A federal judge in Georgia has halted the Pentagon from enforcing its coronavirus vaccination mandate for all members of the military, saying the Air Force cannot discharge a Christian officer who says she cannot take the inoculation because it was made with fetal stem cells, NBC News reports.
Saying her “body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,” the unnamed officer asserted she “sincerely believes that receiving a vaccine that was derived from or tested on aborted fetal tissue in its development would violate her conscience and is contrary to her faith.”
U.S. District Judge Tilman E. Self III, a Trump appointee, wrote about his skepticism that the military seriously considered religious exemptions. “With such a marked record disfavoring religious accommodation requests, the Court easily finds that the Air Force’s process to protect religious rights is both illusory and insincere,” he wrote. “In short, it’s just ‘theater.’”