Can I Take a Vaccine Made from Aborted Babies?
00:00:00.000 | Hello, everyone. This is Tony speaking to you from November as I edit this episode for
00:00:04.800 | the podcast with a brief programming note before we start. Due to studio schedules,
00:00:09.540 | this episode had to be recorded way back in October, back when it was widely reported
00:00:15.360 | that a major ethical dilemma was looming for pro-life Christians related to COVID vaccines
00:00:19.800 | made from aborted tissue cell lines. But as the weeks passed, however, vaccines rose to
00:00:26.240 | the forefront that do not pose this ethical dilemma, particularly those from Pfizer and
00:00:30.800 | Moderna. All that to say, today's question needs to be addressed, even if it's looking
00:00:35.480 | now like it will thankfully not be as major of a dilemma with the COVID vaccines in the
00:00:42.120 | news. Alas, on to today's episode.
00:00:49.400 | Well the pandemic has disrupted our lives in America for nearly a year now, and I know
00:00:53.600 | this disruption is very real for many of you around the world too. As we record this, vaccinations
00:00:59.800 | are on the minds of as an important step really in ending the pandemic and returning to some
00:01:05.800 | sense of normalcy. But with it arrive many emails about the ethics of vaccines, questions
00:01:12.440 | from listeners like Callum, Benjamin, Anna, Heather, Megan, Michelle, Krista, Tanisha,
00:01:18.400 | Matt, Carolyn, Candace, Daniel, James, and Franco, just to name a few. Basically, these
00:01:24.760 | listeners share one single dilemma. Several frontrunners for the new coronavirus vaccine
00:01:31.000 | are made from the cells of aborted children, healthy children who were murdered. Most notably,
00:01:39.920 | this includes the human fetal kidney cell line called HEC-293 from the kidney of a healthy
00:01:45.520 | girl aborted in 1972 and Per-C6 from the retina of a healthy boy aborted in 1985. Science
00:01:55.200 | magazine reported last fall that five of the leading coronavirus vaccines use one of these
00:02:00.160 | two human fetal cell lines. And apparently, similar cell lines have been used since the
00:02:05.920 | 1960s to manufacture vaccines against rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A, shingles, hemophilia,
00:02:12.040 | rheumatoid arthritis, and cystic fibrosis. As we record this, ethically derived coronavirus
00:02:19.120 | vaccines are in process but are slower and will likely be more expensive, rarer, and
00:02:24.880 | maybe even more difficult to get. That's the prediction, at least. So the question
00:02:28.960 | is, should committed pro-lifers get the fast, available, cheap vaccines made from aborted
00:02:34.400 | cells or should they wait? Pastor John, how do you think through this ethical dilemma?
00:02:39.200 | Let me make four kinds of observations and hope and pray that these will give some guidance
00:02:48.960 | to our thinking and our feeling and our acting, and I think all three of those really matter,
00:02:56.000 | particularly in regard to the use of human organs or human tissue harvested from the
00:03:04.320 | killing of unborn children. And we need to say it with words like that, otherwise we
00:03:11.680 | will conceal from ourselves what's happening. So first observation. In Romans 3.8, some
00:03:19.040 | of Paul's adversaries accused him of "doing evil that good may come." Paul responded
00:03:29.620 | to this that it was a slanderous charge. In other words, he distanced himself from that
00:03:37.640 | kind of ethical stance, and I think we should too. We shouldn't do evil that good may
00:03:45.720 | come. God alone has the infinite wisdom to manage an entire world of sin in which he
00:03:54.300 | can turn horrible things for wise and good purposes. He never tells us that we have such
00:04:01.400 | wisdom. We don't. We are to live our lives guided by the principles he reveals in his
00:04:07.300 | Word, not by our calculations about how much evil we can join in for some greater good.
00:04:18.740 | So if we really believe that the killing of unborn children is abhorrent to God and falls
00:04:27.720 | into the category of the shedding of innocent blood for which God's judgment fell, we
00:04:33.980 | should not think of turning this wickedness into a wonder drug to save our lives. We should
00:04:43.200 | not do evil that good may come. That's my first observation.
00:04:48.160 | Second, God frequently in the Bible calls us to do things and avoid things which are
00:04:55.500 | very costly to us personally in order to demonstrate that Christ and his ways are more precious
00:05:04.680 | to us than safety or security or comfort and that we sacrifice in order to do what's right.
00:05:15.280 | When we are told not to return evil for evil or that we should love our enemies or turn
00:05:21.920 | the other cheek or go the extra mile or do good to those who hate us, all of those kinds
00:05:31.000 | of commands are designed to show that we are not in bondage to this world and that the
00:05:39.280 | deepest contentment of our lives does not flow from needing to avoid risk or show vengeance.
00:05:50.880 | By denying ourselves comfort or satisfaction or safety for the sake of testifying to Christ's
00:05:59.200 | value to us and testifying to the sanctity of another person's life or testifying to
00:06:07.200 | our hope for another person's well-being or testifying to our confidence in God's
00:06:13.680 | reward beyond the grave, when we deny ourselves in that way, we aim to exalt Christ and his
00:06:22.880 | ways over mere self-preservation.
00:06:27.000 | So if a scientist avoids using tissue and organs harvested from babies killed in abortion,
00:06:35.120 | or if an ordinary citizen avoids using a medication which they know has been developed specifically
00:06:42.560 | through such harvesting and research, the aim is that the Christian conscience is preserved
00:06:49.800 | and Christ is made much of as more valuable than any security or safety or health we might
00:06:58.400 | get through sin.
00:07:01.160 | Third, avoiding such research and avoiding the use of the products of such research is
00:07:09.720 | only one way of testifying to the truth and value of Christ and the sanctity of the unborn
00:07:16.600 | persons, but another way that should be added is the proactive engagement in whatever way
00:07:25.280 | we can to speak and act against the taking of innocent human life in the womb and the
00:07:33.280 | use of those children for research and experimentation.
00:07:37.400 | So I'm saying renunciation, that is the avoidance part of our ethics, which is being
00:07:43.740 | asked about, to avoid the medication.
00:07:47.040 | The renunciation of the use of such drugs has value, yes, it does, and supplementing
00:07:53.720 | that value should also be the proactive engagement of resisting and discouraging abortion and
00:08:02.680 | the use of aborted babies in research.
00:08:05.720 | And the final observation, the fourth one that I would make, is the one that's most
00:08:11.760 | difficult to articulate but may be the most important.
00:08:17.080 | The observation is that acting on principle, in this case the principle that we do not
00:08:23.600 | want to be complicit in the desecration of dismembered human beings, acting on principle
00:08:33.000 | often does not look like the most obvious way to be a blessing to the greatest number
00:08:39.120 | of people.
00:08:40.340 | For example, if you try to act on the principle of not participating in the desecration of
00:08:47.580 | these children by avoiding medicines developed from their dead bodies, someone will say,
00:08:53.560 | but look, look at all the good that is coming through the medication.
00:09:01.140 | And they will say that they can't see the good that may be coming from your principled
00:09:07.000 | action.
00:09:08.600 | So what I'm saying here is this.
00:09:11.360 | God has ways of honoring and blessing and multiplying the effectiveness of principled
00:09:19.660 | action in his name, which to the human calculation may appear futile.
00:09:26.480 | This is certainly the case with many martyrdoms in history, for example, or other kinds of
00:09:32.940 | sacrificial principled actions, which didn't look like they were going to have any payoff
00:09:39.240 | at all for the suffering person or for their family or for the cause of Christ.
00:09:45.380 | Just a dead-end street at the stake of suffering.
00:09:49.120 | The sufferers simply acted because their consciences wouldn't let them do otherwise, while the
00:09:55.880 | world sees that as futile and foolish.
00:10:00.820 | Just save yourself and your family and others and stop denying yourself the privilege of
00:10:07.840 | life or health or prosperity.
00:10:10.660 | And my point, again, is God is God.
00:10:14.880 | He honors integrity and principled action that is rooted in his truth and his beauty
00:10:22.020 | and his worth, even where the world cannot see the point.
00:10:27.140 | We have no idea what explosive effects in the depths of God's providence and purposes
00:10:34.260 | our principled action might unleash by God's grace.
00:10:39.380 | So I'm saying let's not act as researchers or as ordinary consumers in a way that desecrates
00:10:49.300 | the bodies of unborn victims and treats those children as though they can be killed and
00:10:57.260 | their tissue harvested for our benefit.
00:11:00.460 | Amen.
00:11:01.460 | That's a sobering word.
00:11:02.460 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:03.460 | And thanks to everyone who sent this question in to us.
00:11:06.780 | We really appreciate it.
00:11:08.100 | Well, you can ask a question or follow up with a question of your own, a follow-up to
00:11:12.060 | this topic.
00:11:13.380 | You can do that online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:17.540 | And there you can also search or browse 1600 of our past episodes and even subscribe to
00:11:22.300 | the podcast.
00:11:23.300 | Well, we have been talking a lot about providence of late, but why?
00:11:28.100 | What's the big deal about God's providence?
00:11:31.300 | What are the implications of the doctrine for my busy life?
00:11:35.060 | We're going to spend some time looking at the implications of providence, and we'll
00:11:38.700 | begin doing this next time on Wednesday.
00:11:41.540 | I'm Tony Reinke.
00:11:42.540 | We'll see you then.
00:11:43.260 | [End]
00:11:45.260 | 1.
00:11:46.260 | Desiring God's Providence 2.
00:11:47.260 | The Providence of Late 3.
00:11:48.260 | The Providence of Late 4.
00:11:49.260 | The Providence of Late 5.
00:11:50.260 | The Providence of Late 6.
00:11:51.260 | The Providence of Late 7.
00:11:52.260 | The Providence of Late 8.