[wolfekeeper]

One of the hot button issues is the 'use of fetal tissue' because of possible association with abortions.

What this means in practice is that people get very upset about cell lines like HEK 293 cells, which are immortalized fetal tissue. Where the fetus came from exactly isn't known, but it was back in 1973, either an abortion or a miscarriage. 50 years ago! Even the woman involved may have died by now.

Sounds theoretical to most people, but if you had an AstraZeneca vaccine, that's a chimp virus that was grown on that cell line substrate, which has saved vast numbers of people.

But it goes far, far beyond that, pretty much every medicine is tested on these immortalized cell lines, including almost certainly all the other vaccines.

In America, Republican governments ban all government funding for experiments and tests involving these cell lines.  They end up having to have two sets of refrigerators one where they store fetal-related tissues. And every democratic government promptly reverses it again, because it's stupid. Even the Pope who is very anti-abortion thinks it's pretty stupid at least for things like Covid vaccines.