SC State Senator Proposes Bill To Remove Religious Exemptions For Vaccines In Public School Children
from the thank-god dept
The current measles shitstorm in South Carolina has been burning for several months now, dating all the way back to October of 2025. What started with a bunch of counties that were undervaccinated for measles began spiraling out of control at the start of 2026. The federal tracker for measles cases is at best woefully out of date, or purposefully obfuscating the true degree of the problem at worst. That public tracker, which is updated every Friday, claims a current nationwide count of confirmed measles cases at 910. The current measles count in South Carolina alone, for this year, is 933. Once again we have a federal government program run by RFK Jr. that is behind, unprepared, and impotent.
In the absence of federal leadership, the states will attempt to take action on their own. And sometimes those actions will result in federal pushback from the very same people who are causing the problem through inaction in the first place. I have no doubt that will be the case with a South Carolina state senator’s attempt at a bill to remove the religious exemptions for vaccinations for public schools in the state.
The context here is that South Carolina has one of the most wide open programs for obtaining a religious exemption for a childhood vaccine in the country. I think only Florida might be considered more wide open, given that state has mostly removed all vaccination requirements for public schooling. In South Carolina, you essentially just have to whisper the word “religion” and you’re exempt.
But that wont’ be the case if Senator Margie Mathews gets her way.
Senator Margie Bright Matthews (D-Dist. 45) has introduced a bill that would eliminate religious exemptions for measles vaccinations for students in public K–12 schools and childcare settings. It’s a move that’s drawing both support and criticism across the state.
Matthews said the rising measles cases prompted her to step in with the proposed legislation in an effort to bolster public health and keep communities safe.
“The goal of the bill is simply to protect children and stop the spread of measles in South Carolina,” Matthews said.
Yes, of course it is. And the pushback that has already begun within the state is absurd. I know enough about religion, as well as religious demographics, to know with absolute certainty that the number of “religious exemptions” in South Carolina doesn’t remotely comport with the number of religious adherents to any religion that has anything to say about vaccinations. South Carolina is largely Protestant and Catholic, for instance. While Protestants have traditionally been in the vaccine hesitant camp, I have never heard a serious biblical argument made for that stance. Were one to even exist, I’m confident most of the people applying for exemptions couldn’t make it.
Instead, these people are vaccine hesitant for entirely non-religious reasons. And that, I will say, is their right. But this legislation suggests that nobody’s right to their religion includes the right to put the rest of their community in danger.
Senator Matthews stressed that the goal of the bill is to increase vaccination rates and limit the spread of measles.
“I plan on reminding them every time we have new cases in South Carolina, I plan on writing and requesting that my bill receive a hearing before the committee, so that we can have the influencers from South Carolina that are against this bill and that are for this bill, I would like to have public hearing in reference to it,” she said.
Despite my strict adherence to being non-religious, I am, in fact, sensitive to ensuring that we maintain the secular rights of those who don’t agree with me. It’s that secularism that has allowed the flourishing of both free speech and thought in this country as well as, perhaps ironically, of religion itself. All of that is just aces as far as I’m concerned.
But just like someone’s freedom of movement ends the moment their fist makes contact with my face, so too does the rights of religious freedom end at the point where it puts everyone else’s children in danger.
Filed Under: anti-vax, margie bright matthews, measles, religious freedom, south carolina, vaccine mandates
Comments on “SC State Senator Proposes Bill To Remove Religious Exemptions For Vaccines In Public School Children”
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Yeah man, you don’t get to force others to inject stuff into themselves, nor their children.
Really not sure what part you don’t get.
You are the baddies.
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You have the right to be pro-plague and/or try to get your kids maimed/killed by refusing to get them vaccinated, what you don’t have is the right to put the lives of everyone else around you at risk because of it.
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It’s obvious you didn’t get the part that it’s entirely voluntarily avoid getting vaccinated, but if you go with that choice you also don’t get to send your kids to childcare or public schools.
But I’m sure you would happy to fraternized with people who may have Dengue-fever or Foot-and-mouth disease or any other disease there’s a vaccine for. Hey, if you are lucky you may even run into someone who has the Bubonic plague but vaccines are bad, right?
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I have to wonder what the venn diagram of ‘Terrible parents who refuse to vaccinate their children because that’s their choice as the parent’ and ‘Parents with children who have food allergies and insist that the school change it’s cafeteria menu in response’ look like…
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No, it’s very much not voluntary on the part of the children. Even if they want a vaccine, they have no rights; the parents’ religious views take precedence for some reason.
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Don’t want it? Then remove yourself and your children from all public contact. If you’re going to make yourselves a threat to public health & safety then you don’t get to make any public contact with those who do care about public health. You’re the “baddie” here, buddy.
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Fuck off, plague rat.
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That’s why theses kinds of “mandatory common sense for everyone” laws would never pass, because too many estimate their level of common sense from their lack of common sense.
With regards to Catholics and vaccines.
At the point that vaccines became available for COVID Pope Francis started with declaring taking a vaccines was the right thing to do for Catholics. He eventually escalated that to not taking the vaccine was the equivalent of attempting direct suicide. And for Catholics any attempt at direct suicide that doesn’t get absolved by clergy before a person dies is a go straight to hell sin.
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People are allowed to have personal religious views, regardless of what some official says. But I find it a bit hard to take them seriously when a miracle appears and they reject it. Jesus became famous for allegedly healing a fairly small number of people; vaccines have saved probably millions.
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Many Protestants say
Only the very strict adhere to We fully trust in God.
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‘I refuse to take the vaccine for religious reasons!’
‘The head or your religion says that there’s nothing in there that would prevent getting vaccinated, and in fact refusing to do so is no different than attempted suicide, a hell worthy sin.’
‘… What does that woke lib know about catholicism?!’
I say let them have their exemptions, but only on the condition that any of them exposed to measles etc. must strictly quarantine until a doctor confirms they aren’t contagious anymore. Your kid gets it? They’re confined to home until they get over it. As is anyone else in the household who’s had contact with the kid. That means no going to work, no opening the door for anyone, strict quarantine. Violation of quarantine punishable by forced quarantine under guard. We can use those warehouses the DHS wants to buy to hold them.
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OK. How do you know they have been exposed? Do you know that people are contagious with measles before and after symptoms? Measles is highly contagious. If one person has it, up to 9 out of 10 people nearby will become infected if they are not protected. Fuck religious exemptions. Fuck ignorant white nationalists. They can go crawl back under their rocks.
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You can’t tell before they show symptoms, yes. But you know how long they could have been contagious before showing symptoms, so anyone anywhere they were in that period also could have been exposed and would be required to quarantine. Expand the quarantine coverage every time one of those quarantinees develops symptoms.
Yes, that’s going to turn into a nightmare in very short order. That’s the point. Make it such a nightmare that the first time it happens public opinion even in the most conservative areas turns vehemently against the exemptions because of the pain they cause.
I’d prefer if the anti-vaxxers grew a brain, or if the politicians or the courts stood up and said “No.” to the nonsense. That doesn’t seem like it happens.
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That worked really well during COVID…. Sorry mate, but your faith in people’s willingness to follow rules is far stronger than mine. But great idea for the use of the DHS warehouses!
Re: Biblical justification
Closest I have seen to a biblical justification for non-vaccination is from the PA Dutch. There isn’t a religious ban on modern medicine, but the Amish believe that God is the ultimate healer and are therefore much less likely than the general population to accept exceptional medical interventions. Some used that as justification for not getting the covid vaccines.
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To which my response is:
Why leave to God what human beings are capable of fixing? If you need to build a house, do you dump a stack of lumber on the site and wait for God to do the job for you?
Let medically-trained humans work on what can be fixed by humans. When they throw up their hands and declare “It’ll take a miracle!” that’s when you leave it to God to fix.
(Note: Doctors tend to have a much higher success rate than gods have. And you rarely hear the phrase “It was the doctor’s will” when a child dies of something preventable.)
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Quarantine might not be sufficient.
Measles is very infectious. When you hear from someone that they may have infected you with measles (so you go into quarantine), you may have already passed on the infection to others.
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THIS. Measles is one of the most highly-infectious diseases known to us. It has an R0 (a measure of how easily it spreads) of 12 to 18 – roughly speaking, if an unprotected population (unvaccinated, and haven’t already had it) is exposed to measles, roughly 90% of them will develop it. It has an incubation period of 7-10 days (time after exposure), and a person can spread the virus up to four days before the rash appears.
By the time little Sally’s mother calls you to tell you Sally has the measles and little Bobby has been exposed to it, there’s a really good chance Bobby is well on his way to developing a case. At that point, it’s too late.
The part that most vaccination refusers forget about the “my rights” argument is that rights come with obligations. You may have the right to not protect yourself against a preventable disease, but if you’re going to interact in person with other people, you have an obligation (to society, at least) to take appropriate steps to prevent infecting them with the disease.
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No, fuck that. It’s child neglect and should be treated as such.
Good Christian children need God to give them measles to toughen them up. Then, they can go a round with polio. That’ll really make them strong!
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Yeah, then god can toughen them up by making each disease and plague a bit harder than the one before and before you know it they’ll be laughing in the face the Andromeda Strain.
Sadly, protection from Trump, MAGA, Qanon and social media is pretty much fatal no matter how tough the treatment.
You have the right to remain unvaccinated. You don’t have the right to make it other people’s problem.
That is not how religion works
In particular not how Christianity works. The scripture religions work with books millennia old and all practitioners manage the transition into modern life by making this a huge cherry-picking (or plain fantasizing) endeavor entrusted to religious (or not so religious) leaders.
In case of Christianity, this was made explicit by St Paul as the religion’s founder by saying that applying the whole Jewish Canon would not be helpful regarding the conversions of heathens, so he preferred to let that idea fall under the floor.
But it is not like other religions with holy scriptures don’t pick and choose in a similar manner.
The idea of “faith” mostly revolves around deferring to your respective religious leaders in terms of deriving standards of conduct and behavior.
Bible study is applied mainly for ret-conning confirmation bias telling the practitioner that they are doing the right thing.
In this particular case, the sanitation-inspired rules revolving around leprosy will certainly deliver enough working material to reject vaccination once you have been told by your elders that it is a bad thing.
any of them exposed to measles etc. must strictly quarantine
The problem with this is you can’t be sure when a person was exposed. Person A interacts with Person B who is contagious but now showing symptoms. Person A is now infected and contagious but now showing symptoms and can pass it along before realizing they were exposed.
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So what? Some parents want religious exemptions from vaccines for their children. When their child gets sick from the disease that child could’ve been vaccinated against, the parents have to assume the responsibility of helping keep other people who can’t (or won’t) get vaccinated from getting sick due to their child’s illness. If they won’t assume that responsibility, they should be made to assume liability for any illness their child causes in others. If they don’t want to assume that liability, they should practice their responsibility and get their child vaccinated.
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One way to fix the problem is that if someone isn’t vaccinated and then get infected and spreads it they are then liable for any incurred costs or deaths due to that spread.
Poof, there went all the religious exemptions
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While a pleasant thought ‘Sure my kid isn’t vaccinated but prove that they were the ones who infected others since it’s not like the infected only interacted with my kid’ strikes me as a bar that would be tough to reach.
Easier to just issue a ‘If your kid isn’t vaccinated then they’re not allowed in school’ rule.
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There’s something called serology which tests for antibodies and their IgM/IgG ratios plus the antibody avidity and those can tell how long ago someone was infected OR vaccinated with some accuracy.
If someone has been vaccinated they always have a strong IgG response but a very weak IgM response, not so if they were infected and not vaccinated. There’s more to it than that, but it generally holds true.
And we also have had some doctors who falsely gave unvaccinated people vaccination cards, do you really think such parents who availed themselves to that type of doctor would care about any rules a school or childcare may have about vaccinations? They got that fake vaccination card for a reason.
Do I need to remind you about the plague-bearers that extolled the virtue of “fuck you, I do as I wish and you can’t stop me”? Lying about being vaccinated comes naturally do these fuckers.
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When it comes to people lying about vaccinations(either their own or their kids) I would be totally on board with a law treating that as attempted assault if not attempted murder depending on the illness in question and it’s history of fatalities.
I’m up a little over 10% on measles this year. Blowing away most of my other investments. Thanks MAHA!
'I have a religious right to put the lives of everyone around me at risk!'
Religious exemptions from vaccination requirements should no more be legal or socially acceptable than a religious exemption from drunk driving laws would be.
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Correction: “to put my children and everyone around them at risk”.
What about the religious rights of the children? They often know their parents’ stated beliefs are bullshit, but society doesn’t respect their rights till they’re 18 years old.
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Studies shown that children that grown in very religious families have more difficulties to differentiate fiction from reality when they become adult.
So, sadly, they may never fully realize the level of bullshit they’ve been exposed when they were young.
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Yes, that’s another form of child abuse that has a lasting impact on many of them.
Maybe we should have schools that handle the vaccinations so you know everyone has one and different schools for those that don’t want vaccinations.