IMB Position Paper on Vaccines and the Sanctity of Life

April 2020

The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention is committed to the sanctity of human life, which we believe begins at conception. In the words of The Baptist Faith and Message 2000, “We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death.”¹ We are completely opposed to the practice of elective abortion and believe that it entails the unjustifiable killing of a human life.

This conviction is rooted in the clear biblical doctrine that all humans are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27, 9:6). Every human being is crowned with dignity and honor as an image-bearer of God, regardless of race, gender, national origin, religion, stage of development, disability, capacity to contribute to society, or any other qualifier. This dignity and honor begin at conception. Scientific research in the last several decades has made it clear that the act of conception produces a distinct human being with a full human genetic code that is different from that of the mother. Babies in the womb never share the circulatory, nervous, or other body systems of their mother, but quickly develop such systems of their own. Babies in their mother’s womb feel pain that the mother does not feel from an early stage in the pregnancy. A baby in the womb is not a part of the mother’s body, but rather is a distinct human child. To kill such a child is a morally reprehensible act.

This opposition to elective abortion produces a logical and necessary opposition to fetal tissue research and to the practice of aborting children to use their tissue for medical or scientific purposes of any kind. In this regard, we are aware that two cell lines used in the production of some vaccines can be traced back to children killed by abortion several decades ago.² Does this origin make the current use of vaccines from these two cell lines morally unacceptable? The Medical Department of the International Mission Board believes that it does not, for the following reasons:

1. The decision to abort the children was entirely independent from the decision to use the cells from the bodies of those children to create the vaccines. The abortions took place without the thought or purpose of using the tissue for research or medical treatment.
2. No further abortions have been required or involved in producing these vaccines. There is no ongoing use of new fetal tissue in vaccine production in the United States.
3. This situation is therefore analogous to transplanting the organs of murder victims to save the lives of others. The murder victim’s organs are available because of a morally reprehensible deed, but their use to benefit someone else does not make the recipient or the transplantation team complicit in the murder. There was no cooperative action between the murderer and the medical team or the recipient.

This is consistent with the position taken by Dr. Gene Rudd, MD, in his article “Is Vaccination Complicit with Abortion”³ on the website of the Christian Medical and Dental Association. This article gives an excellent summary of the history of the matter and the ethical issues at stake. The interested reader is referred to this and to other articles on this website which address this issue.

The Medical Department of the International Mission Board continues to require immunizations as an ethically responsible and medically safe practice which saves lives.

This page reproduces the International Mission Board’s “Position Paper on Vaccines and the Sanctity of Life” (April 2020) in full and unaltered, hosted for reference and citation. The text and footnotes are the IMB’s own.