Unlike other kids in Massachusetts, students living in one Boston suburb won’t be able to go back to school next month unless they’ve had their chickenpox and measles shots, as well as other routine childhood vaccinations.
“Any student not fully vaccinated without exemption will be excluded from school,” Newton Public Schools Superintendent Anna Nolin wrote in a memo last month. The directive followed a chickenpox outbreak among students, as well as rising threats of measles, Nolin said.
But unvaccinated students without medical reasons to forgo the shots can still get a pass to attend class in Massachusetts: a religious exemption.
According to state immunization data, vaccination rates among kindergartners in Massachusetts have been falling — from 95.9% in 2020 to 94.3% this past school year — as the proportion of students with religious exemptions has risen: 0.93% in 2020 to 1.33% currently.
Schools in Massachusetts loosened vaccination requirement rules during the pandemic, allowing unvaccinated students to attend class without exemptions. In some areas of the state, the proportion of students who are allowed to skip shots because of exemptions is as high as 12.8%, according to the state’s data.
There’s “a lot of concern about what’s happening with kids and keeping them safe from vaccine-preventable diseases,” said Northe Saunders, executive director of the SAFE Communities Coalition, an organization that supports pro-vaccination policies. “People are fed up.”
A bill working its way through the Massachusetts statehouse proposes removing nonmedical exemptions — including religious and philosophical beliefs — for vaccination requirements to attend public schools.
“Misuse of the current religious exemption loophole in Massachusetts policy has led to kindergarten classes across our state with terrifyingly low rates of vaccination,” Logan Beyer, a Harvard Medical School student, said at a hearing about the legislation last month.
Beyer, who studies child health and child health equity, testified that she had a conversation with a woman who confided that she would use the religious exemption loophole to delay vaccinating her child. “‘We don’t really go to church, but you don’t have to prove anything,’” the woman said, according to Beyer.
Massachusetts isn’t alone. Vaccination rates have been falling across the United States for years.
Clamping down on vaccination exemptions raises rates
In the past decade, California, Connecticut, Maine and New York have removed such exemptions in an effort to drive up vaccination rates.
It seems to be working. Maine, for example, had one of the country’s highest vaccination opt-out rates in 2017, at 5.3%. Two years later, in 2019, it passed a law that eliminated religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccinations.
Since then, Maine’s kindergarten MMR vaccination rate has climbed from less than 94% to nearly 98%.
When California passed a law in 2016 removing personal belief and religious exemptions after a measles outbreak that began at Disneyland, MMR coverage increased by 3% in 2019. It has remained high, at 96.2%, according to the California Department of Public Health.
The actions come at a critical time in America’s vaccination history. The country is on track to have the largest measles outbreak in decades, with 1,267 cases already logged this year.
While the majority of parents support vaccination, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly undermined the shots’ safety and effectiveness.
Childhood immunization rates fell during the pandemic for several reasons. Children were less likely to get their annual well-checks during lockdown. And misinformation about Covid shots stoked fears about vaccines in general.
The percentage of students with religious exemptions in Hawaii doubled during that time, from 2% before the pandemic to 4% last year, according to the state Health Department.
Hawaii legislators proposed a bill to end exemptions based on religion, but it stalled after a massive public backlash.
Meanwhile, Kennedy has doubled down on vaccine distrust. In June, he abruptly fired every member of the federal government’s group of nonpartisan, independent experts charged with advising the administration on vaccines, appointing instead several known anti-vaccine activists.
Religious concerns about vaccination?
Most states and Washington, D.C., allow parents to opt out of vaccination requirements based on religious or philosophical views.
Mississippi lawmakers added a religious vaccination exemption in 2023.
In Texas, where an ongoing outbreak of measles in southwest Texas has killed two children, legislation in front of state lawmakers would make it easier for parents to be notified about and obtain vaccination exemptions.
There is no indication, however, that any of the world’s major religions oppose vaccination.
Catholic popes, for example, have a long history of supporting immunizations. In a 2021 video message, Pope Francis urged people to get the Covid shot, calling it “an act of love.”
“Getting vaccinated is a simple yet profound way to care for one another, especially the most vulnerable,” he said.
Jewish law supports vaccination. Islamic law does, too. The Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism’s highest spiritual leader, has personally given polio vaccinations to children.
One possible sticking point in some religions is a concern that vaccines contain fetal cells.
The concern is unfounded, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Some vaccines involve growing viruses in human cell cultures originally developed from two aborted fetuses in the 1960s. These cell lines are still going, so no new aborted fetuses are ever needed,” the group writes on its website. “Purification processes filter the vaccine during production, and no fetal tissue remains.”
Still, the number of kids whose caregivers are opting them out of routine childhood vaccines has reached an all-time high, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts said the findings reflect Americans’ growing unease about medicine in general.
Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado and a spokesman for the pediatrics academy, said the group’s official policy “is that there should be no nonmedical exemptions for vaccines,” including religion. (Some children have weakened immune systems because of cancer treatments or organ transplantation and can’t be vaccinated.)
Otherwise, “there’s no legitimate reason not to be vaccinated,” he said. “The benefits of vaccines clearly outweigh the risks.”
