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Mexico City, Mexico, Aug 7, 2021 / 06:00 am (CNA).

40 Days for Life In Mexico said Wednesday that “regarding the issue of vaccines, each of the volunteers and people who are involved with the movement is free to make their decision regarding whether to get vaccinated or not.”

The pro-life apostolate said that as an institution it is not taking a position on the issue for or against and that it respects “individual freedom”, in an Aug. 4 Facebook post.

40 Days for Life stressed that “our apostolate aims to end abortion through prayer and fasting, peaceful vigil and community outreach.”

“We do not promote anti-vaccine positions, or attacks on priests who support vaccination” adding that “any comment or position of a 40 Days for Life volunteer is personal and does not represent the position or thinking of the 40 Days for Life Mexico movement.”

The pro-life apostolate began in 2004 in the United States and has spread throughout the world. Currently there are prayer and fasting vigils for the end of abortion in more than a thousand cities in 63 countries.

It is estimated that this campaign has saved more than 19,000 babies from abortion, closed 112 abortion clinics, and that 221 abortion workers have left the industry through its efforts.

In the midst of the controversy over some vaccines, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in December 2020 issued a note on the morality of their use, addressing the fact that some vaccines “in the course of research and production, employed cell lines drawn from tissue obtained from two abortions that occurred in the last century.”

In its note, the CDF stated that “all vaccinations recognized as clinically safe and effective can be used in good conscience with the certain knowledge that the use of such vaccines does not constitute formal cooperation with the abortion from which the cells used in production of the vaccines derive.” 

“It should be emphasized, however, that the morally licit use of these types of vaccines, in the particular conditions that make it so, does not in itself constitute a legitimation, even indirect, of the practice of abortion, and necessarily assumes the opposition to this practice by those who make use of these vaccines,” the CDF said.

The congregation stressed that “at the same time, practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”