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"Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed a hotly contested California bill to impose one of the strictest school vaccination laws in the country in the wake of an outbreak of measles at Disneyland late last year.
California now joins West Virginia and Mississippi as the only states without a personal-belief exemption for vaccines. Medical exemptions will still be available for children with serious health issues. When considering exemptions, doctors may take family medical history into account.
Effective the 2016-17 school year, children whose parents refuse vaccination and are not granted a medical exemption must be homeschooled. School-age children who currently claim a personal-belief exemption will need to get fully vaccinated by kindergarten and seventh grade, the state's two vaccine checkpoints. The law applies to both public and private schools, as well as daycare centers."
What's next for California's contentious vaccine law
So, in order to attend either public or private school in California, all children who don't have a specific medical exemption must now be fully vaccinated against all childhood disease.
On the surface this seems to be a reasonable public safety measure designed to "protect the children." However, IMO it just one more step down the road of Nanny-State policies designed to violate individual liberty in the name of public security.
My argument isn't that vaccinations are inherently bad, although as with any pharmaceutical product there is ALWAYS a risk of allergic reaction in a section of the population; nor do I buy into the position that vaccinations cause Autism.
My argument is about the erosion of the right to be secure in one's physical person from seizure and invasion. A person's physical body is their evidence of existential individuality; the basis from which all claims of individual liberty and inherent rights flow. Forcible invasion of a person's body for ANY reason is a direct assault on their liberty. History demonstrates that once you give a government that kind of power over the individual, it is a slippery slope leading to all sorts of horrors. (See Compulsory Sterilization, Nazi experimentation, etc.)
It is one thing to lock someone up for a violent act for a period of incarceration, but quite another to require individuals to submit to blood tests, DNA extraction, or the forcible injection of substances into the body because other people think it will make THEM safer.
In this case, voluntary vaccination serves to protect you and your children from infection. Compelling someone else to do so? I don't think your concerns trump their rights to choose not to.
California now joins West Virginia and Mississippi as the only states without a personal-belief exemption for vaccines. Medical exemptions will still be available for children with serious health issues. When considering exemptions, doctors may take family medical history into account.
Effective the 2016-17 school year, children whose parents refuse vaccination and are not granted a medical exemption must be homeschooled. School-age children who currently claim a personal-belief exemption will need to get fully vaccinated by kindergarten and seventh grade, the state's two vaccine checkpoints. The law applies to both public and private schools, as well as daycare centers."
What's next for California's contentious vaccine law
So, in order to attend either public or private school in California, all children who don't have a specific medical exemption must now be fully vaccinated against all childhood disease.
On the surface this seems to be a reasonable public safety measure designed to "protect the children." However, IMO it just one more step down the road of Nanny-State policies designed to violate individual liberty in the name of public security.
My argument isn't that vaccinations are inherently bad, although as with any pharmaceutical product there is ALWAYS a risk of allergic reaction in a section of the population; nor do I buy into the position that vaccinations cause Autism.
My argument is about the erosion of the right to be secure in one's physical person from seizure and invasion. A person's physical body is their evidence of existential individuality; the basis from which all claims of individual liberty and inherent rights flow. Forcible invasion of a person's body for ANY reason is a direct assault on their liberty. History demonstrates that once you give a government that kind of power over the individual, it is a slippery slope leading to all sorts of horrors. (See Compulsory Sterilization, Nazi experimentation, etc.)
It is one thing to lock someone up for a violent act for a period of incarceration, but quite another to require individuals to submit to blood tests, DNA extraction, or the forcible injection of substances into the body because other people think it will make THEM safer.
In this case, voluntary vaccination serves to protect you and your children from infection. Compelling someone else to do so? I don't think your concerns trump their rights to choose not to.