by Dr. Anne Mulhern

Bill H.2554 has made it out of committee. This bill alters the existing law regarding the required schedule of injections that a child must be proved to have received before being permitted to attend any public (government or charter), private, or parochial school. The proof is generally provided in the form of a certificate endorsed by a physician.

The pharmaceutical schedule is required by law to include the injection of prophylactics against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles and poliomyelitis, but the department of health is authorized to add additional pharmaceuticals to the schedule at any time.

As the law now stands, a child may be exempted from the requirement to be injected with a particular pharmaceutical if a physician provides a note indicating that the child is likely to suffer adverse consequences from the treatment. If the school’s physician disagrees, then the matter is referred to the department of public health, which has the final say.

A child may also be exempted from the physician’s certification requirement entirely if their parent or guardian informs the school in writing that “vaccination or immunization” conflicts with the child’s sincerely held religious belief. If the department of public health has declared an emergency, the exemption is automatically voided.

The proposed bill would remove the existing “religious exemption” entirely.

It would also add a statistics gathering and reporting requirement: the schools will be required to provide data recording how many students have received the various injections and correspondingly, how many have not to the department of health. The department of health will be required to provide that data to the public.

If the bill passes it will make it illegal for a child to attend school without having undergone the entire schedule of injections required by the department of health unless a physician had provided a note informing the school that the child was likely to suffer harm from a particular injection and has not been overruled by the department of health.

I predict that if this bill passes there will be a sharp increase in the number of children who are homeschooled in Massachusetts. According to Johns Hopkins Institute of Education Policy, the number of students being homeschooled doubled in 2021. It then dropped precipitately in 2023. However, in 2023 the number of children being homeschooled was still approximately 150% of the 2020 value, approximately 12000 in 2023 as opposed to 8000 in 2020, and that number has since undergone a moderate, but probably significant increase. The passage of this law would likely accelerate this upward trend.

I believe that the law, as it stands, has numerous defects. Few people know that Massachusetts includes atheists among those protected by law against religious discrimination, but that is the case. The “religious” exemption in this Massachusetts law actually discriminates on the basis of religion, because it allows exemptions based only on a particular set of religious or ethical beliefs implied by the existing law: (1) that every pharmaceutical on the schedule is an immunization or vaccination, (2) a principled objection to all immunizations or vaccinations.

Since the COVID-related Presidential Executive Orders were implemented, many people who have no principled objection to vaccines as they understand them are justifiably wary of the actions of government departments imposing largely untested pharmaceuticals on them under threat of punishments ranging from loss of employment to loss of access to schooling for their children to restrictions on their travel. The law as it stands disregards every one of these persons, however thoughtful, principled, and informed their objections may be.

But the proposed removal of the “religious exemption” does not constitute an improvement in the existing law. It obviously infringes on citizens’ fundamental freedoms, since the department of health may add any pharmaceutical to the schedule at any time, and bar any child whose parents are not willing to comply from every school in Massachusetts. In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision “Mahmoud et al. vs. Taylor et al,” which upheld parental control over religious instruction of their children in relation to the reading of books in children’s class rooms, it may ultimately be proved contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as well.

Isn’t there a single legislator in all of Massachusetts who can come up with a better proposal than this?