The New Orleans Archdiocese (United States) announced that the vacancy for Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 was “morally compromised” and agreed that Catholics should use alternative ethics if they were available.
The new vaccine, manufactured by Janssen, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine division, was approved by the United States Drugs and Food Administration (FDA) with an emergency use permit issued on Saturday, February 27th.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute, sponsored by the research group Susan B. Anthony List, has determined that the vacancy in question uses cellular lines derived from abortion in design and development, production and laboratory tests.
The New Orleans Archdiocese declares on February 26 that the vaccine institute “morally compromised” has begun its connection with abortion.
On the other hand, the other available vehicles for the COVID-19 are “morally acceptable”, referenced in Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna.
Given the possibility that there is no alternative ethics available, the New Orleans Archdiocese indicates that it is not probable that Catholics will receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The decision to receive a vacancy for the COVID-19 “follows an individual decision of conscience when consulting with the medical attention provider”, says the Arquidiócesis.
The New Orleans Archdiocese, under the auspices of the Vatican Orientation, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States and the Catholic National Center for Bioethics affirm that even some laboratory tests that use the cellular line are currently available from Pfizer and Modern are not based on abortion cell lines in the manufacturing process and, for that matter, can be morally acceptable for Catholics, and the connection with abortion is extremely remote “, he said in his statement .
Ethics specialists signal that as much as Pfizer vacancies such as Modern eran “indisputable etiquette”, its connection with abortions during the design phase was extremely remote. Without embarrassment, some laboratory tests are being carried out for the vacancies using aborted fetal cell lines.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, on the other hand, uses fetal cell lines aborted in all phases.
“It is a common misconception that the archdiocese should teach Catholics that the ultimate vacancy of Janssen / Johnson & Johnson is morally compromised, and that it uses the cellular line derived from abortion in the development and production of the vacancy, as well as in the pruebas ”, indicates the Archdiocese.
This ethical problem is similar to the AstraZeneca vaccine, which also uses a cellular line derived from abortion in the development and testing of its product.
The Arquidiócesis states that “in no way does the position of the Church diminish the malicious actions of women who decide to use cellular abortion lines to make vacancies”.
“If we do, we agree that if the Pfizer Modern’s vacancy is available, Catholics should opt to receive any of these vacancies instead of receiving the new Johnson & Johnson’s vacancy by debiting their use of cell lines derived from abortion,” he said.
The cellular line derived from an abortion of the previous decade, denominated in HEK-293, is commonly used in tests and the development of pharmaceutical products.
The communiqué of the Arquidiócesis concurs with the text of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Fa entitled “Note on the morality of the use of some vacancies against the COVID-19”, of December 21, 2020.
This document explains that “when there are no vacancies COVID-19 is irreplaceable (by way of example, in places where there is no provision of medical and patient vacancies without ethical issues or the distribution of these conditions is more difficult Emergency and transport specialties, which distribute various types of vacancies in the same way, by the sanitary authorities, do not allow the citizens to choose the vacancy that is inoculated) it is morally acceptable to use the vacancies against COVID-19 that he used cellular lines of aborted fetuses in his investigation and production process”.
The document explains that “the rationale for considering morally the use of these vacancies is that the type of malpractice (passive material cooperation) of the abortion provoked by the process are different cell lines, by which women use the resulting vacancies, is remota ”.
In this mode, “the moral deed to avoid this passive material cooperation is not vinculant if it exists a graph graph, as the propagation, by the inconsistent demons, of a pathogenic agent graph: in this case, the pandemic propagation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 ”.
One of the promotions for the Johnson & Johnson vacancy is that it does not require specialized refrigeration and can be administered in a single dose, which is the most attractive option for some health professionals such as the Modern and Pfizer vacancies. These vacancies require emergency air conditioning and are administered in doses.
Translated and adapted by Diego López Marina. Originally published in CNA.