Committee chair Carol Liu (D-Glendale) pointedly asked Pan, "How do you justify the public purpose of public safety and the right for everyone to have access" to an education.
The bill would make California one of only three states -- along with West Virginia and Mississippi -- without a religious or philosophical exemption to vaccination.
Only a tiny minority of California schoolchildren -- about 2.5 percent of the state's kindergartners this year -- have a personal belief exemption on file. But parents who support the exemption were out in full force at the hearing, testifying in opposition to the bill, just as they had turned out last week before the health committee. The health committee had voted 6-2 to advance the bill. Many parents said they would pull their kids out of school rather than meet a vaccine requirement.
Parents in support of the bill turned out as well, including Marin County father Carl Krawitt, whose 7-year-old son is in remission from leukemia. The chemotherapy the boy received as treatment wiped out previous vaccine protection. He could not commence revaccination until February, when his immune system had recovered sufficiently.
"We believe that this is sound public health policy because it keeps our kids safe," Krawitt testified. "You have a duty to legislate from solid evidence, not from fear, and keep our schools safe."
Risk of Backfire?
But some supporters of vaccinations wonder if the move will backfire. Writing in the New York Times about the California bill, Dartmouth government professor Brendan Nyhan referred to the "blundering approach state legislators there have taken" and asserted that this "direct attack on exemptions can rally the anti-vaccine cause."
Nyhan argued instead in favor of tightening exemption rules, as State of Health has previously described:
- Requiring annual renewal of the personal belief exemption. Right now, parents need only file at kindergarten and seventh grade
- Require notarization to file the personal belief exemption form
- For religious exemptions, require a religious leader within the organization to submit a letter on your behalf
But in a phone call late Wednesday afternoon, Pan, the bill's co-author, stood his ground. "We can't bury our heads and say that nothing is happening in our communities," he said. "We need to have a public debate about what it means to be safe from these deadly diseases."
He cited the 2010 whooping cough epidemic in California with more than 9,000 cases. Ten infants died. Places with higher rates of personal belief exemption were associated with more cases of whooping cough.
The education committee will vote next Wednesday. If approved, it has another committee stop before it would get to the Senate floor. If it passes both those hurdles, it heads over to the Assembly.