Standing Our Ground

When it comes to matters of pro-life leadership, Pope John Paul II has stood his ground in the face of ridicule, denial and abandonment, encouraging the faithful to do the same. We rally, we pray, we believe and we love our Church. In an effort to do all we can to cripple the abortion industry, we avoid products from companies who support Planned Parenthood, charities that sponsor fetal tissue or embryonic stem cell research, doctors who offer abortion services and stores that supply over-the-counter abortifacients.

When it comes to using vaccines that are derived from abortion, many parents are objecting by filing for exemptions through their local health departments and schools, refusing these vaccines for themselves and their children.

Challenging the Law

But what happens when parents take such action? The results might surprise you, depending on the state in which you reside. Children have been expelled from school, state health departments have used their own interpretation of Catholic teaching to force vaccinations and, in some cases, parents have even been threatened with child abuse charges. Yet when such actions are rightfully challenged, schools and state officials have been forced by law to back down.

“The State does not have the right to decide what a particular religion does or does not teach,” says Erik Stanley, attorney for the Orlando, Fla., law firm, Liberty Council. “Nor do they have the right to show preferential treatment for one religion over another.”

Such was the recent case of multiple parents in Arkansas who challenged that state for their refusal to allow the vaccine exemptions. The wording of the Arkansas law only allows religious exemptions if that particular faith refuses all vaccinations, such as Christian Scientists. At the onset of the hearings in early November 2001, the judge reviewing the cases recognized that the Arkansas law, as written is most likely unconstitutional. The courts are upholding the rights of parents in many other states as well.

In a shocking case of injustice in the New York school system, parents were warned their children would be expelled if they did not have up-to-date immunizations. When parents refused to comply due to religious conflicts, the children were subsequently expelled and the State Department of Children and Families Services was notified. That department then threatened to charge the parents with child abuse for not having their children in school, calling it “educational neglect.” Once the matter was brought to court, the children were re-instated, exemptions were allowed and all charges were quickly dropped.

In Wyoming, state health officials were stopped by a federal judge from holding hearings to determine the sincerity of parents who keep their children from getting immunizations based on religious objections. The parents who objected to the mandate protested that the state would be violating their civil rights if hearings to test their religious sincerity were pursued. The judge agreed and refused to hear the State’s complaint.

In Illinois, pro-active citizens pushed for Governor George Ryan’s signature on SB 1305, a bill that removed the Department of Children and Family Services’ regulation of “medical neglect” for parents who chose to refuse vaccinations for their children based on medical or religious exemptions.

Catholic Confusion

It is not only the states and public school officials who are trying to iron out the nuances of the law and decide if parents should be allowed exemptions from vaccines that violate their religious beliefs. Ironically, some Catholic schools that are just finding out about the vaccine sources are scratching their heads in frustration as well. One diocesan religious education director contacted by this reporter was shocked to learn that the vaccines they were requiring for school admission could possibly be derived from aborted fetal tissue. He stated, “How could this be? Why, the Church would never allow such a thing!”

Once the evidence was laid out before their administration, however, they still pondered over whether the exemptions should be allowed because the Church, they reasoned, had not formally rendered any guidelines. They questioned whether allowing the exemption would cause a sudden onslaught of parents requesting it, and therefore a possibility of spreading disease. The conclusion was fairly simple. When a parent decides not to vaccinate, they are accepting the fact that their child may contract the disease. They weigh that against the added possibility that using the vaccine, regardless of its source, is not in itself without a certain amount of risk. They are not endangering the health of other children whose parents do not share their same moral values because those children would have already been immunized. A far greater concern was that refusing the exemption would be construed as anti-life: What kind of pro-life message would they be sending to parents and the general public if a Catholic school refused its own religious exemptions, while the public schools allowed it?

Fr. Phillip Wolfe, FSSP, from the Fraternity Apostolate in Kansas City, Kan., stated, “Optimally, the Catholic schools would be encouraging parents not to vaccinate when the vaccination is obtained with illicit means. In effect, the Catholic schools can simply say that they are abiding by the principles which govern the public schools—which allow for a religious exemption.”

Yet some schools and parishes have chosen to simply remain silent on the subject, perhaps fearing they will have to commit themselves as to whether it is morally permissible to use the vaccines. But the issue at stake has not required that such determinations need to be made at all. The bottom line is that parents have a constitutional right to refuse any vaccine or medical product that would violate their religious or moral beliefs. And in order to do so, parents need the Church teaching to back them. Indeed, the very act of not exposing the truth to concerned parents could be viewed as an act of complicity with the pharmaceutical companies that have tried to keep the issue quiet. Fr. Anthony Zimmerman STD, a retired professor of moral theology at the Divine Word Seminary of Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan agreed, saying, “An opportunity is presented here to protest against the prevailing Culture of Death and to do something positive for the Culture of Life by vigorous opposition to the use of tainted vaccines.” He added, “It is wrong for the [Catholic] schools to be a light—yet not shine for the public.”

Whereas many parents anxiously await guidance from their parish priests and dioceses, others have taken it further, continuing up the ladder of Church hierarchy. In the case of one woman, that meant putting in a call to the Vatican. “I just didn’t know where else to turn,” the frantic mother told this reporter. “I went to my pastor, my diocese—no one seemed to have any solid answers. My child was on the verge of being expelled from school because I refused to allow him to be injected with cells of a slaughtered baby used in the chickenpox vaccine!”

That phone call would actually pave the way as a small ray of hope for many Catholics who were being refused religious exemptions. The response from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith to Children of God for Life, a non-profit organization fighting to obtain ethical vaccines from the pharmaceutical companies, stated: “In the absence of any formal guidelines from the Magisterium of the Church, parents should use the Church’s teaching on moral conscience” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1776-1789). Those documents, along with several other references to the Church’s position on abortion and respect for human life were compiled and put on Children of God’s website within 24 hours (see www.cogforlife.org). It is now one of their most frequented pages and has been used to successfully challenge schools, public heath officials and state laws that try to dictate what the Catholic Church teaches on this issue.

While some continue to argue that parents have a duty to protect their children from disease, the question then follows: Is that “duty” more compelling than a parent’s decision to follow his/her conscience? None of the moral theologians, priests or bishops consulted seem to think so. “One duty must be weighed against another duty,” said Fr. Zimmerman. “The duty to vaccinate is questionable and slight at best, because the vaccine is tainted, because the danger of infection is remote, because the danger of being harmed by the vaccine is not absent. No clear duty to vaccinate is present.”