja."

"[T]he child speaks to the mother who bore him in the great city with black looks and in anger, then the king who hates violence, Hendursaja, will treat such a person like water in a filthy place, and will reject that child for her sake as grain is rejected by acid soil."

"One should worship the supreme God with different types of auspicious flowers. Obeisance to Rāghava whose feet should be worshipped first."

"Madhusūdan (Vishnu) himself was born as his (Daśarath’s) son. O sage, Vishnu, having been pleased, became four brothers from his four parts."

"All sins of that person (who performs the Rāghava-dvādaśī) vanish and he obtains all the desired objects. He who performs it without any desire gets the permanent ‘nirvāna-pada’."

"“The Kalpataru has size (though it is not as extensive as the Viramitrodaya), has great range, but in quality it is very inferior not only to Mitãkshara but also to some other digests. Lengthy discussions in the Kalpatru are few and far between. It is more in the nature of a collection from all smritis.”"

"Vaccines have been one of the chief public benefits of fetal tissue research. Vaccines for hepatitis A, German measles, chickenpox and rabies, for example, were developed using cell lines grown from tissue from two elective abortions, one in England and one in Sweden, that were performed in the 1960s. German measles, also known as rubella, “caused 5,000 spontaneous abortions a year prior to the vaccine,” said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious-disease specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “We wouldn’t have saved all those lives had it not been for those cells.” Fetal tissue was “absolutely critical” to the development of a potential Ebola vaccine that has shown promise, said Dr. Carrie Wolinetz, an associate director at NIH, which last year handed out $76 million for work involving fetal tissue, or 0.2 percent of the agency’s research budget."

"18-6 Vaccines ok on temporary basis if no other moral alternative available to fetal stem cell lines “Parents and physicians may use the current vaccines without immoral cooperation in abortion “on a temporary basis” when no ethical alternative is available and “insomuch as is necessary in order to avoid a serious risk not only for one’s children but also…for the health conditions of the population as a whole”. When no other ethical alternative is available, “it is right to abstain from using these vaccines if it can be done without causing children, and indirectly the population as a whole, to undergo significant risks to their health”. (2005) (renewed 2015)"

"18-7 CMA condemns pharma companies that participate in illicit methods to create vaccines AND BE IT RESOLVED, that the CMA condemns the illicit cooperation in abortion by pharmaceutical companies in the manufacturing of vaccines and encourages the use of ethical alternatives with opposition by all legitimate means to those vaccines with moral problems. And be it further resolved that parents and physicians “have a duty” to seek alternative product whenever available and that both parents and the medical professionals have a “grave responsibility” to call upon the vaccine manufacturers, the FDA and government officials to make products available as soon as possible that are not grown on cell lines procured from abortion. (2005) (renewed 2015)"

"Some people wonder whether the vaccines made using human fetal cells (chickenpox, rubella, hepatitis A, one version of the rabies vaccine, and one version of the COVID-19 vaccine) could cause harm if the DNA from the fetal cells “mixes” with the vaccine recipient’s DNA. This is not likely to happen: *Stability of DNA - Because DNA is not stable when exposed to certain chemicals, much of it is destroyed in the process of making the vaccine. Therefore, the amount of human DNA in the final vaccine preparation is minimal (trillionths of a gram) and highly fragmented. Because the DNA is fragmented, it cannot possibly create a whole protein that could be harmful. *Opportunity – DNA from the vaccine is not able to incorporate itself into cellular DNA. In fact, if this could be accomplished, gene therapy would be much easier than it has been."

"WHO requirements for the use of animal cells as in vitro substrates for the production of biologicals. Biologicals 1998;26:175-193. Cell lines of human (e.g., WI-38, MRC-5) or monkey (FRhL-2) origin are non-tumorigenic and residual cellular DNA derived from these cells has not been, and is not, considered to pose any risk."

"Two cell lines currently used in vaccines are derived from selective abortions performed overseas in the 1960s; WI-38 from Germany in 1961 and MRC-5 from UK in 1966. Many excellent and thoughtful papers have been written on the ethics and religious aspects arising from use of these human cell lines."

"Addressing Concerns for Catholics: *Catholic US bishops approve use of COVID-19 vaccines with ‘remote connection’ to abortion *“…as regards the vaccines [containing WI-38 or MRC-5] without an alternative, the need to contest so that others may be prepared must be reaffirmed, as should be the lawfulness of using the former in the meantime insomuch as is necessary in order to avoid a serious risk not only for one’s own children but also, and perhaps more specifically, for the health conditions of the population as a whole – especially for pregnant women.” 2005 Official Document, Moral Reflections on Vaccines Derived from Aborted Human Foetuses *“danger to the health of children could permit parents to use a vaccine which was developed using cell lines of illicit origin, while keeping in mind that everyone has the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their healthcare system make other types of vaccines available.” 2008 Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions [link to complete text – near the end of section 35]"

"Some people cite the Catholic Church’s objection to certain vaccines, such as the rubella vaccine, that were initially developed in laboratory cell lines that were derived from aborted fetuses. (The vaccines themselves contain no fetal cells.) The church has stated that in those instances members should find alternatives when available but that there is no religious obligation to refuse these vaccines. (Catholic News Service even ends an article on this subject with the wonderful: “Children and unborn children must not pay the price for ‘the licit fight against pharmaceutical companies’ that produce immoral vaccines.”)"

"The lack of vaccinations of the population indicates a serious health risk of diffusing dangerous and often lethal diseases and infections that had been eradicated in the past, such as measles, rubella, and chickenpox. As noted by the Italian National Health Institute, since 2013 there has been a progressive trend in decreasing vaccination coverage. Vaccination coverage data for measles and rubella decreased from 90.4$ in 2013 to 85.3% in 2015, contrary to WHO indications that recommend 95% vaccination coverage to eliminate virus circulation. In the past, vaccines had been prepared using cells from aborted human fetuses, however currently used cell lines are very distant from the original abortions. The vaccines being referred to, the ones most commonly used in Italy, are those against rubella, chickenpox, polio, and hepatitis A. “It should be noted that today it is no longer necessary to obtain cells from new voluntary abortions, and that the cell lines on which the vaccines are based in are derived solely from two fetuses originally aborted in the 1960's.” From the clinical point of view, it should also be reiterated that treatment with vaccines, despite the very rare side effects (the events that occur most commonly are mild and due to an immune response to the vaccine itself), is safe and effective. No correlation exists between the administration of the vaccine and the onset of Autism."

"In 2005 the Pontifical Academy for Life published a document entitled: "Moral reflections about vaccines prepared from cells of aborted human fetuses" which, in the light of medical advances and current conditions of vaccine preparation, could soon be revised and updated. Especially in consideration of the fact that the cell lines currently used are very distant from the original abortions and no longer imply that bond of moral cooperation indispensable for an ethically negative evaluation of their use. On the other hand, the moral obligation to guarantee the vaccination coverage necessary for the safety of others is no less urgent, especially the safety more vulnerable subjects such as pregnant women and those affected by immunodeficiency who cannot be vaccinated against these diseases. As for the question of the vaccines that used or may have used cells coming from voluntarily aborted fetuses in their preparation, it must be specified that the "wrong" in the moral sense lies in the actions, not in the vaccines or the material itself. The technical characteristics of the production of the vaccines most commonly used in childhood lead us to exclude that there is a morally relevant cooperation between those who use these vaccines today and the practice of voluntary abortion. Hence, we believe that all clinically recommended vaccinations can be used with a clear conscience and that the use of such vaccines does not signify some sort of cooperation with voluntary abortion. While the commitment to ensuring that every vaccine has no connection in its preparation to any material of originating from an abortion, the moral responsibility to vaccinate is reiterated in order to avoid serious health risks for children and the general population."

"The vaccine from Johnson&Johnson uses human adenovirus serotype Ad26 and full-length S-protein stabilized by mutations. In addition, it is produced using the PER.C6 cell line (embryonic retinal cells), which is not widely represented among other registered products. Sputnik V is a two-component vaccine against COVID has been tested Gamaleya Center in which adenovirus serotypes 5 and 26 are used. A fragment of tissue-type plasminogen activator is not used, and the antigen insert is an unmodified full-length S-protein. Sputnik V vaccine is produced with the HEK293 cell line, which has long been safely used for the production of biotechnological products."

"The United States bishops' conference has said that Catholics can take two of the three available COVID-19 vaccines, even though they were developed with a "remote connection" to "morally compromised" cell lines. In a statement released Monday, the bishops also said it is morally permissible in some circumstances to receive a third vaccine, developed in close connection with aborted cell lines, but that Catholics cannot allow the pandemic to "desensitize" or "weaken our determination" to oppose the evil of abortion."

"In view of the gravity of the current pandemic and the lack of availability of alternative vaccines, the reasons to accept the new COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are sufficiently serious to justify their use, despite their remote connection to morally compromised cell lines," said the bishops. Taking one of those vaccines, said the bishops, "ought to be understood as an act of charity toward the other members of our community."

"The Holy See, through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical Academy for Life, has offered guidance on the question of whether it is morally acceptable to receive a vaccine that has been created with the use of morally compromised cell lines," the bishops said. "Both the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical Academy for Life emphasize the positive moral obligation to do good and in so doing to distance oneself as much as possible from the immoral act of another party such as abortion." The bishops also noted that "with regard to people involved in the development and production of vaccines, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explains that 'in organizations where cell lines of illicit origin are being utilized, the responsibility of those who make the decision to use them is not the same as that of those who have no voice in such a decision.'"

"In 1972, a female child was aborted in the Netherlands, and cells from her kidneys were extracted and developed into the cell line now known as "HEK293." "HEK" stands for "Human Embryonic Kidney." Cells from the HEK293 line have been commonly used in biologic research since the late 70s. The vaccinations produced by Pfizer and Moderna did not use HEK293 in their design, development, or production, but did use cells from the line in a confirmatory test, said the bishops. "While neither vaccine is completely free from any connection to morally compromised cell lines, in this case the connection is very remote from the initial evil of the abortion," said the bishops. Conversely, the vaccine produced by AstraZeneca "should be avoided if there are alternatives available," said the bishops, as this vaccine is "more morally compromised." "The HEK293 cell line was used in the design, development, and production stages of that vaccine, as well as for confirmatory testing," said Rhoades and Naumann. The two compared the AstraZeneca vaccine to the current rubella vaccine, which also was reliant on "morally compromised cell lines." In the case of the rubella (German measles) vaccine, explained the bishops, the risk posed to an unborn child and the community at large by the illness outweigh the morality concerns related to the development of the vaccine. "In such a situation, parents are justified in having their children vaccinated against rubella, not only to avoid the effects of rubella on their children, but, secondarily and just as importantly, to prevent their children from becoming carriers of rubella, as the spread of rubella can lead to the infection of vulnerable pregnant women, thereby endangering their lives and the lives of their unborn children," said the bishops. Rhoades and Naumann acknowledged that while Catholics should avoid the AstraZeneca vaccine in preference for one of the other two, it may not be possible for someone to do this without putting society at risk from the coronavirus. If this were to happen, a Catholic would be permitted to receive that vaccine."

""It may turn out, however, that one does not really have a choice of vaccine, at least, not without a lengthy delay in immunization that may have serious consequences for one's health and the health of others," said the bishops. "In such a case, just as accepting a vaccination for rubella with a morally compromised vaccine is morally permissible because of the lack of alternatives and the serious risk to the public health, so it would be permissible to accept the AstraZeneca vaccine," they said. A person who refuses to be vaccinated, said the bishops, has "a moral responsibility to undertake all the precautions necessary to ensure that one does not become a carrier of the disease to others, precautions which may include some form of self-isolation." While the vaccines for coronavirus are permissible to receive despite their moral flaws, it is imperative that Catholics "must be on guard so that the new COVID-19 vaccines do not desensitize us or weaken our determination to oppose the evil of abortion itself and the subsequent use of fetal cells in research," they said. "For our part, we bishops and all Catholics and men and women of good will must continue to do what we can to ensure the development, production, and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine without any connection to abortion," said the bishops."

"A closer look at the ethics of fetal tissue research, however, reveals a duty to use this precious resource in the hope of finding new preventive and therapeutic interventions for devastating diseases. Virtually every person in this country has benefited from research using fetal tissue. Every child who’s been spared the risks and misery of chickenpox, rubella, or polio can thank the Nobel Prize recipients and other scientists who used such tissue in research yielding the vaccines that protect us (and give even the unvaccinated the benefit of herd immunity). This work has been going on for nearly a century, and the vaccines it produced have been in use nearly as long. Any discussion of the ethics of fetal tissue research must begin with its unimpeachable claim to have saved the lives and health of millions of people. Critics point to the underlying abortions, assert that they are evil, and argue that society ought not implicitly endorse them or even indirectly benefit from them, lest it encourage more abortion or make society complicit with what they view as an immoral act. Yet they have overwhelmingly partaken of the vaccines and treatments derived from fetal tissue research and give no indication that they will foreswear further benefits. Fairness and reciprocity alone would suggest they have a duty to support the work, or at least not to thwart it."

"Given the panel’s conclusion that research use of fetal remains is ethical, it seems clear that the needs of current and future patients outweigh what can only be symbolic or political gestures of concern. Indeed, the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, while arguing for a right to refuse to use pediatric vaccines derived from fetal tissue and calling for development of vaccines through other means, nonetheless concluded in 2005 that parents’ duty to protect their children from illness justifies their use of current vaccines."

"By using the public’s unfamiliarity with the history and realities of fetal tissue research as a back door for attacking Planned Parenthood, abortion opponents have added millions of people to the collateral damage of the abortion wars. This attack represents a betrayal of the people whose lives could be saved by the research and a violation of that most fundamental duty of medicine and health policy, the duty of care."

"NOTE TO READERS: If a vaccine is not discussed on this page, it does not employ the use of fetal cells in production. For example, no influenza vaccine available in the U.S. requires the use of fetal cells for production. Vaccines for varicella (chickenpox), rubella (the “R” in the MMR vaccine), hepatitis A, rabies (one version, called Imovax®) and COVID-19 (one U.S.-approved version, Johnson & Johnson (J&J)/Janssen) are all made by growing the viruses in fetal cells. All of these, except the COVID-19 vaccine, are made using fibroblast cells. The COVID-19 vaccine (J&J/Janssen) is made using fetal retinal cells."

"Fibroblast cells are the cells needed to hold skin and other connective tissue together. The fetal fibroblast cells used to grow vaccine viruses were first obtained from elective termination of two pregnancies in the early 1960s. These same fetal cells obtained from the early 1960s have continued to grow in the laboratory and are used to make vaccines today. No further sources of fetal cells are needed to make these vaccines. The reasons that fetal cells were originally used included: *Viruses need cells to grow and tend to grow better in cells from humans than animals (because they infect humans). *Almost all cells die after they have divided a certain number of times; scientifically, this number is known as the Hayflick limit. For most cell lines, including fetal cells, it is around 50 divisions; however, because fetal cells have not divided as many times as other cell types, they can be used longer. In addition, because of the ability to maintain cells at very low temperatures, such as in liquid nitrogen, scientists are able to continue using the same fetal cell lines that were isolated in the 1960s. As scientists studied these viruses in the lab, they found that the best cells to use were the fetal cells mentioned above. When it was time to make a vaccine, they continued growing the viruses in the cells that worked best during these earlier studies."

"The retinal cells used to make the COVID-19 adenovirus vaccine (J&J/Janssen) were isolated from a terminated fetus in 1985 and adapted for use in growing adenovirus-based vaccines in the late 1990s. Adenovirus-based vaccines that cannot replicate when administered to people need to be produced in cells that have the necessary gene to allow for large quantities of the virus to be made. The retinal cell line, called PER.C6, was adapted to enable production of these altered viruses."

"Even though fetal cells are used to grow vaccine viruses, vaccines do not contain these cells or pieces of DNA that are recognizable as human DNA. People can be reassured by the following: *When viruses grow in cells, the cells are killed because in most cases the new viruses burst the cells to be released. *Once the vaccine virus is grown, it is purified, so that cellular debris and growth reagents are removed. *During this process of purification, any remaining cellular DNA is also broken down. To learn more about DNA and vaccine, visit the “Vaccine ingredients – DNA” page."

"The question of the use of vaccines, in general, is often at the center of controversy in the forum of public opinion. In recent months, this Congregation has received several requests for guidance regarding the use of vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19, which, in the course of research and production, employed cell lines drawn from tissue obtained from two abortions that occurred in the last century. At the same time, diverse and sometimes conflicting pronouncements in the mass media by bishops, Catholic associations, and experts have raised questions about the morality of the use of these vaccines."

"Since the first vaccines against Covid-19 are already available for distribution and administration in various countries, this Congregation desires to offer some indications for clarification of this matter. We do not intend to judge the safety and efficacy of these vaccines, although ethically relevant and necessary, as this evaluation is the responsibility of biomedical researchers and drug agencies. Here, our objective is only to consider the moral aspects of the use of the vaccines against Covid-19 that have been developed from cell lines derived from tissues obtained from two fetuses that were not spontaneously aborted."

"1. As the Instruction Dignitas Personae states, in cases where cells from aborted fetuses are employed to create cell lines for use in scientific research, “there exist differing degrees of responsibility” of cooperation in evil. For example, “in organizations where cell lines of illicit origin are being utilized, the responsibility of those who make the decision to use them is not the same as that of those who have no voice in such a decision”. 2. In this sense, when ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available (e.g. in countries where vaccines without ethical problems are not made available to physicians and patients, or where their distribution is more difficult due to special storage and transport conditions, or when various types of vaccines are distributed in the same country but health authorities do not allow citizens to choose the vaccine with which to be inoculated) it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process. 3. The fundamental reason for considering the use of these vaccines morally licit is that the kind of cooperation in evil (passive material cooperation) in the procured abortion from which these cell lines originate is, on the part of those making use of the resulting vaccines, remote. The moral duty to avoid such passive material cooperation is not obligatory if there is a grave danger, such as the otherwise uncontainable spread of a serious pathological agent--in this case, the pandemic spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19. It must therefore be considered that, in such a case, all vaccinations recognized as clinically safe and effective can be used in good conscience with the certain knowledge that the use of such vaccines does not constitute formal cooperation with the abortion from which the cells used in production of the vaccines derive. It should be emphasized, however, that the morally licit use of these types of vaccines, in the particular conditions that make it so, does not in itself constitute a legitimation, even indirect, of the practice of abortion, and necessarily assumes the opposition to this practice by those who make use of these vaccines. 4. In fact, the licit use of such vaccines does not and should not in any way imply that there is a moral endorsement of the use of cell lines proceeding from aborted fetuses. Both pharmaceutical companies and governmental health agencies are therefore encouraged to produce, approve, distribute and offer ethically acceptable vaccines that do not create problems of conscience for either health care providers or the people to be vaccinated. 5. At the same time, practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary. In any case, from the ethical point of view, the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one's own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good. In the absence of other means to stop or even prevent the epidemic, the common good may recommend vaccination, especially to protect the weakest and most exposed. Those who, however, for reasons of conscience, refuse vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted fetuses, must do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable."

"It is no secret that thousands of laboratories around the world use cells derived from a fetus that was aborted decades ago to develop vital medicines. But it is a contentious topic in the US, where conservatives and anti-abortion activists have long deemed the practice unethical."

"It's becoming annoying," Andrea Gambotto, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said of the controversy. Gambotto has used a cell line called HEK 293, the same used by Regeneron, as part of his research for 25 years. "It'd be a crime to ban the use of these cells," he added. "It never harmed anybody—it was a dead embryo so the cells back then (were used), instead of being discarded, they were used for research." The big advantage of these cells, which were developed in the early 1970s, is that they now represent a "gold standard" in the pharmaceutical industry. If Gambotto—who is leading a COVID-19 vaccine research project himself—one day succeeds, his vaccine can be produced anywhere in the world, thanks to HEK293. "You can go to India and make a vaccine for all the world," he said. To those who call for the development of alternatives, he says, "You don't need to go back 30 years and reinvent the wheel."

"The original cells were transformed and immortalized in January 1973 by a young Canadian postdoc by the name of Frank Graham, who was working at the time in Leiden, the Netherlands in the laboratory of Professor Alex van der Eb. Normally, a cell has a finite number of divisions, but Graham managed to modify these cells so that they divide ad infinitum. This was his 293rd experiment, hence the name of the line (HEK stands for "human embryonic kidney cells"). "Use of fetal tissue was not uncommon in that period," Graham, a professor emeritus at Canada's McMaster University who now lives in Italy, told AFP. "Abortion was illegal in the Netherlands until 1984 except to save the life of the mother. Consequently I have always assumed that the HEK cells used by the Leiden lab must have derived from a therapeutic abortion." Vaccine developers like HEK293 because the cells are malleable and transformable into virus mini-factories. To grow viruses, you always need a host cell. It can be a chicken egg, but human cells are preferable in human medicine."

"In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, several makers have used HEK293 to generate what are called "viral vectors." These are weakened versions of common cold-causing adenoviruses that are loaded with the genetic instructions for human cells to manufacture a surface protein of the coronavirus. This elicits an immune response that the body remembers when it encounters the real coronavirus. Three vaccines that are in advanced trials use HEK293 lines—the Oxford vaccine co-developed with AstraZeneca, China's CanSino Biologics vaccine and Russia's Gamaleya Institute vaccine. Johnson & Johnson uses the other major fetal cell line, PER.C6. Several other companies, such as Moderna and Pfizer, have used HEK293 to develop "pseudoviruses" to test their drugs. Vaccines against Ebola and tuberculosis, as well as gene therapies, have also been created with HEK293 cells, said Graham. "I take great satisfaction from the fact that the cells I created nearly 50 years ago have played a major role in numerous advances in biomedical research and in the production of vaccines and medicines," said the professor, who dislikes commenting on the controversy that periodically emerges over their origin."

"Many commonly used vaccines have their origin in cell lines that were originally developed from an aborted fetus. This poses a serious moral dilemma for those who oppose abortion. Two questions need to be examined: first, may a Catholic, in good conscience, use vaccines derived from aborted materials, or is one obliged to refuse them? And, second, may a Catholic parent refuse to vaccinate a child?"

"Two human cell lines (MRC-5 and WI-38) that are used to grow these weakened virus strains have their origins in cells derived from the lung tissue of aborted fetuses (Dan Maher, “On the Use of Certain Vaccines,” unpublished manuscript [1998, NCBC]). Although these human cell lines could have been produced using cells taken from other sources (thus avoiding the moral problem entirely), the fact is that they were not. In many cases, there is no other choice than either to make use of a tainted vaccine or to forgo vaccination altogether. Thus “Meruvax,” a widely used vaccine for rubella (German measles) sold by Merck & Co., Inc., uses the WI38 cell line. The chicken pox vaccine “Varivax,” produced by the same company, uses both MRC-5 and WI-38. SmithKline Beecham offers a vaccine called “Havrix” that has its origins in MRC-5. “Havrix” guards against scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, kidney inflammation, and other hepatitis A infections. Whether immunization with these vaccines is permissible depends upon whether their use involves the Catholic in cooperation with evil. Briefly, formal cooperation arises when an individual shares in the intention or the action of another who does what is wrong. Immoral material cooperation occurs when one who cooperates makes an essential contribution to the circumstances of a wrongdoer’s act. Thus the question about vaccines derived from aborted fetuses concerns whether or not their use involves the Catholic in immoral cooperation with the evil of abortion. The answer, in short, would appear to be “no.” For it seems impossible for an individual to cooperate with an action that is now completed and exists in the past. Clearly, use of a vaccine in the present does not cause the one who is immunized to share in the immoral intention or action of those who carried out the abortion in the past. Neither does such use provide some circumstance essential to the commission of that past act. Thus use of these vaccines would seem permissible."

"One might object, however, that if we consent to the use of these vaccines, then we also consent to their origins in aborted fetal material. Such consent would represent a type of material cooperation with abortion. Yet another objection would be that use involves receiving a benefit from the immoral actions of others. What difference does it make, one might wonder, if the original immorality is now a part of the past? Most troubling, however, is the possibility that the present use of these vaccines might encourage future abortions. If that were true, then one might expect vaccination to constitute immoral cooperation with abortion."

"Neither does it seem that use of these vaccines will encourage future abortions. Regrettably, the cell lines that gave rise to MRC-5 and WI-38 began with tissue taken from aborted human beings, but these immoral actions were one-time events. Since their first beginnings, the cells used for these lines have continued to duplicate and grow in culture. There is little incentive to begin new human cell lines when these are well established and their various scientific properties well understood."

"Yet another objection concerns the problem of scandal. When a Catholic allows himself to be immunized with these vaccines it may appear to others that he acts hypocritically. Catholics, it will be said, talk a lot about moral principles, but when it comes to their own health or that of their children, they appear willing to abandon all previous moral conviction. There would appear to be no objective basis for the charge that one who uses these vaccines cooperates in moral wrongdoing; therefore, any scandal caused by their use must be purely subjective in character. Appearances, however, can be important. For this reason, some Catholics decide to refuse vaccination in order to express their strong opposition to the practice of abortion. Still others are convinced, contrary to the arguments offered here, that vaccination does involve some form of cooperation with abortion. They believe that refusal is the only way to avoid complicity. Nonetheless, refusal appears to represent a course of action that goes beyond what is morally required. When carried out in the light of a fully formed conscience, heroic acts based on sound moral principle can be highly praiseworthy. That would seem to be the case here. Those in the medical profession who refuse to be immunized with tainted vaccines often suffer harm to their careers. Health care facilities require that all employees be properly immunized against infectious diseases. When health care employees refuse to do so, they can expect to be dismissed from their posts."

"Refusal also involves some risk that one will contract a serious and perhaps even fatal disease, though the danger is lessened when most others in a given society are properly immunized. This gives rise to a hope. If there were a sufficient number of people who were prepared to refuse these vaccines, would the manufacturers feel compelled to begin new cell lines that did not have their origins in abortion? The development of widespread public opposition to tainted vaccines might lead to the eradication of the present dilemma for future generations. Although initially appealing, there is one consideration that makes this scenario highly unlikely: parents have a moral obligation to provide vaccinations to their children. An adult may choose a heroic course of action that risks his own life and limb, but generally speaking, a child may not. The child is not capable of fully forming his conscience or of appreciating the risks that attend refusal of vaccination. Nor does it seem appropriate for a parent to refuse on behalf of a child and thereby risk the child’s well-being."

"Any widespread effort to force the hand of vaccine manufacturers would require considerable human suffering. Heroic refusals by adults are laudable, but parents have a moral obligation to secure the life and health of their children. As with so many issues of this type, it appears that the only proper recourse is to make appeals for redress to our legislatures and our courts. The true scandal here is not that Catholics use these vaccines, but that the researchers and scientists who bring us these products do not take into sufficient account the moral convictions of millions of their fellow citizens."

"As a father of five, I have been confronted with the question of whether to vaccinate my children against rubella (“German measles”). As many now know, this vaccine is currently produced from a cell line that had its origin in abortion. Two other vaccines are similarly implicated in the tragedy of abortion: the hepatitis A and the new varicella (“chicken pox”) vaccines. As unfortunate as these facts are, an analysis of the problem, using traditional Catholic moral principles, does not seem to indicate that there is any obligation on the part of parents to avoid the use of these products. For my own part, therefore, I have not hesitated to have my children protected against these diseases. Nonetheless, there are many parents who have come to the opposite conclusion. They believe that it would be immoral to inoculate their children with these products. They hold that a vaccine with even the most remote connection to abortion is forbidden to them, and thus, they refuse immunization on the grounds of conscience. What is the status of this refusal? Can it be supported by Catholic teaching? We have a moral obligation to follow the light of conscience. Indeed, this duty is so fundamental that, even if one’s judgment is in error, conscience must still remain the standard of our conduct. To argue otherwise would be to say that we should do what we personally judge to be immoral."

"The rubella vaccine, produced by the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck & Co., Inc., uses WI-38 cells. There are two hepatitis A vaccines, one produced by Merck, the other by Glaxo SmithKline, both of which use MRC-5 cells. The varicella vaccine, again produced by Merck, uses both WI-38 and MRC-5 cells."

"From a theoretical standpoint, therefore, the path would seem to be clear. Parents who reject all association with abortion should feel free to refuse vaccination for themselves and for their children. Nonetheless, when this approach is put into practice, many difficulties arise. For example, objectors often face a problem when they attempt to place their children into a school system, whether public or private. School administrators, who have both a moral and legal obligation to protect the health and well-being of their students (as well as their teachers, school administrators, and all who work there), routinely prohibit attendance by children who have not been vaccinated against rubella and other contagious diseases. Many states offer exemptions from immunization requirements; some do not or only for very specific reasons. Thus a state may accept a religious exemption, but may refuse one based on medical concerns if they are deemed unjustifiable. In cases where an exemption is denied, parents find themselves with very few options. The difficulty is heightened for Catholics because there is no official teaching of the Church on the question of whether the use of these vaccines is permissible. There are, it is true, various “probable opinions” issued by respected Catholic theologians and Catholic organizations, but the Church itself has taken no position. Thus Catholic parents who object to immunization with vaccines implicated in abortion can make no appeal to official church teaching, and if they attempt to do so, they are likely to be shown a statement from some recognized Catholic authority that contradicts their views. Can an appeal to conscience serve as a ground for an exemption to vaccination when there is no Catholic teaching on this matter?"

"The exercise of conscience, therefore, is a type of rational decision-making. Given that no one else can carry out this task for me (another can offer me moral guidance, but I must accept or reject that advice according to the light of conscience), the Church recognizes that: “Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions.” Quoting Vatican Council II’s document, Dignitatis humanae, the Catechism adds: “‘He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters.” This would seem to indicate that those who sincerely believe that it would be wrong to vaccinate their children against rubella should be permitted to refuse immunization on the grounds of conscience. One might also appeal here to the priority of the family. The rights of parents in the care and education of their children should take precedence over any duty owed to the state. Under the principle of subsidiarity, decisions about the moral good should be left under the care of those who have the most immediate responsibility and not be usurped by higher authorities. Thus the decisions of the parents have priority over those made by the state."

"But let us suppose that it should turn out that those who refuse vaccination are mistaken in their judgment. Let us say that the Church issues a directive stating that there is no illicit cooperation with abortion in the case of these vaccines. Nonetheless, the obligation to follow an erroneous conscience remains. We cannot oblige a person to violate his conscience, but we must respect that decision even if we ourselves are convinced that it is wrong. On all of these grounds, therefore, one can argue forcefully that parents who do not want to have any association with the practice of abortion, and who refuse to have their children vaccinated, should be free to do so. Certainly, it would be wrong to force parents to vaccinate their children. We cannot compel anyone to act against his will except as punishment for a crime. Beyond this, however, it is difficult to know what more one can be said about the refusal to vaccinate on the basis of conscience. Catholic teaching holds that there is an objective moral order that ought to guide the activity of conscience. Obviously, we are not free to decide whatever we wish—every moral person will agree on this point. The moral order that ought to guide our conduct does not depend upon the judgment of Church officials, but exists independently of all human decision. The mind must conform to reality in order to know the truth, but in the absence of any announced position by the Church, one can only appeal to the authority of one’s own conscience, which will hopefully be well-grounded in observation and sound thinking. The more our appeal takes its bearings from a knowledge of the facts and the true principles of morality, the more likely it will be that our exercise of conscience will successfully choose the good."

"One of the facts of this case concerns whether we should identify the right not to violate one’s own conscience with the demand for an exemption to a duly established public policy. One might easily argue that these two are not the same. Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are not compelled to act contrary to their conscience under the law. If they are refused an exemption under some established public policy, then they will suffer the consequences of their refusal. Their children will not be permitted to enter into the local school system or some other public facility. This not a violation of conscience, but is a denial of an exemption. The case is not comparable to that of a Catholic health-care facility which is obliged by the state to dispense contraceptives because there is no compulsion to vaccinate one’s children. If one wants to appeal to conscience in order to justify a decision not to vaccinate one’s children, then the freedom not to violate one’s own conscience is all that can rightly be expected by the parent. The further claim that the exercise of conscience demands that the state must cede to the wishes of the parent for an exemption does not follow—at least, not as the right of conscience is understood by the Catholic Church."

"I had previously said in my writings that the activity of the tissue researchers who produced WI-38 and MRC-5 was wrong because it constituted immediate material cooperation in the intrinsically evil action of abortion. A more detailed review of the evidence suggests that the tissue researchers played a much more direct role in the culture of abortion than I had realized. Hence, I revise my view to say that those tissue researchers were engaged in immoral formal cooperation with abortion. The activity of those who established these cell strains should be distinguished from that of the researchers who used them to invent the new vaccines. The latter, I continue to hold, were engaged at the level of immoral proximate material cooperation."

"An exception to this rule would be the use of fetal material from indirect or spontaneous abortions, such as that recommended by Maria Michejda, M.D., in “Spontaneous Miscarriages as Source of Fetal Stem Cells” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, 2.3 (Autumn 2002): 401–411."

"Having considered the previous cases, we arrive at the question of what kind of cooperation with abortion obtains when a parent decides to immunize a child against rubella. The parent has no intention of participating in abortion and, living in the present, has no connection whatsoever to the abortions performed in the past. Neither does the parent make use of the cells taken from an abortion, but makes use of a vaccine that was grown in descendant cells. The capacity of these cells to duplicate in culture shows that their use applies little to no pressure on others to perform abortions. There is an abundant supply. If there were some remaining level of cooperation here, it could only be remote. This cooperation would be completely permissible because 1) parents have no choice but to use these products if they wish to protect their children and society from these serious diseases; and 2) the good that parents are seeking to secure through vaccination exceeds any harm that might be caused by that use. Thus it would represent a very harsh judgment, in my opinion, if someone were to say that unborn children must face the risks of serious birth defects or even death because others feel an obligation to make a strong statement against the evil of abortion. The fault surely lies with the original tissue researchers and, less directly, with the pharmaceutical companies or those who made imprudent decisions at the time these products were first manufactured. The fault does not lie with the parents and surely not with the children who suffer the risk. If the above reasoning is correct, and there is no immoral cooperation with abortion in the use of these vaccines, then we are led back to the problem of conscience from an entirely new perspective. One who properly exercises conscience will recognize that he has a moral obligation to protect the life and health of his neighbors and that he must therefore ensure that he and his children are vaccinated as a correct means to that end. He will recognize that there is a moral question at issue in the use of vaccines, but he will also see that there can be no justification for risking the health and life of unborn children who have had absolutely no hand in the original wrongdoing. He will bear in mind that his own children will learn from his decision and that the occasion presents him with an opportunity to explain to them how to think about difficult moral problems. The formation of conscience is a responsibility that a parent has toward his child throughout his time in the home. What will the child learn from a parent who refuses to vaccinate him out of an exaggerated concern that the use of these vaccines is immoral? Hopefully, the entire event will pass without his notice."

"Prospects do not look good. The biotechnology company Crucell N.V. and Aventis Pasteur S.A. are seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to introduce PER-C6, a cell strain made from a fetus aborted at eighteen weeks. Even more disconcerting are the efforts of biotechnology companies to produce new drugs and therapies from embryonic stem cells. Some U.S. states have recently passed laws encouraging this research. Any new products made from these strains will be even more controversial than the implicated vaccines."

"Let us suppose that the child who is not vaccinated contracts rubella while his mother is pregnant. Let us also suppose that this unborn child is then infected and born with birth defects. This is not an unreasonable scenario, especially for those who tend to have larger families. The most likely transmission is from a born child to one who is unborn. What will be the lesson that the child learns as he sees his brother or sister born with such defects? Will he say to himself, “Yes, we must suffer even this, in order to show our strong opposition to abortion”? Or will he say, “No, this cannot be right. How does the suffering of my brother or sister advance the cause of abolishing abortion?” This question would be especially troubling for a child who realizes that his sibling has suffered this calamity because he himself has contracted the disease and passed it on. The child should understand, of course, that what has happened was not his fault, but it may not prove easy for him to distinguish between his role as the source of the disease and his innocence of any moral responsibility. And if he is not to blame, who will the child hold responsible for this tragedy?"

"No one should suppose that the position advanced lends any support to the claim that scientists should be free to work with fetal tissue in research. It should be obvious that those who set up arrangements with Planned Parenthood or other abortion facilities to receive the remains of aborted children, so that they can be used in programs of experimental research, are doing something that cannot be justified under any principle of Catholic teaching. The direct cooperation between the parties in this matter sullies the hands of those who receive the fetal materials and makes them cooperators in the evil of abortion. In the case at hand, I am talking about the use of the cells that descend from an abortion, cells which replicate themselves in culture, from which vaccines are made. That product is then made available for use by physicians. The level of cooperation in the two cases is radically different, as the above brief rehearsal should make plain."

"There is an even more fundamental question at stake. Can a parent exercise a right of conscience for a child? How can I risk your health in order that I might make a strong stand against abortion? This, in fact, is impossible because it is contrary to the very nature of conscience, which is always the personal act of a particular individual19 I cannot carry out an act of conscience for you. Only you can do that for yourself. But someone will say, “In this case the child is not old enough to decide for himself; therefore, the parent must decide on his behalf.” Exactly, and that is all the more reason to act for the sake of the child’s health. That is the moral principle that ought to govern all decisions in this area. Just as the demand for an exemption to a law mandating vaccination seems unjustifiable, so does the appeal to the right of conscience. No one can exercise the right of conscience for someone else—not even for one’s own child. All one can do is act for the sake of child’s life and health. Hence, an adult is free to appeal to the right of conscience in order to justify his own refusal to vaccinate himself, but he cannot appeal to the right of conscience in order to justify his decision not to vaccinate those who are under his supervision and who rely upon him for their medical care. We should not allow the one who carried out an abortion in the past to hold our children hostage in the present."

"Then in 1962, Hayflick made another discovery. “Without it, you and I might not even be alive,” says Stuart Jay Olshansky, an expert in biodemography and gerontology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. It began when a nameless woman who was three months pregnant had a legal abortion in Sweden. As the author Meredith Wadman wrote in her book, The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease, the foetus wasn’t incinerated, buried or thrown away – instead it was wrapped in sterile green cloth and sent to the Karolinska Institute in northwest Stockholm. At the time, Hayflick was sourcing the cells he used for his research from this institution. In his laboratory at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, he managed to incubate some of the tissue in several glass bottles at 37C (98F). He added an enzyme to break down the protein that bound the cells together, as well as "growth medium", a solution which contained the nutrients they needed to divide. After a few days, he was left with a continuous sheet of cells. One of these cells eventually turned into the cell line “WI-38”, which stands for Wistar Institute foetus 38."

"Over the ensuing years, frozen vials of the cells were flown to hundreds of laboratories across the world, WI-38 is now one of the oldest and most widely available cell lines on the planet. As Hayflick has noted previously – although perhaps rather insensitively – as early as 1984, WI-38 had become “the first cultured normal human cell population to ever reach voting age”. Today the cells are routinely used to make vaccines against polio, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella zoster (chicken pox), herpes zoster, adenovirus, rabies and Hepatitis A. Why are the cells so special? And how can we justify continuing to use them?"

"Soon after Hayflick discovered that cells are mortal, he realised that if you siphon some off each time they divide and freeze them, a single source can theoretically provide an almost unlimited supply – around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 sextillion) in total. And though WI-38 cells are mortal, because the cells had divided relatively few times when they were collected, they can be grown for longer before they reach the Hayflick limit. Most WI-38 cells have 50 divisions left, which each take 24 hours to complete, so they can be grown continuously for 50 days before you need to start again. Though there are hundreds of cell lines available in the United States, WI-38 makes up the majority of the cells used."

"Another reason WI-38 has become so ubiquitous is that a quirk of the American legal system at the time of its discovery: it wasn’t possible to patent living things. This means their use was never restricted, and scientists around the world were able to share them freely with colleagues. Though there are hundreds of cell lines available in the United States, WI-38 makes up the majority of the cells used, together with just one other. “MRC-5” cells, named after the initials of the Medical Research Council where they were collected, were obtained from the lungs of another three-month-old foetus. This time the abortion happened in England in 1966 for “psychiatric reasons”. WI-38 was fundamental for the development of vaccines against polio, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella zoster (chicken pox), herpes zoster, adenovirus, rabies and Hepatitis A, as well as in the production of many early vaccines. Today it's still used to make the rubella vaccine – part of Merck's measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab – and Teva's adenovirus vaccine for the US military."

"Finally, foetuses are thought to be the “cleanest” possible source of cells, since they are less likely to have picked up any viruses from the outside world which might contaminate vaccines or confound the results of experiments. Back in 2017, Hayflick asked Olshansky to quantify exactly how many lives the cells had spared until that point. By comparing the global prevalence of certain infectious diseases in the 1960s, when the cell line was discovered, with the prevalence of infectious diseases then, he calculated that vaccines made with WI-38 may have prevented around 4.5 billion infections. In total, the cells are likely to have spared 10.3 million lives."

"There has been some controversy surrounding the origins of the cell line, however. Apart from the fact that some people feel uncomfortable about its links to abortion, the woman whose foetus the cells came from, who Wadman has named “Mrs X”, did not consent to its use. In fact, she didn’t even know about it until years later, when she was contacted by someone from the Karolinska Institute who was hoping for a more detailed medical history. The incident is unlikely to happen again today, because human tissue is regulated in the United States. Any material collected is subject to the Common Rule – a set of ethical standards introduced in 1981, which researchers must comply with in order to receive federal funding. Chief among them is the requirement for informed consent. However, the rule doesn’t apply retrospectively, and there are many examples of tissue which was effectively stolen and continues to be used to this day."

"These ethical transgressions have become even more problematic with the advent of affordable genetic sequencing. Human cell lines contain human DNA – and WI-38 will share 50% of its DNA with the foetus’ mother. In this light, the cell line is considered by some as potentially representing a privacy risk."

"[T]he benefits of using the cells are widely thought to vastly outweigh them, and many religious organisations which are otherwise anti-abortion have publicly announced their support for the use of vaccines manufactured this way when no other alternatives exist, including the Catholic Church, although it did express a need for alternative sources of vaccines."

"The connection between the chilling origins of many cell lines and the benefits they provide is perhaps most striking in the development of the rubella vaccine. Though it’s produced in WI-38 cells to this day, its early development relied heavily on cells taken from several different aborted foetuses – many of which had been aborted for the very reason that their mother was infected with the virus. Rubella can cause a number of serious consequences during pregnancy, such as stillbirth and miscarriage. If a woman is infected early on, she has a 90% chance of passing the virus to her unborn child, where it can lead to “congenital rubella syndrome” and a constellation of health problems, from brain damage to hearing loss. “You have to think, well what about the ethical consequences of not using the cell line?” says Olshansky. “Just keep in mind that they are a critical link in the chain, in the development of viral vaccines.”"

"Unlike bacteria, viruses do not replicate on their own. To make viral vaccines, large numbers of viruses must be grown in cell cultures specific to each virus. Some licensed viral vaccines (i.e., some formulations ofhepatitisA, poliovirus, rabies, rubella, and varicellazoster viruses or combination vaccines containing such component viruses) are produced by growing viruses that infect humans in WI-38 or MRC-5 cell cultures. WI-38 and MRC-5 represent two commonly used lineages of human diploid cell cultures, batches of immature cells with twice as many chromosomes as sperm or egg cells. Embryonic diploid cells are valuable in vaccine manufacture, because each aliquot ofthese cells can propagate several dozen times before senescence. Each of these cell lines started with cells harvested from a deliberately aborted fetus. The cell lines are used to grow the viruses, then discarded and not included in vaccine formulations. These cell lines cannot form a human being. TheWI-38 line was developed attheWistar Institute in Philadelphia in 1961, with lung cells from a female fetus of 3 months gestation aborted in Sweden, whose parents feltthey had too many children. Similarly, British scientists funded by the Medical Research Council developed the MRC-5 line in September 1966 with fetal lung fibroblasts “taken from a 14-weekold male fetus removed for psychiatric reasons from a 27-year-old woman. . .”. These cell lines, still in use today, gradually replaced primary cultures of monkey, duck, rabbit, chicken, dog, or mouse tissue, an approach vulnerable to contamination with viruses and bacteria."

"Vaccine manufacturers have few options for viral culture media, for reasons of microbiology and safety. It is not possible to simply replace one cell line with another, because various viruses grow abundantly only in some kinds of cell lines. WI-38 and MRC-5 lines are well described and understood, with experience accumulated via hundreds of millions of vaccinations, important for safety-assessment reasons. The fetal origins of WI-38 and MRC-5 cell lines pose an ethical or moral problem for people who disapprove of abortion. Critically, the two abortions were not conducted for the purpose of harvesting the cells that were transformed into these cell lines. This lack of intention is a key element in breaking the complicity link that could otherwise make use of the vaccines unacceptable. No additional abortions are needed to sustain vaccine manufacture. The cell lines are not the final product, and no human cells are present in the final vaccine formulations."

"In the late 1990s—early 2000s, teams of ethicists at the National Catholic Bioethics Center and then at the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life and elsewhere considered the virology, epidemiology, and theology of the matter in detail. Their considerations included both cooperation with evil and the principle of double effect. In this case, the cooperation related to those involved with the specific abortions in the 1960s. The principle of double effect applied insofar as using implicated vaccines today could appear to endorse or acquiesce to the acceptability of additional abortions in our current time. These teams concluded that the association between implicated vaccines and abortion was noncomplicit, and that using these vaccines is not contrary to a principled opposition to abortion. These centers reasoned that, because the abortions that enabled the production ofthese vaccines are in the past and (critically) the abortions were not undertaken with the intent of producing the cell lines, being immunized does not involve any sharing in immoral intention or action of others. In short, they are morally separate actions. In 2008, this position was elevated to the status of official Roman Catholic teaching. The bioethicist teams agreed that use of a vaccine in the present does not involve sharing in the action of those who carried out the abortion in the past. Further,they foundthatparents have a moral obligation to provide for the life and health of their children by means of immunization. The situation with vaccines differs morally from ongoing harvest of fetal tissue for pharmaceutical manufacturing or research, which could be used to justify future abortions. Still, these ethicists concluded that alternate vaccines should be used if available. They also recommended that parents and clinicians should speak out against abortion by asking governments and vaccine manufacturers to stop using cell lines that have links to aborted fetuses."

"In 1964, the Wistar Institute developed the RA 27/3 strain of rubella virus. The rubella virus isolate “was recovered from the explanted [kidney] tissue of a fetus obtained at therapeutic abortion from a mother who had been infected with rubella virus”. The scientific literature of that era indicates that the abortion was not conducted with the motive of isolating the virus, but rather because the mother was infected with rubella virus and risked major birth defects. After the RA 27/3 strain was isolated, it has been propagated serially in human diploid cells. The RA 27/3 strain produced superior antibody responses and was better tolerated, compared with other rubella vaccine strains available in the 1960s. No further abortions are necessary to sustain the manufacture of additional batches of rubella RA 27/3-strain vaccine. Use of the RA 27/3 rubella virus strain was also considered by the National Catholic Bioethics Center and the Pontifical Academy for Life. Using the same logic, they reasoned that because the one abortion that yielded the viral isolate was not undertaken with the intent to retrieve the virus and because no additional abortions are needed to obtain more virus, being immunized is morally acceptable and also associated with parental duty. The same provisions for preferring alternatives and petitioning governments and manufacturers also apply. Some find it meaningful that rubella vaccination prevents many cases of fetal death and congenital rubella syndrome that would otherwise occur if women were infected with rubella virus during pregnancy. Immunized women exposed to the virus during pregnancy are no longer confronted with the question (what some religions might consider temptation) of whether to terminate their pregnancies on that basis."

"The Catholic Church permits temporary use of vaccines generated using aborted fetal tissue to protect children from preventable diseases until alternative vaccines that do not use aborted fetal tissue are available. In medical research, cell lines that were generated from elective abortions should be avoided and alternative cell lines of licit origin utilized."

"The HAVRIX vaccine provides protection against hepatitis A infections (Innis 1994). However, hepatitis A is not endemic in the United States. Hepatitis A is also spread by the fecal-oral route; therefore, improvements in hygiene and sanitation significantly reduce infection (CDC 2006). Nevertheless, some individuals are at risk for hepatitis A infections, which can cause severe liver disease, presenting a grave inconvenience imposing vaccination. These include those traveling to areas where hepatitis A virus is endemic, men who have sex with men, intravenous drug users, those with clotting disorders, those working with nonhuman primates, and those having sexual intercourse with someone who has hepatitis A (CDC 2006)"

"It is important to note that the use of these vaccines, generated from fetal tissue of elective abortions, can only occur on a temporary basis, as it represents a “very remote mediate material cooperation” (Pontifical Academy for Life 2006, 547) with the original illicit act of abortion. The distinctions between the different forms of cooperation were established by St. Alphonsus Liguori and can be categorized by the proximity of actions to the original illicit act. An example using vaccines generated from fetal tissue of an elective abortion follows: Principal agent: The mother who elects to terminate her pregnancy. Formal cooperator: The abortionist who agrees with the actions of the principal agent and supports her by performing the abortion. Immediate material cooperator: A nurse who does not agree with the actions of the principal agent but supports the abortionist in performance of the abortion. Mediate material cooperators: The nurse who does not agree with the actions of the principal agent but prepares her for the abortion and monitors her recovery post-abortion. Remote mediate material cooperators: The technicians at the abortion clinic that process and package fetal tissue for future use in scientific research. The scientists who arrange to receive aborted fetal tissue from the clinic for their research. Very remote mediate material cooperators: Individuals utilizing a product, for example a vaccine that was generated utilizing aborted fetal tissue. Even the distant cooperation represented by these vaccines needs to be avoided as it is: moral coercion of the conscience of the parents, who are forced to choose to act against their conscience or otherwise, to put the health of their children and the population as a whole at risk. ...[Therefore,] doctors and fathers of families have a duty to take recourse to alternative vaccines (if they exist), putting pressure on the political authorities and health systems so that other vaccines without moral problems become available. (Pontifical Academy for Life 2006, 549, 547–8)"

"The human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cell line, derived from an elective abortion in the 1970s, is routinely used for production of proteins and cultivation of viruses due to the ease of transfection with gene constructs that are efficiently translated into appropriately folded proteins (Wong 2006). A PubMed search with the term “HEK,” lists more than thirty thousand citations, testifying to the extensive use of this cell line.1 The Catholic Church’s position on the use of HEK293 cells, or other cell lines generated from elective abortions, in medical research is that they should be avoided because other-wise this creates a “contradiction in the attitude of the [researcher] who says that he does not approve of the injustice perpetrated by others, but at the same time accepts for his own work the ‘biological material’ which the others have obtained by means of that injustice” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 2008, no. 35). Again, alternatives should be explored. Utilization of fetal tissue from spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) is licit. In addition, COS-1 cells that are not derived from elective abortions are effective for production of proteins that could be utilized in some studies (Smith 2009). Unfortunately, COS-1 cells are of monkey origin. Hence, xenogeneic differences between monkey and human proteins limit their use in the generation of vaccines."

"Recently, two articles were published in the New England Journal of Medicine that char acterized fetuses of elective abortions, one being thirty-two weeks old, from mothers who contracted Zika virus in the first trimester of pregnancy (Mlakar et al. 2016; Driggers et al. 2016). These studies identified Zika virus in the microcephalic brains of the fetuses indicating an association between in utero Zika virus infection and microcephaly. More research on human subjects with similar experimental designs has been proposed to better understand fetal infection (Check Hayden 2016). These studies would also involve pregnant women who have been exposed to Zika virus infection that are followed for microcephaly by ultrasound throughout pregnancy. They would be informed of ultrasound results and, if microcephaly was demonstrated, would receive counsel on the prognosis of their child and options available, including termination of the pregnancy. If the mother elects to abort her child and provides her consent, the aborted fetal tissue would then be utilized in research procedures. This experimental design denies the intrinsic right to life of unborn human beings as the success of the study is predicated on the decisions of mothers to abort their babies. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 45 Part 46 Subpart B, “Additional Protections for Pregnant Women, Human Fetuses, and Neonates involved in Research,” indicates that: The risk to the fetus is caused solely by interventions or procedures that hold out the prospect of direct benefit for the woman or the fetus; or, if there is no such prospect of benefit, the risk to the fetus is not greater than minimal and the purpose of the research is the development of important biomedical knowledge which cannot be obtained by any other means. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2009)."

"While the ultrasound procedure presents minimal risk to the fetus, diagnosis of microcephaly by ultrasound has the potential to place the fetus at greatest risk due to the mother’s decision to abort the fetus. To minimize the possibility that involvement in research will influence a mother’s decision to terminate a pregnancy, 45 CFR 46, Subpart B, indicates that, “no inducements, monetary or otherwise, will be offered to terminate a pregnancy” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2009). In addition, it “excludes researchers from any decisions as to the timing, methods, or procedures used to terminate a pregnancy, or determinations on the viability of the fetus at the termination of the pregnancy” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2009). Nevertheless, it is very challenging to design experimentation that identifies microcephaly in utero, which would not increase the number of elective abortions regardless of whether research scientists desiring aborted fetal tissue were excluded from involvement with patients’ decision making. Here, the Catholic Church’s perspective is invaluable: “sick and disabled people are not some separate category of humanity; in fact, sickness and disability are part of the human condition and affect every individual, even when there is no direct experience of it” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 2008, no. 22). Therefore, only an experimental design that recognized the dignity and legal status of both healthy and diseased fetuses would effectively discourage elective abortion in research studies. This design would not only protect the unborn but also limit scandal (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2284), a behavior that leads another to do evil, from the actions of mothers and scientists. Development of a vaccine against Zika virus is a top priority; and as the virus infects fetal brain tissue, it is likely that cultivation of Zika virus for use in vaccines could occur in fetal tissue derived from elective abortions. However, alternative tissue that is not derived from elective abortions could be equally effective and should be investigated."

"Researchers have estimated that vaccines made in WI-38 and its derivatives have prevented nearly 11 million deaths and prevented (or treated, in the example of rabies) 4.5 billion cases of disease."

"Two main human cell strains have been used to develop currently available vaccines, in each case with the original fetal cells in question obtained in the 1960s. The WI-38 cell strain was developed in 1962 in the United States, and the MRC-5 cell strain (also started with fetal lung cells) was developed, using Hayflick's technology, in 1970 at the Medical Research Center in the United Kingdom. It should be noted that Hayflick's methods involved establishing a huge bank of WI-38 and MRC-5 cells that, while not capable of infinitely replicating like immortal cell lines, will serve vaccine production needs for several decades in the future."

"Some of the COVID-19 vaccines being studied in clinical trials use cells originally isolated from fetal tissue (often referred to as fetal cells) in vaccine development or manufacturing. This research does not require fetal cells from new abortions; they use existing historic cell lines that are many decades old. Historical fetal cell lines were derived in the 1960s and 1970s from two elective abortions unrelated to vaccine development. Fetal cell lines have been used to create vaccines for diseases such as hepatitis A, rubella, and rabies. The fetal cell lines being used to produce some of the potential COVID-19 vaccines are from two sources: * HEK-293: A kidney cell line that was isolated from a terminated fetus in 1972 * PER.C6: A retinal cell line that was isolated from a terminated fetus in 1985"

"ARE THE PFIZER AND MODERNA COVID-19 VACCINES DEVELOPED USING FETAL CELL LINES? The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna do not require the use of any fetal cell cultures to manufacture the vaccine. Early in the development of mRNA vaccine technology, fetal cells were used to demonstrate how a cell could take up mRNA and produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were found to be ethically uncontroversial by the pro-life policy organization the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Further, Brian Kane, senior director of ethics for the Catholic Health Association of the United States, in an interview for the America: The Jesuit Review stated: “In terms of the moral principles of being concerned about the use of any pharmaceuticals that were developed from aborted fetuses, that is certainly an issue that we all want to be cognizant of and try to avoid their use. With that in mind, the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines that are coming out are not even tainted with that moral problem."

"“When ethically irreproachable COVID-19 vaccines are not available … it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses.” — U.S. CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS"

"IS THE JANSSEN (JOHNSON & JOHNSON) COVID-19 VACCINE DEVELOPED USING FETAL CELL LINES? The vaccine produced by Janssen does require the use of fetal cell cultures, specifically PER. C6, in order to produce and manufacture the vaccine. The Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission have both stated that receiving a COVID-19 vaccine that requires fetal cell lines for production or manufacture is morally acceptable."

"The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has stated, “When ethically irreproachable COVID-19 vaccines are not available … it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process. However, if one can choose among equally safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, the vaccine with the least connection to abortion-derived cell lines should be chosen. Therefore, if one has the ability to choose a vaccine, Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccines should be chosen over Johnson & Johnson’s.” It should be noted that due to the fact that demand currently outpaces supply of COVID-19 vaccines, as well as the overwhelming benefit of immediate vaccination weighed against the dangers of waiting, healthcare experts encourage all those eligible to accept the vaccine being offered to them. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have also stated that “receiving a COVID-19 vaccine … should be considered an act of love of our neighbor and part of our moral responsibility for the common good.”"

"WHY ARE FETAL CELLS USED TO MAKE VACCINES? To develop and manufacture some vaccines, scientists working with pharmaceutical companies prefer human cell lines over other cells because: 1. Viruses need cells to grow, and the viruses tend to grow better in cells from humans than animals (because they infect humans); 2. Fetal cells can be used longer than other cell types; and 3. Fetal cells can be maintained at low temperatures, allowing scientists to continuing using cells lines from decades ago."

"“Receiving a COVID-19 vaccine … should be considered an act of love of our neighbor and part of our moral responsibility for the common good.”"

"No, the COVID-19 vaccines do not contain any aborted fetal cells. However, fetal cell lines – cells grown in a laboratory based on aborted fetal cells collected generations ago – were used in testing during research and development of the mRNA vaccines, and during production of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine."

"It is true that decades ago, scientists decided to use fetal tissue to start the cell lines we use to test drugs today. However, the description of ongoing modern fetal tissue harvesting to create vaccines is dishonest sensationalism. As a practicing Catholic, I think the moral balance of indirectly benefitting from an abortion that occurred 50 years ago in order to take a vaccine that will prevent further death in the community is a no-brainer – especially considering that so many of the over 620,000 American deaths have occurred in the most vulnerable and marginalized in our society. We need to focus on saving lives right now. We need to care for our neighbors. The Vatican and bishops agree. The Vatican has issued clear guidance that permits Roman Catholics in good faith to receive COVID-19 vaccines that use fetal cell lines in development or production."

"Fetal cell lines are cells that grow in a laboratory. They descend from cells taken from abortions in the 1970s and 1980s. Those individual cells from the 1970s and 1980s have since multiplied into many new cells over the past four or five decades, creating the fetal cell lines I mentioned above. Current fetal cell lines are thousands of generations removed from the original fetal tissue. They do not contain any tissue from a fetus."

"When it comes to the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, fetal cell line HEK 293 was used during the research and development phase. All HEK 293 cells are descended from tissue taken from a 1973 abortion that took place in the Netherlands. Using fetal cell lines to test the effectiveness and safety of medications is common practice, because they provide a consistent and well-documented standard. For the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, fetal cell lines were used in the production and manufacturing stage. To make the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, scientists infect PER.C6 fetal cell lines to grow the adenovirus vector. (Learn more about how viral vector vaccines work.) All PER.C6 cells used to manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are descended from tissue taken from a 1985 abortion that took place in the Netherlands. This cell line is used because it is a well-studied industry standard for safe and reliable production of viral vector vaccines."

"Quite apart from the health benefits and risks associated with using or not using vaccines, some people oppose the use of certain common vaccines—such as Varivax (for chicken pox) and Meruvax II (for rubella)—because of the connection between the production of these vaccines and elective abortion. The production of these and some other vaccines involves a stage in which viruses are grown in human cell culture. Because viruses can reproduce only inside living cells, they are placed in the human cell culture and allowed to grow in large quantities. The viruses are removed from the cell culture, inactivated or modified, and then processed further in order to produce the vaccine. There are two human cell lines that provide the cell cultures needed for producing vaccines. One of these lines, called WI-38, was developed in 1961 in Philadelphia from the normal lung tissue of a three-month-old female fetus obtained by surgical abortion.19 The other line, called MRC-5, was developed from normal lung tissue of a fourteen-week-old male fetus, aborted “for psychiatric reasons.” The WI-38 human diploid cell line … has been shown to have one of the broadest human virus spectra of any cell population that has been tested and is especially useful for isolation of rhinoviruses. The cells are free of contaminating viruses, mycoplasmas or any other microorganism and do not form tumors when inoculated subcutaneously into terminal human cancer patients.21 MRC-5 cells replicate more rapidly and are less sensitive to adverse environmental factors than WI-38 cells. The MRC-5 cell line, like WI-38 (ATCC CCL-75), is susceptible to a wide range of human viruses, is suitable for the production of viral vaccines, and has been useful in senescence studies."

"See also the comments of Albert Moraczewski, O.P., as reported in a Pittsburgh newspaper article (source uncertain) by freelance writer James McCoy (“New Pox Vaccine Began with Abortions,” December 8, 1995): “Turning an abortion into a vaccine, Fr. Moraczewski concluded, means ‘being an accomplice to the act of abortion’.” Other common vaccines available in the United States produced using human cell lines are: Adenovirus Vaccine type 4 and type 7; Havrix and Vaqta (for Hepatitis A); MMR II (measles, mumps, and rubella); Imovax Rabies, Ipol, and Poliovax (inactivated poliovirus vaccines). It should be added that according to Roberge’s report, the strain of virus used in Meruvax is itself taken from a boy who was aborted because his mother contracted rubella during pregnancy. For this Roberge cites S. A. Plotkin, “Development of RA 27/3 Attenuated Rubella Virus Grown in WI-38 Cells,” International Symposium on Rubella Vaccines (London 1968)."

"These cell lines are maintained in such a way that they have an indefinite lifespan, providing all the cells needed for the production of vaccine and for some other uses. It is said to be unlikely that any additional human cell lines will be produced or needed for two reasons. First, for scientific purposes, it is desirable to make use of well-known cell lines that have proven over the years to be useful for these purposes and to be free of complicating or contaminating factors (as described in the preceding quotations). Second, any cell line such as these must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which means that it is probably financially prohibitive to try to gain the same approval for other lines when these have already proven effective. This situation generates a difficulty for people who both oppose abortion in principle and would like to have the benefits of these vaccines. Opposing abortion “in principle” here means moral condemnation of elective abortion itself without regard to circumstances, motives, or beneficial consequences. The various reasons, theological or philosophical, that people might bring forward to support this opposition are not immediately relevant; it is necessary only that the opposition be principled. This kind of attention to moral good, i.e., moral good understood as decisively superior to goods of health and life, opens the door to a different order of opposition to vaccination. For using the vaccines produced in the manner described above appears to involve profiting from abortion and it is a question whether someone can both use these vaccines and oppose abortion without moral incoherence. Is the moral integrity of a person opposed to abortion compromised by benefitting from the research following the abortion, which research has led to the development of several powerful vaccines? Is it immorally opportunistic, vulture-like, or hypocritical for someone to take advantage of something he or she condemns as evil? Or, on the other hand, since the abortions have already been accomplished, is not the best course of action to pursue whatever good can be derived from these abortions? To answer these questions, it is necessary to try to determine the moral relationship of the use of these vaccines to the two abortions25 that have already taken place and to try to determine whether the use of these vaccines either condones or promotes further abortions."

"The analysis given below to these two abortions applies also to the third abortion (mentioned in footnote 18 above), from which has been obtained a virus strain (as distinct from fetal parts) and which therefore is not more directly involved in vaccine production."

"The use of fetuses and fetal tissue in research was initially governed (between 1969 and 1973) by the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act. The 1975 Report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research added further qualifications, including that “those harvesting tissue could not have any part in the timing, method, or procedures used to terminate a pregnancy.”31 Following a 1987 Mexican report of improvement in Parkinson’s patients who had received fetal neural tissue transplants, the National Institutes of Health convened the Human Fetal Tissue Transplantation Research Panel to consider ethical, legal, and social implications of this sort of research in the United States. “A substantial majority” of the panel members concluded that this was acceptable public policy, although they had some reservations concerning the need to separate the decision to abort from the decision to donate tissue. Despite this report, there was a presidential ban on federally funded research from 1988 until January of 1993, at which time the ban was lifted. The central concern in the debates on this issue has been determining the nature and significance of the connection of the research and transplantation to voluntary abortion."

"When aborted fetal tissue is transplanted into others for experimental or therapeutic purposes, the very use of the tissue uses it up and additional uses require an additional supply of tissue, normally made available by further abortions. In vaccine production, the currently available cell lines provide all the fetal material that is needed now and, apparently, in the future. Indeed, the success of these particular cell lines makes it unlikely that any new lines will be developed (whether from induced or spontaneously aborted children). Hence, the production techniques themselves do not require further abortions. The moral difference between vaccine technology and tissue transplantation is not changed by the fact that the product labeling for Varivax, for example, states that each dose contains “residual components of MRC-5 cells including DNA and protein.” These trace particles do not function in any sense as active components in the effectiveness of the vaccine. Still, it remains necessary to inquire into the relationship between the production of the vaccines and the two abortions that yielded the tissue. According to all available reports, in both cases the decision to abort was independent of the desire to make use of fetal tissue. In other words, the abortions would have taken place whether or not the cell-line research would have followed. This means that the abortions were not undertaken in order to produce vaccines or to fulfill any other research purpose. Moreover, nothing indicates that the vaccine production requires cell lines from electively aborted fetuses; tissue that is sufficiently healthy to produce cell lines of the type requisite for vaccine production might have become available from a fetus that died from some other cause. Granted, healthy tissue is more commonly found in electively aborted fetuses, but nothing indicates that such tissue is necessarily unavailable from other sources. These points suggest that vaccine production and, hence, use is morally separable from abortion, even though current production in fact depends upon cell lines derived from aborted fetal tissue. Vaccine production and abortion are morally independent, which is to say that vaccine use and opposition to abortion are in principle morally coherent."

"One pertinent detail that I have not been able to discover is the exact manner in which the tissue was transferred from those who performed the abortions to those who initiated the research. Did the research teams make it known that they were seeking certain types of tissue in a certain condition and did this influence the time or manner of the relevant abortions? This is significant because it can determine the moral quality of the initial research work relative to the abortions. This can be seen clearly by considering the differences between ordinary abortions and abortions that might be performed with a view to using fetal tissue for therapeutic or research purposes. In some of these cases it could happen that the manner of the abortion would be dictated by the need for certain amounts of, say, neural tissue in a certain condition. And so it might become necessary for fetal tissue collection to take place while the fetus still lives, or, more accurately, it might be necessary that the manner of fetal tissue collection itself be the cause of fetal death. If some similar relationship obtained between the original abortionists and the researchers who developed the cell lines, these researchers would be morally implicated in the abortion. Nevertheless, judging those actions is not now the primary concern. Knowing the exact manner of the transfer of tissue would be significant for evaluating the moral character of the initial research uses of the fetal tissue, but it is not, I argue below, decisive for evaluating the use of the vaccines today."

"Showing how the initial researchers may have been cooperatively involved in the two abortions helps to make clear how vaccine producers cannot be understood to be cooperatively involved. In the context of vaccine production, the principle of cooperation is (at most) applicable to evaluating the relationship between the people who performed the abortions and the people who initially obtained the tissue. This is because the principle of cooperation applies only when there is some shared, cooperative action. The two fundamental kinds of cooperation are called material and formal. At the simplest level of analysis, material cooperation occurs when someone contributes something that enables another person to perform some action. For example, a nurse assisting at an operation and someone who lends another person money cooperate materially in the operation and in the use of the money. Theologians distinguish many degrees and kinds of material cooperation, some forms of which are so closely connected to the principal action that the cooperator shares in the moral responsibility of that action. Nevertheless, this is not always the case. For example, an employer pays employees and thereby cooperates in their financial activities, but the employer remains normally free of moral responsibility for how employees use their money."

"Now, in the present case, the only opportunity for cooperation in abortion occurs in connection with the initial transfer of tissue. Today, when a person receives a vaccine injection, there simply is no cooperative action with whoever performed the abortions. The vaccine user provides no material assistance in the abortion nor acts in such a way as to will that the abortions take place. It is true as a matter of fact that the cell lines used to produce vaccines come from abortions, but abortion is not essentially necessary as a means to this end. This does not mean that the use of the vaccine is totally unrelated to abortion, but only that the distinctions that help to assess cooperation in evil do not provide a coherent moral analysis. Considering the independence—not only in time and place, but also morally—of vaccination from abortion, one comes to see that one achieves a morally coherent understanding of vaccination without essential relation to one’s moral condemnation (or for that matter, approval) of abortion. The use of these cell lines for the production of vaccines is somewhat akin to the use of the organs of a murder victim for transplantation in order to benefit others. A murder victim’s organs are available because of a morally reprehensible deed, but their use to benefit someone else does not make the transplantation team or the recipient complicit in the murder. Once again, there simply is no cooperative action between the murderer and the organ recipient or even the transplantation team. Acknowledging that it is distasteful to draw personal benefit from another’s suffering, one must yet recognize that taking advantage of this situation in this manner is not, as such, morally evil or morally incoherent. Just as it would be preferable to receive organs without any murder having occurred, in the same way, it would be preferable if the vaccines had no connection with abortion. Nevertheless, the use of the vaccine is accidentally, not essentially related morally to those two abortions."

"The only way in which this can be construed as cooperation is by turning the issue around and charging the abortionist with material cooperation in today’s vaccination. But this is stretching the matter. Even supposing that a part of the abortionist’s intended end were that the resulting tissue would become useful for therapeutic research, the indefiniteness of that end from the abortionist’s perspective would make it difficult to call him or her a formal cooperator in the production of vaccines. Even though the tissue taken from the abortions has been used for vaccine production, it does not appear to be the case that the abortions were undertaken as part of the means for vaccine production."

"The argument above holds that the use of vaccines whose production involves the use of fetal cell lines does not create a situation of cooperation with abortion or complicity with the original abortions. This use is not, however, entirely unrelated to abortion, and the fact that using the vaccines is not cooperation in abortion does not settle the matter. The gravity of abortion might require us to make extensive efforts to avoid wherever possible association with abortion, abortion providers, and people who promote abortion in one manner or another. Donum vitae addresses this concern: The corpses of human embryos and fetuses, whether they have been deliberately aborted or not, must be respected just as the remains of other human beings. In particular, they cannot be subjected to mutilation or to autopsies if their death has not yet been verified and without the consent of the parents or of the mother. Furthermore, the moral requirements must be safeguarded, that there be no complicity in deliberate abortion and that the risk of scandal be avoided. Also, in the case of dead fetuses, as for the corpses of adult persons, all commercial trafficking must be considered illicit and should be prohibited.38 This excludes “complicity in deliberate abortion,” and if being complicit means being an accomplice, it appears that avoiding complicity requires avoiding cooperation in or contributing to the performance of abortion. If it is true, as has been argued above, that the use of the vaccines in question cannot be understood to be a case of complicity in abortion, it would appear that there is no objection on the basis of this text. The matter is, however, not so simple. The Latin version of the pertinent sentence—translated above as “Furthermore, the moral requirements must be safeguarded, that there be no complicity in deliberate abortion and that the risk of scandal be avoided”—reads as follows: Praeterea, semper salva legis moralis praescriptio esse debet, quae excludit quamlibet cum abortu voluntario societatem et scandali periculum. Literally: “Furthermore, the prescription of the moral law ought always to be preserved, which excludes the danger of scandal and any association with voluntary abortion.” Now, excluding “any association” appears to be a stronger requirement than excluding complicity. An associate is more loosely related to some thing than is an accomplice. Still, societas is not a technical term, and it is necessary to determine what Donum vitae means by this wrongful association."

"Scandal is a theological concern in the sense that its technical meaning involves leading someone to sin or causing confusion as to what is a sin. Even apart from the matter of sin, awareness of the significance of one’s actions relative to the moral instruction of others has special relevance to the question of vaccinations, which is a concern primarily for parents. That is to say, if parents endeavor to teach their children that some actions, such as abortion, are bad in principle, they need to consider carefully whether the use of certain vaccines does not constitute a source of confusion for their children, who might at some point become cognizant of the factual dependence of some vaccines upon voluntary abortion. Can one coherently and plausibly defend the view that abortion is bad in principle and that yet the use of these vaccines is good? Can one teach one’s children to understand this, or will it happen that they will understand the actions of their parents to belie their words? Will the lesson that is actually learned be that abortion is usually wrong, but sometimes it is beneficial, and that parents who try to hold otherwise are deluding themselves?"

"In addition to concern for the moral formation of their children, parents making decisions about the use of the vaccines under consideration might also question whether this use would appear to others as indifference to the moral quality of abortion, thereby lending some positive encouragement to others to have abortions or perhaps leading others to indifference or misunderstanding. Here it is necessary to distinguish, in the traditional language, between scandal given and scandal taken. Scandal is given when someone acts in such a way that an observer can be expected to be led astray. Scandal is taken when someone is led astray upon observing another person’s behavior, whether that behavior has been rightly or wrongly interpreted. People who take moral matters seriously take reasonable steps to avoid giving scandal when possible, but there does not seem to be any limit to how much might need to be done to preclude the possibility of someone’s taking scandal by misinterpreting one’s own upright behavior. Plainly, it is sufficient to be reasonably cautious. This means that questions of scandal require prudence to evaluate the circumstances and the likely course of the actions of others. Consider the following two scenarios. Someone could argue that the use of these vaccines displays an indifference to abortion. Indeed, some people do appear to believe that if the production of the vaccines involves aborted fetal tissue in any manner whatever the vaccines must be rejected.41Knowing this, anyone using the vaccine must also anticipate that another person may take scandal at one’s actions, thereby leading the scandalized person to believe that the vaccine user does not genuinely oppose abortion, but only when it is convenient. In their own way, the children being vaccinated might be susceptible to this view. Further, someone could believe that the availability and use of these vaccines might lead to further abortions by allowing ambivalent women to take consolation that some good might come out of having an abortion. This possibility is remote, admittedly, and yet it is not inconceivable as a contributing motivating factor. Hence, this argument would lead one to refuse to use these vaccines, not because their use is in principle bad, but because someone else might through misunderstanding be led to some error."

"“In carrying out research and treatment of human (or nonhuman) diseases, it is immoral to use embryonic and fetal tissue obtained from intentionally induced abortions. A major reason for opposing use of such tissue is that this is a form of complicity in moral evil,” William E. May, Testimony before the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel, February 2, 1994. See the comments of Albert S. Moraczewski, O.P., quoted in note 18 above. See also Henry Greely et al., “The Ethical Use of Human Fetal Tissue in Medicine,” New England Journal of Medicine 320 (April 20, 1989): 1095."

"Nevertheless, these considerations, while plausible, are not compelling. Someone could respond to these arguments, with at least equal plausibility, by saying that a woman deciding whether or not to abort her own child is likely to be completely unconcerned with whether the children of others have been adequately vaccinated. It is hard to imagine any drastic increase in the number of abortions because of vaccines; people have abortions for other reasons. Further, it could be argued that even if a woman were swayed in her decision by the presence of these vaccines, that would amount to no more than an excuse and a way to silence feelings of doubt or remorse. One person is not ordinarily responsible for another’s rationalizations. Finally, this argument would say that the bare possibility that some hypothetical woman might be swayed to have an abortion is not as significant as the genuine responsibility of parents to protect their existing children from harmful, even deadly, diseases. In some cases (e.g., rubella, varicella, and adenovirus), there is not available an equally good vaccine that is produced without the use of cell lines from aborted fetuses. Moreover, the health benefits at issue do not accrue only to their own children, but to all people within the community to which the children belong. In the face of these opposing arguments regarding the relation of the use of these vaccines to future abortions, it would seem that more than one practical option is morally coherent. People who want to make a strong stand against abortion could refuse to use the vaccines, assuming that they could find adequate ways to protect themselves and others from disease. When there are children involved, parents must recognize that they are responsible for reasonable measures to protect the children (and to prevent the children from being a contagious threat to society). This threat is no trivial element of what parents must examine when they consider whether their children will join them in making an equally strong stand against abortion. At the same time, someone else who understands and deplores the accidental relation of these vaccines to abortion, who thinks that his or her use of the vaccine will have no significant effect on any future abortions, and who finds no alternative, equally effective ways to guard against infectious diseases readily available could make use of these vaccines without falling into moral incoherence. No further harm is necessarily generated by using the vaccine; no obvious good is necessarily achieved by refusing it, and there are a variety of other ways parents might communicate the moral character of abortion to their children. Alternatively, some people might want to be especially rigorous in their opposition to abortion, much as some people will participate in public abortion protests. Such public opposition cannot be understood to be morally implied by opposition to abortion since it is unclear how or if those protests have any significant effect on the number of abortions one way or the other."

"The rabies vaccine exists in two forms, one produced using MRC-5 cells and one produced using a fetal rhesus lung cell line. There are some treatment alternatives for preventing hepatitis A and poliomyelitis."

"After all of this has been said, if one judges that the use of these vaccines is indeed morally coherent for those who condemn abortion, even if it is not unqualifiedly desirable, one must be prepared for a further challenge. If the use of these vaccines despite their connection with abortion were to become customary, and if people cease to be uncomfortable with the regrettable origins of these vaccines, it will probably become more difficult to maintain the distinction between the use of existing fetal cell lines for vaccines and the use of fetal tissue for research and transplantation, not to mention the various experimental uses of frozen human embryos. The distinction articulated above—between a noncomplicit, accidental relationship and an association that is incoherent with principled opposition to abortion—will probably become more difficult to defend in public. As the practice of fetal tissue research and transplantation spreads, the sorts of arguments presented above are likely to be recast and used in support of this sort of research and transplantation.47 This suggests that it is rhetorically difficult to display the moral coherence of using these vaccines while simultaneously opposing proliferation of the therapeutic use of aborted fetal tissue. This difficulty is not decisive for the question of vaccines, but neither is it irrelevant. Whatever the future may hold in this regard, it is essential to think seriously about the moral significance of these matters. It would be irresponsible to condemn vaccines and other powerful therapies for superficial or accidental moral reasons. The health benefits at issue are considerable, and weighty moral reasons must be given before it is coherent to accept what may be a serious loss of control over vaccine-preventable diseases."

"A small but growing number of parents who object to vaccinating their children on religious grounds say they do so because many common vaccines are the product of cells that once belonged to aborted fetuses. There is a grain of truth to this statement. But even religious leaders, including a future pope, have said that shouldn't deter parents from vaccinating their children."

"Some childhood vaccines, including the one against rubella -- which is part of the MMR vaccine given to millions of children worldwide for measles, mumps and rubella -- is cultured in "WI-38 human diploid lung fibroblasts," according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's fact sheet on the vaccine's ingredients. Merck, the vaccine's manufacturer, acknowledged that those cells were originally obtained from an electively aborted fetus. They were used to start a cell line, which is a cell multiplied over and over again to produce cells that are of a consistent genetic makeup. The WI-38 cell line is used as a culture to grow live viruses that are used in vaccines."

""Merck, as well as other vaccine manufacturers, uses two well-established human cell lines to grow the virus for selected vaccines," Merck said in a statement to ABC News. "The FDA has approved the use of these cell lines for the production of these Merck vaccines." Other common vaccines, including those for chicken pox, hepatitis and rabies, are also propagated in cells originating from legally aborted human fetuses, according to the FDA. "These abortions, which occurred decades ago, were not undertaken with the intent of producing vaccines," said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers Disease Control and Prevention. The original cells were obtained more than 50 years ago and have been maintained under strict federal guidelines by the American Type Culture Collection, according to Merck."

""These cell lines are now more than three generations removed from their origin, and we have not used any new tissue to produce these vaccines," the company added in its statement. To say that the vaccines contain a significant amount of human fetal tissue, as some objectors to the vaccines claim, is misleading, stressed Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the vaccine education center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "There are perhaps nanograms of DNA fragments still found in the vaccine, perhaps billionths of a gram," he said. "You would find as much if you analyzed the fruits and vegetables you eat." And to remove human fibroblast cells entirely from vaccines is out of the question, Offit explained, noting they are necessary because human viruses don't grow well in animal cells. "They have also been tested for safety and the fetal cells can go through many more divisions than most other cells before dying," he said."

"Religious organizations have sided in favor of vaccines as well, even those generally opposed to abortion. "We should always ask our physician whether the product he proposes for our use has an historical association with abortion," the National Catholic Bioethics Center states on its website, but then goes on to say "one is morally free to use the vaccine regardless of its historical association with abortion." "The reason is that the risk to public health, if one chooses not to vaccinate, outweighs the legitimate concern about the origins of the vaccine," the center's position statement continued. "This is especially important for parents, who have a moral obligation to protect the life and health of their children and those around them." Offit said he was glad the Catholic Church supports vaccination. He noted it is particularly ironic to object to the rubella vaccine using fetal cells because Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, commented on the subject in 2003, saying: "Universal vaccination has resulted in a considerable fall in the incidence of congenital rubella, with a general incidence reduced to less than 5 cases per 100,000 livebirths." In other words, Offit explained, the rubella virus increases the risk of spontaneous abortion. In the U.S., vaccination prevents up to 5,000 miscarriages each year in the U.S. alone, he said."

"Fetal tissue has been used since the 1930s for vaccine development, and more recently to help advance stem cell research and treatments for degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. Researchers typically take tissue samples from a fetus that has been aborted (under conditions permitted by law) and grow cells from the tissue in Petri dishes. Many of the uses of fetal tissue – and much of the debate – are not new. “It’s just that the public is finding out about it,” said Insoo Hyun, associate professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University."

"Despite the long history of using fetal tissue in medicine and research, the practice could be on the way out. Even though it has led to important medical advances in the last several decades, “in the future, the need for fetal tissue will go down because of advances in stem cell [technology] that will take over,” Hyun said. One of the earliest advances with fetal tissue was to use fetal kidney cells to create the first poliovirus vaccines, which are now estimated to save 550,000 lives worldwide every year."

"In the early days of making the vaccine, researchers infected fetal kidney cells in Petri dishes to produce a large amount of virus that they could then harvest, purify and use to vaccinate people. (The virus evolves to become less deadly when it infects cells out of the body, and thus could safely be given to people to prime their immune system for the real thing.) Today manufacturers of the polio vaccine use other types of human cells, which weren’t available in the mid-1900s. They also use monkey cells, which they originally avoided for fear that making the vaccine in animal cells could put people at risk of diseases from other species."

"Many of our other common vaccines, such as chicken pox, rubella and shingles, have been produced in tissue derived from fetuses, particularly two electively terminated pregnancies from the 1960s."

"The woman was four months pregnant, but she didn’t want another child. In 1962, at a hospital in Sweden, she had a legal abortion. The fetus — female, 20 centimetres long and wrapped in a sterile green cloth — was delivered to the Karolinska Institute in northwest Stockholm. There, the lungs were dissected, packed on ice and dispatched to the airport, where they were loaded onto a trans- atlantic flight. A few days later, Leonard Hayflick, an ambitious young microbiologist at the Wistar Institute for Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, unpacked that box. Working with a pair of surgical scalpels, Hayflick minced the lungs — each about the size of an adult fingertip — then placed them in a flask with a mix of enzymes that fragmented them into individual cells. These he transferred into several flat-sided glass bottles, to which he added a nutrient broth. He laid the bottles on their sides in a 37 °C incubation room. The cells began to divide. So began WI-38, a strain of cells that has arguably helped to save more lives than any other created by researchers. Many of the experimental cell lines available at that time, such as the famous HeLa line, had been grown from cancers or were otherwise genetically abnormal. WI-38 cells became the first ‘normal’ human cells available in virtually unlimited quantities to scientists and to industry and, as a result, have become the most extensively described and studied normal human cells available to this day."

"Vaccines made using WI-38 cells have immunized hundreds of millions of people against rubella, rabies, adenovirus, polio, measles, chickenpox and shingles. In the 1960s and 1970s, the cells helped epidemiologists to identify viral culprits in disease outbreaks. Their normality has made them valuable control cells for comparison with diseased ones. And at the Wistar Institute, as in labs and universities around the world, they remain a leading tool for probing the secrets of cellular ageing and cancer. “Here’s a clump of cells that has had an enormous impact on human health,” says Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “These cells from one fetus have no doubt saved the lives of millions of people.” Few people, however, know the troubled history of the cells — one that may offer lessons for modern researchers seeking to work with human tissues. Six years after deriving his famous strain, Hayflick made off with stocks of the cells and later started to charge for shipping them, prompting an epic legal battle with the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, about who owned the cells. That struggle nearly destroyed Hayflick’s career and raised questions about whether and how scientists should profit from their inventions."

"What’s more, the WI-38 strain has helped to generate billions of dollars for companies that produce vaccines based on the cells, yet it seems that the parents of the fetus have earned nothing. That recalls the earlier development of the HeLa cell line, named after the woman whose tumour gave rise to the cells and chronicled in Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010). As with HeLa, the WI-38 case highlights questions about if, and how, tissue donors should be compensated that are still urgently debated today. Last month, for example, some scientists in the United States found themselves barred from using new stem-cell lines derived from human embryos because women had been paid for the eggs used to make them (see Nature http://doi.org/mv2; 2013). The story of WI-38, unlike that of HeLa, also has its own controversial twist because it was derived from an aborted fetus. For 40 years, anti-abortion activists have protested against the use of WI-38 and vaccines developed from it. “It’s still a live issue,” says Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison. “We still have people who refuse to take these vaccines because of their origins in fetal tissue."

"When Hayflick opened up that icy package from Sweden in 1962, he was working at the vanguard of virus research in the United States. At the time, the Wistar Institute was led by Hilary Koprowski, a polio-vaccine pioneer who hired Hayflick to run the centre’s cell-culture laboratory and supply cells to researchers. But Hayflick also began investigating whether some human cancers might be caused by viruses. To do so, he needed a resource that did not yet exist: verifiably normal human cells that could be reliably grown in the lab. Fetal cells, he thought, were an ideal candidate, because they were less likely to have been exposed to viruses than adult cells. Although abortions were technically illegal in Pennsylvania at the time, they were still performed when doctors said they were medically necessary. Hayflick says he was able to obtain fetuses straight from the operating room of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital across the street from Wistar. Unless the tissue was put to some use, he reasoned, “it was definitely going to end up in an incinerator”. The University of Pennsylvania says that it is unable to find records to confirm the source of fetal tissues used by Hayflick. Hayflick developed 25 different fetal-cell strains, numbered WI-1 to WI-25. But several months into the project, he began to notice something strange. Scientific orthodoxy held that cells in culture, properly treated, would replicate forever. But his oldest cell strains were beginning to replicate more slowly. Eventually, they stopped dividing altogether."

"WI-38 found a greater use in virology, where the ease of infecting the cells with a panoply of human viruses quickly made the strain an important virus-identification tool. In 1967, the cells became a workhorse in a World Health Organization survey of viruses causing lower respiratory tract infections in hospitalized children on four continents."

"Hayflick also supplied WI-38 liberally to aspiring vaccine-makers. One was Stanley Plotkin, a Wistar scientist and a physician who had seen at first hand the effects of the huge rubella epidemic that swept the United Kingdom and the United States in the early 1960s. Rubella can be devastating to fetuses whose mothers are infected: those that are not killed in utero are frequently born blind, deaf, mentally disabled or with some combination of these conditions. Working at the Wistar, Plotkin grew rubella in WI-38 at 30 °C, cooler than body temperature, creating a weakened strain that still fired up the immune system enough to protect against future infections. Trials showed that his vaccine induced better immunity against rubella than competitors. Plotkin’s vaccine was licensed in Europe in 1970 and in the United States in 1979. A version made by the pharmaceutical company Merck, based in New Jersey, is today the only rubella vaccine available in the United States, and GlaxoSmithKline uses Plotkin’s weakened virus in a rubella vaccine that it markets in Europe and Australia. The rubella vaccine was only one of many made using WI-38. In the 1960s, a WI-38-based measles vaccine was licensed in the former Soviet Union and Koprowski developed a rabies vaccine using the cells. In the early 1970s, the pharmaceutical company Wyeth (now part of Pfizer) launched an oral adenovirus vaccine developed using WI-38 and Pfizer, based in New York, used WI-38 to make a vaccine against polio. Today, the cells are also used by Merck to make vaccines against chickenpox and the painful nerve infection shingles."

"Hayflick explains that, contrary to common practice in 1962, he had not laced the cells with antibiotics at the outset because vaccine manufacturers feared allergic reactions to the drugs. Shortly before the Science article was published, Hayflick sued the NIH. He argued that the agency had violated the 1974 Privacy Act by making his name and the allegations against him available under the FOIA without including his rebuttal. He also sued for title to WI-38 and its proceeds. By then, Hayflick was also facing a criminal investigation: Stanford University had alerted local prosecutors that the case could be one of criminal theft of government property. (The prosecutors subsequently found no grounds for criminal investigation and dropped the case.) Meanwhile, some vaccine manufacturers, fearing that there would not be enough stock of WI-38 to meet future needs, switched much of their work to an alternative fetal cell strain, MRC-5."

"“Other vaccines are produced in a completely morally non-objectionable way. So why aren’t we doing this with all vaccines?” says Debi Vinnedge, the executive director of Children of God for Life, a group based in Largo, Florida, that opposes the use of WI-38 in vaccine-making. In 2003, Vinnedge wrote to the Vatican asking for an official position on whether Catholics could ethically receive vaccines made using cells from aborted fetuses. She waited two years for an answer. The letter, when it came, concluded that where no alternative exists, it is “lawful” for parents to have their children immunized with vaccines made using WI-38 and MRC-5, to avoid serious risk to their own offspring and to the population as a whole. Still, the Vatican wrote, faithful Catholics should “employ every lawful means in order to make life difficult for the pharmaceutical industries” that use such cells. Merck, a major producer of Plotkin’s rubella vaccine, has been a perennial target of abortion opponents, who have pressed the issue at Merck’s US shareholder meetings. (Merck said in a statement to Nature that “it would be exceedingly difficult, if at all possible, to develop and test an alternative”, and emphasized the vaccine’s long record of safety and effectiveness.) The irony of the protest is not lost on Plotkin. “I am fond of saying that rubella vaccine has prevented thousands more abortions than have ever been prevented by Catholic religionists,” he says."

"Profits from Merck’s rubella vaccine represent a big slice of the billions of dollars that have been made from products that have involved the use of WI-38. Among the other companies that have made money from WI-38 are Barr Laboratories (now part of Teva Pharmaceuticals, based in Petach Tikva, Israel), which today makes the adenovirus vaccine given to all US military recruits, and Sigma Aldrich in St Louis, Missouri, which charges $424 in the United States for a vial of the cells. Legal experts say it is unlikely that the parents of the fetus, or their heirs, would have any legal grounds to demand compensation for tissue collected over 50 years ago. At the time that WI-38 was derived, use of tissue without consent was routine in the United States, as it was in Sweden. Under current rules, researchers supported by US government grants are free to make use of surgically removed tissue — including aborted tissue — that has been stripped of its identifiers, without consent. However, some states have stricter rules. But, says Charo, “if we continue to debate it entirely in legal terms, it feels like we’re missing the emotional centre of the story”. It could be argued, she says, “that if somebody else is making a fortune off of this, they ought to share the wealth. It’s not a legal judgment. It’s a judgement about morality.”"

"If nothing else, the WI-38 story highlights the benefits of discussing the issues of compensation and consent with tissue donors at the outset. In the case of WI-38, suggests Charo, returning to the donor now, even with an offer of compensation, “may also be a way of re opening an experience that may for her have been painful. You have to be careful.” Hayflick argues that there are at least four stakeholders with title to WI-38 or any human cell culture: the tissue donors, the scientists whose work gave it value, the scientists’ institution and the body that funded the work. “Like me”, he adds, “hundreds of other scientists had their careers advanced using WI-38 and other human cell cultures so we all owe a moral debt to the tissue donors.”"

"Human fetal kidney cells were used to develop Genentech’s Pulmozyme, which helps clear thick mucus from the lungs of children with cystic fibrosis."

"Chaired by Representative Marsha Blackburn (R–TN), who is now helping steer President-elect Donald Trump's transition, the panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued, as it exited the stage, a 413-page Final Report. Besides targeting Planned Parenthood, which receives more than $500 million annually in federal funding, much of it through the Medicaid health program for the poor, the report also takes to task research institutions, other abortion providers, and the companies that process and prepare fetal tissue for researchers. It accuses some of illegally profiting from the sale of fetal tissue, which is forbidden under the 1993 law. And it cites numerous examples to conclude that "human fetal tissue research makes a vanishingly small contribution to clinical and research efforts." But a close look at those claims reveals inaccuracies; a sampling follows: Report, p. xxxix: "In over 100 years of unrestricted clinical research, human fetal tissue has failed to provide a single medical treatment …" Fact: Several important medicines now on the market were created using fetal tissue. Amgen's Enbrel battles rheumatoid arthritis; Genentech's Pulmozyme helps children with cystic fibrosis clear the thick mucus that clogs their lungs; and Nuwiq, made by Octapharma, treats boys and men with hemophilia, a life-threatening bleeding disorder."

"Report, p. 379: "Several letters [from the Association of American Medical Colleges and others] … suggest that human fetal tissue is used for modern vaccine production. In reality, none of the nearly 75 vaccine formulations currently licensed in the United States is produced using human fetal tissue …" Fact: The WI-38 and MRC-5 cell lines, derived from two fetuses that were aborted, respectively, in 1962 in Sweden and in 1966 in the United Kingdom, are used to produce the following vaccines, all licensed and marketed in the United States: *Sanofi-Pasteur's Imovax rabies vaccine is propagated in MRC-5 cells. When they were introduced in the 1970s, human fetal cell–propagated rabies vaccines supplanted dangerous and occasionally fatal animal tissue–produced rabies vaccines. * Merck's chicken pox and shingles vaccines are propagated in MRC-5 cells; they are produced at a relatively new company plant in North Carolina. The weakened "Oka" virus used in both vaccines was initially attenuated in WI-38 cells. * Merck's rubella vaccine—the "R" component in the MMR vaccine given to U.S. infants and preschoolers—is propagated in WI-38 cells on the company's campus northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Merck has shipped nearly 700 million doses of the rubella vaccine since its launch in 1979. Also known as German measles, rubella, like Zika virus, attacks and damages fetuses in the womb. *Hepatitis A vaccines are marketed in the United States by both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline; both companies propagate their vaccines in MRC-5 cells. *The polio component of Sanofi Pasteur's U.S.-marketed Quadracel vaccine (which also protects against diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus) is propagated in MRC-5 cells. *The adenovirus vaccine that since 1970 has protected nearly 10 million members of the U.S. military from respiratory infections is propagated using WI-38 cells. (In seeming contradiction, the report goes on to state, one page later, that "11 [current vaccines] … are produced using historic, fetal-derived cell lines.")"

"Report, p 376: "… human fetal tissue has never been used to make the polio vaccine." Fact: Virologists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden used fetal cells to propagate a polio vaccine in the mid-1950s; it was given to some 2000 schoolchildren. In 1967 and 1968, Yugoslavia conducted a mass polio vaccination campaign using polio virus propagated in WI-38 cells; Sweden and Switzerland had already run trials of the same vaccine. In the early 1970s, Pfizer launched a polio vaccine propagated in WI-38 cells in the United States. And the French vaccinemaker Sanofi Pasteur uses MRC-5 cells to make polio vaccine to this day."

"Senior Catholic leaders in the United States and Canada, along with other antiabortion groups, are raising ethical objections to promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates that are manufactured using cells derived from human fetuses electively aborted decades ago. They have not sought to block government funding for the vaccines, which include two candidate vaccines that the Trump administration plans to support with an investment of up to $1.7 billion, as well as a third candidate made by a Chinese company in collaboration with Canada's National Research Council (NRC). But they are urging funders and policymakers to ensure that companies develop other vaccines that do not rely on such human fetal cell lines and, in the United States, asking the government to "incentivize" firms to only make vaccines that don't rely on fetal cells. "It is critically important that Americans have access to a vaccine that is produced ethically: no American should be forced to choose between being vaccinated against this potentially deadly virus and violating his or her conscience," members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and 20 other religious, medical, and political organizations that oppose abortion wrote to Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in April. "Thankfully, other [COVID-19] vaccines … utilize cell lines not connected to unethical procedures and methods." "We urge your government to fund the development of vaccines that do not create an ethical dilemma for many Canadians," wrote Archbishop of Winnipeg Richard Gagnon, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, and 17 other antiabortion religious, medical, and politic groups and individuals in a 21 May letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "The … manufacture of vaccines using such ethically-tainted human cell lines demonstrates profound disrespect for the dignity of the human person.""

"Cells derived from elective abortions have been used since the 1960s to manufacture vaccines, including current vaccines against rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A, and shingles. They have also been used to make approved drugs against diseases including hemophilia, rheumatoid arthritis, and cystic fibrosis. Now, research groups around the world are working to develop more than 130 candidate vaccines against COVID-19, according to the World Health Organization; 10 had entered human trials as of 2 June. At least five of the candidate COVID-19 vaccines use one of two human fetal cell lines: HEK-293, a kidney cell line widely used in research and industry that comes from a fetus aborted in about 1972; and PER.C6, a proprietary cell line owned by Janssen, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, developed from retinal cells from an 18-week-old fetus aborted in 1985. Both cell lines were developed in the lab of molecular biologist Alex van der Eb at Leiden University. Two of the five vaccines have entered human trials (see table, below). In four of the vaccines, the human fetal cells are used as miniature "factories" to generate vast quantities of adenoviruses, disabled so that they cannot replicate, that are used as vehicles to ferry genes from the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. When the adenoviruses are given as a vaccine, recipients' cells begin to produce proteins from the coronavirus, hopefully triggering a protective immune response. The fifth vaccine, which has shown promise in monkeys and is headed for human trials as soon as this summer, is what is known as a protein subunit vaccine. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh use HEK-293 cells to manufacture the coronavirus' spike protein—a vital part of its structure—which is used to trigger an immune response. The vaccine is delivered through a skin patch with 400 tiny needles. The fetal cell lines are key to producing both types of vaccine. "HEK-293 [cells] are essential for making protein subunit vaccines," says Andrea Gambotto, a vaccine scientist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the vaccine's lead developer. Their human origin is important, he says: "Cultured [nonhuman] animal cells can produce the same proteins, but they would be decorated with different sugar molecules, which—in the case of vaccines—runs the risk of failing to evoke a robust and specific immune response." (Among the developers of the five vaccines, only Gambotto responded to a request for comment.)"

"David Prentice, vice president and research director at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, which opposes abortion, notes researchers making adenovirus vaccines have modified HEK-293 cells to be adept at packaging new genes—such as those that direct cells to assemble the coronavirus spike protein—into adenoviruses. But he adds that other technologies are available, including using cells captured from amniocentesis that are engineered to make replication-deficient adenoviruses. "The use of cells from electively aborted fetuses for vaccine production makes these five COVID-19 vaccine programs unethical, because they exploit the innocent human beings who were aborted," Prentice and a co-author—molecular biologist James Sherley, a Lozier Institute associate scholar and director of the adult stem cell company Asymmetrex—wrote in a position paper published last month."

"Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the New York University School of Medicine, counters: "There are better ways to win the abortion wars than telling people not to use a vaccine. These are long-over abortions. These cells are decades old, and even major religious leaders like the pope have acknowledged that for the greater good it's not worth the symbolism to put the community at risk." * The Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life declared in 2005 and reaffirmed in 2017 that in the absence of alternatives, Catholics could, in good conscience, receive vaccines made using historical human fetal cell lines."

"A vaccine made by the Chinese company CanSino Biologics was the first COVID-19 vaccine to enter phase II human trials. It was developed using adapted HEK-293 cells that the company licensed from Canada's NRC, where the cells were developed. (NRC-developed HEK-293 cells have already been used to develop an approved Ebola vaccine.) Last month, NRC announced a collaboration with CanSino Biologics under which it is preparing to run late-stage clinical trials of the vaccine in Canada, and scale up facilities to produce the vaccine in quantity."

"One of the Warp Speed candidates, made by Janssen Research & Development, uses PER.C6 cells. The second, from University of Oxford researchers and AstraZeneca, uses HEK-293 cells. Both have received U.S. government commitments of, respectively, $456 million and $1.2 billion, if they meet milestones, through the Biomedical Advanced Research Development Authority (BARDA). Another vaccine that relies on HEK-293, being developed by two companies owned by the billionaire scientist and businessman Patrick Soon-Shiong, made an earlier, Warp Speed long list of 14 promising candidates, according to a press release from one of companies, NantKwest. Prentice says: "As they are choosing—BARDA and the Warp Speed people— what vaccines to move ahead, they should at least recognize that there is some portion of the population who would like an alternative vaccine they can take in good conscience." Caplan disagrees. "If you are going to say the government shouldn't fund things that a minority of people object to, you will have a very long list of things that won't get funded by the government, from research on weapons of war to contraceptive research.""

"The Trump administration has restricted the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions in biomedical research. One year ago, it adopted a policy that forbids researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from using fetal tissue from elective abortions in their studies. And it imposed an extra layer of review on non-NIH scientists seeking agency funding to do research using such tissue. But the policy did not stop either group from using decades-old fetal cell lines like HEK-293 and PER.C6."