Denver, CO – Parent’s rights are being taken away. Colorado Democrats and at least one Republican want to make it extremely hard to opt-out of vaccinating your children. Six hundred citizens signed up to testify on this bill. Most of them were against it. The bill still passed, and parent’s voices are NOT being heard.
We have written extensively about the vaccination issue as it applies to parent’s rights. If you want to read our latest primer on vaccinations, please click here.
Last year one of the few wins for Colorado citizens was the defeat of the mandatory vaccination bill in the legislature. Of course, Democrats, who think they have a mandate, brought back a similar bill. Unfortunately, they have a Republican along for the ride this year. Kevin Priola (R-Adams), Julie Gonzales (D-Denver), and Kyle Mullica (D-Adams) are prime sponsors on the bill.
SB20-163 is this year’s legislation to force vaccinations on your children subtly. From The Denver Post:
If Senate Bill 163 passes, parents still would be able to claim religious or personal belief exemptions for their children when signing them up for public schools. However, they would have to get a form signed by a person authorized to give vaccines, or they would need to complete an online module about vaccines. The bill also calls for improving data collection about exemptions in a central system.
Saja Hindi, The Denver Post, February 19, 2020
The existing process for opting your kids out was signing a form. This was already a lousy policy because when it comes to something like vaccinations, it should be an opt-in situation. The extra step of getting a signature from a medical professional comes as a considerable burden for a lot of families in both time commitment and money.
The part of this bill that is incredibly nefarious is the data collection. First, why should the government be collecting personal data on its citizens, especially medical data? This should be a privacy issue.
Second, the big question is what the government will do with the data? Will they use this to track physicians who sign the forms. Will this lead to harassment by the government of these physicians, like threatening to take a medical license if they continue the practice?
What about the parents and children in the database? Will this information be used to harass and stigmatize parents and children? Unfortunately, this will be the result of the data collection. The government’s argument that the data collection is just for “statistics” is disingenuous.
Over 600 people showed up to testify for and against SB20-163. Most of them were against the bill. Some citizens couldn’t wait the ten hours to testify. Even with this level of opposition, the bill passed out of a State Senate committee on a 3 to 2 vote. Legislators didn’t listen to the testimony.
The government is about control, SB20-163, reinforces this notion.
What do you think about mandatory vaccinations? Do you believe SB20-163 is fair to parents? Please post your comments below and on social media!
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the government never collects information on its citizens for good reasons…..
This is outrageous, endangering healthy children, enlisting them into a system like some criminals! I Oppose SB20-163!!! And until I’m dead, no child if mine will be FORCED into anything that is against their will!
Thank you for some REAL journalism on this incredibly complicated issue. One more thing to note and this is a BIG deal; the bill wants to do away with the current process of consulting local stakeholders
for vetting any vaccine being recommended to the mandatory school schedule and wants to simply give all the power to the Board of Health to add whatever they want, whenever they want. The Board of Health is directed follow the ACIP recommendations which will add at least 4 more vaccines to the school mandatory schedule right away, including Flu and HPV.
Many Colorado families’ who normally follow the vaccine schedule, have issues with those two vaccines in particular. They will now have to utilize and submit an exemption, this will greatly increase the numbers of exemptions, which will do a few things. It certainly won’t increase vaccine compliance, which is supposedly the whole point of this disastrous bill to begin with and when the bill sponsors come back next session, they’ll cite the increase in exemptions and lack of compliance as evidence that they must flat-out remove all exemptions, for the greater good. We are being set-up to fail and it’s exactly how California and NY stripped the Rights from their citizens, it’s all part of the game. The government has NO place in dictating Medical Decisions, it’s just that simple. Colorado parents simply want to keep medical decisions private and between them and their doctors’, just like we do with EVERY OTHER MEDICAL DECISION. No on SB-163.