New state law puts children in harm’s way
COMMENTARY
Laura McFarland

I hate needles.

I cringe every time I think about going to the doctor’s office to get a shot in the arm or somewhere even less fun.

Even knowing how much I hated getting shots, my mom always dragged me to the doctor’s office to get vaccinated. This was partly out of love because she wanted me to stay healthy, and partly because these shots were mandated by law before it was possible to enter the education system.

For years, millions of parents and reluctant children have been going through the immunization process. Only children with religious or medical reasons could be exempted from getting immunizations before they entered public or private child care facilities, elementary or secondary schools and universities.

Now, under a state law that went into effect Sept. 1, parents can have their children exempted from immunizations required by the state for “reasons of conscience.”

Ridiculous as it sounds, now, “I don’t like needles,” can actually be considered a good reason to avoid getting these shots, Texas Department of Health press officer Doug McBride said.

Hopefully no parent would be thoughtless enough to leave a child vulnerable to disease for such a reason, but with the law worded as it is, the Texas Health Department would have to accept this absurd reason as valid.

It appears lawmakers tried to cover themselves by including in the section a line that says students who use this reason can be removed from school “in times of emergency or epidemic declared by the commissioner of public health.” But all that leads to is a number of children missing school because they weren’t protected in the first place.

The state health department has already received about 1,800 requests for the form needed to apply for a “reasons of conscience” exemption, McBride said. That’s a significant number when you consider those requests represent 2,900 children who will not be vaccinated against easily preventable diseases, like measles, mumps, whooping cough and chicken pox.

There have already been 3,286 cases of vaccine-prevenatble diseases in Texas this year. With an increasing number of children not vaccinated, there is a greater risk that these numbers will go up.

Adding the “reasons of conscience” exemption to state law is a gross misjudgment on our lawmakers’ parts and represents a step back in medicine. Diseases that were, for all intents and purposes, mostly beaten are being afforded a comeback.

It’s irresponsible to have this law offer no definition for “reasons of conscience” other than that it includes religious reasons, which were already part of the document.

It looks like it is going to take more children getting sick to prove this was a bad decision, but waiting for that kind of proof is taking too much of a risk with their health and safety.

Managing editor Laura McFarland is a senior news-editorial journalism and English major from Houston.