There was only one governor who all by himself made an executive order mandating the shots. There is no excuse for what Perry did, it ought to be a huge red flag.
With an opt-out which anybody but the least-involved parents could easily have submitted, maintaing control of their own children's lives and welfare. Hey, I home schooled so I would not give up my parental rights at ALL. I don't think asking parents to care about their kids enough to take their OWN parental control with such an easy way is asking too much of good parents.
Although, come to think of it, there really ARE too many parents who don't even care enough to take charge of their children's best interest, so maybe Rick Perry was actually expecting too much of those parents.
That said, usually conservatives applaud states trying to use conservative - local - private funding ways to implement programs, but in this case, all the other governors using tax payer money to pay for their Gardasil programs (happening NATION-WIDE) at that time seems to be the route of choice for today's conservatives here. Go figure.
Now we ALL are stuck with paying Mereck through tax payer funding.