I normally consider myself a conservative Republican. My political sensibilities were informed during my formative years by the administration of great Californian, President Ronald Reagan. So it was with some dismay when I read about the political debate in the California Senate over a vaccine bill.
Because of the measles outbreak that occurred last winter at Disneyland, California is attempting to pass a bill that would eliminate personal and religious exemptions to children getting the MMR vaccine. The only excuse for not getting vaccinated would be if a physician states that the child is immunocompromised and can not tolerate the vaccine.
Thank goodness some sanity is returning to the vaccine debate. As you can imagine, hundreds of parents have been demonstrating in the state capitol over this proposal with their usual lame uninformed excuses of autism, personal choice, etc. So it was with sad disbelief when I saw the Republican members of the Senate side with these parents. Senate Republican leader Robert Huff says, "I don't believe the [measles] crisis we have seen rises to the level to give up the personal freedoms we enjoy in a free country." SB 277 passed through the Senate Committee by a vote of 25 to 10 with most Republicans voting no.
It saddens me as a conservative to see these Republican pander to the antivax crowd. They claim the bill will intrude on a parent's right to choose how to raise a child. Well, you know what a country where anybody can do as he pleases is called? It's called anarchy. A civilized country has to set limits on some personal freedoms in order to function. What if somebody decides they don't want to stop at a red light because it would interfere with how he wants to drive? Is it intruding on his personal driving habits even if it means a safer driving environment for everybody else on the road? Suppose I want to carry a gun on an airplane because I don't trust the government to keep me and my family safe? It's clear that if people feel they want to do something regardless of public safety in the name of personal choice, the country would quickly descend into chaos.
Besides, who do these California Republican Senators think they are trying to curry favors with? They must know that most of these anti vaccine parents are part of the limousine liberal establishment that are prevalent in LA's Westside and the San Francisco Bay area. These abortion loving, gun controlling, climate change evangelists will never side with Republican candidates no matter how many times they vote to allow parents to withhold vaccinations. If California Republican elected officials truly believe that personal choice takes precedence over the welfare of the general public, then maybe I need to renounce my GOP affiliation, as have the vast majority of the state's residents, and look elsewhere for intelligent political representation.
I think that a reasonable compromise might be to allow kids to go unvaccinated at parents' insistence, but those kids (and any other unvaccinated people) would be banned from schools (public and private) and other public accommodations. I acknowledge that "public accommodation" bans are hard to enforce, but school bans are easy--show proof of vaccination or stay home. This appeases the "live free or die" types while protecting the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteNeither party is perfect. There are plenty of things done by GOP members that give me agita. But on the whole, anti-vax pandering as you describe above is likely to do much less harm to me than the economic and social atrocities being foisted on us by the Democrats.
(and apologies if this appears 3 times...stupid blogger comment engine...)