New Jersey: Take Action to Protect Your Vaccine Exemption Rights
New Jersey, please take action today to stop Senate Bill 1759 (S1759), the
latest effort by the drug industry to interfere with your right to make vaccine
decisions for yourself and your family. This bill was rushed through the New
Jersey Senate two weeks ago and it may be going for a vote by the whole Senate
by this Thursday.
New
Jersey residents please click on the link below to send an email via the
Autism Action Network website to your State Senator asking him of her to vote
“No” on S1759
S1759 makes it much more complicated, expensive, and time-consuming to file for
a religious exemption to vaccination mandates. Currently, parents can opt their
children out of vaccines due to religious beliefs without being forced to
reveal private information such as their religious affiliation to a state
authority. And S1759 mandates the interference of state-sanctioned, secular
authorities prior to a citizen exercising a long-established religious belief.
This is a gross violation of our First Amendment rights to the free exercise of
religion.
If S1759 is signed into law, it will require parents seeking a religious exemption to:
• Specify their exact religious tenets;
• Explain the nature of the religious tenet or practice that is implicated by the vaccination;
• Explain how administration of vaccines would violate, contradict, or otherwise be inconsistent with that tenet or practice;
• Affirm the religious tenet is consistently held by providing information that is not specified in the bill language;
• Find and pay for a notary to notarize the exemption;
• Find and pay for a doctor or advanced practice nurse licensed in NJ to provide unwanted counsel on vaccinations that go against their religious beliefs.
This bill is redundant and wasteful. Doctors already discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination with parents. It will cost taxpayers money for the legislation, cost us again to notarize and be counseled; and then cost us a third time with administrative costs involved in overseeing this program by school nurses and the health department.
S1759 is not a bill that the citizens of NJ requested. It is a self-serving industry-sponsored bill with the markings of corporate influence, pharmaceutical funding, and medical professionals wanting to increase their profits through undue influence and coercion.
Please share this message with friends and family and post to Facebook and other social networks.
Is there an opening now in the market for privately educated children in the US, in schools funded by registered charities in the community, where Vaccines are NOT mandatory and in fact are considered UNhealthy? There is your Holy Grail of unvaccinated children from kindergarten upwards.
Posted by: Patricia | October 27, 2012 at 11:56 AM
This ought to be very simple, and it is strange - even troubling - how 21st century language is amnesiac about the word "conscience". And very often we think things are wrong because of our Judaeo-Christian inheritance: you can't put your hand on your heart having examined the evidence and say "this is the right thing to do".
Posted by: John Stone | October 27, 2012 at 09:18 AM
Godfrey Wyl
No, that would only be if you could take doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and health officials at their word instead of as a bunch liars, making fraudulent claims about the effectiveness and safety of their merchandise. If you take the view that you would be subjecting your child to considerable risks for uncertain benefit it does not make a good deed. I have no doubt those parents like Menessah who sacrificed their chldren to the false idols Baal and Asherah in Gehenna thought they were being very public spirited in assuaging the wrath of the gods.
Posted by: xxxxx | October 26, 2012 at 04:54 PM
"Or flip through the Old Testament - you'll find more than enough passages to support the belief that vaccines cause bodily harm and should be therefore be avoided."
There is effectively no argument but that vaccination is halachically mandated--indeed, a positive mitzvah--if you wish to invoke the Old Testament. The only real pockets of objection in Judaism (those to whom the covenant applies) are among the Haredi sect, which is notoriously casual about Torah observance despite the outward show.
http://www.ou.org/ou/print_this/35693#beahava
Posted by: Godfrey Wyl | October 26, 2012 at 03:56 PM
EDIT:: Christian Scientists DON'T go in for the cholesterol/psychiatric/joint/bp pharmaceutical racket.
Posted by: Joy B | October 26, 2012 at 01:49 PM
John O'Neil, there may not be a specific tenet in Christain Science regarding vaccines, and I don't know WHO wrote that aside about Christian Scientists "complying with vaccine law" but it sounds more like PR than reportage. Christian Scientists absolutely SHUN all preventative medicine(not talking about healthy diet/exercise) and in general, palliatives. They will get tumors removed and have broken bones set, etc. but they do go in for the cholesterol/psychiatric/joint medicine racket. And at least in the midwestern rural/suburban setting I was raised in Christian Science kids absolutely did NOT get vaccines and it was never a big deal. Like I said, there were no papers to fill out, nothing. When they were doing in-school MMR jabs in the mid-80s, I sat it out in a quiet corner of the auditorium, and I'm pretty sure all my mom did was make a quick phone call.
And absolutely, Donna! Many religions have philosophical bases which include a reverance for the body, a reverance for nature, and would surely regard injections of viruses and toxins as HARMFUL both spiritually and materially.
I mentioned Christian Science because vaccines are absolutely antithetical to the faith, which proposes that any such indulgence forfeits your chance at true spirituality, as it acknowledges the power of the material world over the spiritual.
But still in this day and age, within the most prosperous empire in history, personal philosophies based on reason and FACT lend no potency to the argument of the common man. The only card we have to play is our "faith". It's abysmal.
Posted by: Joy B | October 26, 2012 at 01:47 PM
I would have to agree with O'Neill here. Using Religion as an exuse for validating one's reasons not to vaccinate simply sounds to me more an act of desperation than anything else, especially in this growing secular society, probably much more secular of course here in the UK than the US.
Philosophical sounds about right to me. That's if one cannot simply exercise one's innate right to say "Thankyou but No thakyou". Without being asked to complete forms or be hauled in front of committees. My God where are we heading?
Posted by: Patricia | October 26, 2012 at 11:48 AM
John O'Neill,
Actually, strict adherance to many of the organized/established religions of the world would preclude one from using vaccines. Look at any religion which is based upon the principle of ahimsa, or non-injury/no harm...such as Buddhism, Hinduism or Jainism. Or flip through the Old Testament - you'll find more than enough passages to support the belief that vaccines cause bodily harm and should be therefore be avoided.
There are actually more grounds FOR a religious exemption to vaccines in every religion that I know of than there are grounds against exemption. In fact, I can't think of a single religion in the world which would require its followers to blindly subject their infants and children to medical practices which are proven to cause illness, disability and death.
Posted by: Donna L. | October 26, 2012 at 11:35 AM
John O'Neil
A bit of both perhaps, depending on who you are as well. Supposing we have a Judaeo-Christian heritage, and some of us have a religious commitment, we might be affronted at different cultural levels by demands which are being made, including the religious. But actually for people of a religious cast they must surely have to consider all sorts of ethical contingencies and putting faith in the vaccine programme or not might easily be one of them. In the past issues of spurious secular authority (both in biblical and modern times) have often occured (so there are precedents of a sort).
Posted by: John Stone | October 26, 2012 at 11:27 AM
John Stone - As far as I'm aware, no religions state you must have vaccines, but this is about using religion to opt out of vaccines - and actually, very few, if any religions have a prohibition on vaccines. Which really makes a religious exemption a bit of a waste of time - should it not be simply a "philosophical" exemption, as it seems there aren't really any grounds for a religious exemption?
This seems to be what you're arguing for when you say "you should employ what ethical discrimination".
Posted by: John O'Neill | October 26, 2012 at 11:03 AM
John O'Neil
So, which religions say you must have vaccines? My point is that you should employ what ethical discrimination you can given that every future historical contingency has not been anticipated, while prostration before an idiotic body of dogma (prophet Offit) is ridiculous. I have pointed out before that in the UK vaccine ideology derives from Offit's 10,000 vaccine doctrine, which is scientific piffle. In the UK you are still in theory allowed to make up your own mind but in reality this is greatly constrained by the presence of multivaccines.
A fundamental stupidity in this is that there is no effective sanction against people and institutions that inflict damage through the programme and this puts an absurd ethical burden on anyone trying decide to vaccinate their child - a completely irrational leap of faith in the present situation.
PS You will no doubt tell me that I need to trust science, and I will reply "No, you are asking me to put my trust in people who do not play by normal social rules and make up their own laws".
Posted by: John Stone | October 26, 2012 at 09:59 AM
John Stone - So you are suggesting that people should just make up their own bits of religion (or ignore bits of their chosen belief system), even to the point of disagreeing with their church leaders (the Catholic Church for example specifically encourages vaccination), if they think they can get some benefit out of it?
Doesn't that kind of negate the purpose of organised religion?
Posted by: John O'Neill | October 26, 2012 at 09:17 AM
John O'Neil
No, I wasn't attempting to answer that question, I was just pointing out that religious beliefs don't necessarily call on us to be neutral or acquiescent in modern institutions just because those institutions were not anticipated at the time those religions were formed, or even if their modern leaders are foolish enough to be taken in.
Posted by: John Stone | October 26, 2012 at 07:55 AM
Jabber the Hut - Jedi was not registered as a religion.
"Jedi was assigned its own code in the United Kingdom for census processing, the number 896. Officials from the Office for National Statistics pointed out that this merely means that it has been registered as a common answer to the "religion" question and that this does not confer on it the status of official recognition." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_census_phenomenon
John Stone - That still doesn't really answer my question about which actual proper religions ban vaccination.
Posted by: John O'Neill | October 26, 2012 at 07:15 AM
John O'Neil
There might not be specific prohibitions against television in most religions - Amish? - but that doesn't mean watching anything on television is alright. People might very well say certain television programmes were harmful to their children or harmful in general. In the UK we recently learnt that one of our most celebrated TV personalities was using his position to serially sexually abuse children, the disabled, the orphaned, the insane, maybe even the dead in industrial quantities, and even with the help of the Department of Health. Last year when he died he was accorded about the grandest public funeral since the Queen Mother, but with all the shows of big heartedness, the millions raised for charity he was all the time pursuing harm, sponsored and protected by the BBC, and much of the British establishment. It is now being seriously suggested that a paedophile ring was being operated from the cabinet office in No 10 Downing Street at an unspecified period. Personally, I never watched him deliberately, would switch off if I saw him, and actively the whole thing was as it turned out just a big pretext to pursue criminal harm to children and other vulnerable people.
Many things have the potential to cause harm, and the vaccine programme as presently constituted is totemistic rubbish with all serious discussion pushed to the public margins (whether you are religious or not).
Posted by: John Stone | October 25, 2012 at 02:51 PM
The Church of Christ, Scientist doesn't specifically prohibit vaccination.
"The Church urges the reporting of communicable diseases, conforming with vaccination laws, and the provision of certified midwives or other medical attendants at childbirth as required by law."
http://www.religioustolerance.org/cr_sci.htm
Are there any others that actually do?
(John Stone - There are plenty things that no religions prescribe: Watching television, flying in aeroplanes, playing cricket - that isn't an argument to avoid them.)
Posted by: John O'Neill | October 25, 2012 at 12:15 PM
The attack on Non-medical exemptions is part of a plan to extend vaccine mandates beyond the school years into adulthood. The basic rationale for school age mandates is to prevent schools and that forced contact from being infection hubs. Using that logic, what is the difference between a school and a place of business other than the age of the people there?
Vaccine proponents want to point to the school mandates as the example of a succesful program that needs to be copied. When that is done, if non-medical exemptions exist they are problematical. 60% of Health Care Providers exempt out of recommendations. This is one of the real reasons for the push against Personal, Philosophical, and Religious exemptions. There are no conditions in NJ, VT, CA, or WA that indicate there is any need to change the exemption rules. Vaccination rates are at all time highs and infection rates are low. This is part of a stated, organized effort to eliminate all non-medical exemptions.
Please see the various slide shows at http://www.scribd.com/VaccineInformation
Posted by: Emery Max | October 25, 2012 at 12:20 AM
What really makes me crazy is when people tell me that my unvaccinated child is putting their child at risk. If they actually followed the line of reasoning to it's end, it's their child having gotten the vaccine, especially the live ones, that put people at higher risk. Some mainstream pediatricians have quietly agreed with my thoughts about this.
Posted by: Kona Mendoza | October 24, 2012 at 09:56 PM
BTW in the UK a group of Starwars enthusiasts got together before 2001 census to persuade people to record their religion as Jedi. It did not require many people and Jedi was duly registered as a religious denomination.
Posted by: Jabber the Hut | October 24, 2012 at 04:33 PM
Vaccine damage has tipped the country over to the downside of the public health Laffer curve. American kids are sicker than ever. Buying off state legislatures to cravenly pass these 'hurdle' bills does nothing to restore public trust in the bloated vaccine program, and in fact only serves to underscore the point that vaccines must not be so great if they have to be forced upon an unwilling public, their constitutional rights be damned. Ultimately it may spark even more people to exempt, rather than the other way around.
Maybe it's time for the Canaries & allied groups to join up with Common Cause in pursuit of ALEC.
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=8060297
Posted by: Garbo | October 24, 2012 at 04:26 PM
With much prayer and reflection I know God is on the side of saving our children from harm, I don't need a religious group to join in with my beliefs or to have my back. If the Supreme court fails in our constitutional rights and decides I don't have this freedom of personal religious belief then I will find another country. Remember I'm one out of six ..five are damaged from vaccines and sometimes yes, I feel they are coming after my baby. What is different about him from every other child , EVERYTHING, most parents couldn't even imagine such wholeness in one child. It should be this way for all children, the birth rite of health and emotional well being has sadly been taken away through a profit driven vaccine agenda.
Posted by: barbara j | October 24, 2012 at 02:06 PM
We can form our own religion ..... praise be to AoA .
NJ fight this with everything you have got !
If anyone reads this and wants to know what autism is , this is how I would describe autism , this is what vaccines have done to me .
"Some powerful authority reached into my chest , ripped out my heart , and spiked it on a butchers hook"
Posted by: Guard Us All | October 24, 2012 at 12:58 PM
Another story from my Christian Science childhood~~ My parents had foster kids for a few years when we were caretakers of a large farm. This was the early 80s, and I was 4. If I recall correctly vaccines were part of the application process, and my mother had no trouble getting her religious exemption. It wasn't a formal process(in my later school years either), she simply said what was what and that was all.
My parents were then given blood tests - not because they pulled an exemption, it was part of the process. I was not given a blood test, but how hard would that be?
I guess it's now "insane" to propose something like testing kids before they enter school, when newborn babies are injected hours after their birth againsts a virus that's an adult STD, instead of just testing the mother. Or maybe I'm foggy on this. Whose idea WAS it to start doing this to hours-old infants? What on earth could be the benefit? I say this as a person whose best friend's son had what we now know was a vaccine reaction before he had even had his first meal.
Posted by: Joy B | October 24, 2012 at 12:55 PM
John, Christian Science for one, they beleive that acknowledging "matter" and the material is succumbing to its ways and therefore giving up on the powers of spirituality - so, no "preventative" medicine. They shun basically every drug as well. I was raised this way and we never had an aspirin or antacid in the house, let alone prescription drugs. Most Christian scientists I've known don't even drink coffee.
If it comes to this...everyone technically could say they were Christian Scientists. No? I mean what are they going to do, start surveilling actual Christian Science churches and taking names? Because that seems like the next logical step.
First they came for the Christian Scientists...
Posted by: Joy B | October 24, 2012 at 12:38 PM
The entire idea that man could, in the matter of a century, improve on the immune system and cycles created by God, which evolutionary process had allowed for the successful idea of being fruitful and multiplying over how many thousands of years, BEFORE the 1800's, probably goes against all religions. Can anyone tell me about a religion that says it's humanity's job to improve on what already existed by god or nature before the first vaccine was invented? Isn't the entire body designed to protect the blood of life? Isn't every disease of the blood one of tragedy? Don't we do everything in our medical power to prevent infections of the blood because they are so dire? Why would anyone believing in God OR evolution EVER suggest putting poison or bacteria or virus in any form directly into your blood or your child's blood, is a good or godly notion, when blood itself is the lifeline? For no other reason than greed, a godless trait that has brought down many a country in many different ways in the past. This is just the newest twist on it's pervasive, never-ending ability to morph. Unfortunately this particular transfiguration has so many tentacles that it will take great effort to cut them all off at once and put the damn thing out of its misery. And don't drop it on the ground, either, just hold it up in the air for everyone to see, forever and ever, otherwise it will roll into the shadows of history to gather strength again and be on it's feet again for yet another generation to deal with.
Posted by: Duh | October 24, 2012 at 12:32 PM
John O'Neil
Which actual religions prescribe vaccines? Most religions have ethical tenets and people could feel that these are being transgressed. Offering a child up to the scientistic belief systems surrounding vaccination might be one of way of transgressing your beliefs - a totemistic belief in dogma (Prophet Paul Offit).
Posted by: John Stone | October 24, 2012 at 11:42 AM
Which actual religions have a prohibition on vaccines?
Posted by: John O'Neill | October 24, 2012 at 10:52 AM
That is how our government wins every time -- they have year of knowledge on psych stuff and are experts in driving the masses like sheep.
They ask us for impossible paper work, and our time - not just to fill those forms, but ultimately demands, sending us to go, to and fro, and pay though the nose to pros.
And then they sneak upon you from behind an give you what you wished not!
Posted by: Benedetta | October 24, 2012 at 10:22 AM