A Catholic mother is making news this week out on Long Island, for refusing to have her son vaccinated. A deacon friend and classmate sent this my way, and it’s an eye-opener.

From Newsday:

A Bayport mother has asked the Bayport-Blue Point Board of Education to allow her son to enter the sixth grade without being immunized, saying that vaccinations are against her religious beliefs.

Rita Palma has requested a religious exemption from the James Wilson Young Middle School for her son, Jakob, 11, who will enter the sixth grade in September.

“I’m pro-choice,” Palma said Tuesday night during a school board meeting, “and my choice is to keep my body and my soul and the bodies and souls of my children clean.”

The board did not make a decision Tuesday night.

“Vaccinations represent fear, anxiety and mistrust in God,” Palma, a Catholic, said in a letter to school officials. “Mankind states that if we do not vaccinate our child he/she may become sick and die. Mankind also states that an unvaccinated child may cause others to become sick and die. This principle contradicts the peace and balance that I seek in my journey to God. It also contradicts the love I feel for mankind as an instrument of Jesus Christ.”

The Vatican Curia has expressed concern about the rubella vaccine’s embryonic cell origin, saying Catholics have “a grave responsibility to use alternative vaccines and to make a conscientious objection with regard to those which have moral problems.” The Vatican concluded, however, that until an alternative becomes available, it is acceptable to use the existing vaccine.

Palma had applied for a waiver for another son, Lucas, now 8, in 2006 when he was entering the first grade, but was denied. She appealed, but the board’s decision was upheld by the state Commissioner of Education. She has since had Lucas and another son, Joseph, now 12, immunized, a decision that she said caused her great pain.

Now, she is requesting the waiver for Jakob for the so-called Tdap booster shots. New state health regulations instituted in 2007 require that 11-year-old children receive a vaccination for diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis, also known as whooping cough.

David Cohen, an attorney for the school district, said the district has granted religious exemptions in the past.

“The practice of the board of education has been to meet with the parents, to ask them questions with regard to their religious beliefs,” Cohen said.

To enter public schools in New York, children are required to have had certain vaccinations. The two exemptions from these rules are medical, with a physician’s letter, and religious.

State Assemb. Marc Alessi (D-Wading River) has introduced a measure to create a philosophical exception to vaccination requirements. “There are different issues surrounding the mandated vaccines program,” Alessi said. “As a state, we have to sort through all those questions and answer them.”