(The Hill) — Matthew McConaughey says that while he’s received his COVID-19 shot, he’s skeptical about mandating that his children get vaccinated.
“I couldn’t mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids. I still want to find out more information,” the “Interstellar” actor said, when asked at The New York Times’s DealBook summit about his stance on childhood vaccinations and whether to mandate them.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for emergency use in children ages 5 to 11 last week.
McConaughey, who’s repeatedly floated a possible campaign against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), indicated that he’s not opposed to vaccinations, but would be against requiring them.
“I’m vaccinated. My wife’s vaccinated. I didn’t do it because someone told me I had to — [I] chose to do it,” he told the Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.
“Do I think that there’s any kind of scam or conspiracy theory?” McConaughey asked. “Hell no. We all got to get off that narrative. There’s not a conspiracy theory on the vaccines.”
But McConaughey, 52, added of his children: “Right now I’m not vaccinating mine, I’ll tell you that.”
Saying he’s “quarantined harder” than his friends since the beginning of the pandemic last year, McConaughey — who’s been a proponent of face masks — told Sorkin his family has relied on a “heavy amount” of COVID-19 testing.
“I’m in a position, though, where I can do that, and I understand that not everyone can do that,” he said.
He also weighed in on the Lone Star State’s controversial six-week abortion ban, which is facing a Supreme Court challenge, calling it “overly aggressive.”
“It doesn’t doesn’t seem to open up the room for a sensible choice to be made at the right time,” he said.
“I believe in this: more responsibility, more personal responsibility to make the right choices. And we got to pick context with each situation, and each person’s situation, each woman’s situation.”