In the face of COVID vaccine mandates for federal and private companies, schools, and other spaces, a group of parents in Virginia are urging Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin to carry out his campaign promise to protect parental rights so they can choose whether or not to have their kids vaccinated against the coronavirus.
A coalition of parents recently launched a petition for the governor to listen to the warning of more than 16,000 medical scientists and doctors who said that healthy children should not be forced to get the COVID vaccine.
"We call upon our future governor to fulfill his promise: protect Virginia parents' most fundamental right to make informed medical decisions on behalf of their children," the group of parents wrote in the petition. "In light of the importance and urgency of this matter, we request that Governor-Elect Youngkin issue an Executive Order immediately upon taking office to reaffirm his commitment to parental rights."
The parents then outlined four steps that will "reaffirm" the governor-elect's commitment to parental rights, which included prohibiting the Virginia State Health Commissioner from enacting COVID vaccine mandates for children, preventing local and state government officials from "using coercive language and bribery to incentivize vaccine compliance," banning the State Health Commissioner and other health officials from "describing the COVID-19 vaccine as 'safe,'" and ordering the State Health Commissioner to provide parents documentation on "all known potential health risks and unknown long-term effects" before they consent to having their children vaccinated against COVID.
Children's Health Defense (CHD) Virginia chapter president Kathy Blum lamented to the Christian Post that over the past few years, parental rights have been "challenged on multiple fronts." She added that parents should be able to make "informed and uncoerced medical decisions" for their kids and that this was of "utmost concern."
CHD's Virginia chapter is calling upon Governor-elect Youngkin "to ensure he restores this most important and fundamental right," Blum argued. She warned that there is a lot of corruption going on behind the hasty development of COVID vaccines, which she said the general public would be "shocked" to know about.
Blum cited a whistleblower's report to the FDA that showed how Pfizer allegedly falsified data on the vaccine, unblinded patients, failed to adequately train vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse effects of the vaccine. She lamented that the report was largely "ignored by the FDA" and news outlets.
Blum cited the pediatric trial of Pfizer, during which a 12 year old volunteer by the name of Maddie de Garay experienced severe pain immediately after taking her second vaccine shot. Pfizer described her experience as "functional abdominal pain," despite suffering "life-altering injuries," which according to the petition involved "three hospitalizations" and being confined to a wheelchair and being "dependent on a nasogastric tube."
In October 2021, Youngkin told Newsmax that he refused to mandate COVID vaccines for children, saying that ultimately, it is "a parent's decision." He added that he believes 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."
