Arkansas Judge Holds Hearing on Request to Stop Vaccines

A woman who doesn't want her children immunized against hepatitis B asked a federal judge on Friday to order the state to drop its requirement that they be vaccinated. Susan Brock of Royal, Ark., and Shannon Law of Little Rock, Ark., filed a lawsuit today, saying the vaccinations would violate their religious beliefs. State health officials have denied their exemption requests. Brock, with four children ages 8-16, said Friday the state had no right to require that her children be immunized against an STD. Hepatitis B can spread through sexual contact and intravenous drug use.

Brock quoted Bible passages to support her beliefs, even though her religion, Roman Catholicism, does not have a tenet that specifically forbids vaccinations. "It goes against everything that I've been taught as a Christian, as a Catholic, [and] as a good mother who has wisdom and discernment," Brock testified. She said her children's bodies were God's property and temples of the Holy Spirit. "My children are sacred. They're holy and innocent," she said. Accepting the shots would let her family down, she said. On cross-examination by health department lawyer Rick Hogan, Brock said that she was not against all medications. She said her children had received other vaccinations and that she would give her children pain medicine or antibiotics -- even if the antibiotics also had a use against a STD. "I don't think my children should be immunized against a sexually transmitted disease. I've got to trust in God that my children will be protected," Brock said.

Law, also a Roman Catholic, seeks to prevent her children from taking the chicken pox vaccine, which was developed along cell lines produced after a pair of 1966 abortions. She said in her lawsuit that having her children receive the shots would violate her religious beliefs. Health department officials say the two cannot receive exemptions because their religious denomination does not categorically reject vaccinations.

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