Vaccine religious exemption letter pdf how to#

Gaming exemptionsįor example, Rita Palma, a New York-based anti-vaccine activist, has been actively promoting her site, My Kids, My Choice, which links to several resources on how to get an exemption, on her Facebook page.Īttorney Kevin Barry has, in a Facebook Live, promoted a Zoom webinar he is offering on how to get the religious exemption “right.” Granting exemptions on the basis of religion incentivizes these people to lie, and exemptions are more likely to be given to people who have lied well - for example, by getting input from anti-vaccine activists teaching others to game the system. In fact, given the amount of misinformation about vaccine safety and the virus, chances are that most of the exemption requests are from people who do not want to get COVID-19 vaccines because of safety concerns or misinformation about the pandemic.

While it is hard to examine closely, there is no reason to think most, or even a large share, of religious exemption requests to COVID-19 vaccines are from people whose opposition is religious. And dedicated anti-vaccine activists are exploiting these ambiguities to help people get religious exemptions. This too makes sense, but again, makes it harder to challenge religious exemption claims by members of religions that support vaccines. It’s not the state job to enforce a religion’s rules on its believers, the state is tasked simply with assessing whether the religious objection is sincere. But it removes one tool that would help distinguish between those with sincere religious objections, and those using religion to cover other objections to vaccines.Īdditionally, states cannot refuse an exemption to those whose interpretation differs from their religion’s doctrine regarding vaccination. This makes sense, because the validity of your religious exemption should not depend on belonging to a religion that opposes vaccines. Employers, universities, or states offering religious exemptions cannot limit them to organized religion, because that would discriminate against those with sincere beliefs that are not part of an organized religion. Sincere beliefs?īut cracking down on the misuse of religious exemptions is quite difficult. This includes: statements from anti-vaccine activists who state publicly that they lied to get religious exemptions surveys on the reasons people do not vaccinate and the fact that most religions do not prohibit vaccines (in fact, many actively encourage or support them). In a previous paper, I pointed out that quite a bit of evidence suggests there is widespread misuse of religious exemptions. You are proposing to take away my right as a parent and for what? To protect other people?” In a recent hearing on a bill to remove Massachusetts’ religious exemption, a witness said that she used the religious exemption, “Not because it goes against my religion, but because I do not believe that it is necessary to put additional chemicals into my child’s body for an illness that she would fully recover from. And without policing, it is easy for those misled by anti-vaccine misinformation to use the religious exemption.

The problem is that the same people who eagerly promote anti-vaccine misinformation are just as eager to misuse religion to avoid vaccinating, and have no hesitation or compunction about coaching others to do the same. The government policing people’s religion raises a number of thorny issues. This makes policing religious exemptions to vaccination hard – and rightly so. Religious freedom is a core value in the United States. Two major problems with granting religious exemptions to vaccine mandates are that they are very hard to police, and that they are routinely gamed.

Vaccine religious exemption letter pdf