Legislators Move to Eliminate Vaccine 'Personal Belief' Exemptions

State and federal legislators are rethinking a parent’s right to choose not to vaccinate their children thanks to the national measles outbreak epicentered in Southern California.

As California’s measles toll reaches a 15-year high of 99, two state senators, including Sen. Ben Allen, D-Redondo Beach, said they plan to introduce legislation that would eliminate the ability of parents to receive a “personal belief” exemption from immunizing their children.

“The high number of unvaccinated students is jeopardizing public health not only in schools but in the broader community,” Allen said. “We need to take steps to keep our schools safe and our students healthy.”

Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, who is also a pediatrician, said the idea of people not immunizing their children has concerned him “for a long time.”

“I’ve personally witnessed the suffering caused by these preventable diseases and I am very grateful to the many parents that are now speaking up and letting us know that our current laws don’t protect their kids,” Pan said.

Pan authored a law in 2012 requiring parents to speak to a healthcare practitioner before obtaining a vaccination exemption. According to Pan, the number of parents seeking exemptions dropped by 20 percent when the law took effect.

The effort to eliminate the exemption appeared to gain early support from Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both D-Calif., who sent a letter to California Health and Human Services Secretary Diana Dooley asking that the state reconsider its policy on exemptions.

“While a small number of children cannot be vaccinated due to an underlying medical condition, we believe there should be no such thing as a philosophical or personal belief exemption, since everyone uses public spaces,” according to the letter. “As we have learned in the past month, parents who refuse to vaccinate their children not only put their own family at risk, but they also endanger other families who choose to vaccinate.”

There have been 21 cases in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl urged educators and daycare operators Thursday to talk to parents and encourage them to get their children vaccinated against measles and other preventable diseases.

Kuehl also made a direct appeal to parents in her Westside-area Third District to vaccinate their kids.

“Unfortunately, the health of our community’s children has been needlessly jeopardized by too many parents who, for a variety of reasons, have chosen not to vaccinate their children, putting them -- and everyone else’s children as well -- at increased risk of entirely preventable infection,” Kuehl wrote in a letter to educators in her district.

“On the Westside in my district, for example, some private schools report levels of unvaccinated children ranging in as high as 68 percent -- comparable, according to World Health Organization data, to that found in developing nations like Chad and South Sudan.”

In her letter, Kuehl asked educators to “contact every parent with whom you have a relationship and encourage them to choose vaccination for their children.”

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS: Should parents have the right to choose whether to vaccinate their children, or should vaccines be entirely mandatory for the sake of public health?

• City News Service

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