Wed Mar 16, 2022 – 11:53 am EDT
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (LifeSiteNews) — A New Zealand court has defended the rights of Christians to refuse to receive an abortion-tainted COVID shot on the grounds that it constitutes a violation of their conscience, acknowledging that the objection to abortion is “grounded in a core principle” of Christianity.
The High Court of New Zealand ruled on February 25 that a government mandate ordering police officers and New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel to receive a COVID jab in order to carry out work was an “unlawful” impediment on officers’ “free and democratic” rights.
In particular, Judge Francis Cooke accepted that “an obligation to receive a vaccine which a person objects to because it has been tested on cells derived from a human foetus, potentially an aborted foetus, does involve a limitation on the manifestation of a religious belief in ‘observance, practice, or teaching’ of religion.”
“It is grounded in a core principle of the particular Christian religion and the objection to abortion,” Cooke determined, adding that the “fact that others observing the same religion do not agree with the stance does not mean that the stance does not
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