Ever licit to use abortion-derived cell lines?

The moral acceptability of using abortion-derived cell lines in research has been an area of debate in Catholic bioethics for some time. The Magisterium first weighed in over a decade ago.

Although it is a relatively uncontroversial position that Catholics can use vaccines developed using abortion-derived cell lines, the stance toward conscientious participation in research has been more ambivalent. Some people have made the moral distinction between a supervisor, who has authority to decide which cell lines are used, and a technician, who has no say in this area. The implication is that a Catholic in conscience could be a technician but would be on less morally stable ground if he or she were promoted. Although this distinction correctly identifies cooperation as the operative principle, and establishes neat, role-based responsibilities for cooperators, it does not seem to reflect magisterial statements, which provide less-rigid guidelines.

The Church has continuously affirmed that aborted-derived cell lines are originated in a grave injustice from which their use cannot be separated. Nevertheless, because of the great temporal distance from the abortions as well as other circumstances, it is not necessarily illicit for researchers to use them. In Dignitas personae, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith advised, “It is fitting therefore to formulate general principles on the basis of which people of good conscience can evaluate and resolve situations in which they may possibly be involved [with such research] on account of their professional activity” (34).

Eleven years later, in Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Foetuses, the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) indicated through a double negative the conditions in which researchers can use such cell lines. Vaccine producers, the PAV said, engage in illicit passive material cooperation “if they do not denounce and reject publicly the original immoral act (the voluntary abortion), and if they do not dedicate themselves together to research and promote alternative ways, exempt from moral evil, for the production of vaccines for the same infections.”

In this document, the PAV associates research using abortion-derived cells lines with material cooperation with evil but does not specify whether this would be immediate, proximate mediate, or remote mediate. Immediate material cooperation is virtually indistinguishable from the principal agent’s action, such as directly assisting the agent. Mediate material cooperation is characterized by causal distance between the actions of the cooperator and the principal agent. Material cooperation is permissible to achieve a proportionate good, and the PAV indicates that protecting the public’s heath, especially that of children and pregnant women, is a proportionate reason to justify cooperation in these cases. (The academy expresses greater reservations about the permissibility of marketing these drugs, but this may be because it is difficult to object to a product’s origins and seek alternatives while rigorously promoting its adoption.)

Considering this guidance, scientists who use abortion-derived cell lines, object to their use, and try to find alternatives appear to engage in licit remote mediate material cooperation with abortion. First, their research projects do not use aborted fetal tissue (and are causally unrelated in that regard); the abortions occurred long ago, and current research did not contribute to them in any way; and the potential effect of using these cell lines on encouraging future abortions is similarly remote. Second, this minimal assistance is outweighed by the great goods of developing life-saving medical products and giving Catholic witness by going to great lengths to use ethical cell lines.

PHILIP CERRONI, M.P.H., is an associate ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. He also is managing editor of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.