It’s a Vaccine. Mandatory Vaccines.
The idea behind mandatory vaccines for anything is that people would catch diseases in school.
Are people having sex in school?
There is so much garbage in Perry’s record.
We’ll be hearing a lot about Gardasil.
Gardasil is like Whitewater or birth certificates or being a B-movie actor. It doesn’t stop presidents from being elected, just a thorn in their side.
The argument we were having was not over whether a specific requirement for Gardisil was appropriate. Well, that is the argument we SHOULD be having, but because of both the “sound bite” nature of debates, and the desire of Perry opponents to attack him with the strongest charges possible, the argument made against him is that he opposed parental rights because he required a vaccine.
My argument is that this is a different argument, because we DO have a long list of mandatory vaccines, Texas law already gives the executive branch the responsibility for determining which items are on the list, and provides the opt-out provisions which appply to vaccines on the list.
So the attacks on Perry that he usurped authority are wrong, and the argument that he opposes parental rights are wrong. His error, and I strongly agree it was an error, was to make Gardisil a mandatory vaccine. That argument has nothing to do with parental rights or usurping authority.
I agree with you on Gardisil. I wrote two articles in Virginia opposing our Gardisil vaccine requirement, using those same arguments.
The problem with anti-perry folks is that the error in judgment of adding Gardisil to a vaccine list is a minor one, which Perry reversed, and has admitted was a mistake. That is why they are trying to make it into an argument that Perry rejects parental authority. That’s a rediculous claim for a guy who has pushed parental rights throughout his governorship, including parental consent laws.
Even in his executive order, he ADDRESSED parental rights, directing the administrators to streamline the opt-out process and advertise it, to make it easy for parents to opt-out.
Elsewhere I’ve explained that opt-in doesn’t make sense for a vaccination program, because you can always opt in to a vaccine, you don’t need a law or order. But the Texas vaccination law doesn’t provide for an opt-in procedure anyway.
IN summary, it’s absurd to argue that mandating a specific vaccine demonstrates a rejection of parental authority — because the vaccine program as a whole falls under that same argument, as does the attendance rules for public school.