This well-considered dialogue at Public Discourse still does not satisfactorily address the one issue that The Pillar, OSV, and other publications seem to leave out: how we had an opportunity to persuade the globe to abhor the use of fetal cells in research, and we as a Church chose not to do so. I am yet to read a proper and convincing refutation of the position of Dr. Trasancos in that regard.
Some points to draw forth from Dr. Moschella :
Strictly speaking, however, the cooperation-with-evil framework does not apply to the case of the COVID vaccines, because the evils we are concerned about occurred in the past, and nothing that we do now can change what happened. Some worry that the willingness to use the vaccines despite their connection to these past evils indirectly perpetuates the practice of using aborted fetal tissue to make new cell lines, by showing that consumers are willing to use products made with the help of these cell lines. I’m not convinced by this claim, given that the cell lines are immortal and that for scientific purposes there are huge advantages to using established cell lines with well-known properties. In other words, continuing to use an established cell line like HEK 293 on balance is actually most likely to reduce the demand for the creation of new fetal cell lines.
I contend that Dr. Moschella's point would hold more water were it not for the fact that abortion is a continually perpetuating morass into which our entire economy and administration and health care system has sunk itself. The use of fetal cells is an INDUSTRY, and so these academic arguments fail to take stock of the horrors to which we have all grown unjustly accustomed.
They did not occur in "the past" so long as Planned Parenthood is selling infant cadavers and organs.
Dr. Moschella may not be convinced of the claim, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that she ought to be. She even enumerates some of the tainted products later in her argument- cosmetics, foods, and medicines. An insufficient level of abhorrence emanates from her for what we have developed into a standard operating procedure. Again, she does not satisfactorily address the position of Dr. Trasancos that we must press first for the pharmaceutical industry to change its tactics, and we had the opportunity to put the leverage necessary to achieve such an outcome.
That sort of desensitization is something that we have an obligation to guard against whenever we benefit from past evil...using products like vaccines—or the multitude of other products lining the shelves of our grocery stores and pharmacies—that were made with the help of abortion-derived cell lines. Part of the way that we do that is by making sure to remind ourselves of that past injustice and recommit ourselves to stopping or preventing similar injustices now or in the future. In that regard, I think that a consideration of what is likely to be the most effective use of limited resources to fight the injustice is important: wouldn’t direct efforts to restrict abortion, to address the underlying causes that lead women to seek abortions, to support women in crisis pregnancies, or to lobby for more ethical research practices be much more effective than objecting to a vaccine that has only an extremely remote connection to a past abortion?
Had we made such a public commitment as a Church that use of fetal cells at all is to be avoided at all costs while also promoting the vaccine for the common good, that would have been one thing. Yet, immediately the ethicists who share Dr. Moschella's view were falling all over themselves to justify it, as in "Nothing to see here, move along, get vaccinated, it is moral to do so" while asking us to sidestep the giant aborted elephant baby in the living room!
The people in the pro-life movement doing ALL of the action steps she lists- those who march for life and volunteer at pregnancy clinics and donate diapers and pray at Planned Parenthood sidewalks- are among the ones who are objecting to the vaccine precisely because they want to lobby for more ethical research practices. How does one lobby against something so huge except in this one small outcry?
Also consider:
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2021/resisting-abortion-tainted-vaccines-and-the-culture-of-death
No comments:
Post a Comment