MPVR IN THE MEDIA
11/4/2023
NEW YORK TIMES: ‘Medical Freedom’ Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates– Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.
The New York Times featured article, published on Sunday, December 3, covered the story of Mississippi’s journey to a religious exemption and the circumstances surrounding the historic federal court victory. The lengthy article mentions your MPVR, MaryJo Perry, Del Bigtree, ICAN, attorney Aaron Siri, and plaintiffs Brandi Renfroe, Jeana Stanley, and Pastor Paul Perkins. In addition, the white coats’ side of our issue was also covered, including quotes from Dr. Paul Offit and our state health officer, Dr. Daniel Edney.
10/3/2023
CLARION LEDGER: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks to Jackson crowd on vaccines, possible presidential run
Edward Inman Clarion Ledger
Originally Published 10:18 am CDT October 3, 2023 by The Clarion Ledger, HERE.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted environmental lawyer, opponent of government-mandated vaccines, and presumptive candidate for U.S. President in 2024, spoke in Jackson Monday to an appreciative crowd of about 200 assembled at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and Museum of Mississippi History auditorium.
The son of the late U.S. Attorney General and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Kennedy in April announced his intention to challenge U.S. President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination for President.
On Sept. 29, however, the political news website Mediaite founded by Dan Abrams, reported that Kennedy was reorienting his campaign to run as an independent rather than as a Democrat with a formal changeover announcement expected to take place at an event in Pennsylvania in October
Kennedy appeared to echo that report Monday in Jackson, telling the crowd “I’ll see you all in Philadelphia — you are all invited.”
He also wasted little time criticizing the current Democratic Party leadership, charging the party has become controlled by special corporate interests and Wall Street, supports war, and has become opposed to freedom of speech.
Monday’s event was co sponsored by the National Apostolic Christian Leadership Conference (NACLC) and Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights (MPVR).
While Kennedy has been criticized for advocating anti-vaccine misinformation and promoting a discredited link between vaccines and autism, most attendees Monday showed support for his stand for what they consider to be parental rights.
“They closed the churches without any democratic process but kept the liquor stores open as essential businesses,” Kennedy said of mandates following the Covid-19 pandemic beginning in 2020.
He said the government used the pandemic to institute “all kinds of arbitrary orders” including lockdowns and closing local businesses. He said that included many Black owned businesses of which he said “41 % will never reopen,” having lost customers to Amazon and other huge companies.
Kennedy also touched extensively on his father’s 1968 presidential campaign where the elder Kennedy was shot and killed by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Having run against incumbent U.S. President Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination that year, Kennedy said his father faced extensive criticism from many sides including students and labor unions.
But he defended his father’s legacy by stating “he set out to unite the country and he did it be telling the truth to people.”
Kennedy also noted that his father was one of the first candidates to win nominations in both California and South Dakota, thus succeeding in his quest to “unite the rural and urban divide.”
Kennedy also spoke of his personal friendships with Mississippi civil rights activist James Meredith, the late Medgar Evers, and his brother Charles Evers.
He also spoke of his opposition to U.S. involvement in the Ukraine war, comparing current misinformation about the war to that which occurred during the Vietnam War up to 1975.
He characterized wars of aggression abroad and the war against poverty at home as incompatible ideas.Kennedy was introduced by Rev. David Tipton, Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church, and Mary Jo Perry, president of MPVR.
“There is power when people of faith come together for a common purpose,” Tipton said, adding, “when the faith community steps back the government steps in. Now is the time for voices of people of faith to be heard in the halls of government.”
Perry stressed the need for “medical self determination” and related a story of how her own child had been barred from attending kindergarten because the state of Mississippi denied religious exemptions from vaccines.
“We were dismissed, we were laughed at, and we ultimately learned that to be effective we had to play hard ball,” Perry said.
She stated that due to her organization’s efforts, Mississippi now has a religious exemption for vaccines effective April 15 which “no state official will ever be able to take away.”
Prior to Monday’s appearance, Kennedy made at stop at the popular downtown Jackson eatery Hal and Mal’s where he shook hands and discussed his presidential candidacy with local residents.
8/26/202
WLBT: How many families are requesting religious exemptions for school vaccinations in Mississippi?
By Courtney Ann Jackson
Originally Published by WLBT: Aug. 26, 2023 at 2:53 PM CDT HERE.
JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – We wanted to update you on what’s happening in Mississippi related to vaccine exemptions for school-age kids.
It was in April that a federal judge ordered the state to add a religious exemption. 3 On Your Side is learning more about what happened after the forms were made available in late July.
”I don’t expect it to, you know, to become, you know, like, Florida or Texas, so to speak,” explained Mary Jo Perry, President of the Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights. “But I think we just had that big rush right there at the beginning of families who had been, you know, waiting for this to happen.”
Mary Jo Perry has been pushing for the religious exemption to be added for years now.
7/28/2023
EPOCH TIMES: IN-DEPTH: ‘Long Overdue’: Medical Freedom Advocates Celebrate ‘Historic’ Federal Ruling Returning Religious Vaccine Exemption to Mississippi
By Matt McGregor
7/28/2023
Originally published by Epoch Times HERE.
Long before the COVID vaccine mandates stirred people into questioning government overreach, MaryJo Perry was already awake to medical tyranny.
In 2008, she got her youngest son vaccinated for kindergarten in Mississippi.
Within a 72-hour window following his shots, he had multiple grand mal seizures.
Still, more shots were required for him to be allowed to attend school, but it was clear he couldn’t continue with the state’s mandatory vaccine schedule safely, Ms. Perry said.
Her son’s physician wrote to the Mississippi State Health Board (MSHB) to request an exemption based on what had happened but was denied—not just once—but three times, which left Ms. Perry with only one option: to homeschool him.
“That’s when I realized that something was really wrong in Mississippi because under no circumstance should a bureaucrat who’s never seen a child or checked their medical history be able to override the medical opinion of that child’s doctor, but that’s the way it’s been in this state,” Ms. Perry, president of the Mississippi Patriots for Vaccine Rights (MPVR), told The Epoch Times. “So, our medical exemption process is badly broken and needs to be fixed. We set out to do that and to restore the state’s exemption process based on deeply held convictions.”
But at every turn, Perry and others who supported the cause were met with opposition, not from the pro-mandate Democrats but from Republican leadership in the state legislature, she said.
“I have yet to figure out where the incentive comes from and what it is, but Mississippi has an agenda to have the highest vaccine coverage rate in the nation and officials have maintained that for many years, but the way they’ve done that is throwing children like my son under the bus,” Ms. Perry said. “There must be some sort of financial incentive. I don’t know why else they would mistreat the children of Mississippi and reduce them to second-class citizens for not being fully vaccinated when they’re vulnerable to the shots like my son was.”
Mississippi is often considered to be one of the most religious states in the nation, so it never made sense that a religious exemption for the vaccines wasn’t permitted by state officials, Ms. Perry said.
“As a Christian, every decision I make is inspired by God’s word and the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and if I have a check in my spirit about something, I don’t proceed,” Ms. Perry said. “I was concerned about vaccinating my son to begin with because there was something telling me that he was vulnerable. But I did it anyway, and he got hurt. Then we were told we had to do it to him again. It just felt like we were being terrorized by our own government.”
Though she had the benefit of being able to homeschool, Ms. Perry said the problem was that many other parents hadn’t had that option.
“I couldn’t help but think about the child with no father and the mother who had to go to work, or both parents had to go to work,” Ms. Perry said. “It was just shocking to me that our government was that tyrannical and I felt that something had to be done to fix it.”
‘A Force To Be Reckoned With’
Seeing the opposition as politicians who were owned by the medical establishment, Ms. Perry said she realized the voice of the parents had to become bigger than the establishment.
“I know in a practical sense one would say that’s not possible, but the fact is when people come together in large numbers, regardless of how much money and power the medical establishment has, it’s the people who vote,” Ms. Perry said.
Ms. Perry made it her mission to inform people who their lawmakers are and encourage them to apply pressure on them to do what’s right, she said.
“Over time, we became somewhat of a force to be reckoned with, and legislators would tell us, ‘Look, I’m going to vote for your bill, but I don’t want it to come out publicly because I’ll get hammered by the White Coats,” Ms. Perry said. “So, we had a lot of legislators friendly to our issue but afraid of the opposition.”
What Ms. Perry found, she said, is money can’t overcome patriot, organized grassroots parents.
“But in the meantime, while the Lord hardened the hearts of the proverbial Pharaohs at the Capitol, he used their hardened hearts to show His glory through the courts,” Ms. Perry said. “And now we have these six families that sued the state and federal court, and we’ve got a federal court ruling that supersedes any legislation that our state could pass to take away. A federal judge has ruled it unconstitutional not to respect the religious beliefs of families who take issue with many, if not all, of our vaccines.”
‘A Historic Win’
In April, U.S. U.S. District Judge Halil Suleyman Ozerden —appointed by former President George W. Bush—ruled that by July 15, the MSDH must start accepting religious exemptions and that State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney must institute a process by which parents can request the exemptions.
The ruling stemmed from a 2022 lawsuit (pdf) in which several families filed a complaint for injunctive relief against state officials such as Dr. Edney and several principals. They contended that the statute requiring students to be vaccinated to attend public and private schools violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits legislators from enacting policies that infringe upon the practice of one’s religion.
Ms. Perry called it “a historic win.”
“It sets a precedent for other states who have recently lost their religious exemptions,” she said.
Following the Disneyland measles outbreak at Disneyland in California in 2015, many states did away with religious exemptions. Ms. Perry said.
Up until this month, Mississippi—which lost its religious exemption in 1979—was one of six states without a religious exemption for students to attend public school, the others being California, Connecticut, Maine, New York, and West Virginia.
Fetal Cell Lines In Vaccine Development
Families who oppose the vaccines based on religious grounds do so because the vaccines contain fetal cell lines used from aborted babies, Ms. Perry said.
“It is a fact that babies were born alive and butchered between three and five months of gestation in order to manufacture certain viral vaccines that we give our children,” Ms. Perry said. “Though these abortions were done years ago, they use their cell lines and perpetuate them in a lab in order to grow the viral antigen bond to create the vaccine. So, when a child gets an MMR or chickenpox vaccine, they’re being injected with DNA fragments from aborted babies.”
For years, advocates for medical freedom like Ms. Perry were told this wasn’t true; however, a deposition of a physician who helped in manufacturing vaccines in the 1960s ended that debate.
In 2018, Dr. Stanley Plotkin was deposed in the case of Lori Schmitt v. Michael Schmitt, in which the plaintiff, formerly married to the defendant, was suing over the medical freedom to not have to vaccinate her child.
Though the Michigan Court of Appeals sided with the defendant, Dr. Plotkin’s nine-hour deposition went beyond confirming what Ms. Perry and others believed to be true.
Dr. Plotkin was interviewed by Aaron Siri, an attorney with Siri & Glimstad, the firm that represented the families in the religious exemption case in Mississippi.
In a clip of the deposition, Dr. Plotkin answered Mr. Siri’s question on how many fetuses had been used as a part of his work on vaccines.
Initially, Dr. Plotkin answered, “Two.”
Mr. Siri then handed Dr. Plotkin a study on vaccines from the Wistar Institute, in which Dr. Plotkin was named as an author.
While flipping through the study, Mr. Siri asked how many fetuses were used in the study described in the article.
The number went from two to 76.
Dr. Plotkin confirmed that they were normally developed fetuses at three months or older and that a “whole range of tissues” were harvested by his coworkers.
Dr. Plotkin went on to confirm that multiple organs, such as the lungs, pituitary glands, heart, spleen, and kidneys of the fetus, were cut up into pieces and cultured for vaccine development.
“Are you aware that one of the objections to vaccinations by the plaintiff in this case is the inclusion of aborted fetal tissue in the development of vaccines and in fact that it’s actually part of the ingredients of vaccines?” Mr. Siri asked.
Dr. Plotkin responded that he was aware of the objections but that the Catholic church had issued a statement telling its followers to get the vaccine regardless.
“I think it implies that I am the individual who will go to hell because of the use of aborted tissues which I am glad to do,” Dr. Plotkin said.
Dr. Plotkin responded to additional questions by saying he took issue with religious beliefs.
“You have said that ‘Vaccinations is always under attack by religious zealots who believe that the will of God includes death and disease,’” Mr. Siri said. “Do you stand by that statement?”
Dr. Plotkin answered, “Yes, I absolutely do.”
In an interview with American Thought Leaders, Mr. Siri criticized the research that went into determining vaccines were safe for children.
While COVID-19 vaccines at over six months of safety review and over 30,000 people used in the clinical trial, he said, one Hepatitis B vaccine given to 147 infants had a safety monitoring window of five days, with no indication of a control group.
The Hepatitis B vaccine is given to babies when they are first born, then at one month, and later at six months.
“That’s the first shot they get in life, so yea, I’d say ridiculous might be too soft of an adjective to describe that safety review period,” Mr. Siri said.
‘Get Engaged’
While on the surface it may seem overwhelmingly hopeless, the solution to local, state, and federal governments that have been corrupted by the pharmaceutical industry and other special interest organizations, Ms. Perry said, is for citizens “to get engaged.”
“I often hear people complaining about all of the dirty and corrupt politicians, but it’s because we haven’t been engaged,” she said. “Until the people have their own organization to which we’re all connected in a grassroots network and we start raising money to defeat these corrupt politicians and get good people in office, we’re going to keep getting more of the same.”
It’s important, she said, because there’s a “clear agenda” at play.
“We have to get proactive and protect the ability of parents to stand between their vulnerable children and this agenda in which you’ve got a mandatory vaccine schedule that provides these drug companies with continuous amounts of revenue,” she said.
‘Long Overdue’
After her own son was injured by the DTP vaccine in 1980, Barbara Loe Fisher worked with parents of vaccine-injured children to establish the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC).
Since that time, she’s witnessed federal and state governments lose sight of their responsibility to their citizens and side with the pharmaceutical industry.
By 2020, the National Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 which NVIC helped establish lost its relevance to many in the medical field.
The Act required health care workers to report adverse events to vaccines; however, those reports were met with propaganda-fueled ridicule.
Like Ms. Perry, Ms. Fisher celebrated the Mississippi ruling.
“For decades, parents in Mississippi have been working to educate state legislators about the need to protect the First Amendment right of parents to follow their religious beliefs when it comes to laws requiring children to receive a long list of vaccinations as a condition for attending public or private schools,” Ms. Fisher told The Epoch Times.
She called the ruling upholding the rights of Mississippi families “long overdue.”
“States that fail to provide religious and conscientious belief exemptions to vaccine laws are violating not only the First Amendment of the US Constitution but are also violating the informed consent ethic that serves as the foundation for the ethical practice of medicine,” Ms. Fisher said.
I’m glad to hear that but let me state unequivocally; I don’t need an exemption to say no to ANYONE trying to inject anything into my body.
7/15/2023 (updated 7/17/2023)
Mississippi now allows religious exemptions for school vaccinations
JACKSON, Miss. —As of Monday, the Mississippi State Department of Health is offering religious exemption for school vaccinations.
The policy is in response to a federal court order issued in April. The exemption is in addition to the existing medical exemption process, MSDH officials said Friday.
For a religious exemption, a parent or guardian will be required to schedule an appointment at a county health department office and submit Form 139-R, which is available on the MSDH website and at health department locations. During the appointment, the parent or guardian will watch a vaccine education video and will have an opportunity to ask questions. Health department staff will complete the form and submit it to the state epidemiologist for review.
In each exemption process, the parent or guardian will be informed of any vaccine-preventable diseases for which the child has not been adequately immunized and current outbreaks that may prevent the child from attending daycare or school.
MSDH has detailed information about the exemption process on its website.
Read the original article here: https://www.wapt.com/article/mississippi-to-allow-religious-exemptions-for-school-vaccinations/44548473
7/17/2023
Mississippi, under judge’s order, starts allowing religious exemptions for childhood vaccinations
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi is starting the court-ordered process of letting people cite religious beliefs to seek exemptions from state-mandated vaccinations that children must receive before attending day care or school. Mississippi is one of the poorest states and has high rates of health problems such as obesity and heart disease. But it has received praise from public health officials for years because it has some of the highest rates of childhood vaccination against diseases such as polio, measles and mumps. In April, U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden ordered Mississippi to join most other states in allowing religious exemptions from childhood vaccinations. His ruling came in a lawsuit filed last year by several parents who said their religious beliefs have led them to keep their children unvaccinated and out of Mississippi schools. The lawsuit, funded by the Texas-based Informed Consent Action Network, argued that Mississippi’s lack of a religious exemption for childhood vaccinations violates the U.S. Constitution.
Ozerden set a deadline of this Saturday for the state to comply with his order. The Mississippi State Department of Health website will publish information on that day about how people can seek the religious exemptions, according to court papers filed on behalf of Dr. Daniel Edney, the state health officer. “To be clear, Dr. Edney does not endorse Plaintiffs’ views on vaccination or their arguments that the School Vaccination Law is unconstitutional,” wrote Michael J. Bentley, an attorney representing the health officer. Bentley wrote that Edney also does not agree with state Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s position that the Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law enacted in 2014, provides a religious exemption to the school vaccination law, “though he respects her authority to opine on questions of Mississippi law.” “In Dr. Edney’s view, the School Vaccination Law is constitutional as enacted by the Mississippi Legislature without a religious exemption,” Bentley wrote.
Continue reading original article here:
https://www.wlbt.com/2023/07/14/mississippi-under-judges-order-starts-allowing-religious-exemptions-childhood-vaccinations/
6/2/2023
Daily Clout’s Documentary, “The Smooth Stone” Tells the Story of MPVR’s Fight for Religious Exemptions
Originally published by Daily Clout at https://dailyclout.io/dailyclout-exclusive-film-the-smooth-stone/
4/20/2023
The Highwire – Federal Court Victory for Religious Exemptions in Mississippi – Featuring MPVR Leaders, MaryJo Perry & Lindey Magee (VIDEO)
ICAN once again made history this week by winning yet another lawsuit, this time actually reversing the draconian ban on religious exemptions for vaccines in Mississippi. ICAN lead attorney, Aaron Siri along with co-founders of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights, Lindey Magee and MaryJo Perry, join Del to recount their uphill battle that led to this historic victory.
4/18/2023
AP News – Judge: Mississippi Must Give Religious Exemption on Vaccines
Original AP News article posted here.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi must join most other states in allowing religious exemptions from vaccinations that children are required to receive so they can attend school, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden handed down the decision Monday in a lawsuit filed last year by several parents who say their religious beliefs have led them to keep their children unvaccinated and out of Mississippi schools. According to the lawsuit, some of the plaintiffs are homeschooling their children, while others have family or work connections in Mississippi but live in other states that allow religious exemptions for childhood vaccinations.
Ozerden set a July 15 deadline for the Mississippi State Department of Health to allow religious exemptions. The state already allows people to apply for medical exemptions for a series of five vaccinations that are required for children to enroll in public or private school. The immunizations are against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis; polio; hepatitis; measles, mumps and rubella; and chickenpox.
Mississippi does not require COVID-19 vaccinations.
The only states without religious or personal belief exemptions for school immunization requirements are California, Connecticut, Maine, Mississippi, New York and West Virginia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In response to questions from The Associated Press on Tuesday, health department spokesperson Liz Sharlot declined to say whether the department will appeal the judge’s ruling. She did not say whether the department has an estimate of how many people might seek religious exemptions from vaccinations.
“The Mississippi State Department of Health continues to support strong immunization laws that protect our children,” Sharlot said. “Beyond that, it is our long-standing policy that the Agency does not comment on pending litigation.”
The lawsuit, funded by the Texas-based Informed Consent Action Network, argued that Mississippi’s lack of a religious exemption for childhood vaccinations violates the U.S. Constitution.
“The State of Mississippi affords a secular exemption to those with medical reasons that prohibit vaccination, reflecting that it can accommodate students that are unvaccinated,” the network said in a statement. “It has simply chosen to not accord an exemption when it is someone’s immortal soul that a parent believes would be at risk.”
One of the families who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit believe “God has created humans with functioning immune systems that were well designed to counteract threats,” the lawsuit said, adding that they only seek out medication “when an intervention is clearly necessary.”
Mississippi once had a religious exemption for childhood vaccinations, but it was overturned in 1979 by a state court judge who ruled that vaccinated children have a constitutional right to be free from associating with their unvaccinated peers, the lawsuit said.
Over the last several years, Mississippi legislators have rejected proposals to allow religious exemptions for childhood vaccinations. Health officials have argued that allowing more exemptions could lead to the spread of preventable diseases.
1/17/2023
American Family Association – THE STAND
LIFE LIBERTY AND THE PURSIUT OF RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION
Published in The Stand Email by The American Family Association on 1/17/22 and can be read here: https://afa.net/the-stand/culture/2023/01/life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-religious-exemption/
On Thursday, January 12, 2022, the Mississippi Patriots for Vaccine Rights PAC (MPVR) launched an action alert spurring its recipients to reach out to the Speaker of the state’s house, Phillip Gunn (R), regarding Representative Steve Hopkins’ bill that, if passed, would provide a religious exemption for childhood vaccines in the state of Mississippi.
The alert emphasized that if the bill was set to process through more than one committee this would delay its progression and ultimately has the potential to snuff out the bill altogether. It urged Mississippians to reach out to Gunn imploring him to quickly advance the bill through to only one committee before the January 31st deadline.
So, why religious exemption?
Our forefathers sought out America in order to find freedom and the very government set in place to protect those freedoms has stripped us of so many and we go quietly because it’s “just the way things are.”
We have been conditioned to believe by way of manipulation and fear mongering that the government has this authority, when in reality – the power is the peoples’ and it’s time the people took back the power.
The simple fact that we, as citizens of the United States of America, are having to ask for our religious freedom, dare I say the cornerstone of our country’s birth and building, is quite frankly asinine and backwards.
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” – The Declaration of Independence
With an unsavory laundry list of ingredients including that of Medical Research Counsel cell strain 5 (MRC-5) as well as Wistar Institute Foetus 38 (WI-38), both of which were harvested via means of abortion, MRC-5 being obtained via a fourteen-week-old preborn baby boy and WI-38 a three-month-old preborn baby girl, vaccines become a problem for Bible believing Christians.
Two precious lives cut short in the name of science. We, as believers, cannot serve the Creator of life and support something that takes it.
Period.
This is not to mention the additional research emerging almost daily regarding the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry. When was the last time you read all 18 pages of a vaccine insert or took a look at the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program stats?
But that’s a soapbox … I mean … blog for another day.
As it stands, Mississippi is 1 of 6 states out of 50 and the only red state that does not offer this religious freedom by way of childhood vaccination exemption. Because we have sought the Lord for wisdom on behalf of our babies and have prayerfully stepped out in faith – our children cannot attend school outside of the home, participate in school affiliated sports; they can’t even go to daycare at a local church.
I mean, maybe it’s the version I’m using, but I’m pretty sure Matthew 19:14 doesn’t read, “Let only the vaccinated little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
With our voices together, I believe with strong conviction we can make the difference and shift the tides of medical freedom for our children. Just like with the COVID-19 shot, we fought for religious exemption, and our children should not be the exception.
Even if this isn’t a passion we share, even if you are a believer on the opposite end of the spectrum on the issue of vaccination, I implore you to stand up for basic medical freedoms and stand in the gap for your brothers and sisters who do bear these convictions.
I speak for a large and passionate portion of the Mississippi population when I say, it should be a parent’s informed decision of what vaccines – if any – are right for their child(ren).
Earlier this week I had the privilege of speaking with Mississippi State Senator, Chad McMahan, who had this to say regarding the bill:
“I have a strong record in support of private property rights;
There’s nothing more private than your body or the bodies of your minor children. Individuals and parents should have a religious exception if they have concerns about a vaccine(s). I support a religious exemption based on religious beliefs and the science of health care for individuals. The DNA of each person is unique just as we are unique individuals.”
There is still time to reach out to Speaker Gunn. There is still time to kindly, yet confidently press for this bill to be sent in front of one committee and thank him in advance for his swift action!
Mississippi Speaker Gunn
601.359.3300
pg15@house.ms.gov
Senate Passes Anti-Vaccine Mandate Bill
3/9/22
“The Senate passed a strong, conservative bill which protects employees and children attending school in Mississippi from a COVID-19 vaccine mandate,” said Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. “I personally support a broader bill providing a religious exemption for vaccine requirements for schools and will support that provision when it is properly before the Senate.”
Read Full Article at Mississippi Today, HERE.
Mrs. Perry’s organization has been aggressively lobbying the legislature to pass a new bill that would get rid of a vaccination requirement to enroll in public schools and recognize religious exemptions.
State Senator Angela Hill has introduced Senate Bill 2107, legislation that would give the state’s parents the ability to use a religious exemption to opt out their children from vaccine mandates imposed by the State Board of Health. However, her bill is being held up by the chairman of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, Democratic State Senator Hob Bryan – who was appointed to that leadership position by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, the presiding officer of the Senate.
Rob Chambers is vice president of policy and legislative affairs at the Mississippi-based American Family Association.
“What we see in plain sight here is a Republican, statewide official – Delbert Hosemann – working with the Democratic Party to kill legislation like this one that would grant religious liberty to people who want freedom from compelled vaccinations,” he summarizes.
A group known as Mississippi Patriots for Vaccine Rights and Medical Freedom isn’t happy with Hosemann – and has launched an online petition telling the state’s second-in-command to urge Senator Bryan to pass the bill out of his committee before February 1.
Chambers – who says the group’s “political outrage” is valid – believes Hosemann has bought into the lies about COVID-19 being pushed by the left.
“We have a body politic that is inoculated from what I believe is conservatism,” he tells AFN. “They are following the dictates of liberal policy that has no basis in fact – even no basis in scientific fact.”
Chambers urges all Mississippians to call their state senators.
Editor’s Note: The American Family Association is the parent organization of the American Family News Network, which operates AFN.net.
Originally published 1/28/22 by The American Family News Network: https://afn.net/politics-govt/2022/01/28/gop-appointed-dem-blocking-religious-exemption-measure/
