Another pro-life student has sued her school over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, saying the requirement violates her religious freedom.
The Epoch Times reports “Jill Doe” is a 16-year-old student at Scripps Ranch High School in California who cannot in good conscience take a vaccine that was developed using a cell line created from an aborted baby.
On Oct. 22, she and her parents sued the San Diego Unified School District, challenging its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, according to the report.
The school district requires all staff and students ages 16 and up to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 20. Exceptions are allowed for medical reasons but not for religious reasons, and students who remain unvaccinated will be forced to do remote learning.
Jill Doe said she believes that abortion is wrong, and all three currently-avaiable COVID-19 vaccines were tested and/or developed with cell lines created from aborted babies.
The student said she “must either abandon her faith or enroll in independent, online study at SDUSD,” according to the lawsuit.
The case is one of several religious freedom lawsuits challenging vaccine mandates by employers and schools across the country. For many plaintiffs, the problem is the connections between the vaccines and aborted babies.
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A group of Catholic and Jewish students at St. John’s University in New York recently filed a similar lawsuit. Pro-life students also filed lawsuits against Creighton University, a Catholic school in Nebraska, and Western Michigan University over their COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Opinions about the ethics of the new COVID-19 vaccines vary even among many religious people and pro-life advocates.
The Vatican recently issued a statement declaring that it is morally acceptable for Catholics to take vaccines even if they use cell lines created from aborted babies because of the life-saving impact. But other Catholic and pro-life leaders have argued that any connection between the vaccines and the killing of unborn babies in abortions is immoral.
None of the vaccines contain cells from aborted babies, but they all have links to abortion, some more-so than others.
The companies Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca used cell lines created from babies who were aborted decades ago in the development and testing of their vaccines. These cell lines are clones of the aborted babies’ cells.
The connections between abortion and the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are much more limited, with cell lines created from aborted babies used only in testing the products.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute has a list of the COVID-19 vaccines with information about whether cell lines created from aborted babies were used in testing and/or production. Find it here.
