SCOTUS refuses to back Catholic mother’s appeal for a childhood vaccine religious exemption

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to intervene for a Catholic mother seeking a religious exemption from New York’s school vaccine mandate, as EWTN News’s Amira Abuzeid reports. The mother, identified in filings only as “Jane Doe,” sought to enroll her 5-year-old son at Waverly School in Eastchester without the required shots.

New York eliminated religious exemptions from its school vaccine mandate in 2019, following a measles outbreak; medical exemptions remain available. Two lower courts had already denied Doe’s request for an injunction, and the high court’s refusal leaves her case pending before the 2nd Circuit. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they’d have granted the request.

A conscience objection, not just doctrine

Doe’s objection draws on Catholic teaching linking some vaccines to decades-old fetal cell lines. “The taking of an innocent human life is a grave sin,” she said. “I will not do it.” She also points to a 2020 Vatican note on COVID-19 vaccines, which held that vaccination “is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”

Related on the SLP

Viewpoint: RFK, Jr.’s ‘useful idiots’: His 6-point plan that undermines U.S. health policy rolls along Legislating hesitancy: Anti-vaccine lobbying is dismantling state-level vaccine protections 

Challenging creation of a ‘vaccine injury clinic,’ NIH research scientists rebuke Kennedy for politicizing and undermining science

How the “wellness” movement has turned into a rigid cultural belief system

Vaccines, religious freedom, and protecting children’s health: New York Amish appeal to Supreme Court after $118,000 in vaccine fines for blocking shots

For now, New York families citing faith objections still have no exemption to claim.

Related on the SLP The intersection of vaccinations and faith: Should the ultra-religious get exemptions from mandatory vaccines shots?

Read the original article here