Lansing, MI — Today, the Michigan House passed pandemic supplemental spending bill HB 4047, which includes language requiring informed consent for coronavirus vaccines developed using tissue taken from aborted babies. The Senate voted to pass the bill yesterday. The bill now goes to Governor Whitmer’s desk for consideration.
Right to Life of Michigan President Barbara Listing said, “Right to Life of Michigan applauds prolife leadership in the Michigan House and Senate for including this provision. People have a right to know if certain vaccines were developed using unethical sources, so they can make their own informed decisions.”
The language in the bill states vaccine recipients “shall be provided with information or informed if and in what manner the development of the vaccine utilized aborted fetal tissue or human embryonic stem cell derivation lines.”
Listing said, “We call on Governor Gretchen Whitmer to respect informed consent and the will of voters and their elected officials. People needlessly lose confidence in our medical system when they figure these facts out on their own and then question why they were not given proper informed consent to begin with.”
The Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine utilizes cell lines taken from an aborted baby to produce doses. Moderna and Pfizer do not use cell lines taken from aborted babies to produce vaccine doses, but used cells lines to test their vaccines. Some other vaccines in development utilize these cell lines, and others do not.
The two cell lines in question are HEK-293, taken from the kidney of a healthy baby aborted sometime around 1972, and PER.C6, taken from the retina of a healthy baby aborted at 18 weeks in 1985.
Prolife people disagree about the ethics of using vaccines developed from these cell lines. Some point to these cell lines being decades old, and others point out that using them may encourage additional abortions to develop new cell lines. Right to Life of Michigan believes everyone has a right to know to make their own ethical decision about taking these vaccines.
For more information: Right to Life of Michigan Legislative Director Genevieve Marnon, (517) 487-3376, [email protected].
Background information:
HB 4047
Coronavirus vaccine cell lines
Origin of HEK-293 and PER.C6