Thread by @ashtonpittman

NEW: Andy Gipson, Mississippi's top agriculture and commerce official, spoke at an anti-vaccine rally on Saturday.

During his speech, Gipson, who is also an anti-abortion Baptist preacher, claimed the COVID vaccine contains aborted fetal tissue. FALSE.👇🏻
mississippifreepress.org/16832/ag-commi…

Commissioner Gipson: "You'll never hear it in the mainstream media, but these vaccines, several of them, are manufactured through the harvesting of aborted fetal cells. That is a scientific fact. Not a theory, it’s a fact."

That is not a fact. It is a lie.mississippifreepress.org/16832/ag-commi…

The lie that COVID vaccines contain aborted fetal tissue spread across right wing social media circles, amplified by James O'Keefe's extremist propaganda outfit Project Veritas.

It is unclear whether Commissioner Gipson knows his claim is false.mississippifreepress.org/16832/ag-commi…

Catholic infectious-disease expert Dr. James Lawler: "It's true that decades ago, scientists decided to use fetal tissue to start the cell lines we use to TEST drugs today."

Those cells “are thousands of generations removed from the original fetal tissue."mississippifreepress.org/16832/ag-commi…

Dr. Lawler: "As a practicing Catholic, I think the moral balance of indirectly benefitting from an abortion that occurred 50 years ago in order to take a vaccine that will prevent further death is a no-brainer...We need to focus on saving lives right now."
nebraskamed.com/COVID/you-aske…

During his remarks, Commissioner Gipson told the story of a young boy who had a severe allergic reaction to his childhood immunizations and whom doctors ordered not to receive other vaccines in the future.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am that young man."
mississippifreepress.org/16832/ag-commi…

Gipson: "There are hundreds and thousands of Mississippians like me who for medical reasons can’t get this shot, and they shouldn’t be fired and their employment terminated because they can’t do it.”

But medical exemptions already exist for those people!
mississippifreepress.org/16832/ag-commi…

“Here we are today, facing the struggle of our lives,” Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce Andy Gipson told the crowd, some of whom were seated in lawn chairs while their children played in an inflatable bouncy house on the grass nearby.
mississippifreepress.org/16832/ag-commi…

Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson portrays vaccine mandates as "unAmerican" and says the right to make ones' own medical decisions is a vital part of freedom.

As a state senator in 2015, though, he voted to incarcerate tuberculosis patients who refuse treatment with SB 2585.

In recent years, other states experienced outbreaks from diseases like measles amid the growing anti-vaccine movement.

But Mississippi, which has the strictest childhood vaccination laws in the U.S., has not identified a new measles case since 1992.
mississippifreepress.org/16832/ag-commi…

Several GOP lawmakers have tried to weaken Mississippi's strict vaccination laws.

Earlier this year, though, legislation to undo Mississippi's vaccine requirements and allow religious exemptions died without a vote, as did a bill banning employer mandates.mississippifreepress.org/8262/mississip…

On March 3, 2020, Commissioner Andy Gipson joined a crowd of anti-vaxxers at the Mississippi Capitol where he endorsed legislation undoing childhood vaccine requirements.

The state identified its first COVID-19 case days later.mississippifreepress.org/16832/ag-commi…

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