LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 21, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Employers in the United States can require that employees be vaccinated, making it possible for businesses to fire workers who refuse COVID-19 shots.
The Charlotte Observer reported today that it is “entirely legal for a business to require a vaccination, including for COVID-19, provided that religious and medical accommodations are made, according to health experts and lawyers.”
It added, however, that “whether employers will actually do that is another question altogether.” An informal survey of about 500 North Carolina businesses suggested that only 5 percent of employers would require employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Forty-five percent said they wouldn’t, and the rest were undecided.
Some of the factors preventing employers from mandating COVID-19 vaccination include employees’ reluctance to take the shot, the vaccine’s status as a new medical product receiving only “emergency authorization” from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and its unknown effects on pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems.
However, Dr. David Weber, medical director of hospital epidemiology and associate chief medical officer of the University of North Carolina Health Care in Chapel Hill, told the Observer that it is possible in the next six months that schools and universities will make vaccination a condition of attending classes in person.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week that employers could not require the vaccine, even if they wanted to, because it is not widely available. However, it stated that the “emergency authorization” status of the current options does not change “an employer’s legal ability to require a vaccine.”
The onus is on employers to prove that a vaccination is necessary for an employee to do the job, though. The Inquirer was told that this could mean that the employee works “in a high-risk environment, such as a hospital or a long-term care facility, and that the vaccine is necessary to keep patients and employees safe” or that there is a “direct threat” of COVID-19 to the employee. Therefore, although you might be forced to accept vaccination to keep your job in a hospital, your employer would have less of a case if you work from home.
The Inquirer also mentioned that some states have “restrictions” on requiring government employees to get vaccinations, although Pennsylvania is not one of them. Meanwhile, employees who don’t want to take the vaccine for religious or medical reasons have to be “accommodated” by employers, although those who object on purely political grounds do not.
PETITION UPDATE (12/16/2020) -
Operation Warp Speed—the HHS’s program to accelerate the development, manufacture, and distribution of COVID-19 therapeutics—has spent billions of our tax dollars to bring a COVID vaccine to market.
Now, the FDA has granted emergency approval to roll out the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, and people in the UK and the US are already receiving it.
Though the Pfizer vaccine was not designed or produced using aborted fetal cells, it was tested using the HEK293 fetal cell line to create humanized mice.
And, more unethical vaccines are reaching the finish line and are being funded and promoted by the HHS with our tax dollars.
We must continue to demand that this stop and that a fully ethical vaccine be brought to market instead!
SIGN and SHARE our petition with the Personhood Alliance to demand that the HHS stop using our money to support the grisly connection between abortion and biomedical science.
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Operation Warp Speed—the HHS’s program to accelerate the development, manufacture, and distribution of COVID-19 therapeutics—is spending billions of our tax dollars to bring a COVID vaccine to market as quickly as possible.
Now, two of the Operation Warp Speed vaccines (one created by Pfizer/BioNTech and one created by Moderna/NIH) are nearing the finish line, soon to be applying for emergency FDA approval for mass distribution.
And, while LifeSite neither advocates for or against voluntary vaccination, there are several apparent problems with the vaccines being fast-tracked by HHS’ Operation Warp Speed.
First among the vaccines’ major problems: they were tested using aborted fetal cells.
Please SIGN and SHARE LifeSite’s urgent petition with the Personhood Alliance to demand that the HHS stop funding and promoting this unethical practice, and bring a fully ethical vaccine to market instead.
The production and testing of vaccines that use the remains of aborted children, regardless of when they were killed and at what point they were used in the process, is morally unacceptable and must be consistently opposed by the whole pro-life movement.
And, although the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were not designed or produced using aborted fetal cells, the Personhood Alliance recently reported that the vaccines’ testing phases used the HEK293 aborted fetal cell line to create humanized mice.
This stomach-churning practice transferred immortalized cells from a child killed in 1973 into mouse embryos, so that when the mice were born, they had tiny human lungs that researchers infected with COVID to test the vaccines.
This type of Frankenscience has no place in a civilized society, certainly not one whose citizens are forced to fund it!
Sign our petition with the Personhood Alliance to demand that the HHS stop supporting the grisly connection between abortion and biomedical science.
We can make a difference if we raise our voices together, but we’re running out of time!
Thank you for SIGNING and SHARING this urgent petition today!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
See LifeSite articles on the Coronavirus vaccine
**Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
Refusing the COVID-19 vaccination on religious grounds may be difficult for Catholics who naturally object to accepting a vaccine developed with the use of genetic material from aborted fetuses, thanks to recent statements from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Both bodies have stated that Catholics may use such vaccines if there are no alternatives. Some Catholic leaders, however, including Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, have declared that they will not accept vaccines using or developed from material taken from aborted children.