re: #119 lawhawk

A handful of states do not provide exemptions from vaccinations for anything other than medical necessity. West Virginia is one such state.

That should be the gold standard. Religions don’t prohibit vaccinations. Beliefs are insufficient to override medical necessity, especially during a public health crisis like a pandemic where vaccinations are safe and highly effective.

I would respect the “deeply held religious belief” that medicines developed from fetal cell lines are immoral, if they applied that principle to all medicines developed from fetal cell lines. There was a pastor out there who pointed out a list of at least 30 common medications people take without a second thought that were developed using fetal cell lines. People need to quit freaking the fuck out about fetuses and focus on the living, but we’ll never get there as long as people cling to Jeremiah 1:5:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

That’s it. That’s literally the hook the religious wingnuts are hanging their hat on in order to cling to their anti-abortion, anti-fetal-cell-research bullshit. There’s nothing there that says specifically that the fetus is a person; in fact, there’s some indication that the Lord is referring to another concept entirely, as the verse starts with the line, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” That would be Jeremiah’s soul, which was marked as a prophet’s soul before his body was created. It says nothing about the fetus itself being Jeremiah the prophet.