After an acrimonious 4-month battle in California between
doctors, public health advocates, epidemiologists, historians,
and the celebrity-speckled anti-vaccine fringe, sound medical
science has finally won the day.
Earlier this afternoon Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate
Bill 277, which ends “personal belief” vaccination
exemptions—religious or otherwise—for children attending
public or private schools in California.
Activists,
including those of us at the Center for Inquiry, had been growing uneasy as the bill inched closer to
Brown’s desk. In 2012, the governor used his executive
power to insert a religious exemption into a similar bill,
Assembly Bill 2109, which required Californians to consult
with a physician before receiving a “personal
belief” exemption. The signing statement decree was a
last-minute retreat that critically weakened the bill. And
until today, Brown had remained coy on SB 277.
To the relief of SB 277 supporters, in this signing
statement Brown settled for pointing out the simple fact that
vaccination saves lives and
protects everyone from needless suffering,
especially the most vulnerable:
“The science is clear that vaccines dramatically
protect children against a number of infectious and
dangerous diseases. While it’s true that no medical
intervention is without risk, the evidence shows that
immunization powerfully benefits and protects the
community.”
By no means is SB 277 perfect. As it weaved its way through
the state legislature, two frustrating amendments were added
to the bill. The first set vaccination
“checkpoints” at kindergarten and 7th grade.
Although it ensures that all new students are
vaccinated beginning in 2016, this structure allows
unvaccinated students already in the school system at
that time to remain enrolled until they reach 7th grade, at
which point they must be vaccinated or switch to
homeschooling. Unvaccinated students already in the 8th grade
or later can continue in the district, unvaccinated, until
graduation from high school. If an unvaccinated student
changes school districts, however, they must be vaccinated
before attending their new school.
The second, more consequential amendment limits SB 277 to
only barring belief exemptions for the 10 vaccines
currently required in California. Almost certainly
related to religious and secular fear-mongering about
Gardasil and Cervarix—HPV vaccines, increasingly required
nationwide, that protect against cervical and other
cancers—the amendment allows parents and individuals to claim
a philosophical exemption from any vaccines introduced and
required in the future.
Regardless, SB 277’s passage marks a tremendous and
overdue victory for public health and vaccination. It also
comes in the nation’s most populous state, which now
joins Mississippi and West Virginia as the only 3 states to
ban belief exemptions. This victory also stands as a powerful
repudiation of the paranoid, privileged, anti-scientific,
ahistorical, and inhumane anti-vaccine fringe, from its
ideology to its idols—and in one of the
movement’s strongest bastions.
As lawmakers, doctors, and public health advocates take up the
fight in new states nationwide, they could do far worse than
to model themselves on the tenacious California
activists—including
Vaccinate California, the
California Immunization Coalition, the
California Medical Association, and others—and their vindicated campaign to protect both
sound medical science and the most vulnerable citizens among
them.