SC State Senator Proposes Bill To Remove Religious Exemptions For Vaccines In Public School Children

from the thank-god dept

The current measles shitstorm in South Carolina has been burning for several months now, dating all the way back to October of 2025. What started with a bunch of counties that were undervaccinated for measles began spiraling out of control at the start of 2026. The federal tracker for measles cases is at best woefully out of date, or purposefully obfuscating the true degree of the problem at worst. That public tracker, which is updated every Friday, claims a current nationwide count of confirmed measles cases at 910. The current measles count in South Carolina alone, for this year, is 933. Once again we have a federal government program run by RFK Jr. that is behind, unprepared, and impotent.

In the absence of federal leadership, the states will attempt to take action on their own. And sometimes those actions will result in federal pushback from the very same people who are causing the problem through inaction in the first place. I have no doubt that will be the case with a South Carolina state senator’s attempt at a bill to remove the religious exemptions for vaccinations for public schools in the state.

The context here is that South Carolina has one of the most wide open programs for obtaining a religious exemption for a childhood vaccine in the country. I think only Florida might be considered more wide open, given that state has mostly removed all vaccination requirements for public schooling. In South Carolina, you essentially just have to whisper the word “religion” and you’re exempt.

But that wont’ be the case if Senator Margie Mathews gets her way.

Senator Margie Bright Matthews (D-Dist. 45) has introduced a bill that would eliminate religious exemptions for measles vaccinations for students in public K–12 schools and childcare settings. It’s a move that’s drawing both support and criticism across the state.

Matthews said the rising measles cases prompted her to step in with the proposed legislation in an effort to bolster public health and keep communities safe.

“The goal of the bill is simply to protect children and stop the spread of measles in South Carolina,” Matthews said.

Yes, of course it is. And the pushback that has already begun within the state is absurd. I know enough about religion, as well as religious demographics, to know with absolute certainty that the number of “religious exemptions” in South Carolina doesn’t remotely comport with the number of religious adherents to any religion that has anything to say about vaccinations. South Carolina is largely Protestant and Catholic, for instance. While Protestants have traditionally been in the vaccine hesitant camp, I have never heard a serious biblical argument made for that stance. Were one to even exist, I’m confident most of the people applying for exemptions couldn’t make it.

Instead, these people are vaccine hesitant for entirely non-religious reasons. And that, I will say, is their right. But this legislation suggests that nobody’s right to their religion includes the right to put the rest of their community in danger.

Senator Matthews stressed that the goal of the bill is to increase vaccination rates and limit the spread of measles.

“I plan on reminding them every time we have new cases in South Carolina, I plan on writing and requesting that my bill receive a hearing before the committee, so that we can have the influencers from South Carolina that are against this bill and that are for this bill, I would like to have public hearing in reference to it,” she said.

Despite my strict adherence to being non-religious, I am, in fact, sensitive to ensuring that we maintain the secular rights of those who don’t agree with me. It’s that secularism that has allowed the flourishing of both free speech and thought in this country as well as, perhaps ironically, of religion itself. All of that is just aces as far as I’m concerned.

But just like someone’s freedom of movement ends the moment their fist makes contact with my face, so too does the rights of religious freedom end at the point where it puts everyone else’s children in danger.

Filed Under: anti-vax, margie bright matthews, measles, religious freedom, south carolina, vaccine mandates