Thousands
of protesters declared victory Monday, as lawmakers scuttled a planned
vote on a compromise bill that would have ended the ability for parents
in New Jersey to avoid vaccinating their children based on religious
beliefs.
For public health
advocates, failure to pass the bill to tighten vaccine
requirements means lawmakers must start over in the next legislative
session, which begins Tuesday. The stakes are significant, as
measles
cases in the United States hit a 27-year high last year and the number
of children without vaccine protection climbed.
For
vaccine opponents, who for several days have thundered their
disapproval in some of Trenton's noisiest and most crowded
demonstrations, killing the bill capped months of organizing and
galvanizing a national movement. Protesters in the chamber started
screaming and cheering when the Senate session ended without a vote.
Senate
President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said the lawmakers would
reintroduce the bill Tuesday and restart the entire process
“We’re
ready to go to war with this,” Sweeney said Monday. “We’re going to
start attacking this issue a hell of a lot different. We’re going to
attack it with medical experts and putting the facts out and taking them
head on with their challenges, because the statements that they make
are absolutely untrue. We will pass this bill.”
Protesters
outside the Statehouse had drowned out action inside the Senate with
chants of “please vote no,” “kill the bill” and “we will vote you out,”
as car horns blared and whistles and microphones added to the mix.
At the center of the debate is a
measure to require all children in public schools and day care centers,
as well as public colleges and universities, to be vaccinated
against certain diseases unless a doctor signs a state form granting
a medical exemption. Objections for religious reasons, currently claimed
for about 7,300 public-school children from prekindergarten through
sixth grade, would end.
Private schools, however,
would be allowed to admit unvaccinated children, under an amendment
crafted Thursday in the Senate to secure passage of the measure with a
yes vote from Republican Sen. Declan O'Scanlon.
This
compromise would require parents who enroll a child in private school
to acknowledge that they have been informed of the school's vaccine
policy, and the school to post its vaccination rate at each school
entrance.
“This isn’t victory or defeat — this is
the next step in democracy, and the folks that opposed this deserve
credit for putting together a pretty amazing grassroots effort,"
O'Scanlon said. "But now what comes next? Do we bury our heads in the
sand and hope that the resurgence in vaccine-preventable diseases just
goes away? That’s probably not a wise move. I’ve done all I could to
bring both sides together and overcome the negativity.”
The previous version passed the Assembly in December, 45 to 25 with six abstentions, and stalled in the Senate. The amendments passed the Senate on Thursday, 18 to 15, with seven members not voting.
“We’re
either going to get it done now or we’re going to get it done in the
next session," Sweeney said Thursday, "but by all means, this is getting
done.
"It’s the right health care policy and it’s
based on science — unlike what they’re chanting and saying," he said,
referring to the vaccine protesters.
Opponents
of mandatory vaccines, who say the bill would violate their
constitutional right to practice religion, decried the amendments as
making a bad bill worse. The revised version would discriminate against
those with religious objections who can't afford private schools, said
Sue Collins, co-founder of the New Jersey Coalition for Vaccine Choice.
"The
wealthy can once again buy themselves out of a law at the expense of
the rest of us," she said Friday, warning of unintended consequences
from the last-minute rush to approval.
On Friday,
opponents continued their high-pressure campaign that
included telephone calls, tweets, and visits to lawmakers' offices.
Organizations like Children's Health Defense, founded by Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., urged activists to flock to "Occupy Trenton" as lawmakers
vote, to "take a stand for medical rights."
A
national vaccine scientist and advocate, Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor
College of Medicine in Texas, tweeted that he hoped "the NJ Legislature
(and state legislatures in >40 US states) ... realize the potential
harm and damage to children resulting from phony vaccine exemptions."
The number of children with religious exemptions
has climbed by more than 50% in New Jersey over the last five years,
from 8,977 to 13,987, according to the state Department of Health.
Current law requires that parents simply write a letter declaring that
vaccination is against their religious beliefs.
Public
health advocates say people who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons
will be protected from diseases like measles, mumps, chickenpox, and
whooping cough only by "herd immunity" — when a high percentage of the
rest of the population has been vaccinated. Easy-to-get religious
exemptions have created localized pockets where such diseases can spread
and children are at risk, they say.
New York and Maine passed laws last year to eliminate religious exemptions, but Maine has scheduled a "veto referendum" on March 3 to
give voters the opportunity to repeal that legislature's
action. California, Mississippi and West Virginia already had barred
religious exemptions.
Gov. Phil Murphy did not say
whether would have signed the measure if it reached his desk. "We’ll
make the decisions on any bill, including this one, based on science and
facts and data," the governor said last week.
Lindy
Washburn is a senior health care reporter for NorthJersey.com. To
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