Parents petition Va. Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin to protect parental rights in response to COVID-19 vaccine mandates
A coalition of parents is urging Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin to keep his campaign promise to protect parental rights amid growing concern over vaccine policies, particularly as COVID-19 shots are now being advised for children.
In a recently-launched petition, the parents ask the incoming governor to heed the warning of more than 16,000 medical scientists and doctors from around the world that healthy children shouldn't be mandated to get the COVID-19 vaccines. The petition also asks Youngkin to safeguard the rights of parents to make medical decisions on behalf of their children.
The petition calls on Youngkin to immediately issue an executive order upon taking office that affirms his stated commitment to parental rights. It asks Youngkin to bar the State Health Commissioner from mandating COVID-19 vaccines for children; prohibit local and state government officials from using coercive language and bribery in order to incentivize compliance with vaccine mandates; forbid all state health officers, including the Health Commissioner, from describing the vaccine as "safe;" and require the Virginia Health Commissioner to provide parents with written information listing all known potential health risks and unknown long-term repercussions prior to giving consent to their child’s vaccination.
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Kathy Blum, the president of the Virginia chapter of Children’s Health Defense, told The Christian Post in an interview that over the past few years, parental rights have been challenged on multiple fronts. Making informed and uncoerced medical decisions for their children is of utmost concern, she said.
CHD-Virginia is petitioning Youngkin “to ensure he restores this most important and fundamental right,” Blum said. She asserted that if the general public knew about the corruption behind the hasty development of these COVID-19 vaccines, they would be shocked.
Blum pointed to a whistleblower's report to the FDA describing how Pfizer falsified data, unblinded patients, inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow-up on adverse events.
“Her report has been ignored by the FDA, as well as almost all news outlets,” Blum told CP.
Similarly, she added, Brianne Dressen, who was a participant in the AstraZeneca trial, suffered a severe adverse event after her first injection, became disabled, and was hospitalized.
“The trial investigators withdrew her from the trial but did not document her experiences in the trial's publication in the New England Journal of Medicine. Ms. Dressen wrote to the journal demanding a correction and complete reporting of the trial results. The editor-in-chief, Dr. Eric Rubin, refused to correct the inaccurate data,” Blum explained.
“Most egregious is Pfizer's pediatric trial where 12-year-old volunteer Maddie de Garay experienced crippling pain immediately upon receiving her second injection. Despite suffering life-altering vaccine injuries, Pfizer falsely described them in their application to the FDA as ‘functional abdominal pain,’” she continued.
De Garay’s story is described in the text of the petition.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website that COVID-19 vaccines are "safe and effective," that millions have received them under the "most intense safety monitoring in history," and the agency recommends everyone receive the shot as soon as possible.
In late December, the CDC released new data revealing that a total of 965,843 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Dec. 10, 2021, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is the government's database for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the United States. Those figures included a total of 20,244 reports of deaths — an increase of 358 over the week before — and 155,506 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 4,560 compared to the previous week.
The U.S. VAERS data for children ages 5 to 11 during that same time span showed 4,181 adverse events, including 80 rated as serious. Two deaths were reported. One death occurred in an 11-year-old girl from Georgia who was vaccinated on Sept. 14, prior to the authorization of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in the 5 to 11 age cohort.
VAERS is jointly managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The database serves as an "early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines."
A disclosure on the website says that the database is not "designed to determine if a vaccine caused a health problem, but is especially useful for detecting unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse event reporting that might indicate a possible safety problem with a vaccine."
Anyone can report to the database. Certain adverse events are required to be reported by healthcare professionals. Vaccine manufacturers are also required to report adverse events that come to their attention.
When asked about how the "anti-vaxxer" label is used to frame and often weaponize discussion about concerns around this subject and the cavalier disregard some exhibit with respect to vaccine-injured people and their medical complications, CDH-Virginia Vice President Teresa Champion said that the label “has become a pejorative term that is spat out of mouths like a curse.”
“Many of us with vaccine-injured children have for many years been seeking medical care for the multiple life-changing medical issues our children and adults now live with and as such, we live with too as long as we are able to care for them,” Champion said in the emailed statement to CP.
“To call someone ‘anti-vax’ is not completely accurate. We did vaccinate, and then our child was injured without recourse. We did what we were told without question and, at the time, without meaningful informed consent. We have now researched and understand what happened, but the moment of discovery, our epiphany, is well beyond any statute of limitations,” she added.
Champion said their injured children serve as cautionary warnings for the benefit of others. She implores people to not use such individuals as "'cannon fodder' for the greater good."
“That certainly should not be the case here when the vaccine really only supposedly protects the person receiving the shot and doesn’t protect from further transmission or even further infection. Over the years, I have learned the complete lack of fiduciary care demonstrated by corporations and, in particular, pharmaceutical corporations,” she said.
Champion’s son was injured by the Hep B vaccine at birth. Before that, she had no idea that vaccine injuries were an issue to be concerned about, and didn't know what to look for until 20 years later, following genetic tests and reading extensively about such injuries.
Also of concern to parents backing the petition are the ways in which children are being allowed to make medical decisions outside the purview of their parents, particularly regarding the COVID-19 shot.
One such mom from Washington, D.C., who is supporting the Virginia effort, shared with CP how her 17-year-old daughter was caught between her parents, who are divorced, and had different ideas about whether she should get vaccinated. Because her daughter attends school in the District, where children as young as 11 can get themselves vaccinated without parental notification or consent, she was able to make the choice herself.
“Without telling me, she scheduled herself an appointment. After the fact, she let me know she got the COVID vaccine. She got vaccinated at Target where they gave her a $10 coupon to the store, which she used right then and there. Another perk-for-the-poke she and her friends enjoy is a free donut every time they show their vaccine cards at Krispy Kreme,” the mother shared with CP.
In an October interview with Newsmax, then-candidate Youngkin said that he would not mandate the COVID-19 shot for children and that he did not think schools should either, especially for young children.
"I think that’s a parent’s decision. I believe in parents’ rights, fundamental rights to make decisions with regards to their children and as governor, I’m going to make sure I’m standing up for parents’ rights," Youngkin said at the time.
Champion went on to say that there “should be no ‘noble lies’ to try to steer the action of the public.”
“All information should be open access and easily retrieved so that an individual can judge risk versus benefit knowing their own situations and conditions,” she asserted.
The petition comes amid growing Big Tech censorship of vaccine critics, particularly Dr. Robert Malone, who was permanently suspended from Twitter Wednesday. Malone, who is the co-inventor of mRNA vaccine technology and had over half a million Twitter followers, said in a statement on his Substack that the social media platform’s move means that he “must have been on the mark” and “[o]ver the target.”
“It also means we lost a critical component in our fight to stop these vaccines being mandated for children and to stop the corruption in our governments, as well as the medical-industrial complex and pharmaceutical industries,” Malone said.
Malone was interviewed by famous podcaster Joe Rogan on Dec. 31. The three-hour interview was released on Spotify.
