Hospital Says to Earn Religious Exemption from Vaccine, Devout Employees Can't Take Tylenol
As progressive politicians continue to institute vaccine mandates across the country, more Americans are attempting to secure a religious exemption from the jab. One hospital in Arkansas is now trying to render that option ineffective, too.
According to KARK-TV, Conway Regional Hospital is requiring a COVID-19 vaccine. The hospital said an increasing number of people were attempting to secure a religious exemption from the requirement.
Many of the employees applying for the exemption were reportedly citing an issue with fetal cell lines being used in the development of vaccines. The practice involves growing cell lines in a lab using cells from aborted fetuses.
Since Christians and people of many other religions tend to be against abortion, one could see why they would be against taking a vaccine that they feel makes them complicit in (or at least profiting from) the act of abortion.
Matt Troup, Conway Regional’s CEO and president, did not take too kindly to that line of thinking.
“We require the flu vaccine to work here,” Troup said. “With the COVID vaccine, we saw a dramatic increase in the number of exemption requests related to this fetal cell issue.”
Troup said he believed this increase signaled that employees may be filing for a religious exemption because of health concerns about this specific vaccine rather than deep moral convictions.
In response, he and other administrators developed a so-called “attestation form” that employees requesting an exemption would be forced to sign. The form requires those employees to commit to refraining from everyday medicines such as Tylenol, Pepto-Bismol, ibuprofen, Benadryl and Claritin, among others.
The form says these medicines have used fetal cells during their development, so employees must not take them in order to “support your claim of a ‘sincerely held religious belief.'”
“We feel that if you request an exemption then attesting to that form really should follow,” Troup said. “A lot of this, I believe, is a hesitancy about the vaccine, and so that’s a separate issue than a religious exemption.”
There are multiple issues with Troup’s line of reasoning, but they all revolve around the central idea that groups from the federal government all the way down to a local hospital feel they have the right to impose authoritarian mandates on every American.
First of all, there are other religious reasons for not getting the vaccine other than the concern about fetal cells. For example, some people believe their religion teaches them not to inject things into their bodies.
By requiring every employee who applies for a religious exemption to fill out an attestation form, the hospital is ignoring the fact that some of those people may have religious concerns about the vaccine outside of the fetal cells used in its development.
Second, Troup is probably correct that some employees are using the religious exemption as an excuse not to get the vaccine. But the very reason they have to do so is because of the dictatorial demands they are being subjected to.
If the federal government and Conway Regional Hospital would allow people to make their own decisions about whether to get the vaccine, those people would not have to turn to special exemptions to protect their freedom.
Of course, neither the hospital nor the federal government truly cares about those concerns. They simply want to force the vaccine on every person they possibly can, and they want to close any avenue allowing people to avoid such treatment.
Very few people would view abstaining from medicines like Tylenol and ibuprofen as a viable option. By making that a prerequisite for a religious exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine, the hospital is effectively removing the exemption for the vast majority of its employees, if not all of them.
Progressive politicians and power-hungry business owners alike continue to show they have no empathy for any of their constituents, religious or otherwise. They feel they are morally superior to anyone under them, and they will continue to try to control them at all costs.
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