URGENT ACTION ALERT
OPPOSE SENATE BILL 277 TO REMOVE NON-MEDICAL
VACCINE EXEMPTIONS IN CALIFORNIA
California needs to urgently mobilize to oppose SB 277, a bill that would remove all non-medical exemptions to vaccinations. SB 277 affects all children except a small portion of home school children.
SB 277 has passed by the Senate Health Committee and been referred to the Education and Judicial Committees. The senators on these committees are the decision makers for the next stage. The bill is scheduled for hearing in the Senate Education Committee on April 15th.
Please make sure to put next Wednesday April 15th on your calendars and plan to go to Sacramento for the Education Committee hearing. It is really important that we show up in large numbers again, because the Education Committee is just as, if not more important, to this fight. We have a better chance of getting it defeated there because there are only 2-3 senators (one being Pan) that have co-authored it.
ACTION TO TAKE:
1. Please email, fax, call and visit the Senators on the Education Committee. Make sure that they understand that although the bill has been amended to exempt some home school children, this does not make the bill OK to pass. There must be a schooling option that allows children to go to school without parents having to home school and that is accessible to families across the state. If one of the Education Committee is your senator, please go in and meet with them or their aides. See talking points below, especially first 8 which are geared towards the Education Committee. See Contact information below.
2. Attend Education Committee hearing on April 15th in Sacramento.
3. If possible, meet with your Senator or Assembly Person or their staff in person on Thursday or Friday when they are more likely to be in their regional offices. The feedback is that representatives are having their eyes opened by hearing the personal stories and seeing injured kids. See talking point 17 for more. Find your Senator and Assembly Person here: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov
4. If you want more information about local California groups or Facebook pages, contact Dawn Winkler at [email protected]
CONTACT LIST
For emails, just copy and paste this list in your Sent To box: Put “Oppose SB277” in the Subject Box.
EDUCATION COMMITTEE –
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Carol Liu (D) District 25 CHAIR (916) 651-4025
Bob Huff (R) District 29 VICE CHAIR (916) 651-4029
Marty Block (D) District 39 CO-AUTHOR OF SB 277 (916) 651-4039
Loni Hancock (D) District 09 (916) 651-4009
Connie M. Leyva (D) District 20 (916) 651-4020
Tony Mendoza (D) District 32 (916) 651-4032
Richard Pan (D) District 06 AUTHOR OF SB277 w/ Sen. Allen (916) 651-4006
Andy Vidak (R) District 14 (916) 651-4014
Talking Points – Focus on first 8 points as they pertain to Education:
1) You have DEEP concerns about SB277 and are strongly opposed to it.
2) The bill has been amended to exempt from vaccination home school children who all reside in the same residence or are members of a single family but this group is a small portion of the homeschooling contingent and does not help the thousands of other families who cannot home school.
3) Why this is personal to you: a vaccine reaction in someone you know, harassment, autoimmune disease in your family, etc.
4) Research shows that over half of US school children (54%) suffer from a chronic illness or neuro-developmental disability (asthma, allergies, diabetes, obesity, speech delay, learning and behavioral disabilities, autism, etc.) and between 1 in 6 and 1 in 3 US kids has a neuro-developmentally disability. Science links all these conditions to vaccines. This is having a huge impact on school resources and large impact on our taxes. Science links these chronic illnesses or neuro-developmental disabilities to vaccines.
5) A study found that boys vaccinated with hepatitis B vaccine at birth had 3 times the risk of autism as boys who received the first shot later than 1 month after birth. Another study found that boys who received the triple-series of hepatitis b vaccines were 9 times more likely to require special education services than unvaccinated boys. SB 277 will only increase the special education needs of California by forcing vaccines on children who parents already fear are susceptible and therefore avoid vaccination.
6) Special education costs more than twice as much per pupil and will only rise with more mandated vaccines. Schools spend $8.6 billion a year on special education. The average cost to educate a student with disabilities is $22,300 a year, compared with $9,600 for a non-disabled child. We can’t afford this. Source
7) 618,000 California school-aged children, about 10 percent of public school enrollment, another 68,000 preschoolers require special education. How will our nation continue to lead with so many disabled? Source
8) Only 59 percent of students with special needs graduate from high school on time only 11 percent of students with disabilities met federal benchmarks for English language arts and math proficiency in 2011. Don’t we want more for our children? Source
9) Your body and your children’s bodies do not belong to the state. You want to be free to choose how you nourish and keep yourselves healthy. This bill takes away the right to informed consent to vaccination for our children. You are pro-information and pro-civil rights.
10) The safety of vaccines is not absolute and no medical doctor would sign a statement that vaccine safety is absolute. The US Supreme Court recognizes vaccines to be “unavoidably unsafe” (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-152.pdf) and to cause injury and death in some recipients. The US government has paid out more than $3 billion to the victims of vaccine injury. Hundreds of thousands have reported an adverse reaction to vaccination. Vaccine package inserts warn of the risk of brain damage, life-threatening allergy, and death and no one knows in advance who will be harmed by a vaccine.
11) Vaccines fail even in fully vaccinated people and no one knows who will not respond to a vaccine nor how quickly the vaccine’s protection will wane if it did provoke a response in the first place.
12) Vaccinated individuals can spread disease for several weeks after receiving a live virus vaccine.
13) Vaccine makers and the healthcare providers who administer them bear zero liability for vaccine injuries and deaths. Vaccine makers have no incentive to make vaccines safe.
14) Most of the vaccines given today are for diseases that are either rare or mild. For example, there have been no deaths from measles during the last 10 years, but 108 deaths reported after the MMR vaccine during the same time period.
15) It is immoral to force a person to inject a pharmaceutical product into their body, or anything for that matter, even more so when that product could injure or kill them.
16) There are many other ways to stay healthy: a healthy diet, adequate rest, sunshine and exercise, etc. without any risk of vaccine injury.
17) If we mandate vaccines, will we also mandate other medical procedures, such as fetal ultrasound, mammograms and colonoscopy? Will we dictate medical procedures based on genetic testing? Will we have a medical police to determine whether someone can leave the house with a cough?
18) Children today receive 69 doses of vaccines for 16 different viral and bacterial illnesses which more than doubles the government childhood schedule of 34 doses of 11 different vaccines in the year 2000. A vaccine exemption is filed regardless of whether it is for one dose or all doses. Thirty-five doses and 5 more unique vaccines have been added to the schedule in the last 15 years. Those supporting forced vaccination are being dishonest by not acknowledging the exploding vaccine schedule while sounding alarms over small increases in overall non-medical exemptions.
19) There are hundreds of new vaccines in development including some of the following in clinical trials: HIV, herpes, E. coli, dengue fever, avian influenza, smallpox, tuberculosis, typhoid, norovirus, cholera, smoking cessation, syphilis, and gonorrhea. If vaccine manufactures and others who profit from forced vaccination convince legislators to take away our right to delay or decline a vaccine now, what will our future look like?
20) In the past 5 years, drug makers have paid the U.S. Government 19.2 billion in criminal and civil FRAUD penalties. Skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry is well deserved.
21) Physicians, in the American Medical Association Code of Ethics, affirm philosophical and religious exemptions for themselves. See Opinion 9.133 Routine Universal Immunization of Physicians. Parents should have that same right.
22) Existing California law (AB 2109 Pan) required consultation with a doctor before receiving a personal exemption has been in effect for only one year. In this time there has been a 20% reduction in parents seeking a personal exemption (opt out rate dropped from 3.15% to 2.5%). If the goal is to increase the number of children vaccinated, then we need do nothing more than let the existing law work. Taking the unjustified and intrusive step of eliminating a parent’s right to exercise informed consent when making medical decisions for their children and potentially harm ANY child for the “greater good” is unwarranted, unconstitutional and un-American.
23) A few people have reported to coordinators in California that they have met with their senators and assembly members or their staff, in person, either in their offices or in the field. After hearing the personal stories, seeing the kids and being told that this bill means there is no way out, they are very surprised. They are also surprised if you tell them that there are many other parents and pediatricians that are afraid of giving their real names, because they are scared they are going to be targeted. They really don’t get the implications of the bill. So please make a trip to their offices this week – if possible, on Thursday or Friday as they are more likely to be there in person. Put it in your calendar so you don’t forget. If you have gone and have a partner, grandparent or someone else that can also go in, please have them do that. Representative info can be found at the bottom of the Against SB277 website: http://www.sb277.org/when-how-becoming-a-law.html