Gorsuch: "Each of the currently available vaccines has depended upon abortion-derived fetal cell lines in its production or testing."

Katie Yoder reports,

In an order that drew a sharply worded dissent by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to block New York’s COVID-19 vaccination requirement, which allows exemptions for medical but not religious reasons.

Gorsuch said the ruling violates the plaintiffs’ religious liberty rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. “The Free Exercise Clause protects not only the right to hold unpopular religious beliefs inwardly and secretly. It protects the right to live out those beliefs publicly in ‘the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts,’” Gorsuch wrote in his 14-page dissent.

Two groups of health care workers, several of them Catholics, filed emergency petitions asking the court to intervene. The court decided 6 to 3 to reject the requests. Three conservatives — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh — joined liberal justices Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor in the majority, which did not issue an explanation. Conservative Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Gorsuch in his dissent. Justice Clarence Thomas, another conservative, agreed that he would have blocked the mandate, without specifying why.

Gorsuch shared the stories of two Catholic doctors who objected to the mandate. “These applicants are not ‘anti-vaxxers’ who object to all vaccines,” Gorsuch urged. “Instead, the applicants explain, they cannot receive a COVID–19 vaccine because their religion teaches them to oppose abortion in any form, and because each of the currently available vaccines has depended upon abortion-derived fetal cell lines in its production or testing.”

Read more here: https://www.lifenews.com/2021/12/15/justice-neil-gorsuch-slams-covid-vaccine-mandates-christians-have-a-right-to-opt-out/