That's the way stem cells work - once you have a good line you can generate additional cells from it for research.
One reason they are from so long ago is because of the ban on the use of federal funding for any project that uses stem cells derived from embryonic tissue after Aug 9, 2001.
On August 9, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush introduced a ban on federal funding for research on newly created human embryonic stem (ES) cell lines. The policy was intended as a compromise and specified that research on lines created prior to that date would still be eligible for funding. Seventy-one lines from 14 laboratories across the globe met Bush’s eligibility criteria, and scientists who wished to investigate these lines could still receive grants through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In practice, however, only 21 lines proved to be of any use to investigators.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2744932/#:~:text=On%20August%209%2C%202001%2C%20U.S.,still%20be%20eligible%20for%20funding.
Put yourself in the position of an advocate for Henrietta Lack - it is the same situation, but her cells were taken from her and used similarly, without her consent or compensation.
As medical records show, Mrs. Lacks began undergoing radium treatments for her cervical cancer. This was the best medical treatment available at the time for this terrible disease. A sample of her cancer cells retrieved during a biopsy were sent to Dr. George Gey's nearby tissue lab. For years, Dr. Gey, a prominent cancer and virus researcher, had been collecting cells from all patients who came to The Johns Hopkins Hospital with cervical cancer, but each sample quickly died in Dr. Gey’s lab. What he would soon discover was that Mrs. Lacks’ cells were unlike any of the others he had ever seen: where other cells would die, Mrs. Lacks' cells doubled every 20 to 24 hours.
Today, these incredible cells— nicknamed "HeLa" cells, from the first two letters of her first and last names — are used to study the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones and viruses on the growth of cancer cells without experimenting on humans. They have been used to test the effects of radiation and poisons, to study the human genome, to learn more about how viruses work, and played a crucial role in the development of the polio vaccine.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks/
Whatever position you take about how tenuous the connection is needs to be the same in both situations. If you believe it is unfair that she was not compensated for the work her cells did - attenuated at least as far from her original cells as the vaccine development is from the embryonic stem cells - then you have to acknolwedge the same connection to the aborted fetuses/pre-embryonic cells for in vitro fertilization.
It's perfectly consistent to believe that banning research on stem lines from aborted fetuses is nonsense, but the conection between those cells and the vaccines being developed is the same connection between Henrietta Lacks' cells and the medical developments that were derived from those cells decades after her death.
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