Mary Holland

Because we do believe that the science shows, the meta-analyses that we have show that unvaccinated children are by far and away healthier than vaccinated children.

They don't have the same chronic health conditions.

So sadly, in five states today, we do not have religious exemptions.

In California, New York, Maine, Connecticut, and West Virginia, we do not even have religious exemptions.

And that is catastrophic for those families that do not want to vaccinate their children at all.

And other states...

Blue states, unfortunately, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and others are at risk of losing religious exemptions.

So I'm going to come back to what are legislative fixes on that.

But I want to tell you about a case that we funded in New York State very recently, just to show you how important this is.

We represented through council a 16-year-old girl, Sarah Doe.

who lives on Long Island.

And Sarah, in 2019, when New York State in its wisdom rescinded, repealed the religious exemption, this girl wanted to stay in school like any normal kid.

And so her family regretfully decided to catch her up on the vaccine she had not yet received.

And she developed several life-threatening, life-threatening autoimmune disorders.

She then was told that in order to stay in school, she needed a third dose of a hepatitis B vaccine, which is a disease that is contracted through sexual contact and through IV drug use.

And the irony is that under federal law, if you have hepatitis B, you can go to school and be in the workplace.

But without her third dose, her school district was prohibiting her for coming to school.

And her school district was overriding her medical exemptions.

And she had seven of them from different doctors.

And we had to take that case to court in order to have a federal judge tell the school district, you have to admit this child with seven medical exemptions.