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Decisions of Consequence
I recently watched a compelling video prepared by a group called “Heartbeat International.” They provide women, who regret having taken an abortion pill, the chance to reverse their decision through a treatment involving progesterone. The protocol, though not yet officially “peer-reviewed,” appears to work well if the woman doesn’t wait too long, and the video includes pictures and rescue dates of many beautiful babies who have been saved this way.
What also caught my attention were the stories of several nurses working at Heartbeat International.
“I wanted to help out in a meaningful way,” one of them, named Amanda, said. “I was very excited to hear about abortion-pill reversal for the first time… I thought: God just brought that in front of me, and I think that’s what I’m meant to do.”
She went on to share a follow-up from two mothers whom she had recently assisted.
“They sent me pictures on WhatsApp after they had their babies. … I'm so thankful for their courage and their bravery. They talked about how much they love their babies and I'm just so happy for them. I’m just so grateful God gave me that opportunity to speak with both of them.
I’ve never had this kind of fulfillment in any previous nursing job that I’ve had — that feeling of Yes! — I'm making a difference in someone's life, …a difference in eternity.”
Every child saved this way is someone who now enjoys the opportunity to grow up, go to school, get married, have kids, grandkids and great-grandkids. It clearly makes an incalculable difference for that child, as well as for untold others. An “eternal difference.”
Each of us would like for our lives and our work to “make a difference,” and especially to make a lasting, impactful, and eternal difference.
It should come as no small consolation to understand that whenever we make deliberate moral choices for the good or turn away from what is wrong, we are already starting to make those “eternal differences.” Through such decisions of consequence, we align our own will with God’s, and contribute, in his wisdom, to rectifying the many patterns of sin around and within us. Such decisions enable us to collaborate with his all-encompassing redemptive plan.
In the field of bioethics, these “decisions of consequence” arise with great regularity. When one of our ethicists at The National Catholic Bioethics Center, for example, helps a husband and wife to understand the moral problems surrounding in vitro fertilization, not only can this help them avoid the tragedy of trapping their young offspring in “frozen orphanages,” but it can also help them reflect on deeper questions like, “What does our infertility really mean?,” and, “How does God want us to be fruitful?” This can lead them to consider new paths of grace, like reaching out to kids in the community who are parentless, through mentoring programs such as Big Brother/Big Sister, or through pursuing the generous path of foster parenting and adoption. Such generosity is another “decision of consequence” where we stand to make an eternal difference.
Our “decisions of consequence” need not be great or lofty gestures; they can be quite simple. I recall a true story first relayed by John W. Schlatter in 1993, that has circulated widely since.
Bill was walking home after his junior high school classes, his arms full of books and other items from his locker. At a certain point, everything spilled out of his arms, and another boy named Mark witnessed it and came over to
help him pick it up off the ground, making some friendly small talk. The two of them decided to spend part of the afternoon together, playing games and goofing off. In succeeding weeks and months, they became friends.
Years later, Bill was reminiscing with Mark, and he brought up the day they first met.
"Did you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things home that day?" he asked. “I cleaned out my locker because I didn't want to leave a mess for anyone else. I had stored away some of my mother’s sleeping pills and I was going home to commit suicide. But after we spent some time together talking and laughing, I realized that if I had killed myself, I would have missed that time and so many others that might follow. So Mark, when you picked up those books that day, you did a lot more: you saved my life."
In a sense, each day for us involves a walk along the threshold of eternity, through small and not-so-small gestures, even though we may not always see the full implications of each of our decisions. Each day we have a chance to make beautiful, potentially life-saving and indeed eternal “decisions of consequence.”
Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River and serves as the director of education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org and www.fathertad.com.
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The Moral Analysis of BoxingIn 1996 when Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic flame on international television, the issue
of sports-induced brain damage was raised to new prominence. One of the greatest boxers in history, his evident frailty and overt Parkinson’s tremors led many to question the sport of boxing and its future. Since then, countless other athletes, not only from the world of boxing, but from football, hockey, mixed martial arts, soccer and beyond, have shared tragic stories of debilitating sports-related concussions.
Although many sports involve the risk of unintentional injuries, boxing for many raises the issue to an entirely different level. Indeed, it is important for us to inquire about the intended purpose or goal of boxing.
Literature describing the ancient practice of the sport of boxing makes it clear that Greek athletes sometimes suffered permanent injuries or even died during tournaments. During Roman gladiatorial boxing events, they basically fought to the death. Any sporting activity where the declared goal would be to kill one’s opponent would, of course, automatically raise serious moral objections.
Modern boxing has no such goal, though certain elements of bodily harm and violence continue to characterize the sport, with an average of 10 boxing deaths occurring each year since 1900. Among the more serious forms of harm that can occur from competitive boxing is physical damage to the brain. From January of 1960 to August of 2011, for example, 488 boxing-related deaths were reported, with approximately 65 percent of those deaths involving grave neurological damage.
If the goal of a professional boxing match is “just” to knock out the opponent to gain victory, the purpose of the competition itself still raises moral concerns, because participants are striving to inflict potentially serious harm to their opponent’s brain by causing a concussion, a type of traumatic brain injury.
Suffering a concussion can result in a panoply of symptoms and problems, including fuzzy thinking, painful vision, harmful reactions to light, difficulties with memory and learning, and loss of the ability to focus. Sometimes repetitive brain trauma can result in progressive neurodegenerative disease with significant symptoms arising years later, including dementia.
Our ability to recognize and understand traumatic brain injury is continuing to improve with time. Several proteins, released by nerve cells when they are damaged following a concussion, can often be detected as “fluid biomarkers” either in the blood or in the cerebrospinal fluid. Testing for the presence of these proteins can aid in identifying and confirming even mild traumatic brain injuries that may not be obvious on first assessment.
Neurologists, of course, are among the first to emphasize that a concussion represents a serious medical condition. Treatment options generally remain limited, and tend to include the need for extended time to allow the neurological impairment to heal.Young athletes can be so desperate to compete, nevertheless, that they will say they are fine after suffering an injury even when they are not, and seek to return to the competitive event. A second insult to the brain, without allowing for full healing of the first, can significantly increase the risk for prolonged symptoms.
Considering the intensity of competitive pressure, particularly among young people who may have a limited ability to consider the consequences of their actions and the potential future effects of injuries, the question arises whether there isn’t a broader moral obligation in the community to “save players from themselves” and for those around them to refrain from applying undue pressure to perform on young athletes.Regrettably, undue pressure to participate sometimes arises from parents and coaches, and outside mediators are sometimes needed to assure that young people’s best interests are protected.
One element of responsible gamesmanship in today’s sporting events involves the development and use of appropriate gear to protect athletes from accidental harm. Another involves the establishment of rigorous penalties for players and teams that intentionally seek to cause harm to their opponents during competitions and tournaments.
For the sport of boxing, however, such measures reveal a contradiction. If one were to completely protect a boxer, for example, with appropriate body padding to avoid injury, the sport would lose much of its energy and appeal, since causing injury is central to the process of engagement. If one were to be penalized for intentionally seeking to harm the other boxer, as may be done for other sports like hockey, again, boxing would become eviscerated of much of its core.
There are obvious meritorious considerations to boxing, like the intense training, personal discipline, and resilience involved, all of which are clearly valid on their own terms. St. Paul even uses the analogy of boxing to describe the way we should exercise heroic discipline in the Christian life (1 Cor 9:25-27 ).
But while there are various elements that can attract us to the sport, the violent goal of the engagement remains gravely problematic at a moral level. The sport of boxing not only risks serious impairment and even death, but poses many uncomfortable questions for us regarding our own appetites as spectators, and our willingness to allow for certain elements of brutality and even barbarism in the practice of sporting events.
Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.organd www.fathertad.com. -
Vaccine Mandates and Catholic Colleges
In a recent statement from the National Catholic Bioethics Center on COVID-19
vaccines, we noted that the Catholic Church “neither requires nor forbids” the use of vaccines, but instead urges people to “form their consciences and to carefully discern the moral and prudential issues involved.”
A 2020 Vatican statement offers a similar conclusion: “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation,” and “therefore, it must be voluntary.”
That’s why, when Catholic colleges and universities mandate COVID-19 vaccines as a condition for enrollment, as several have recently done, important ethical conflicts and prudential concerns arise.
Vaccine mandates run counter to the wisdom of encouraging individuals to make careful and case-specific determinations regarding their personal health needs. Such mandates bolster the idea that the judgment of a higher authority, say a university president or a politician, should be substituted for their own free and informed consent.
In general, when I become sick, I ought to function as the decision-maker regarding my medical treatments, even as I work closely with my health care providers to receive the information I need to make the best decision. Similarly, if I am healthy, but face the risk of exposure to a new disease, I must weigh the benefits and burdens of prophylactic measures like vaccines.
Early in a pandemic, there can be a lot of questions and uncertainty because of shifting sets of medical data or a growing sense of alarm and panic. We may be tempted to think we can or should sideline ethical or prudential concerns.
Yet it is at precisely such a time that our ethics and prudential judgments become paramount, as we seek to temper urgency with due diligence, and to confront our fears with reason and discernment. It is in such a crisis moment that calm, careful, and case-by-case discernment becomes crucial.
Mandating vaccines for everyone involves a flawed assumption that there are only benefits, and no significant burdens, associated with getting vaccinated. The history of vaccine development reminds us how vaccines, which constitute a breakthrough technology and life-saving remedy in the battle to improve public health, are nevertheless not a risk-free endeavor.
Some individuals have allergies to vaccine ingredients. Others have immune systems that cannot tolerate vaccines. Some vaccine recipients encounter unanticipated reactions and side effects, whether it’s headaches, muscle aches, several days of exhaustion or nausea, anaphylaxis, or the rare blood clots seen among those who received the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.
When deciding about vaccinations, other considerations besides safety and side effects also come into play.
There are ethical concerns about the way certain COVID-19 vaccines are connected to cell lines derived from abortions.
Certain populations, statistically speaking, will face low risk from diseases like COVID-19, including otherwise healthy college-age students and children, many thousands of whom have tested positive but most of whom have experienced only mild symptoms or may have been entirely asymptomatic. Those who have been previously exposed to COVID-19 may decide to delay or decline vaccination, since they already have acquired some immunity.
For those, meanwhile, who are more vulnerable to the coronavirus and its potentially damaging effects, like those who are elderly, obese, diabetic, or facing other comorbidities, it makes sense for them to consider the potentially safer path of vaccination, rather than risking a harmful (or deadly) encounter with the virus itself. The same would hold for young people who are obese or diabetic, or have regular contact with vulnerable groups like the elderly.
Finally, mandates can sometimes have an effect opposite to what is intended. People can stubbornly dig in their heels when certain behaviors are compelled.
Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School has noted that there is some evidence that telling people what to do can backfire, as with “Just Say No” style anti-drug campaigns that may actually increase drug use among certain subgroups of young people.
“People want to feel like they’re in control of their choices,” Berger says.
He notes, however, that once people have described what they care about and believe others have addressed those concerns, it’s much harder for them to push back merely for the sake of resisting: “They’re [now] a participant in the process rather than being forced to do something.”
Especially at Catholic universities and colleges, where we are seeking to form the next generation of society’s leaders and thinkers, instead of imposing the requirement to get vaccinated, leaders would do better to share and explain to students the benefits and risks of vaccinations — scientific and ethical — to help them decide.
By offering evidence-based information and moral principles, rather than mandates, college students will be helped to clarify their own processes of intellectual and personal discernment, and acquire the habit of making more prudent and informed choices.
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org and www.fathertad.com.
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Countering Catholic Misinformation About Vaccines
A priest recently mentioned to me that he was not planning to get the COVID-19 vaccine. He told me he was concerned that RNA vaccines could alter our DNA and he heard there were also risks to fertility.
I replied that those particular concerns were unsubstantiated, and not scientifically correct, and encouraged him to be vigilant about various forms of misinformation, including “Catholic” misinformation that can spread rapidly on social media.
In a January 2021 article in Crisis Magazine, for example, AnnaMaria Cardinalli repeats several errors regarding a cell line widely used in vaccine production and research. Her comments appear to be based on a problematic LifeSite News interview by John Henry Westen with former graduate student Pamela Acker:
“Acker speaks about her research into the HEK-293 cell line specifically, and talks about the number that’s at the end of that cell line name. ‘HEK’ stands for Human Embryonic Kidney and the ‘293’ actually reveals the number of experiments that a specific researcher did to develop that cell line. ‘It doesn’t mean there were two hundred and ninety-three abortions, but for two hundred and ninety-three experiments, you would certainly need far more than one abortion. We’re talking probably hundreds of abortions,’ Acker shares.”
In reality, the HEK 293 cell line was obtained from a single fetus, and only one abortion occured, not hundreds. Cells were removed from the kidney, modified, and grown subsequently for many years in the laboratory of Alex van der Eb in Leiden, the Netherlands. This cell line, generated in 1972 or 1973, underwent many "passages” and purification steps, leading to the number “293.”
Whether there were hundreds of abortions or just one is not the key issue, since harvesting cells from even a single abortion is still unethical. However, in Acker’s interview, the sense of outrage for the audience is ramped up in proportion to the overstated claims about the number of abortions. This phenomenon is understandable, since there are some Catholics who do not seem to grasp the problem with abortion-derived cell lines at all, or minimize it, which can generate frustration among others who may be tempted to overstate their case.
When Catholics disseminate incorrect medical, scientific or factual information in their discussions, or subscribe to urban legends and conspiracy theories, it raises serious concerns. Some of this scientific fake news comes from those who are generally opposed to vaccinations and perhaps more gullible when it comes to false scientific claims. We face a particular obligation to get our facts straight because “the establishment” will fact-check us very strictly even as it allows certain liberal distortions of truth to pass unchallenged, particularly when it serves the narrative that the Church is “anti-science.” In terms of COVID-19 vaccines, we spend a fair amount of time at the National Catholic Bioethics Center countering “Catholic” misinformation and/or disinformation about cell line usage from abortions, whether from those who believe one can never get vaccinated, or from those at the other end of the spectrum who believe there is no moral problem at all with the continued use of these cell lines in research.
Cardinalli also offers the claim that the HEK-293 cell line was obtained from a living baby because once a child dies, the cells are basically no longer useful: "HEK stands for human embryonic kidney. To harvest a viable embryonic kidney for this purpose, sufficiently healthy children old enough to have adequately-developed kidneys must be removed from the womb, alive, typically by cesarean section, and have their kidneys cut out. This must take place without anesthesia for the child, which would lessen the viability of the organs.”
These claims are not correct, and there is no historical evidence that a C-section was ever done to obtain the HEK-293 cell line. Rather, procurement of the kidneys relied on standard abortion techniques. It is also noteworthy that extracted kidneys can survive and even function for many minutes following the death of an individual — that is how cadaveric kidney transplantation between adults originally took place — and cells can be successfully derived from kidneys quite some time after their removal from the body.
The best response to these forms of misinformation from well-intentioned Catholics is to provide accurate guidance and scientific explanations to our Catholic faithful, hoping they will have ears to hear and hearts open to dialogue and reflection when presented with factually correct information.
None of this is to reduce the obligation we have to object strongly to the continued use of abortion-derived cells in vaccine work and other forms of research, as I have emphasized in several recent essays available at ncbcenter.org and fathertad.com.
But Catholics have to be on guard against anti-science prophets, no matter how well meaning, and the false witness they bear. We should give witness to the truth in all its forms, including in the important and highly influential worlds of science and medicine.
Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org and www.fathertad.com.
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MUSt Catholics refuse a COVID-19 vaccine made with a cell line from an abortion?
By Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk
In the wake of announcements from multiple pharmaceutical companies about safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, many are expressing ethical doubts about whether it is OK to take these vaccines. Do Catholics have a moral duty to decline an inoculation if it was unethically produced using a cell line that came from an abortion?
The short answer is “no.” This has been discussed and explained in several magisterial church documents in recent years.
In 2008, for example, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reminded us in the Instruction Dignitas Personae that:
“Grave reasons may be morally proportionate to justify the use of such ‘biological material.’ Thus, for example, danger to the health of children could permit parents to use a vaccine which was developed using cell lines of illicit origin, while keeping in mind that everyone has the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their healthcare system make other types of vaccines available.”
For a serious reason, therefore, Catholics may receive a COVID-19 vaccine having an association with abortion, and a serious reason could include a threat to one’s health and well-being. Those who are elderly or who face co-morbidities like diabetes, obesity or other significant health conditions are among the highest risk groups for adverse outcomes from infection and would clearly have a serious reason.
Vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, which was the first to receive emergency approval in the U.S., do not rely on cell lines from abortions in the manufacturing process. As such, they appear to be good candidates for Catholics to use. There is a problem that a cell line from a 1972 abortion was used to carry out some ancillary testing of those vaccines, but the fact that zero material derived from any cell line from an abortion is present in these vaccines, that is to say, inside the syringe which actually jabs the patient, is sufficient in the minds of most to assuage any concern over using them, even if problematic laboratory testing may have taken place along the way.
If we end up facing a choice among multiple COVID-19 vaccines of similar or equal safety and efficacy, as appears likely, it will clearly be preferable to choose alternatives with a better ethical profile, i.e. those not associated with, or less associated with, material derived from abortions.
Suppose, however, that two new vaccines both appeared to be safe during clinical trials. The first vaccine had no association with abortion, but was only 35% effective at protecting from COVID-19, while the second was more than 90% effective, but was manufactured using a cell line derived from an abortion. In such a case, again, we could choose the significantly more effective version for the serious reason of danger to our health.
Relying on cell lines from abortions to manufacture a COVID-19 vaccine provokes strong moral objections and some can and will refuse the vaccines on these grounds. While it is a personal decision of conscience as to whether or not to accept a vaccine, it is important to be clear that the Church, for her part, does not require us to decline it on such grounds in the face of serious reasons, as in the situation of an elderly person or someone with multiple health issues who faces significant risks if they were to contract COVID-19. This fact, of course, in no way absolves or diminishes the serious wrongdoing of those who used cell lines from abortions to make vaccines in the first place.
Any time we decide to receive an unethically produced vaccine, moreover, we should push back. We need to do our part in applying pressure on the manufacturer, perhaps by sending an e-mail indicating our objection to the fact that their vaccine was produced using ethically controversial cell sources, and requesting that they reformulate it using alternative, non-abortion-related cell sources. Alternatively, we might write a letter to the editor of our local paper pointing out the injustice of being morally coerced to rely on these cell sources, or take other steps to educate and inform others.
Such efforts help expand public awareness of the problem and apply real pressure for change. Such efforts can be more effective (and require more authentic determination on our part) than merely “digging in our heels” or “taking a stand” and refusing to get vaccinated, which has the negative effect of subjecting us, and others around us, to heightened risk from various diseases.
The pandemic is certain to elevate the profile of abortion-related ethical concerns among the public to a degree not previously seen, offering a unique opportunity to push for the elimination of these cell lines from future biomedical research and pharmaceutical development projects.
– Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org and www.fathertad.com. -
Is Mandating a COVID-19 Vaccine Ethical?
Virginia State Health Commissioner, Dr. Norman
Oliver, told a local news station in August 2020 that he planned to mandate COVID-19 immunizations for Virginians once a vaccine becomes available to the public. The following day, the Governor, Ralph Northam, pulled rank on the Commissioner and announced there would be no vaccine mandate after all. The Health Department walked back the Commissioner’s earlier comments while the Governor’s Office issued a statement focusing on vaccine accessibility and fair distribution, not a mandate.
Virginia law, nevertheless, does empower the Commissioner to issue a vaccine mandate under certain conditions. Virginia has a religious exemption for vaccines generally, but not if the state declares an “emergency or epidemic of any disease of public health importance for which a vaccine exists.” In the emergency situation, the only exemption would be for serious medical reasons, i.e. the vaccine would be detrimental to the health of the recipient, as certified by a physician.
State legislators have been pushing to update the Virginia law to include a religious exemption in an emergency declaration.
The contentious discussions in Virginia raise broader questions about vaccine mandates and exemptions.
It can be helpful to distinguish local vaccine mandates from universal ones.
A local mandate means an immunization is required for services or employment, insisting, for example, that children be vaccinated prior to admission to the local school, or workers in a hospital system be compliant
with Centers for Disease Control immunization schedules as a condition for employment.
A universal mandate, meanwhile, involves a demand that all residents of a particular geographical area, such as a township, county, state or country be immunized.
Generally speaking, vaccinations should not be universally mandated, considering the unique manner in which a vaccine can impose itself upon the inner workings of the human body, and in consideration of the potentially complex set of risks that may accrue.
Especially for newly-developed vaccines with uncertain profiles of efficacy, adverse events, and long-term consequences, universal mandates are ethically problematic.
Only in the face of a highly virulent and deadly pathogen, with few or no alternative treatments available — and it would be doubtful whether any vaccine for COVID-19 could ever qualify in this way — might a broader, universal-type mandate become justifiable.
Even in such high risk situations, however, only a "soft universal mandate" would be justifiable, one that allowed for at least three exemptions to be liberally available to the populace: a conscience exemption, a religious exemption, and as noted earlier, a medical exemption. These exceptions provide the basis for appropriate "opt outs" to occur, and for basic human freedoms to be duly safeguarded.
A local vaccine mandate to ensure the safety of a school or work environment can be acceptable, and not unduly coercive, in part because no one is compelled to seek employment in the field of healthcare, nor to be educated in one specific school setting. Also, exemptions are oftentimes available within schools or certain healthcare settings.
How would a religious exemption differ from a conscience exemption?
A religious exemption would apply if the teachings of the faith of the individual to be vaccinated held that vaccines in general were immoral and contrary to God's will, as might be the case for members of the Christian Science Church founded by Mary Baker Eddy. Since there is no Catholic teaching that the reception of vaccines, including those that rely on fetal cell lines from abortions that happened long ago, is sinful, Catholics cannot claim a religious exemption from the requirement of immunization.
A conscience exemption, meanwhile, would refer to the situation in which an individual in conscience believed that it was immoral to be vaccinated.
Some individuals might claim a conscience exemption if they were convinced, even following extensive safety and efficacy testing, that the risks of being inoculated outweighed the potential benefits.
It is Catholic teaching that one must follow one's informed judgment of conscience even if one is in error because the conscience is our last best judgment about what is right or wrong.
Some Catholics might claim a conscience exemption out of a mistaken but sincerely held conviction that vaccinations themselves are always wrong, or that it is always immoral to receive vaccines made out of cell lines from abortions when that is the only option available.
Some states and jurisdictions do not distinguish between religious and conscience exemptions. They only make available a religious exemption, by which they often intend to include and subsume under the same heading the exercise of conscientious objection.
In sum, state-sponsored or legislative coercion through a universal vaccine mandate raises ethical concerns, especially when appropriate exemptions are unavailable.
Health officials should instead seek to educate those under their authority, through careful and patient explanation, about the importance of receiving a vaccine, so they might freely choose to do so on their own initiative.
– Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as the Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org and www.fathertad.com.
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