The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the very concept of imago Dei and is demanding consideration of how far we will go to deny our inevitable death. Timothy must have had this in mind when he wrote: “The time is coming when people won’t listen to good teaching. Instead, they will look for teachers who will please them by telling them only what they are itching to hear” (2 Tim 4:3).
In this context, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and the mainstream media have seized the lectern. They teach that if we are to survive, the whole world must be vaccinated. Anything that does not fit this narrative is blocked as “fake news,” just as social media routinely blocks expert COVID-19 opinions presented on our radio program and at our pro-life convention.
In April 2020, the U.S. bishops pointed out that aborted children’s body parts were not required for vaccine development since alternatives are available and regularly used. But we did not insist on these moral options, and now all COVID-19 vaccines in the United States are tainted by the use of abortion-derived cell lines.
In response, the Catholic hierarchy capitulated, arguing that these tainted vaccines are morally permissible because of the grave danger and because these abortions took place 40 years ago.
No! This is wrong! Abortion, either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law. That an abortion took place 40 years ago has no bearing on the fact that it is human trafficking to harvest an aborted child’s organs in order that we might live.
This harvesting of preborn children’s organs continues today. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration currently supplies “fresh” aborted body parts to “humanize” mice for testing biologic drugs such as the coronavirus vaccines. This practice was stopped in 2019, but the Biden administration has reapproved this federally funded trade in body parts obtained by abortion.
Moreover, the gravity of the coronavirus danger is at best controversial. Coronavirus death definitions are so inconsistent that any conclusions drawn from the data are meaningless. To wit, the CDC has stated that only six percent of reported deaths were from coronavirus versus with coronavirus. But the debate over mortality is irrelevant. Whether there were 500 or 500,000 deaths, what matters is that a vaccine tainted with body parts harvested from an aborted child is gravely contrary to the moral law.
Concurrently, the immorality and perils inherent in these vaccines are being discounted.
These vaccines are not just weakened forms of the virus. As Dr. Tal Zaks, chief medical officer at Moderna (until February 2021) said, “We are actually hacking the software of life.”
These coronavirus vaccines are experimental gene therapies that supercharge our immune cells. With the COVID-19 vaccine, immune cells are supercharged to target the spike protein of the coronavirus. Targeting is not highly specific, however, and since humans have some 20 naturally occurring spike proteins, sometimes the wrong spike protein gets targeted, with adverse consequences. The placenta, for example, has spike protein, and some miscarriages after vaccination are attributed to supercharged immune cells targeting the placenta spike protein. Moreover, that woman might now be “vaccinated” against any future pregnancy.
We are created in the image and likeness of God. So, besides the immorality of harvesting body parts from children He made, is it licit for Catholics to cooperate in “hacking the software of life”? Or to coerce others to participate in this violation of God’s creation?
“For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matt 16:26)
PETER (JOE) SMITHof the Cleveland Chapter, originally from the U.K., has travelled extensively and lived in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Canada, and the U.S. With advanced degrees in science and engineering, he worked in collecting and analyzing data to make global strategic policy decisions. Before retirement, he led the global operational excellence team for a major U.S. corporation. He now works with Cleveland Right to Life, and supports the nightly radio program From the Median and the annual “Bringing America Back to Life” convention.