"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."
January 1, 1970