Johnson & Johnson vaccine ‘morally acceptable’ despite fetus origins March 5, 2021
The approval of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for use in Canada has heightened the discussion over whether Catholics should receive the vaccine, though Church teaching remains clear that it is “morally acceptable.”
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is produced using cell lines derived from aborted fetuses, unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are made using a synthetic messenger RNA. However, all the companies used abortion-derived cells during preliminary laboratory testing.
In a December statement, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while not endorsing the use of abortion-related cell lines, deemed the vaccines acceptable when “ethically irreproachable” vaccines are not available.