{"id":5439,"date":"2023-12-05T19:38:25","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T01:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5439"},"modified":"2023-12-05T19:38:28","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T01:38:28","slug":"medical-freedom-activists-take-aim-at-new-target-childhood-vaccine-mandates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/12\/05\/medical-freedom-activists-take-aim-at-new-target-childhood-vaccine-mandates\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Medical Freedom\u2019 Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NYT<\/a> Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds. For more than 40 years, Mississippi had one of the strictest school vaccination requirements in the nation, and its high childhood immunization rates have been a source of pride. But in July, the state began excusing children from vaccination if their parents cited religious objections, after a federal judge sided with a \u201cmedical freedom\u201d group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, 2,100 Mississippi schoolchildren are officially exempt from vaccination on religious grounds. Five hundred more are exempt because their health precludes vaccination. Dr. Daniel P. Edney, the state health officer, warns that if the total number of exemptions climbs above 3,000, Mississippi will once again face the risk of deadly diseases that are now just a memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the last 40 years, our main goal has been to protect those children at highest risk of measles, mumps, rubella, polio,\u201d Dr. Edney said in an interview, \u201cand that\u2019s those children that have chronic illnesses that make them more vulnerable.\u201d He called the ruling \u201ca very bitter pill for me to swallow.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mississippi is not an isolated case. Buoyed by their success at overturning coronavirus mandates, medical and religious freedom groups are taking aim at a new target: childhood school vaccine mandates, long considered the foundation of the nation\u2019s defense against infectious disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until the Mississippi ruling, the state was one of only six that refused to excuse students from vaccination for religious or philosophical reasons. Similar legal challenges have been filed in the five remaining states: California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia. The ultimate goal, according to advocates behind the lawsuits, is to undo vaccine mandates entirely, by getting the issue before a Supreme Court that is increasingly sympathetic to religious freedom arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No major religions, including Roman Catholicism, which strongly opposes abortion, have objected to vaccination. But the plaintiffs in these cases say their religious objections stem in part from the use of fetal tissue in vaccine development. A few childhood vaccines, including those that protect against chickenpox and rubella, were developed with\u00a0cells obtained from aborted fetuses<\/a>\u00a0in the early 1960s. Those cells continue to grow in laboratories today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n JWJ IA<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYT Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds. For more than 40 years, Mississippi had one of the strictest school vaccination requirements in the nation, and its high childhood immunization rates have been a source of pride. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5440,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5439\/revisions\/5440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}