Newest effort by Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward to minimize unvaccinated children heads to the House.
BY JACOB PALMER | DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
The latest effort by Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward to rise the immunization rate passed the Senate Tuesday in a 19-10 vote.
In an effort to achieve “herd immunity,” the Oregon Senate passed a bill that requires schools to publish their rates of unvaccinated children.
Legislation introduced earlier this year would have eliminated all nonmedical exemptions to vaccines. But it died in committee after encountering vehement opposition from parents who said it usurped their parental rights. So Beaverton Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward introduced a new measure making public each school’s vaccination rates, a move that she said is designed to help parents know which schools have low immunization rates and whether their school has achieved herd immunity. The information would have to be posted on the school’s website and in the main office.
“This bill is about parental rights. Parents have the right now to exempt their children from immunizations for any reason they so choose. But parents who can’t immunize their children have no right to know what the immunization rates are in their child’s school,” Steiner Hayward said.
(SOURCE: Associated Press)
The bill now heads to the House, which has limited time to pass it to the governor before the end of the session.
