New Jersey: Of God and Vaccine

In New Jersey, the government’s pathological obsession with vaccination continues unabated. This week NewJersey.com reported the state's Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Commission approved a bill "that would establish stricter guidelines before allowing exemptions on religious grounds." The bills sponsor, Sen. Loretta Weinberg, was quoted as saying:

"By adding the words 'bona fide,' we certainly are suggesting that you should not be using a religion just as an excuse,"

As usual, the American Academy of Vaccination Pediatrics joined the debate with their predictable apocalyptic warnings. According to the story, Fran Gallagher, executive director of the organization's New Jersey chapter, said many doctors had told her about parents seeking exemptions on religious grounds, then choosing which vaccinations to skip. "I think it has been abused to the point where it puts the public at risk," Gallagher said.

But what Fran doesn't understand is that the public has always been at risk - at least as long as there have been towns and cities populated by people and animals living in close proximity to one another.

So moving away from forced vaccination doesn't put the public at any more risk than they were before this immoral system was first implemented. It simply takes away protection that should never have existed in the first place, returning us to a morally defensible baseline. (It's important to remember little is gained by compulsory vaccination. The large drops in infectious illnesses attributed to vaccination came before the nationwide push to make those vaccinations mandatory)

Besides, proponents of forced vaccination are not only endangering children (vaccinations, like all medical treatments, carry risks) but they’re harming them directly – that is unless you don’t think plunging needles into a young child is painless. Additionally, there’s the mental anguish inflicted upon parents who see vaccinations as both dangerous and unnecessary. And finally, there’s perhaps the most important harm of all: the harm done to the individual liberty that lies at the heart of this great nation.

Setting aside the philosophical questions of morality, one wonders how, as a practical matter, these government vaccine peddlers will determine what constitutes a “bona fide” exemption

Maybe they’ll take a page from the Middle Ages and employ a trial by ordeal. Trial by hot water would work nicely, I think. As was the custom at the time, government do-gooders (assuming the role of the clergymen of the day) would place a stone, representing the exemption, at the bottom of a cauldron of boiling hot water. Parents claiming a religious opposition to vaccination would have to reach into the cauldron to retrieve the stone. God would of course protect those whose requests were “bona fide”.

Those simply using the exemption as an “excuse” would not gain God’s protection; their hand would be scalded horribly and their exemption denied.

This type of test would certainly be appropriate considering New Jersey appears to see it's people as nothing more than subjects, at the mercy of the state, living only to be told what to do and how to live.

But perhaps it won't come to that. Perhaps the politicians of New Jersey will be denied their chance to conduct their tests of religiosity. The one bright spot appearing in the NewJersy.com article was that number of sources expressed their belief that a determination by the state of religious sincerity would be unconstitutional. We can only pray.