Unlike other children in Massachusetts, students living in a suburb of Boston will not be able to return to school next month unless they have had their chickenpox and measles shots, as well as other children’s routine vaccines.
“Any student who is not completely vaccinated without exemption will be excluded from school,” wrote the Superintendent of Newton’s public schools, Anna Nolin, in a memorandum last month. The directive followed an outbreak of chickenpox among students, as well as the growing measles threats, Nolin said.
But undesidated students without medical reasons to give up the shots can still get a pass to attend the class in Massachusetts: a religious exemption.
According to state immunization data, vaccination rates among children of children in Massachusetts have been falling, from 95.9% in 2020 to 94.3% this last school year, since the proportion of students with religious exemptions has increased: 0.93% in 2020 to 1.3% currently.
The schools in Massachusetts loosen the rules of vaccination requirements during the pandemic, which allows undesisting students to attend class without exemptions. In some areas of the State, the proportion of students who are allowed to omit shots due to exemptions is as high as 12.8%, according to state data.
There is “much concern for what is happening with children and keep them safe from preventable vaccines,” said Northe Saunders, executive director of Safe Communities Coalition, an organization that supports pro-vacunation policies. “People are fed up.”
A bill that makes its way through the Massachusetts state house proposes to eliminate non -medical exemptions, including religious and philosophical beliefs, for vaccination requirements to attend public schools.
“The improper use of the current religious exemption escape in the Massachusetts policy has led infant garden classes throughout our state with terribly low vaccination rates,” said Logan Beyer, a student at Harvard’s Medicine School, at an audience on last month’s legislation.
Beyer, who studies the capital of children’s health and children’s health, testified that he had a conversation with a woman who hoped that he would use the escape of religious exemption to delay the vaccination of his son. “” We really don’t go to church, but you don’t have to demonstrate anything, “said the woman, according to Beyer.
Massachusetts is not alone. Vaccination rates have fallen in the United States for years.
Take advantage of vaccination exemptions increases rates
In the last decade, California, Connecticut, Maine and New York have eliminated such exemptions in an effort to increase vaccination rates.
It seems to be working. Maine, for example, had one of the highest vaccination exclusion rates in the country in 2017, with 5.3%. Two years later, in 2019, he approved a law that eliminated religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccines.
Since then, the MMR vaccination rate of Maine Infants Garden has increased from less than 94% to almost 98%.
When California approved a law in 2016 that eliminated personal belief and religious exemptions after a measles outbreak that began in Disneyland, MMR coverage increased by 3% in 2019. It has remained high, with 96.2%, according to the California Public Health Department.
The actions arrive at a critical moment in the history of vaccination of the United States. The country is on its way to having the largest measles outbreak in decades, with 1,267 cases already registered this year.
While most parents support vaccination, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has repeatedly undermined the safety and effectiveness of the shots.
Child immunization rates fell during the pandemic for several reasons. Children were less likely to obtain their annual verifications during blocking. And the wrong information about the Covid shots warned the fears about vaccines in general.
The percentage of students with religious exemptions in Hawaii doubled during that time, 2% before the 4% pandemic last year, according to the State Health Department.
Hawaii legislators proposed a bill to end the exemptions based on religion, but stagnated after a mass public reaction.
Meanwhile, Kennedy has doubled in the distrust of the vaccine. In June, he abruptly fired all the members of the group of non -partisan independent experts of the federal government in charge of advising the administration on vaccines, appointing in its place several known anti -cacinos activists.
Religious concerns about vaccination?
Most states and Washington, DC, allow parents to choose not to receive vaccination requirements based on religious or philosophical views.
Mississippi legislators added an exemption from religious vaccination in 2023.
In Texas, where a continuous measles outbreak in southwest Texas has killed two children, legislation against state legislators would facilitate parents notified and obtain vaccination exemptions.
However, there is no indications that any of the world’s main religions opposes vaccination.
Catholic potatoes, for example, have a long history of support for immunizations. In a 2021 video message, Pope Francis urged people to receive the photo Covid, calling him “an act of love.”
“Vaccinating is a simple but deep way to take care of each other, especially the most vulnerable,” he said.
Jewish law supports vaccination. Islamic law also does. The Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, has personally given vaccines against polio to children.
A possible conflict point in some religions is the concern that vaccines contain fetal cells.
The concern is unfounded, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Some vaccines involve growing viruses in human cell crops originally developed from two aborted fetuses in the 1960s. These cell lines are still working, so new aborted fetuses are never needed,” writes the group on their website. “Purification processes filter the vaccine during production, and there is no fetal tissue.”
Even so, the number of children whose caregivers opt for children’s routine vaccines have reached a historical maximum, according to disease control and prevention centers. Experts said that findings reflect the growing concern of Americans on medicine in general.
Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatrician of the Colorado Children’s Hospital and spokesman for the Pediatrics Academy, said that the official group policy “is that there should be no non -medical exemptions for vaccines”, including religion. (Some children have weakened immune systems due to cancer treatments or organ transplantation and cannot be vaccinated).
Otherwise, “there is no legitimate reason for not being vaccinated,” he said. “The benefits of vaccines clearly exceed risks.”
