Is it licit to allow ones children to be vaccinated for rubella with vaccine manufactured with the help of fetal cells from aborted babies?
There is no doubt that it is illicit to prepare vaccinations by the use of cell cultures from aborted babies. It certainly is a very troublesome situation if the only way of obtaining such necessary vaccines is from cultures prepared from the by-products of abortions. The question here is whether or not it is permissible to use such vaccines if they are the only ones that are readily available. Can the principles of double effect be applied, that is when only a good effect is directly willed, and a bad effect is simply permitted, but not directly willed in itself. The good effect in this case is the immunization against the infectious disease. The bad effect is the abortion, the killing of the innocent. It is never permitted to do something evil in order that a good can come of it, that it, it is never permitted for the good effect to come from the bad effect. However it is possible to permit an evil, that is not directly willed in itself, and this is called the indirect voluntary. Her
