More than 200 bills that would restrict vaccinations have been introduced in state legislatures so far this year. State groups aligned with Focus on the Family say these bills protect religious liberty, conscience rights, informed consent and full bodily autonomy.
These 209 bills are among more than 400 bills on the subject of vaccinations introduced in 34 states.
Only nine bills restricting vaccinations have passed so far. But more anti-vax bills are winding their way through mostly red state legislatures, thanks in part to a network of 39 state Family Policy Councils that Focus founder James Dobson created four decades ago.
As 8-year-old girl receives a polio vaccine, she watches a closed circuit television broadcast (showing Dr Jonas Salk as he inoculates a boy) of a training telecast for physicians and scientists, New York April 12, 1955. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
Anti-vaccine efforts in states come as the Trump administration pushes an anti-vaccine agenda nationwide, including reducing the number of vaccines children need for the new school year.
“Who wants politicians to have more control over their bodies?” asked the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, one of Family Policy Councils affiliated with the Family Policy Alliance, which recently quit listing its 39 affiliates on its public-facing website.
The Oklahoma group echoes Focus, which opposes all vaccine mandates, even for military members, and says the government should allow any American to opt out if faith or conscience dictates.
The appeal to bodily autonomy is at odds with decades of “pro-family” political activism seeking to limit such autonomy for abortion, transgender medical procedures or pornography.
But autonomy is a rallying cry for anti-vax Christian conservatives.
“Human beings do best when we are responsible for ourselves,” said the Focus-aligned group in Oklahoma. “If we want world-class medical care, with life-saving innovations and affordable prices, the only way to get it is the system of individual freedom and responsibility that people call the free market.”
Iowa already offers religious exemptions from vaccine mandates, but one conservative legislator said anything short of full autonomy is “coercing parents into a situation in which they’re not able to utilize their parental right to find the right vaccination schedule for their child.”
Louisiana Family Forum opposed COVID mandates and now wants the state to develop an informed consent law that allows people to opt in or opt out of vaccines that have traditionally been required.
Kentucky is one of at least eight states where Focus-aligned groups promote “conscience rights” laws that would allow doctors, nurses, hospitals and insurance companies to refuse to provide care violating their religious or moral beliefs, including contraception and fertility services to medical marijuana and childhood vaccines.
Missouri Rep. Sara Walsh’s husband likely was one of the estimated 250,000 Americans who died from COVID after declining vaccinations, but she has battled vaccine mandates in the state ever since. Walsh is a graduate of the Statesmen Academy, the Family Policy Alliance’s training program for conservative Christian activists.
Anti-vax fervor is nothing new. A century ago, the John Birch Society claimed vaccines were a Communist plot.
Faith-based vaccine hesitancy has deep roots, too, shows a new book, Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America, by Kira Ganga Kieffer.
The American Family Association claims “the very act of implementing the vaccine mandate is a sin against God’s holy word,” but doesn’t explain why.
The COVID pandemic poured gas on the fire, inflaming skepticism about vaccines, mandates and the scientific-medical-industrial complex.
“Debates about vaccines are becoming less a matter of scientific or moral debate and more a focal point for ideological and political affiliation,” said a recent article in Christianity Today.
According to The New York Times, today’s state anti-vax bills fit into five main categories:
- Bills that remove or loosen vaccination requirements
- Bills that would establish protections for unvaccinated people
- Bills that promote claims of vaccine dangers
- Bills that target mRNA or COVID vaccines
- Bills that alter vaccination systems
The Family Policy Alliance says its mission is “engaging Christians to protect families in every election,” but vaccine skepticism and hesitancy have forced families to address a new danger: a sudden and completely unnecessary increase in measles outbreaks, hospitalizations and deaths.
Vaccines virtually eliminated measles in the U.S. by 2000, but it is coming back now among the unvaccinated.
In May, Trump reduced federal child vaccine mandates with an executive order, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims vaccines cause autism, contradicting the scientific consensus, but emboldening his Make America Healthy Again base.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly announced he was making flu shots optional for service members, but the Defense Department has quietly rolled back that change following flu outbreaks in the ranks.
Earlier this year, Trump also took the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, an international organization that coordinates responses to global outbreaks. Conservatives claimed the WHO threatens U.S. sovereignty.
Trump also has said the U.S. should pull out of the 35-nation Pan American Health Organization, which could harm planning for regional outbreaks.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next Health and Human Services Secretary, arrives for a meeting with Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by ALLISON ROBBERT/AFP via Getty Images)
Critics say Trump administration cuts to federal and state health programs have aided the spread of cyclospora, a parasite that causes severe diarrhea and has been traced to Mexican-grown lettuce. There have been thousands of confirmed cases and hundreds of hospitalizations and now some deaths.
Kennedy recently backtracked on the measles vaccine, as cases rapidly spread. On national TV last Sunday, he told CNN host Dana Bash the measles vaccine is safe and parents who have not vaccinated their children should do so.
“A measles vaccine is effective. It stops measles in about 97% of the cases, he said. “So people should get vaccinated.”
However, under Kennedy’s influence anti-vax attitudes now extend beyond vaccinations to vitamins.
About 5% of parents now choose to forego once-standard injections of Vitamin K, which slows bleeding in newborn babies. Those choices have led to a dozen unnecessary newborn deaths and even more births with preventable brain damage, wrote columnist Froma Harrop.
Some of the opposition to vaccines is based on compelling narratives, like the story of Andrea Shaw, the mother who claimed her 18-month-old twins were killed by vaccines. Shaw has since been charged with murdering her twins, but Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vax group Kennedy led before leading HHS, still supports her.
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