Miller v. McDonald, a case centering around parental rights, vaccines, and religious liberty, may be heading to the US Supreme Court this fall. Amish and Mennonite parents in New York state, who have religious objections to vaccines (especially vaccines made from the cells of aborted children), are petitioning SCOTUS for protection of their First Amendment rights. 

During a measles outbreak in 2019, New York rescinded all religious exemptions for vaccinations, while other exemptions remained in place. Despite disputed medical science concerning some of the mandated vaccines, the State of New York has argued for a governmental right to force vaccination on children with religious objections in the interest of “public health and safety.” But just how safe are these vaccines? Are there medical, as well as moral, consequences for injecting one’s body with a product cultivated from the tissue of an aborted human child? 

Few people know the origin story of human embryonic cell lines or their current (and anticipated) application in biotechnology. Two of the most well known of these “immortal” cell lines, Primary Embryonic Retinoblasts (PER-C6) and Human Embryonic Kidney 293 (HEK-293), were developed decades ago by utilizing the organs of aborted children at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. 

The PER-C6 cell line comes from the retinas of a child aborted at 18 weeks gestation for social reasons in 1985. No one knows (or will admit) the number of aborted children that were used prior to the successful development of PER-C6. The same holds true for HEK-293, however, we do know the designation 293 is the number of experiments scientists performed in the process of developing the HEK cell line. Just like with PER-C6, there is a specific abortion event the scientists at Leiden reference as the final successful experiment resulting in HEK-293. Again, what is not publicly known is the number of aborted children whose organs were harvested prior to the final, successful experiment.

Pamela Acker and Dr Alvin Wong, both of whom researched the history of embryonic cell lines, suggest that the number of abortions to complete the experiments was significantly more than one. Perhaps even hundreds. In addition, the challenges of keeping tissue viable makes it highly improbable that the harvested organs came from dead, miscarried children. It’s more likely that the tissue was immediately collected after elective abortions of healthy children.

Covid “Vaccines”

HEK-293 was used to test the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid vaccines, but PER-C6 (a cell line owned by Johnson and Johnson), had a more insidious role in the history of the Covid vax. PER-C6 was used to develop, test and produce the Johnson and Johnson adrenovirus Covid vaccine, and “residual fragments” of PER C-6 were found in the vax. It should also be noted that the FDA pulled Johnson and Johnson’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in June of 2023 after observing clotting disorders in individuals who received the vaccine.

During the Covid pandemic, many religious leaders advised Christians that the vaccine was morally acceptable, despite their reliance on embryonic cells. By 2021, The National Council of the Churches in Christ in the USA (NCC) issued a pro-vaccination fact sheet which states, “. . . some have tried to distort our sacred texts to justify discouraging people from taking the vaccine”.  The NCC goes on to weaponize scripture (Mark 12:31, Galatians 6:2, Philippians 2:4, and Ephesians 2:10) before concluding that “. . . taking a safe and proven vaccine that can save lives is not only an act of faith, it is also a moral choice and the right thing to do”.

Pope Francis encouraged the Catholic faithful to comply with the vaccines, calling it “an act of love” and a “moral obligation”. Of course, this position was in sharp contrast to the Vatican’s 20 year doctrine, Declaration on the Production and the Scientific and Therapeutic Use of Human Embryonic Stem Cells, that states:

“No end believed to be good, such as the use of stem cells for the preparation of other differentiated cells to be used in what look to be promising therapeutic procedures, can justify an intervention of this kind.  A good end does not make right an action which in itself is wrong.“

Both Pope Francis’ and the NCC’s position had ramifications for all Christians seeking religious exemptions (it’s much harder to stand up to government, corporate, and cultural mandates when religious leadership, like the Catholic Church, have embraced a “. . . ruling from those whole way of life is scorned in the Church (1 Corinthians 6:4)”. 

Unsurprisingly, US and state governments had no grace for Christians who were made vulnerable by the reversal of moral clarity from religious organizations. This is the case for long-established religious communities. SCOTUS is currently being petitioned to review the 2nd US Circuit Court’s ruling on Miller v. McDonald from 2019, where a religious exemption was denied for measles vaccination of Amish and Mennonite school children. 

The Circuit Court upheld the lower court’s 2019 reversal of a precedent for religious exemption for the vaccination of school-aged children that was established in 1966, stating that the new vaccination law was “neutral”. The court further asserted that the “Amish have never been exempted from all neutral and generally applicable laws that burden religion.” 

The 2nd Circuit Court affirmed that the State of New York did not violate the First Amendment rights of Amish parents, even as the court acknowledged that the Amish live “separate from the modern world”, believe that abortion is murder and that, “. . . aborted fetuses are inextricably intertwined with vaccine development . . .”. 

Laws in the Old Testament

In the Old Testament, God’s laws were a way for His people to set themselves apart from pagan culture and to act as a light to the nations. These laws were also designed to protect His people from deadly cultural practices that were common in the world around them, including child sacrifice (Jeremiah 19:4-6). 

There is a deeper meaning to God’s commands beyond setting yourself apart from the non-believers of the ancient world. We can and should assume that the science behind these laws was beyond the understanding of those in the ancient world, and perhaps, even our modern and more learned culture today. Could there be a throughline between following God’s laws in light of what is assumed to be settled science and ethics, especially in regards to vaccines? The answer is, yes. 

Prions

The fatal illness, Kuru (or The Shaking Disease), was first documented in the early 1900s. It took several decades to understand the cause of the disease, which was limited to just the people belonging to the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. Scientists found the cause of Kuru after studying the cultural tradition among the Fore, where women and children ate the brains of deceased members of the tribe. This resulted in accumulation of abnormal proteins, called prions, in the brains of those practicing the cannibalistic ritual. Symptoms of Kuru took decades to manifest, and the last case was reported in 2005. 

Prions again became newsworthy in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s with the outbreak of Mad Cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. This time, the epidemic was caused by beef cattle raised for human consumption that was given feed containing processed remains (meat and bonemeal) of diseased cows and sheep. More than 100,000 people became victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the name given to this fatal prion variant found in humans, which was brought on by eating the infected beef.

In the 1980s, scientists again identified an outbreak of Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD) resulting from growth hormone therapies given to children in the 1970s. The therapy used the pituitary glands of human cadaveres. Most recently, there were outbreaks of rapid onset CJD during Covid, and some scientists have speculated that the vaccines played a role.

The Unknown Consequences of Neutralizing God’s Law

Scientists had to set aside the practice of cultural relativism to help the Fore in Papua New Guinea end the deadly curse of Kuru disease. In an ironic twist, government and the media relentlessly bombarded us with the relativist mantra “trust the science”, which never proved these vaccines to be safe or effective, as mandates were rolled out across the country and the globe.

It’s now past time to question the new religion of modern medicine and science, which is void of God’s law and cultural traditions of the Bible. As Chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is confronting questions about the possible consequences of abortion tainted vaccines. A recent hearing, Voices of the Vaccine Injured, looked into incidents of myocarditis, pericarditis, blood clots, neurological damage, cardiac arrest, miscarriages, and other health issues, which are potentially caused by Covid vaccines.

Should we be forced to supplant God’s laws with the “neutral” ethics of non-believers? Our religious liberty allows us to act upon faith and the desire to follow God’s word, without interference from government. The First Amendment allows us to decide our own course of action regarding medical treatments–most especially those that developed by taking the lives of the unborn. We cannot be forced by government, culture or our religious leaders to do so.