NY Undo the Damage — Pass A1358/S266 Restore the Religious Exemption from Vaccine Mandates to Attend School.
Ask your Legislators to Co-sponsor the bills ASAP
(From our partners at Autism Action Network)
Assembly Bill A1358 (DiPietro-R) and Senate Bill S266 (Gallivan-R) would restore the religious exemption from vaccine mandates for pre-school and K-12 students in New York. Our religious exemption was eliminated by the Democrats when they finally got control of the Governorship and both legislative houses in 2019 and threw 27,000 children out of school.
This bill is gaining co-sponsors. We want to get as many co-sponsors as possible, so get on the phone to your Assemblymember and State Senator and ask them to co-sponsor these bills. Co-sponsoring the bill makes a public statement that they want this bill passed. Our immediate goal is to get a majority of both houses. We need to know exactly where all the legislators stand on this bill.
One thing that should be clear to everyone is that the disastrously bad performance by Governors Cuomo and Hochul, and New York City Mayors de Blasio and Adams, the public health authorities and public officials in New York in response to COVID should preclude them from making healthcare decisions for individuals and our children ever again. They should never be allowed to mandate a medical procedure for anyone. We can begin to undo the damage by passing A1358/S266.
Take Action
CLICK HERE to send a message to your State Senator and Assemblymember expressing your support for A1358/S266 and asking them to co-sponsor the bill.
Please contact your State Senator and Assemblymember and ask them to co-sponsor A1358/S266.
You can look up your Senator’s and Assemblymember’s names and contact information here:
https://www.nysenate.gov/find-my-senator
https://www.nyassembly.gov/mem/search/
Talking Points: Restore the Religious Exemptions
Proponents of the repeal like to pretend it was about public health and herd immunity. It was never about that. Only one half of one percent of students in New York had religious exemptions in 2019, which is 1/10th to 1/20th of the rate purported to have an impact on herd immunity. They never could, and still cannot, provide a single incident of a child with an exemption causing an outbreak. And there are no studies showing better health outcomes in states without religious exemptions. The science is just not there. Repealing the religious exemption was about money, ideology and power.
The New York Democrats followed the lead of California making New York one of only 6 (now 4) states that do not allow religious exemptions from vaccine mandates to attend school for religious, philosophical, or other reasons of conscience. Up until California repealed their religious exemption in 2016 the only states that did not have religious exemptions were West Virginia and Mississippi. But then the Democrats discovered that doing whatever the vaccine industry wanted was the ticket to a steady flow of pharma money, so, all of a sudden, Mississippi became the model for enlightened public health policy and Constitutional rights.
A federal court in 2023 found that Mississippi violated the first amendment rights of Mississippians by not allowing religious exemptions. The Court ordered Mississippi to provide exemptions by July of this year for the first time in 45 years. Similar lawsuits have been filed in New York and other states. Recently, on his recent first day in office, West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order requiring a religious and moral exemption. Currently, in addition to New York, the only other states without exemptions for religion or conscience are Maine, Connecticut, and California.
We also saw during COVID that the most powerful institutions: the New York State Government, legislators, New York City, big corporations, unions, especially public employee unions, have complete contempt for the consciences of individuals, especially if an individual’s choice could be labeled as “religious.”
One thing that COVID showed us is that personal healthcare decisions are far too important to be left to politicians, bureaucrats, physicians, medical service conglomerates, insurance companies, or employers. Each of those groups has completely different sets of priorities and incentives and are far too compromised to be entrusted to make medical decisions for individuals or their children. And, as we have seen in abundance, the decisionmaker never suffers any consequences when medical care goes wrong, as it so often does. Only the individual or child who are subject to the decision by powerful, frequently indifferent, sometimes malevolent, institutions, suffer the consequences.
Please share the following link to this action alert:
https://www.votervoice.net/AUTISMACTION/Campaigns/109522/Respond
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