{"id":16973,"date":"2015-06-30T23:38:45","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T23:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=16973"},"modified":"2015-06-30T23:41:45","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T23:41:45","slug":"brown-betrays-the-people-of-california-by-signing-vaccine-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=16973","title":{"rendered":"Brown Betrays the People of California by signing vaccine bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jerry Brown signs California vaccine bill<\/h1>\n
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HIGHLIGHTS<\/span>
\n\u2022 Law eliminates religious and personal belief exemptions for vaccines<\/p>\n

\u2022 Brown says \u2018the science is clear\u2019 on vaccines<\/p>\n

\u2022 Opponents vow lawsuit, ballot measure to repeal law<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"brown\"<\/a>

Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 277 on Tuesday, a day after it was sent to hime by the state Senate. The bill removes personal belief and religious exemptions as reasons to not have schoolchildren vaccinated. | Jeff Chiu The Associated Press<\/p><\/div>\n

BY DAVID SIDERS, ALEXEI KOSEFF AND JEREMY B. WHITE
\nThe Sacramento Bee<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed one of the strictest schoolchild vaccination laws in the country, eliminating personal and religious belief exemptions for vaccines.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s signature came one day after the state Senate moved the bill to his desk, following months of protests and fierce debate at the Capitol.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe science is clear that vaccines dramatically protect children against a number of infectious and dangerous diseases,\u201d Brown said in a signing statement. \u201cWhile it\u2019s true that no medical intervention is without risk, the evidence shows that immunization powerfully benefits and protects the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill will make California the third state in the nation to require vaccines without religious and personal belief exemptions.<\/p>\n

Opponents of the measure said it unfairly restricts parent choice. They immediately vowed to challenge the law in court and potentially through a referendum at the ballot box, arguing it will deprive unvaccinated children of their constitutional right to an education.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to wait until someone actually gets thrown out of school until we can challenge it,\u201d which would not occur until after the bill takes effect in 2016, said Christina Hildebrand, founder of the group A Voice For Choice. \u201cBut we will likely have a referendum on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Proponents of the legislation, spurred by a measles outbreak at Disneyland, said unvaccinated children put kids who are too young or sick to be vaccinated at risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents do not need to worry, do not want to worry, about taking their children to the school, or to stores, to theme parks,\u201d said bill author Richard Pan, a Democratic state senator from Sacramento.<\/p>\n

Of the possibility of a legal challenge, he said, \u201cThe courts have been very clear that you don\u2019t have a right to spread a communicable disease, that there\u2019s a public interest in keeping our communities safe from disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill allows any schoolchild with an exemption on file to remain unvaccinated until he or she starts kindergarten or, if already in elementary school, seventh grade.<\/p>\n

Thousands of California parents protested the measure, Senate Bill 277, in recent months, including at a vigil outside the Capitol this week.<\/p>\n

When she heard at the vigil that Brown had signed the bill, Kimberly McCauley of Sacramento sat down on the steps and cried.<\/p>\n

McCauley carried pictures of her 2-year-old daughter Ella, whom she said she stopped vaccinating after Ella had adverse reactions to three immunizations, and a letter from her pediatrician denying Ella a medical exemption.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy daughter is the sweetest little girl, and every day she asks when she gets to go to school,\u201d McCauley said, choking back more tears. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t deserve to be discriminated against.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCauley said Pan was \u201cfacilitating hate\u201d against those who choose not to vaccinate their children, and she accused Brown of refusing to meet with opponents.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe signed this quick and dirty because he wants us to go away. We\u2019re not going away,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to sue. I personally will take this all the way to the Supreme Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite passionate opposition to the bill, a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California this month found support for mandatory vaccines from 67 percent of California adults and 65 percent of public school parents.<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s signature was expected. His office said earlier this year that Brown considered vaccinations \u201cprofoundly important,\u201d and a senior adviser, though saying she was speaking on her own behalf, testified in favor of the measure.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, however, in a relatively mild precursor to this year\u2019s school vaccination bill, Brown made a special exemption for religious beliefs when he signed legislation requiring parents to consult a health professional before declining vaccinations for their schoolchildren.<\/p>\n

In his signing statement Tuesday, the Democratic governor noted that the bill exempts children whose family medical histories lead a physician to recommend against immunization. But unlike in 2012, the former Jesuit seminarian said nothing about religion.<\/p>\n

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HOW VACCINE LAW WORKS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When does it kick in? <\/strong>Jan. 1, 2016. Schools will begin checking to ensure kids entering kindergarten and seventh grade are vaccinated in July 2016, ahead of the 2016-17 school year.<\/p>\n

What vaccines are required? <\/strong>To enroll in public or private schools, children will need to have received shots for diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib meningitis), measles, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), poliomyelitis, rubella (German measles), tetanus, hepatitis B and varicella (chickenpox).<\/p>\n

Can children keep personal belief exemptions they already have?<\/strong> Unvaccinated kids can retain exemptions obtained before 2016 until they enter kindergarten or the seventh grade. Those who currently have a personal belief exemption and enter seventh grade before 2016 will not need to get vaccines.<\/p>\n

Can I get my child a medical exemption? <\/strong>Yes. SB 277 allows for medical exemptions and permits doctors to take into account family history, including whether a sibling had an adverse reaction.<\/p>\n

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Source: California Legislature<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jerry Brown signs California vaccine bill HIGHLIGHTS \u2022 Law eliminates religious and personal belief exemptions for vaccines \u2022 Brown says \u2018the science is clear\u2019 on vaccines \u2022 Opponents vow lawsuit, ballot measure to repeal law<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}