WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Sr. Deirdre Byrne, a surgeon and family doctor, was granted a religious accommodation Friday morning for her moral opposition to COVID jabs by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Thomas More Society attorneys filed a suit on March 9, 2022 against the District of Columbia (D.C.), its mayor, Muriel Bowser, and the director of its Department of Health, LaQuandra Nesbitt, on behalf of Byrne for their joint refusal to grant her a religious exemption from mandatory “vaccination” for D.C. health workers.
Byrne’s rejection of the COVID shots is based on their connection to aborted babies via testing on fetal cell lines, which she denounced during a speech at the August 2021 Truth for Health’s “Stop the Shot” conference.
Byrne’s lawsuit points out that she believes abortion, the killing of babies in the womb, is a “diabolical medical procedure,” and that abortion “interlocks with and supports experimentation involving abortive fetal tissues and cell lines derived from them, which are now central to the vaccine industry, most recently respecting the mRNA and DNA COVID-19 genetic, experimental injections.”
The only stated basis for the denial of Byrne’s religious exemption was that it would pose an “undue hardship” to D.C. Health.
The Thomas More Society noted that the denial was made in spite of the D.C. Health Department’s acknowledgement that Byrne had a sincere religious objection to the shot, as well as despite her test-confirmed natural immunity, and the fact that she is not employed by D.C. Health.
Thomas More Society attorney Christopher Ferrara “observed that D.C. Health does not seem to have granted a single request for religious exemption from the vaccine mandate.”
“During D.C. Health’s nearly six months of purported consideration” of Byrne’s religious exemption request, “Byrne practiced medicine without need of vaccination, and without objection by any of the hospitals and clinics that benefit from her unpaid volunteer medical services for those in need,” the Thomas More Society noted.
Sr. Byrne, who was catapulted into the public eye after her strong defense of the unborn at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in 2020, is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army and a member of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, providing free medical services to the poor and the undocumented.