California’s governor signed a first-of-its-kind bill late last week, dramatically limiting — if not completely erasing — exemptions to the state’s mandatory vaccination law for children.
Some California residents, however, who say that the bill represents a shocking governmental overreach that threatens their personal autonomy, are pushing to have the law included on the November ballot.
NBC News reports that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills designed to “crack down on doctors who write fraudulent medical exemptions for school children’s vaccinations,” in order to re-establish California’s falling childhood vaccination rate, which has given rise to a number of outbreaks of preventable diseases — including the measles — over the last several years.
“This legislation provides new tools to better protect public health, and does so in a way that ensures parents, doctors, public health officials and school administrators all know the rules of the road moving forward,” Newsom wrote in a statement to press accompanying the bill. – READ MORE