In fact Los Angeles Unified School District started providing Gardasil in the 2006-2007 school year.
Perry signed his order in early 2007.
You only hear about Perry because his opt-out "mandate" cause a fuss and was overturned by the TX legislature.
Much of the outrage comes from people who bafflingly see Gardasil as permission for wantonly immoral sex by young kids rather than classed like other vaccines. Then you have the anti-vaccine types who want nothing to do with them no matter how safe or useful.
Since it "opting-out" was always offered under Perry's order the scale of outrage always seemed disproportionate to the his "offense" unless you fall in one of the aforementioned groups.
FDA approved it. American Academy of Pediatrics recommended it. CDC recommended it. It's not as if this was some sick Tuskegee Experiment on little girls. Or done in secret. Or had no opt-out provision.
The vaccine is useless if the patient is already infected so you give the vaccine late enough in life that it's safe yet early enough existing infection is highly improbable. In this case, it's given before sexual activity might take place.
HPV, strains of which Gardasil protects against, infects three-quarters of the population in their lifetime. Most don't know it because they're asymptomatic and their natural immune system kills the virus. Gardasil is narrowly aimed at the strains which cause cervical cancer only.
Parents are creeped out at the idea of their children one day being sexual active but that uneasiness clouds the fundamental good here: preventing cervical cancer. No daughter is going to know if she'll be exposed by a creep boyfriend, a vile rapist or an unfaithful husband. The man himself likely wouldn't know he was a carrier.
Yes cervical cancer can be treatable if caught early but the cold reality is women die from it.
Maybe Perry should've gone about it differently but I believe he has a strong argument saying it was in keeping with his "prolife" principles and he always let parents have the final say.
I'm not going to dig through a lot of back records to find this but I believe that 'opting out' was already on the books in Texas but to do so you had to personally go to some gov't agency to pick up the 'opt out' form. Perry's EO expanded the Parental Rights by making the form available to the parents over the internet. In other words he was making it easier for them to 'opt out' if they so chose.
We also weren’t too happy about him using executive fiat, having to be among the first users (just a bit after Los Angeles), and having revolving-door links to the company involved.
...and the opt-out provision was a big-deal and he should have WANTED it fixed. As I’m sure you know, the drug was required just like any other for kids going to school and the only way to opt out, for any vaccine, was to swear that your religion prohibited the use of vaccines...something conservatives would rather not have to do.
But in the end, we’re simply PERPLEXED. Why the hurry? And given the dozens of deaths from the drug, perhaps he should have taken a bit more time, and brought the public along, in some way.