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ATLANTA, Georgia, June 23, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — The Southeast Permanente Medical Group (TSPMG), a branch of Kaiser Permanente, is requiring its employees to receive COVID-19 vaccines, making no exceptions for pregnant women despite limited data on vaccine safety for expectant mothers and unborn babies.
Internal documents reveal that TSPMG employees are required to receive a full round of the experimental vaccine no later than July 28, according to reporting by the Daily Wire.
Kaiser Permanente is one of the largest health systems in the United States with 12.5 million members, 216,776 employees, and an annual operating revenue of $88.7 billion.
The TSPMG documents reportedly acknowledge that the FDA has granted emergency use authorization but not full approval for the shots, and claim that “COVID-19 vaccines are reported to be safe in pregnant women, and no obvious safety signals were reported among pregnant women who received COVID-19 vaccines.”
According to the CDC, the “safety monitoring systems” put in place to “gather information about COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy” have produced early data that are “preliminary but reassuring.”
“These data did not identify any safety concerns for pregnant people who were vaccinated or for their babies,” the CDC report reads, using gender-neutral language in a manner consistent with the Biden administration’s recent use of the phrase “birthing people” instead of “mothers” in its 2022 budget proposal.
The CDC goes on to admit that “most of the pregnancies reported in these systems are ongoing, so more follow-up data are needed for people vaccinated just before or early in pregnancy.”
According to a report cited by the CDC that was published by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), “Many pregnant persons in the United States are receiving messenger RNA (mRNA) coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) vaccines, but data are limited on their safety in pregnancy.”
The NEJM study, published in April and updated in June, was conducted with a pool of 35,691 participants who “identified as pregnant” and volunteered to use the CDC’s “V-Safe After Vaccine Health Checker,” an app designed to “provide personalized health check-ins after vaccination,” and were enrolled in the CDC’s “V-Safe COVID-19 Pregnancy Registry.”
According to the study, “Among 827 participants who had a completed pregnancy, the pregnancy resulted in a live birth in 712 (86.1 percent), in a spontaneous abortion in 104 (12.6 percent), in stillbirth in 1 (0.1 percent), and in other outcomes (induced abortion and ectopic pregnancy) in 10 (1.2 percent).”
The report went on, noting that before the end of the study on February 28, 2021, “a total of 96 of 104 spontaneous abortions (92.3 percent) occurred before 13 weeks of gestation, and 700 of 712 pregnancies that resulted in a live birth (98.3 percent) were among persons who received their first eligible vaccine dose in the third trimester.”
Adverse outcomes among live-born babies include 60 born prematurely (9.4 percent), 23 born abnormally small (3.2 percent), and 16 with major congenital abnormalities (2.2 percent).
Pamela Acker, author of Vaccination: A Catholic Perspective, who holds a Master’s degree in Biology and has participated in biological research at The Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University in St. Louis, told LifeSiteNews in April that pregnant women “shouldn't be taking these (vaccines),” adding that there is increasing “anecdotal evidence” that the shots “cause miscarriages.”
Examples include a tragic February report of a Milwaukee physician who miscarried her second-trimester baby just days after tweeting “14 weeks pregnant and fully vaccinated!”
Advice from global healthcare organizations and government agencies regarding the safety of vaccines for pregnant women has vacillated. In January, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the COVID-19 vaccine is “not recommended” for pregnant women, but the advice has since been updated. Currently, the WHO, CDC, and the UK’s NHS all advocate for pregnant women to take the vaccine.
The vaccine mandate by The Southeast Permanente Medical Group comes just weeks after a federal judge rejected a lawsuit by 117 staff members of the Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas who argued that their employer’s policy requiring employees to get the jab was illegal.
The Texas hospital announced in April that it was mandating all of its 26,000 employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by June 17. While the vast majority complied, 178 refused, saying they consider the vaccines “experimental and dangerous.” After the hospital suspended them without pay, 117 of the staff members sued.
In rejecting the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes said of the hospital’s mandate and subsequent suspension of noncompliant employees, “This is not coercion. Methodist is trying to do their business of saving lives without giving them the COVID-19 virus.”
According to the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, “An employee who does not get vaccinated due to a disability (covered by the ADA) or a sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance (covered by Title VII) may be entitled to a reasonable accommodation that does not pose an undue hardship on the operation of the employer’s business.”
Such accommodations include unvaccinated employees being required to wear masks, “work at a social distance from coworkers or non-employees, work a modified shift, get periodic tests for COVID-19, be given the opportunity to telework, or finally, accept a reassignment.”