Recent measles outbreaks have had public officials in some states thinking about limiting non-medical exemptions from vaccine requirements in order to boost sagging vaccination rates, but at the same time, some anti-abortion activists are encouraging people to view vaccination as participation in evil.
Intercessors for America, for example, has published "Immunized Against Effective Prayer," a four-page “intelligence report” suggesting that decades of prayer to break “the curse of abortion” may have been ineffective because so many people have been injected with vaccines containing aborted fetal tissue. According to IFA’s report, that makes them complicit in abortion, “thus disqualifying our spiritual authority in prayer.”
More than likely, intercessors praying for the overturn of Roe v. Wade have, unknowingly, been vaccinated with this very tissue. This revelation could provide some answers to why our breakthrough has not yet come.
IFA’s guide offers a “prayer for cleansing” in which people ask forgiveness for any participation in “using that innocent bloodshed to inoculate against disease” and ask to be cleansed of any curse they are under as a result.
It is true that some vaccines are made using cell lines drawn from two pregnancies terminated in the early 1960s. Over the years, anti-abortion groups as well as the Vatican, have publicly weighed what they see as the ethical issues raised by this fact against the individual and societal benefits of vaccines. At Vice’s Tonic this week, Susan Runkunas pointed out that the National Catholic Bioethics Center concludes that people are “morally free” to use vaccines for which there is no alternative because “the risk to public health, if one chooses not to vaccinate, outweighs the legitimate concern about the origins of the vaccine.”
IFA isn’t so sure. “Vaccines began with taking life,” its report states, urging people to “prayerfully consider” whether it is “appropriate for believers to make use of medicine created from the tissue of aborted fetuses.” And, it says, if people are moved to repent, “should we love our neighbors as ourselves by educating and warning them to seek God prior to participating in the use of these products?”
What are the ramifications of an entire nation (and world) that has profited by health or monetarily on the purposeful demise of an innocent child? Are our hands free of blood because it was for the greater good? Does it sooth our conscience that this began long ago and what’s done is done?
The doctrine of the shedding of innocent blood tells us that there is always a consequence for this taking of life. In Ezekiel 35:6, God says, “[B]ecause you did not hate bloodshed, therefore blood will pursue you.” Bloodshed is pursuing this generation and will continue to do so until we hate abortion and remove it—wherever it occurs.
Anti-abortion advocates want to push scientists and pharmaceutical companies to develop alternatives that do not involve the use of cells derived from abortion. From a policy perspective, IFA urges people to “pray for state and federal lawmakers to restore and protect religious freedom so Americans can make all personal health decisions based upon what they discern as they seek the Lord in Spirit, in Truth and in His Holy Word.”
Interestingly, IFA dismisses the findings of a 2016 “United States Congressional Commission” for reporting that aborted fetal tissue was not used in vaccines. Turns out the report they’re talking about was from a “Select Investigative Panel” of the Energy & Commerce Committee, chaired by ardent abortion-rights foe Marsha Blackburn, to investigate charges made by anti-abortion activist David Daleiden that Planned Parenthood was selling “baby parts.” When it came to vaccines, those anti-choice advocates were trying to make the case that scientific progress has not been dependent on the use of fetal tissue research. Those assertions were challenged in Science magazine.
