Is it Ok to receive COVID-19 vaccine? Yes, but keep advocating for life

Published: June 12, 2021

By Father Jason Tyler
Diocesan Bioethicist

We are all familiar with the phrase, “the end does not justify the means.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church uses that exact phrase in paragraph 1753. Even if we have perfect intention, we must not choose something evil to accomplish it.

For example, it would be wrong to commit perjury, even to help someone. Catholic moral tradition rejects any line of thinking that focuses solely on outcomes or intentions in discerning the rightness or wrongness of our actions.

Both outcomes and intentions are important, but the type of thing we do — called the “object” of our action — is the first thing we must evaluate. To focus only on outcomes would assume that we can know with certainty every result of our actions.

To focus only on intentions would ignore the fact that we are rarely capable of taking the intention in our mind and making it real in the world around us. And what was that saying about the pavement on the road to hell?

With all of that in mind, some will ask how it is that Pope Francis, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, our own Bishop Anthony B. Taylor and many other bishops have said that it is morally acceptable to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

Aren’t those vaccines connected to abortion? Yes, it’s true that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were tested in a way that involved cell lines derived initially from past human abortions. Similar cell lines were involved in the production as well as testing of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

It is not true, however, that more abortions have to be performed now in order to make more vaccines. If it were a case of having to kill more unborn humans to save other adult humans, we would never accept such a solution as it would involve certainly doing an evil action in the hope of accomplishing something good.

Instead, the issue before us now is one of cooperation with evil. More specifically, does benefiting from research done after a previous abortion mean that we are somehow supportive of or lending credibility to that past abortion? Does benefiting now imply that we are endorsing the evil that happened before?

It doesn’t have to. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said in its Dec. 17 note on this topic, “(T)he 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.”

An analogy might be helpful here. Some years ago, I anointed a parishioner who had been shot. She did not die immediately but only after a few days in intensive care. She was an organ donor, so when she was declared dead, some of her organs were extracted and given to patients who needed transplants.

Did those organ recipients benefit from her death? Sadly, yes. Did they, therefore, cooperate with, support or endorse her murder? No. Was it wrong for them to receive her organs? No.

In the context of this discussion, the most significant difference between that example of organ donation and the issues around the COVID-19 vaccines currently in use is that our entire society would rightly condemn the murder of the young lady I mentioned. Tragically, many in our society accept or approve of the practice of abortion.

That division reminds us of the need to witness the value of human life in the womb. We can be such witnesses without having to reject the COVID vaccines. But as we recognize now how the practice of abortion is connected with so many things in our lives, we are called to redouble our efforts at protecting the sacredness of human life.

Father Jason Tyler is pastor of St. Joseph Church in Fayetteville, Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Lincoln and St. John the Evangelist Church in Huntsville. He is the diocesan bioethicist. This article was originally published in Arkansas Catholic June 12, 2021. Copyright Diocese of Little Rock. All rights reserved. This article may be copied or redistributed with acknowledgement and permission of the publisher.