ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Accept religious exemptions for vaccinations or risk eligibility for state scholarship programs. That’s the message from Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier to Catholic schools.
On Friday, Uthmeier posted a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops to X. In it, he says at least one diocese seems to have embraced a certain position from the National Catholic Bioethics Center. According to Uthmeier, it says the church doesn’t teach that using vaccinations made in cell lines derived from tissue from an aborted fetus is intrinsically evil, so schools can’t grant an exemption on those grounds.
The letter goes on to say, “Such a policy, if true, is concerning because Florida law requires public and private schools to exempt students from the vaccination requirements contained in state law if a parent has a religious objection.”
Uthmeier said he’s urging Catholic schools to follow the law and grant the exemptions or they could jeopardize eligibility for state educational scholarship programs.
Dan Guernsey, executive director of the National Association of Private Catholic and Independent Schools, said he was excited to hear of the letter.
“I think this is great news for Catholic families and Catholic schools. Anything that we can do to create more opportunity for people to educate their kids in the faith is a fantastic option,” he said.
Guernsey said he’s worked in Catholic education for more than 35 years as a consultant, professor of education, and principal, where he had to turn away families because his school didn’t accept students who weren’t vaccinated.
“They had reservations about vaccinating their children, either because of the somewhat tangential relationship to abortion. Post-COVID, a lot of them have just reservations, period,” he said.
Catholic schools not granting religious exemption requests is something Guernsey said NAPCIS sees mainly in the southeast U.S., but the policy from the bioethics center isn’t a reason he’s heard cited before.
“I believe that the reason for not granting the exemption is really based on those issues of safety-ism and concern about bad press,” he said. “I think that’s what initiated it. Again, when you think about the core argument here is Catholic teaching says you can follow your conscience. Catholic teaching says parents have a right to Catholic education.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, recommends on-time immunization for all children, calling vaccines “the safest and most cost-effective way of preventing disease, disability, and death.”
“The AAP supports regulations and laws requiring immunizations to attend child care and school, with exemptions for specific immunizations only when medically contraindicated for an individual child,” reads the vaccination recommendations page on its web site. “The AAP views nonmedical exemptions to school-required immunizations as inappropriate for individual, public health, and ethical reasons and advocates for their elimination.”
Michele Taylor, director of communications for FCCB, said in a statement, “We are reviewing the letter and will respond to the Attorney General by his requested date of August 7. Be assured, Florida’s Catholic schools are operating in accord with the law and Church teaching.”
According to the AAP, some vaccines are made by growing viruses in human cell cultures originally developed from two fetuses aborted in the 1960s. It says those same cell lines are still going, so no new aborted fetuses are needed, and purification processes filter any fetal tissue out of the vaccines. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia says examples of vaccines made this way include those for chickenpox, rubella, and hepatitis A.
