General
Conscience Exemption for Vaccines based on Fetal Tissue from Abortions (2015)
Conscience Exemption for Vaccines based on Fetal Tissue from Abortions, released April 2007, updated April 2015
The only vaccines readily available in the United States for some contagious diseases (e.g., rubella and Hepatitis A) have been manufactured using fetal tissue from induced abortions. This creates a problem of conscience for some Catholic parents.
The Moral Reflections released by the Pontifical Academy for Life in 2005 have been welcomed by the Catholic Bishops of the United States. Our Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities agrees with the National Catholics Bioethics Center, the Catholic Medical Association, and others that manufacturers should be urged to make alternative vaccines more widely available so that Catholics and others will not face this moral dilemma.
In cases where no alternative is currently available, the Academy said that Catholics may licitly accept vaccination for themselves and their children using a vaccine based on tissue from abortion or may refuse the vaccine “if it can be done without causing children, and indirectly the population as a whole, to undergo significant risks to their health.” The Academy specifically cited the potential threat to pregnant women and their unborn children from a failure to vaccinate for rubella (German measles).