A nun who formerly served in the U.S. army sought a religious exemption to COVID vaccines, which were developed using cell lines from an aborted fetus.
Board-certified surgeon and retired U.S. Army colonel Sister Deidre "Dede" Byrne recently filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia for rejecting her appeal for a religious exemption to the city's COVID vaccine mandate. Byrne is represented by Thomas More Society's Christopher Ferrara, who explained that the former surgeon and retired colonel was denied a legitimately filed exemption from the COVID vaccine mandate, which she filed because she "can have nothing to do with abortion-connected vaccines."
According to CBN News, the development of the Janssen or Johnson & Johnson's COVID vaccine involved the use of the PER.C6 cell line, which was derived from human embryonic retinal cells that were originally extracted back in 1985 from the retinal tissue of an 18 week old fetus. Meanwhile, the COVID vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna were tested using the HEK293 cell line, which was extracted from the kidney of an aborted human embryo in 1973.
The legal complaint filed on behalf of Byrne claimed that officials in the District of Columbia "conceded the sincerity of Sister Deidre's religious objection to being vaccinated." However, they still denied her request and "have not granted a single request for religious exemption from the Vaccine Mandate."
Ferrerra added that after six months, city officials in DC rejected Byrne's petition for a religious exemption because they believed "granting [her] request would create an undue hardship upon DC Health." According to the former surgeon and retired colonel turned nun, the District of Columbia gave her five days to comply with the COVID vaccine and get the jab. When she continued to refuse, they revoked her medical license.
"I've closed my clinics for the month. I can't see patients. I just can't help anyone," Byrne lamented to EWTN. "I feel like I'm just a little tip of an arrow of so many people who are being forced to do the same thing."
Ferrera said that Byrne's case was "yet another example of the intersection of politics and bureaucratic intransigence, and religious liberty. And the result is a constitutional train wreck."
The lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Society on behalf of Byrne named the city of Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser,. and the director of the D.C. Department of Health, who she accused of denying her right to operate her medical ministry. The attorney argued that the District of Columbia's actions towards the former surgeon and retired colonel of the U.S. Army violated her First Amendment rights and violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993, which was signed into law by former President Bill Clinton. The RFRA prevents the U.S. government from mandating anyone to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs unless it can prove that it is acting to uphold a "compelling government interest" using the "least restrictive means" possible.
Byrne's attorneys added that Washongton, D.C. allowed Byrne to offer her medical expertise during the COVID pandemic, during a time when vaccines or therapeutic treatment was available, but suspended her practice despite her having had natural immunity from the coronavirus after she got infected and recovered from the disease.
