America’s War on Religious and Conscientious Objections to Mandatory Vaccines
Recognizing that browbeaters should not be allowed to ride roughshod over citizens’ sincerely held religious or conscientious beliefs, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), on January 18, announced that it was forming a Conscience and Religious Freedom Division within the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The new Division’s mandate will be to enforce “federal laws that protect conscience and the free exercise of religion and prohibit coercion and discrimination in health and human services.” To date, most news stories about the new OCR Division have focused on the Division’s role in standing up for the moral or religious beliefs of health care providers, especially in regards to abortion and religious beliefs. However, the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division has indicated that it may also be willing to receive and respond to complaints from citizens who have been prevented from freely exercising their conscientious and religious beliefs related to vaccination. From now until March 27, 2018, citizens have an opportunity to tell the OCR that they want the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division to explicitly include vaccine-related situations in the categories of complaints that the Division will consider. This is a big opportunity to not only retain the right to refuse vaccines on religious and conscientious grounds but also perhaps to reinstate religious and/or philosophical exemptions in California, West Virginia and Mississippi.