The Senate Judiciary Committee in California has approved a bill requiring all schoolchildren in the state to be vaccinated despite protests from people who view it as attack on their rights as parents.
Senate Bill 227 removes the option for parents in state not to have their children vaccinated according to their personal beliefs, which includes religious objections. The bill states that exemptions will only be given to children with a medical condition that would endanger their health if they were to receive vaccinations.
The committee's third panel approved SB 227 by a vote of five to one and sent the bill to the state's Senate Appropriations Committee.
Hannah-Beth Jackson, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stated that SB 227 was designed to protect the health of young people in California.
"This bill ultimately is about the health and well-being of our children and what in the world is more important than that," Jackson said.
Jackson is one of the authors of SB 227 along with Democratic Senators Ben Allen of Santa Monica and Richard Pan of Sacramento.
On Tuesday, the proponents of the bill agreed to limit the mandate on 10 current state-required vaccines. Allen and Pan agreed that a personal belief exemption will be given if the California's Department of Public Health decides to require other vaccines.
Opponents of the bill, including Republican Sen. Joel Anderson of San Diego, asserted that parents should still be allowed to choose against vaccines for their children especially if they believe that there are health risks.
"This is a very dangerous road that we are gambling on," Anderson said.
Allen, however, argued that courts have repeatedly found that the state has the constitutional right to initiate vaccination programs. Pan also added that the government has a compelling interest to prevent the people from contracting various diseases.
Law professor Dorit Reiss from San Francisco's UC Hastings College of the Law testified in support of the bill stating that California is in a minority of states to allow an exemption based on personal belief.
Reiss told the panel during the deliberations that SB 227 is a legal way to help raise immunization rates in the state in order to protect children from infectious diseases.
California Coalition of Health Choice, a group opposed to SB 227, countered with their own expert on law. Director Mary Holland from the Graduate Legal Skills Program at New York University's School of Law stated that the bill would not hold against legal challenges in court.
Holland explained that the SB 227 discriminates against a minority of parents and children who prefer to have the choice whether or not to get vaccinated. She said that the bill would allow the creation of segregation in its current form.
She also called the bill "coercive" as it is in direct violation of the idea of informed consent in medical decisions. Parents will have their children vaccinated without any choice.
