Children's Health Defense
Massachusetts lawmakers are considering a bill to remove religious exemptions to school vaccine mandates and two bills that would allow minors to consent to “preventative care,” including vaccines, according to grassroots groups Health Rights MA and Health Action Massachusetts.
Versions of the bill seeking to remove religious exemptions were introduced in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate.
Beth Ingham, a leader of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) New England Chapter since 2022, called the proposed legislation “horrendous.”
If passed, children whose families object to school-mandated vaccinations based on sincerely held religious beliefs would be barred from attending public and private K-12 schools, according to Health Action Massachusetts.
Massachusetts’ lawmakers are also considering An Act Promoting Community Immunity, a bill that would undermine religious exemptions for school-based vaccine mandates and remove parental consent for vaccines in some cases.
According to Health Rights MA, the community immunity bill would:
- Allow minors to consent to preventative care, including vaccination, without parental consent or knowledge.
- Allow private daycares, schools and colleges to refuse religious exemptions and impose additional vaccines like the COVID-19 shots, which are not required by the Department of Public Health (DPH).
- Subject the religious and medical exemptions to state approval.
- Grant DPH expansive authority to change immunization and exemption requirements.
- Require doctors to sign religious exemptions.
- Allow DPH to publicly label programs with immunization rates below a state-defined threshold as “Elevated Risk” and exclude healthy, unvaccinated children, even in the absence of an outbreak or emergency.
Candice Edwards, executive director of Health Action Massachusetts, told The Defender that the state’s Joint Committee on Public Health will soon announce a hearing date for the two bills…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (childrenshealthdefense.org)
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