Amish Children in New York Face Forced Vaccinations After Court Ruling
A federal court this week upheld New York’s vaccine mandate, requiring Amish children to be vaccinated despite religious objections. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled March 3 in Miller v. McDonald that the repeal of religious exemptions for vaccines does not violate the First Amendment, The People’s Voice reported.
New York eliminated religious exemptions for vaccines in 2019 following a measles outbreak. Under the law, children must be vaccinated to attend a school — whether public, private or religious — unless they qualify for a medical exemption.
According to the appellate court’s decision, three Amish schools (Dygert Road School, Pleasant View School a/k/a Twin Mountain School and Shady Lane School) were fined after they didn’t comply with the law by requiring parents to present proof that students received vaccines.
The schools, two school board members (Jonas Smucker and Joe Miller), and an elected representative for Amish schools in New York (Ezra Wengerd) sued the state in June 2023, seeking an injunction and claiming the law violated their rights under the first and 14th amendments.
The World Has Romanticised Autism — the Reality Can Be Very Different
“Looking back, it was obvious,” Agatha said. “I don’t know how we missed it.” She was telling me about her son, Elijah, now 20. “When he was one, he had no words. He flapped his hands continuously.
He was quiet and I remember thinking we were lucky to have such a good baby. When he was a bit older, we could just pop Peter Pan on and he’d sit and watch it for hours. And he’d jump up and down and say ‘eee eee eee’, over and over and over… and we used to think, oh, isn’t that sweet.”
Elijah has an older sister who has high-functioning autism. But even with that experience in the family, Elijah’s parents didn’t spot the early signs. When Elijah didn’t talk, Agatha told herself that boys learned to speak later than girls. Plus, Elijah was affectionate and cuddly.
“He wasn’t a loner, which is one of those tropes about autism,” Agatha said. “His grandmother did say she found him hard to bond with, but I didn’t because I suppose I loved him so much. I think I missed the signs because I didn’t really want to know.”
Should Babies Get a ‘Bonus Dose’ of the Measles Vaccine? Doctors Say It Depends
Like many anxious parents, Beth Spektor spent the last few weeks fretting over how to protect her infant daughter from the first deadly measles outbreak to hit the U.S. in a decade.
Her 9-month-old was too young for the first dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, typically given to American toddlers shortly after their first birthday.
But when her New Jersey mommy WhatsApp group started buzzing about an early bonus dose of MMR for babies, Spektor decided to ask her pediatrician for one anyway.
“I was assuming she would say, ‘It’s up to you,’ or ‘It’s not a bad idea,’ something a little less definitive,” the mother said.
Instead, the doctor urged her to take the extra jab, a move they recommended to all infant patients after three linked cases were reported in their region.
“The doctor said she was hoping that U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would change the schedule to recommend that all babies over 6 months get the bonus dose,” Spektor said.
US Measles Cases Jump 35% in a Week: Now Found in 12 States
U.S. measles cases jumped by a third over the past week, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, a worrying sign in the outbreak that’s already linked to two deaths.
New Mexico’s health department listed Friday that an adult who had died and then tested positive for measles had succumbed to the disease, though the state’s medical examiner has yet to confirm the cause of death. If it was caused by measles, it would be New Mexico’s first such fatality in at least 40 years, according to the CDC.
U.S. cases since the beginning of the year rose by 58 to 222 across 12 states, the CDC reported Friday, and 38, or 17% of those confirmed cases, have led to hospitalization.
Author Offers ‘Sound Bites’ About Life on the Autism Spectrum
Living with autism means seeing the world differently — sometimes more clearly, sometimes more intensely, but always uniquely. For Aaron Broadstreet, it also meant finding a way to share his perspective with others. Broadstreet, 35, lives on a 12-acre farm with his parents, surrounded by animals and plenty of space to explore.
He enjoys many things, including museums, flying lessons, bowling, raising butterflies, gardening, his HO model train layout, video games, music, Lego, his pinball machine and new adventures.
One of those new adventures? Becoming an author of the book “Sound Bites: Life Lessons by a Boy Who Has Autism.”
But his book started as something much more personal. “My mom had me write my feelings down since I was young, and one day I said to her, ‘I wish there was a book to help people with autism,’” he said.
