A Change.org petition to increase vaccination against measles and mumps by working with the religious beliefs of parents has garnered support from the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life education organization in the United States.
American Life League (ALL) joined the call urging Merck to make available the single-dose versions of its measles and mumps vaccines. Currently, the measles vaccine from Merck is only available combined with mumps and rubella. The rubella portion of the combination vaccine was created from aborted fetal cell lines, according to a ALL press release Thursday.
“Merck is denying parents the choice of obtaining an ethical measles vaccine,” stated Judie Brown, president of American Life League. “According to Children of God for Life, outbreaks of measles, such as at the California Disney parks, have been on the increase ever since Merck discontinued the ethical single-dose vaccine in 2008.”
Debi Vinnedge, president of Children of God for Life, explained that there are a large number of parents who do not vaccinate their children for measles due to there being no ethical version of the vaccine available. “Ninety-nine percent of the parents I encounter just want the moral versions of measles and mumps vaccines,” Vinnedge stated. “If Merck were to make the ethical single-dose vaccines available again, vaccine coverage would increase significantly.”
Outbreak News Today reached out to vaccine expert, Dr. Paul Offit for a comment on the press release. Offit sent the following statement via email:
Four vaccines are made from embryonic cells obtained from two elective abortions performed in the early 1960s. The two cell lines derived from those abortions are called WI38 and MRC5. These two cell lines are used to make the rubella, hepatitis A, varicella, and one of the rabies vaccines.
Debi Vinnedge has already asked the Church, through its policy making body The Pontifical Academy for Life, to comment on the use of vaccines made using cells from abortions performed about 50 years ago. When she asked, the head of the Academy of Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI.
Although Ratzinger decried the use of these cells at the time researchers made vaccines, he made it very clear that Catholics should vaccinate their children with these vaccines. I talk about this at some length in the book VACCINATED: ONE MAN’S QUEST TO DEFEAT THE WORLD’S DEADLIEST DISEASES.
In the first place, there is nothing unethical about having an abortion. Secondly, our armed forces out killing innocents around the world contain plenty of catholics, catholics murdering innocent people. That is unethical. But you don’t hear anyone making that a religious issue. Hypocritical is not a strong enough word to describe people who hold the beliefs being espoused here.
Yes, the Church does have a “Just war” doctrine, the very narrow criteria of which have not been met in any of the American Empire’s military misadventures in the second millennium, all of which have been condemned by three successive Popes. The fact that individual Catholics have participated in these wars is no more relevant than the fact that individual Catholics have had abortions. The Church does not teach this as something which only members of he Catholic Church mus adhere to. It is an universal ethical position applicable to all humanity.
And yes, the Catholic Church has prosecuted plenty of unjust wars, such as the Crusades, the Inquisition etc. The Church is at least as corrupt as any secular government, and continues to be. The present pope is somewhat of a beacon of justice, but won’t and can’t go far enough to reform the racketeering organization that the Church is.
Anyone who has basic biological knowledge of the developing embyro combined with factual, unbiased information which describe the various abortion procedures would reasonably conclude that abortion is unethical and gravely morally wrong. That is not to judge the individual mother who may be subject to fear, coercion or simply ignorance of the act, but the act itself is always intrinsically wrong.