rambling on some politics

California passed some bills last Monday that make me pretty frustrated, to put it lightly. Honestly, they have maddened me beyond comprehension, and I have spent the week trying to figure out how to adequately express my thoughts about it. 

These bills are “about” a pretty big buzzword … vaccines.

But are they, really?

NO they are about medical freedom. 

I can’t comprehend the idea behind telling someone else what they legally HAVE to put into their body. Or their children’s body.

I CAN comprehend having the choice to do so, and I can comprehend why some make the choice to do so.

But what of stripping that choice away?

California has zero vaccine exemptions valid for children to attend school. There are three types of exemptions, and many other states have some combination of the three, but California just joined New York, West Virginia, and Mississippi to disallow any exemptions.

Personal exemptions were the first to go. You couldn’t just say “I don’t want to.” Religious exemptions were gone following SB277 in 2015. You couldn’t say “It’s against my religious beliefs.” What got taken away last Monday? MEDICAL exemptions. You can no longer say “My child had a reaction to a vaccine so we have consulted with our doctor and have jointly come to the conclusion that my child should not receive any more, for fear there will be another reaction, potentially fatal.” Or “Our family has a history of autoimmune diseases/vaccine reactions/MTHFR gene mutation/etc so upon consulting with our doctor we have decided it is too risky to vaccinate.” SB276 and SB714 have determined that doctors can no longer give more than 4 medical exemptions in a calendar year. And any that they do give must be reviewed by some still-to-be elected official to give the final say. And the final say is almost always going to be “exemption denied,” because the parameters for a medical exemption are now so small that you basically have to already be dead from a reaction before you can maybe receive the exemption.

So the STATE- some elected official working out of an office in Sacramento, who has never met any of the children whose medical exemption pleas pass through his/her desk, can decide that he or she disagrees with the DOCTOR- who has likely seen said children from birth, knows the family, knows their history, cared for sicknesses, has some semblance of knowledge of the child- this state official can decide that he or she disagrees with the medical recommendations from the doctor and the child does not need a medical exemption and must be fully vaccinated in order to attend/continue to attend any public/private/charter school in the state. 

Oh and any doctor who tries to issue more than 4 medical exemptions in a calendar year will automatically be put under review by the state. So now we have a state full of doctors who are going to be terrified of writing ANY medical exemptions (not that they haven’t been already). 

Goodbye doctor-patient relationship. 

Goodbye medical choice. My body, my choice … only valid for so much it seems.

Land of the free, home of the brave?