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With California’s strict vaccine mandate now in place, opponents are fighting to overturn the law in court.
The new law, which took effect Friday, bars parents from citing religion or other personal beliefs as reasons to not vaccinate their kids. SB 277 is one of the toughest mandatory vaccination laws in the country and drew many protesters when it was debated in Sacramento.
A group of parents and the nonprofit Education 4 All filed a suit Friday to overturn the law in U.S. District Court in San Diego. The suit claims that the law violates California children’s right to an education under the state’s constitution.
“SB 277 has made second-class citizens out of children who for very compelling reasons are not vaccinated according to the CDC schedule,” the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert T. Moxley, said in a statement. “We are hoping the court will grant us an injunction while the judicial process takes place to see if this law is constitutional, which it most certainly does not seem to be.”
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About 80,000 California students claim personal belief exemptions for vaccines annually.
First, good for you, California! It’s about damn time this ‘religious belief / personal belief’ crap was tossed out. No surprise that anti-vaxxers are fighting this mandate, but on the basis of violating a child’s right to an education? How does that work, when it is a parent’s refusal to vaccinate which bars a child from a public school? Your child doesn’t go to school in a vacuum, there are a whole lot of other children and their health at stake, and no, you don’t get to count on all the other kids being vaccinated as an okay for your little snowflake to run about in a possibly contagious state. I’m not all that comfortable with home-schooled kids not being vaccinated, because again, those kids aren’t in a magic bubble, never coming into contact with others. I was vaccinated, but I got nailed by chickenpox anyway. It was much milder and shorter lived than it would have been minus the vaccination, and it was not at all fun. I just don’t understand how any parent would be willing to see their child with such an illness.
I was also gobsmacked by the 80,000 personal belief exemption claims. Seriously? I know, in the scheme of the total population it’s not all that much, but in terms of a potential epidemic, it’s a huge number. I don’t have any personal reason to be concerned about these diseases anymore, but I am glad I’m not in SoCal anymore, either.
Via Raw Story.
I was exempted by my doctor, due to various health problems I had as a baby and my reactions to the first few vaccinations I was given. If a child genuinely needs to be exempt, it’s quite simple to go to the doctor and have this verified. For every last other child, they should be vaccinated. Especially because some of us can’t be. Your “personal beliefs” stop being an excuse the second they put other people in danger.
TMM:
Yes. I don’t understand how this very simple reasoning seems to utterly escape the ‘personal belief’ people. You can believe all the silly stuff you like, but when you enter the public sphere, there have to be limits.
Special snowflakes is the “reason” often supposed, as in “my child is preeeeeeciousssssssss…”
I am in So Cal and we have a whooping cough epidemic out here. Doctors are aggressively vaccinating everyone, young and old, but it hasn’t helped much yet. I applaud this law and Gov Jerry Brown.
Morgan @ 4:
Oh fuck, whooping cough is nasty. It’s a nightmarish misery to see an infant with it. I know there was a heavy drive here a few years back for adults to get vaccinated, because there was an outbreak of infants with whooping cough who contracted it from one of their parents.
In civilized places, do parents have a legal or moral right to murder their own kids until they are 18? Some parents think so, and won’t want to hear otherwise.
Does the situation change if the parents are just target shooting apples on their kids heads?
Or timing how quickly their kids can run across a street in heavy traffic?
Or seeing how many yards high their kids are willing to jump down without breaking a neck?
Or seeing how much rum 151 the kid can drink each night?
I think in decent places, each of these would end up with the kids being removed from the control of this parent by the state’s child protective services, whatever they’re called.
Parents have a duty to take care of their kids, not a right to treat them as disposables, even if the father says it’s ok because he can make more.
This duty is set into law, as a concept, not just as a list of specific activities. Protection from serious illness by vaccination is just one further example of this concept.
In the 19th century, medicine was questionable, and avoiding doctors was about as good advice as seeing them. Many attitudes were established in that era.
But now is not then. Medicine now turns out to be real, while magic is not real.
So now all parents have a legal and moral duty to vaccinate their kids. The overall society that includes all other kids should not tolerate people using public streets or public spaces with an unvaccinated person, if that person has any medical possibility of being vaccinated.
I grew up in California, unvaccinated due to my mother’s religious delusion. When I got sick, if I had died, how would I have obtained Justice? Who would have protected me from illness or death? When my mom sent me back to school without consulting a doctor, who would have protected all the other kids in school from me coughing or vomiting on my friends accidentally?
Children’s health care is a legal duty. Google it.
It’s about time that California did the right thing to protect kids from barbarism.
Bruce:
Christ. I am really sorry to hear that, Bruce. That’s one hell of a way to traumatize a child.
I do support decisions arguing that parents do not have absolute rights over their children -- that children have rights to basic (competent) medical care from birthand should be protected from sexual abuse, environmental toxins, and toxic ideology until they are old enough to fend for themselves.
>i>I am in So Cal and we have a whooping cough epidemic out here. Doctors are aggressively vaccinating everyone, young and old, but it hasn’t helped much yet.
Isn’t Gwyneth Paltrow doing anything?
Marcus Ranum @9
I wonder if her steamed vagina regimen might be helpful. You never know ;-)
@Morgan #10:
California is doomed.
Good for you, California. It will be very important to stand against the dissenters.
Second-class citizens? No, actually brought them up to a level with all other citizens who are vaccinated and who will not be at such great risk for childhood illnesses.
Also,
Anti-vaxxers always say that vaccination is such a personal decision. But it’s not! Getting married is a personal decision. Getting a tattoo is a personal decision. So is getting plastic surgery. But vaccination? You are never affecting just yourself if you don’t get vaccinated, you are affecting everyone around you: vaccination is not a personal decision you are making just for yourself; it is a decision you are making for the good of everyone around you. People need to understand that (but I hold few hopes).
The Mellow Monkey, #1
Yup. And one of these “other people” is the child themselves.
I wonder what the overlap is with anti-vaxxers and anti-choice. The parent’s choice to have an abortion “harms” the “child” versus the parents’ choice to not vaccinate harms the child.
Hmm…