A Catholic teenager who has never received a vaccination for the chicken pox out of moral objection to its apparent ties to abortion is not allowed to go back to school, a judge ruled Tuesday.
“It’s my understanding that the vaccine is derived from aborted fetal cells,” said plaintiff Jerome Kunkel, according to WLWT. “And it is against my religion. Abortion is against my religion.”
Christopher Wiest, Jerome’s lawyer, said his client was “devastated” by Tuesday’s ruling, according to USA Today.
The teenager was banned from attending classes and extracurricular functions, such as athletic events, after a chicken pox outbreak occurred at his high school Assumption Academy in Walton, Kentucky.
The Kunkel family did not vaccinate Jerome due to moral objections after finding out about a link between aborted fetal matter and the chicken pox vaccine. As noted by KHN Morning Briefing, “The Varicella vaccine, specifically, is derived from the cell lines of two fetuses that were electively aborted in the 1960s.”
The Northern Kentucky Health Department intervened on March 14 to ban unvaccinated students, such as Jerome, from such school functions.