TN: House GOP votes to end flu, whooping cough vaccine rules for foster and adoptive families

[RandySF]

A bill to eliminate flu and whooping cough vaccine requirements for adoptive and foster families caring for babies and medically fragile kids is heading to the governor’s desk.

Over protests by Democrats, the House GOP on Monday voted to cut off debate over the controversial measure, then voted in favor of it along party lines. If signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee, Tennessee will no longer require parents and other members of a family that wishes to foster or adopt an infant under 18 months old — or a child with significant medical needs – to get the vaccines.

Rep. Ron Gant, a Republican from Piperton who is sponsoring the bill, said the measure will expand the number of willing adoptive and foster parents in Tennessee to include those with religious or moral objections to the vaccines.

Gant linked the genesis of the bill to a Tennessee family denied the right to adopt an infant in recent years because they held religious objections to whooping cough and flu vaccines. The family lives in the district of Sen. Bo Watson, who has called current flu and whooping cough vaccine rules “discriminatory and unfair.” Watson is the bill’s co-sponsor.




https://tennesseelookout.com/2024/03/26/house-gop-votes-to-end-flu-whooping-cough-vaccine-rules-for-foster-and-adoptive-families/

[Walleye]

1. I have a religious and moral objection too, to people who spread pathogens and revive long-cured epidemics

Republicans not only hate the United States, they hate humanity, it seems

[get the red out]

11. YES!

Only the most disasterous "moral exemptions" are allowed for anything in this country. Any self-centered asshole that will buy into anything the preacher says, and walks around like a Peacock feeling superior because of their sacred idiocy, is part of a protected class.

[SARose]

2. Religion again

One prospective adoptive family was turned down because of their religious beliefs about vaccination. A whole state will face the consequences. This is Crazy Town.

I remember when measles, mumps and chicken pox ran rampant through elementary schools. I remember when swimming pools and churches closed due to polio. I had Hong Kong flu in my late teens and almost died.

Your religion doesn’t prevent me from doing anything- it prevents YOU. Stop ramming your “belief” down our throats.

[riversedge]

4. Yes. the big Religion issue again. damn.

[hlthe2b]

3. This is insane. They are killing these children. Pertussis is no laughing matter and the adults are

most often the source--even if they were vaccinated decades ago. And flu? A no-brainer.

I am so damned sick and tired of this anti-science, anti-medicine IGNORANCE.

[Docreed2003]

5. I watched a 3 year old die from whooping cough in the pediatric ICU in Chattanooga

As a medical student. The child died needlessly because of the parents "beliefs". This is sad and sickening. The "religious exemption" to vaccination is something I had not seen on such magnitude prior to the various Covid vaccinations. We are allowing hogwash to dictate science and children will now be further at risk.

[TSExile]

6. Again, this is the "pro-life" party.

It officially needs to be called the forced birth party. They have shown time and time again that they don't give a crap about life. GOTV

[Emile]

7. The religious insanity harms the innocent.

[spanone]

8. I live in Tennessee. This legislature is out of it's fucking mind.

As is the governor.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

9. More suffering, courtesy of RePigs n/t

[GoCubsGo]

10. Is there some sort of competition in these "red" states

to see who can pass the most idiotic, regressive laws? It's as if they're playing "Who Can Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages the Quickest?" with Texas, Florida, Missouri, and other Republican-run states.

I feel sorry for the kids, especially the ones that are going to get adopted by these religious cultists.

[machoneman]

12. FL for sure. Our Gov and his compliant Legislature wins, hands down, for the most idiotic laws concerning not just....

medical issues but a host of other issues. Geez, Gov. white boots even hired a quack doctor to head up FL's top medical position because he blasted COVID measures. Nuts, they are all Republican nuts here.

[SARose]

13. Who is behind all this cookie cutter hate

The same bills filed in the same states with the same language. Hmmmm

[NanaCat]

14. I'm partially deaf in one ear

From contracting the measles as an infant, right before the first vaccine came out. It also gave me audio processing disorder (audio dyslexia), where I have difficulty distinguishing individual words at certain volumes, or in environments with a lot of different sounds going on.

APD also gave me a sort of speech impediment when I was in primary school, because I had difficulty processing internal feedback from speaking. So even though I knew the sound for the word 'earth,' I spoke it as 'oirth' because I didn't receive proper feedback of what I was actually saying. I spent years with a v expensive speech therapist learning how every syllable or inflection feels in my mouth, vocal cords and chest when pronounced properly. Yes, it was as exhausting of a process as it sounds.

It staggers me how parents are so wedded to their ignorance in support of their deranged politics that they would put their own children at that kind of risk.

[lindysalsagal]

15. God wants to kill us all.

Just ask the Tenn. legislature. They know what god wants. You don't.

[sinkingfeeling]

16. Rah GQP. Because all babies should have whooping cough. It killed around 9,000 infants

a year before the vaccine.

[limbicnuminousity]

17. Starting to think the similarities between Nationalist Christians and flagellants isn't by chance.

"The cruelty is the point" is often used to rationalize extreme conservative behaviors and policy. Refusing Medicaid expansion and denying universal free lunch to school children strike me as classic examples of cruelty for the sake of cruelty. At some level those policies and attitudes seem driven by a combination of greed and the mistaken belief that suffering will force the poor to find a way to magically make money. In short, the motivation is discernible.

The refusal to allow for exceptions to abortion law in the case of rape or incest and the scientifically irrational and morally questionable decisions regarding vaccines take on a different flavor though. These are policies that affect their own households. They're not just hurting the poor, they're hurting their own.

That starts to make sense if you start with the assumption that they believe it's deserved suffering. The behavior starts to look like self-mortification, akin to the flagellants emerging following the black death. The black death vs Covid in the era of mass media, might they have a similar impact on the psyche? The flagellants believed they were 'sinners in the hands of an angry god' needing to repent in preparation for judgment day. They denied themselves creature comforts (like medicine? reproductive health care?). They made things suck for the neighborhood in general.

Polls from 2022 indicated that over half of the Christians in America (and 40% of adults overall) believe we're living in the "end times."

Of course there are other groups resembling these people in more recent history. Branch Davidians and Heaven's Gate come to mind. The spirit of David Khoresh has gone mainstream.