This is really a bad idea: A Missouri legislator named Dr. Rob Schaaf wants the state to stop buying and distributing important vaccines that are crucial to maintaining the health of children because they were derived from the cells of aborted fetuses. But how is that any different from harvesting and transplanting an organ? If the patient were killed for the purpose of organ procurement, it would be wrong. Likewise, if a fetus was aborted for the purpose of using the body in experiments and for vaccines, it would be wrong. But that isn’t what happened in the development of these vaccines. Moreover, as the story points out:Scientists aren’t using any new fetal tissue—the vaccines come from the original 1960s cell line, which has been frozen.
There are certainly very important issues that need to combat the use of human beings instrumentally. But this isn’t one of them.
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