IS BEING PRO-VACCINE INCOMPATIBLE WITH BEING PRO-LIFE? - #3

Some Christians have taken the view that it would be ethically wrong to accept the COVID vaccination because it has been developed and tested using cells derived from historic abortions. Their strong pro-life convictions lead them to argue that Christians either should, or must, renounce the use of the vaccine.

John Piper, who has been a vocal advocate for the pro-life cause, has argued that Christians must renounce the vaccine because to accept it would make us ‘complicit in the desecration of dismembered human beings’. He argues that to accept the vaccine would be to ‘do evil that good may come’ and that we should value Christ more highly than ‘any security or safety or health we might get through sin.’ He sees renunciation as a positive opportunity to testify to the sanctity of life.

In the UK Dave Brennan, who leads the ministry "Brephos" which seeks to equip the church to confront the evil of abortion, has similarly advocated renunciation of the vaccine. His arguments are slightly different to Piper’s. He does not argue that Christians would be complicit in the historic abortion from which the cell lines derived by accepting the vaccine, but that they would thereby be endorsing and supporting the ongoing practice of abortion, and therefore complicit in that continuing evil.

He therefore argues that Christians should choose to boycott the vaccine as an act of social protest against abortion and to further the campaign for an end to abortion. He sees this as a unique moment of opportunity for the pro-life voice to be heard by an act of public protest at a time when the nation is looking to this vaccine for salvation from COVID.

In a later piece he takes his case a step further, arguing that obedience to Christ requires Christians to refuse to accept the vaccine, arguing that to do so would be contrary to the principles of 1 Corinthians 10:29, where the context was eating meat sacrifices to idols that was subsequently sold in the public market, as it would damage the ‘conscience’ of the secular world that is offering this vaccine.

Both these brothers therefore regard it as a matter of Christian duty to refuse the vaccine, and by implication as a sin to accept the vaccine. How are Christians to respond to these arguments, and should they listen to them or to other evangelicals who have taken a different view?