Obama gives you NO choice. The only way to opt out is to DIE.
Perry protected the choice and decision making authority parents have no differently than with any other childhood vaccination.
Vaccine requirements are not news: for school attendance, for travel, for certain working environments. It's routine.
Some really sick-minded people are obsessed with Gardasil because the vaccine is against strains of HPV that are classed as an STD. They see "STD" and lose all pretense of rational thought. "He's trying to sexualize our daughters!" "He thinks our baby girls are sluts!" (Cue headless chicken running.)
He was taken to the woodshed. He knows it. You know it. Michelle knows it.
Let's contrast Perry's parental involvement approach with what's happening in CA today
AB 499 does an end-run around parents entirely and says simply: "A minor who is 12 years of age or older may consent to medical care related to the prevention of a sexually transmitted disease."
The state and the child only. No parental consent. There's not even a requirement for parents to be informed after the fact in this bill.
That's the kind of fascist insanity that needs to be stopped. That's real interference with parental rights. That's not what Perry did.
He was repudiated soundly for his use of executive order on the vaccine in spite of its parental rights protections, but the act should not be sensationalized to the extreme.
Perry enhanced the choice and decision making authority parents have.
He made the form available on line and a parent only needed to submit it once for the duration of the child's schooling.
Prior to that, the form needed to be requested from a State Office and the only reliable way to obtain one was to request it in person. There are anecdotal reports that some parents ended up having to travel to Austin to finally obtain the form. The need to resubmit the form changed over time from being good for 5 years to as low as being effective only year to year.