Congrats, GOP! You're The Anti-Vaxxer Party Again
As the Denver Posts Anna Staver reported in the wee hours, and then hopefully she went to bed:
A bill to make it harder for parents to get a vaccination exemption for their children passed out of a Colorado House committee on a 7-4 vote at about 4 a.m. Tuesday morning nearly 14 hours after the hearing started.
It was the longest committee of the 2019 legislative session so far with hundred of parents bouncing and walking their children up and down the Capitol halls late into the night
This is about keeping Colorados kids safe. We need to be proactive, not reactive. We are in the midst of public health crisis and we cant wait for a tragedy to occur, Rep. Mullica, D-Northglenn, said in a statement released early Tuesday morning after the bill passed. Experts believe this option will help improve Colorados dismal and dangerous immunization rates.
Owing to the hefty Democratic majority in the Colorado House of Representatives, it should be noted that the 7-4 vote in favor of House Bill 19-1312 was in fact a party-line vote. All the Republicans on the House Health and Insurance Committee voted against the bill, which is itself a compromise from earlier proposed legislation that would have eliminated the personal-choice exemption for immunization of children headed to Colorado public schools. As we discussed previously, that proposal was considered too coercive by Gov. Jared Polis, leading to this compromise measure that should still help improve Colorados embarrassingly low child immunization rate.
Read more:
https://www.coloradopols.com/diary/119954/congrats-gop-youre-the-anti-vaxxer-party-again