[thackney]

The question is whether the state has the right to step in front of the parents to make what is properly a parental decision for the child.

The executive order written by Governor Perry stated:

Parents’ Rights. The Department of State Health Services will, in order to protect the right of parents to be the final authority on their children’s health care, modify the current process in order to allow parents to submit a request for a conscientious objection affidavit form via the Internet while maintaining privacy safeguards under current law.

http://governor.state.tx.us/news/executive-order/3455/

[icanhasbailout]

And the moment the government can "allow" a parent to exercise his or her responsibility, it has already placed itself between and above the parents in a decision the parents alone have the right to make.

Governments aren't there to allow or not allow. Let me give you a refresher as to what America is about:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

In America, governments exist to secure the rights of the people, not to tell the people which of those rights they may be allowed to exercise at the government's discretion.