'Disgusting': Clarence Thomas skewered for citing claim that COVID-19 vaccines come from 'aborted children'

30 June 2022

United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas referenced a claim on Thursday that COVID-19 vaccines are engineered from cells taken from terminated pregnancies.

"The conservative Justice’s statement came in a dissenting opinion on a case in which the Supreme Court declined to hear a religious liberty challenge to New York’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate from 16 health care workers. The state requires that all health care workers show proof of vaccination," Politico reported.

Thomas, one of the six right-wing jurists in the Court's majority who has upended decades of legal precedents in a slew of recent rulings, wrote that the petitioners "object on religious grounds to all available COVID–19 vaccines because they were developed using cell lines derived from aborted children."

Politico explained that allegation is preposterous:

None of the COVID-19 vaccines in the United States contain the cells of aborted fetuses. Cells obtained from elective abortions decades ago were used in testing during the Covid vaccine development process, a practice that is common in vaccine testing — including for the rubella and chickenpox vaccinations.

National Geographic also quashed this myth:

The cells are grown in a laboratory and were derived from a few elective abortions performed more than three decades ago. These same cell lines are also used to test and advance our understanding of several routine drugs, including acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and aspirin, and they continue to be used for treatment research in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and hypertension.

Doctors, legislators, journalists, and casual observers were in utter disbelief and horror that a sitting Supreme Court Justice would lend credence to such an outrageous conspiracy theory, which was hatched by a propaganda outlet called First Draft in 2020 and thoroughly debunked.

This story has been updated.

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