Some NYPD cops claiming religious exemption from COVID-19 vaccine mandate
NEW YORK — Some NYPD cops are fighting the COVID-19 vaccine mandate by claiming religious exemption because fetal cell lines were used during research, police sources said Monday.
The sources said they know of about a dozen officers who have cited the issue in seeking an exemption and they believe the number is significantly higher.
Fetal cell lines date back more than 40 years to two elective abortions and have been used to create vaccines against diseases such as hepatitis and rabies, medical authorities have said. During research for COVID-19 vaccines fetal cell lines, one from an aborted fetus in 1985, the other from a fetus in 1973 that followed either a miscarriage or elective abortion, were used.
The research does not require scientists to solicit more recent abortions.
But the internet has blown up with a number of false reports, including one by Project Veritas that leaked Pfizer emails they claimed show the pharmaceutical company’s vaccine contains aborted fetal cells.
But the video — an interview between Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and a self-identified Pfizer employee who claims to show internal emails from the company — does not support that erroneous conclusion, the Associated Press reported.
“You are mandated to inject dead babies into your body,” one Twitter account sharing a Project Veritas video falsely claimed. “Fetal cells in the vaccines yet they are denying people religious exemptions.”
The controversy late last year prompted a response from Pope Francis, who approved a statement, from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that said if “ethically irreproachable” vaccines are not available then it is “morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process.”
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