Oregon Senate passes bill to push parents towards vaccination

Oregon's state Senate passed a bill that will make it harder for parents to get a nonmedical exemption from vaccines for their children.

Oregon has the nation's highest rate of parents refusing vaccinations for their kindergartners for nonmedical reasons. This school year, 6.4 percent of Oregon kindergartners were exempted from at least one required vaccination, up from 5.8 percent last year. The median nonmedical exemption rate for kindergartners in the U.S. was 1.2 percent for the 2011-2012 school year, the most recent period for which national data was available, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There are some pockets in the state where parents don't believe vaccinations protect their kids and they choose alternative treatments instead. Those kinds of beliefs have raised concerns that Oregon children aren't being adequately protected.

The bill, which passed 16-13 along party lines on Thursday, is now headed the House.

Republicans argued that it trampled on religious freedoms and limited parents' choice.

"I'm getting very tired of this legislative assembly and this body taking away the choices of parents as to how they raise their kids," said Sen. Jeff Kruse, a Roseburg Republican.

Republicans pitched an alternative proposal that would have carved out an exemption for "sincerely held religious beliefs," but the plan failed. As proposed, the bill would still allow parents to refuse vaccinations for religious or philosophical reasons, but only after they'd visited the doctor or watched the educational video.

Current state law requires all children in public and private schools, preschools and certified child care facilities to be immunized. Parents, however, can seek exemptions for medical or religious reasons.

"I worry that most people who use the religious exemption currently are doing so because of pseudo-scientific misinformation, and not because of their faith," said Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, a Beaverton Democrat and family physician.

Under the bill, parents enrolling unvaccinated children in school would have to prove they consulted a physician for information or show verification they watched an online educational video about the risks and benefits of immunization. The educational material would be consistent with the most up-to-date medical information provided by the CDC.

Doctors and public health officials back the plan, saying the rate of unvaccinated children in Oregon is alarming and could cause a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases like whooping cough and measles.

Though 90 percent of U.S. children are vaccinated by the time they reach kindergarten, a January report by the Institute of Medicine showed that many parents do not follow the recommended vaccine schedule of 24 immunizations by the time the child is 2. Studies have shown that if it is adhered to, children have lower rates of illness, deaths and hospital stays compared to those who are not vaccinated or not vaccinated at the right time.

To reassure parents that vaccinations are safe, the Institute of Medicine reviewed the immunization schedule and determined that vaccines are not linked in any way to autoimmune diseases, asthma, hypersensitivity, seizures, child developmental disorders, learning or developmental disorders or attention deficit or disruptive disorders.

There has been a growing concern that autism may be linked to vaccinations, but a March study in the Journal of Pediatrics found no association between autism and the amount of vaccines received in the first two years of life. The rates of autism in children who received vaccines all on the same day or spread out until the age of two were similar.

Similar legislation was passed in Washington in 2011. The following school year, the rate of religious immunization exemptions for kindergartners fell by almost 25 percent, according to CDC data.