The vote to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution, which previously banned abortion, righted a long-standing wrong. The vote also vindicated the principles of autonomy and justice, which according to McCarthy et al (2018: 1)—who outlined recent developments in public discourse on abortion in Ireland— ‘are at the centre of social and democratic societies around the world.’
Although the focus is now on translating the will of the Irish people into legislation, other challenges may be looming on the ethical horizon. One source of debate could be whether it is acceptable to use fetal material, which would otherwise be destroyed, in medical research, and one might anticipate that the potential rise in abortions could lead to an increased interest in this area of research.
An early example of the possible conflicts that can arise is provided by a case involving Professor Leonard Hayflick—one of the great pioneers of cell culture in the 1950s and 1960s—and the Vatican.
In 1962, following a legal abortion at a Swedish hospital, the lungs from a female fetus were flown from Stockholm to Hayflick's laboratory at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia (Winter, 2018). From these, Hayflick established the WI-38 cell strain, which became the source of licensed human virus vaccines against poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, shingles, adenovirus, rabies and hepatitis A.
Globally, 4.5 billion cases of these infections have been treated or averted, and 10.3 million lives saved by WI-38-derived vaccines (Olshansky and Hayflick, 2017). Yet in 2005, then-Bishop Elio Sgreccia wrote to the Executive Director of the organisation Children of God for Life, saying that it was wrong for parents to permit aborted tissue-derived vaccines to be used on their children, claiming that such behaviour was tantamount to colluding with evil (Sgreccia, 2005). Sgreccia's inventory of evil-doers encompasses those involved in the preparation of vaccines derived from cell strains established from abortions; those who market such vaccines; and those who use them for health reasons.
‘One source of debate could be whether it is acceptable to use fetal material in medical research’
It's a point of view, but while many would credit Hayflick with having contributed to one of the 20th century's major advances in public health, it is worth bearing in mind that religious doctrine can result in convoluted thinking and unreasonable assertions. In this respect I can't help recalling an observation of Howard Jacobson (2017: 119), who drew attention to ‘[t]he absurdity of giving principle precedence over the humanity which principle exists to serve.’
Those who share (the now) Cardinal Sgreccia's condemnation of using aborted fetal tissue must reconcile this attitude with the fact that the WI-38-derived rubella vaccine has not only prevented more than 633 000 miscarriages in the US alone, and countless more around the world, it has also prevented millions of cases of morbidity associated with the congenital rubella syndrome (Olshansky and Hayflick, 2017).
In the Irish context, the role of religion in government policy has been both influential and substantial (McCarthy et al, 2018). This is not to say that religious views should not be represented in the life of the state, but when it comes to law-making, Skene and Parker (2002: 215) make a useful point: they accept the legitimate role of the Church and other community organisations in public debate, yet ‘argue that there are dangers in such bodies insinuating their doctrine under the guise of legal argument in civil proceedings’. However, the authors acknowledge that it is ‘difficult to enunciate a principled distinction between doctrine and legal argument.’
In the context of whether it is acceptable to use human fetal material that would otherwise be destroyed for medical research, I suggest that it would be right to use such material, and wrong to ban its use on the basis of principles that derive from religious doctrine, rather than medical evidence.