Jerry Brown signs California vaccine bill

Opponents, who conducted a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #hearus, argued that the vaccines also carry risks and said parents should have the right to choose whether to use them or seek a religious exemption.

The month before, in December of 2014, a measles outbreak at Disneyland left more than one hundred people sick in the United States and Mexico. State health officials declared the outbreak over in mid-April after confirming 136 measles cases in California.

The law signed Tuesday following emotional debates removes the personal belief and religious exemptions from vaccine mandates for school children. They have even found support from legislative Republicans and some Democrats, who have accused the state of suppressing informed consent. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), a pediatrician and an author of the bill. “We have diseases that are showing up on public transit and restaurants and schools and shopping centers, theme parks, that is not what we want California to be”.

He called the law “tyranny” and said parental choice and control were part of a higher “moral law”.

“SB277, while requiring that school children be vaccinated, explicitly provides an exception when a physician believes that circumstances, in the judgment and sound discretion of the physician, so warrant, ” Brown wrote.

California has made it much harder for parents to opt out of vaccinating their children. The state joins West Virginia and Mississippi as the only states without a personal-belief exemption for vaccines, according to The Associated Press.

What’s easy to miss is that the exemptions being eliminated are concentrated in a relatively small portion of California schools. “And if I can help protect anyone else’s gift, then it’s not just my pleasure, but it’s my responsibility to do it”. They have taken some of the mercury laden thimerosal out of vaccines.

While the law requires nearly all children attending school to be vaccinated, there is still an exemption if a doctor concludes a child should not be vaccinated, for reasons including family medical history. Checkpoints occur in kindergarten and seventh grade.

In a statement explaining his decision, Brown reflected a respect for the science behind vaccinations as a way to protect against infectious disease, as well as the large evidence base suggesting a very good risk-benefit profile for vaccines in general.