A bill aimed at protecting Catholic families’ conscience rights regarding vaccines has advanced in the Florida Senate, clearing a committee and heading to a vote by the full Senate.
SB 1756, titled the “Medical Freedom Act,” would expand vaccine exemptions beyond medical and religious grounds to include conscience-based objections. According to Children of God for Life, a pro-life organization backing the bill, the current medical and religious exemptions for vaccines do not cover Catholic families’ opposition to certain vaccines developed using aborted fetal cell lines.
“Because Church teaching permits vaccine use under limited circumstances, such objections are not always recognized as strictly ‘religious,’ leaving faithful families without adequate protection,” Children of God for Life stated in a press release.
The organization added that the bill “does not ban vaccines or undermine public health” but rather aims to protect Church teaching that moral responsibility and freedom of conscience go hand in hand.
“The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that ‘man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right’ and that conscience is ‘man’s most secret core and his sanctuary, where he is alone with God,’” Children of God for Life noted. “Likewise, the Second Vatican Council affirmed in Dignitatis Humanae that no one should be compelled by civil authority to act against his conscience in religious matters.”
The organization said protecting conscience and religious freedom is “of paramount importance,” adding that diminishing the importance of conscience rights risks putting in jeopardy Catholic health plans, medical facilities, and legal disputes over the dignity of human life.