Your questions, answered "When companies and government agencies talk about vaccine mandates, many of them also seem to allow for medical and religious exemptions. What possible religious exemptions are there? I don't know of any religion that expressly forbids someone from taking a vaccine shot." — Robert in California Currently, 44 states and Washington, D.C., have legislation that allows for exemptions for people who have religious objections to vaccination, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. However, as you probably know, your state — California — is not one of them. Still, you bring up a good point: Meryl Justin Chertoff, executive director of the Georgetown Project on State and Local Government, Policy and Law, said she is not aware of any religion that prohibits vaccination. That's why when courts review religious exemptions, the question is not what formal religion does or does not allow in terms of vaccination; the question is, what is the sincerely held religious belief of an individual claiming a religious exemption, she said. The challenge is proving the individual's claim is sincere. "Has the individual claiming to have this belief been vaccinated for other things in the past? Have they allowed their children to be vaccinated for other things in the past? This would all be part of the testing of the sincerity of the religious belief," Chertoff explained. In terms of the coronavirus vaccine, the most popular claim for a religious exemption is that aborted fetal tissue was involved in certain stages of development of the vaccine. But there seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding that claim. Experts previously explained to The Washington Post that there is a well-established practice of developing and testing medical products, including vaccines, using historical fetal cell lines that were derived decades ago from elective abortions. These cell lines have been used to create vaccines against diseases such as hepatitis A, rubella, rabies and, yes, the coronavirus. But the vaccines themselves do not contain aborted fetal cells. Experts have also pointed out that although the Catholic Church is opposed to abortion, the Vatican issued a statement stating that, in situations when there is no vaccine available that has been developed without fetal cell research, taking one of the authorized vaccines would be morally acceptable. There are some smaller religious groups in the United States, like Christian Science and the Dutch Reformed Church, that have a history of declining vaccinations. But even among these groups, many members choose to get vaccinated. More generally, there may be people who claim, "My body is a temple." But again, Chertoff said, "You would have to really test that belief against their other behaviors in the past, and it would be a very high bar for people to meet." The bottom line, Chertoff said, is that saying there is no true religious exemption is "a very sensitive area for some people." "However," she said, "the overwhelming number of people who are claiming religious exemptions do it based on a misunderstanding of what constitutes a religious objection, and it's not consistent with their past behavior." | 
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