We’re going to be fighting about vaccinations for a while

I wish it weren’t so, but it is.

Texas is one of 18 states that allow non-medical exemptions to the vaccines required for school attendance. California had a similar law allowing non-medical exemptions, until last year when it enacted a law that has one of the strictest requirements in the country after a 2014 outbreak of measles traced to the Disneyland theme park infected more than 100 people around the country.

Many of the parents opting out of the immunizations, which are widely recommended by doctors, say they fear a link between the vaccines and health problems such as autism. But studies that they cite have been widely debunked by public health officials.

“Year after year we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of students with a conscientious exemption from vaccination in Texas,” said Christine Mann, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services. “But overall, the numbers are small.”

Even though statewide levels of vaccinations remain high, at over 98 percent, what concerns public health officials are the growing clusters of geographic areas with high rates of unvaccinated children. Texas went from just 2,314 “conscientious exemptions” in 2003 to 44,716 this year, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Some parents are pressing state officials to let them know how many of their children’s peers are unvaccinated. Jinny Suh, who has a 4-year-old son, is helping spearhead a petition drive asking legislators to change state law so that the number of school exemptions is public. Currently, exemption rates are available for individual private and charter schools, but only district-wide for public schools.

State Rep. César Blanco, a Democrat from El Paso, introduced a bill during the last legislative session that would have required schools to notify parents about vaccination rates at the school level, but the bill was stalled in committee.

“As a parent, there are lots of things that people get very passionate about,” Suh said, “but for some reason, in my experience, vaccinations remains an almost taboo topic besides a few passionate people.”

Yes, the anti-vaxxers are a minority, but they are a vocal and organized minority, which is a recipe for political success. Unfortunately, the end result of that political success is a growing public health problem, which is compounded by a lack of leadership in our state government. Honestly, what we need here is for an organized pushback against the anti-vaxxers, a pro-vaccine Moms Demand Action kind of thing. The main difference here isn’t that there is an anti-vaccination legislative faction that needs to be countered. I doubt there are that many legislators who are truly anti-vaccination, though there are a decent number who are in favor of “conscience” objections to some extent. It’s more that there isn’t a vocal and active pro-vaccination legislative force that can advance the cause and/or defend against attempts to weaken vaccination requirements. People who want to see more kids get vaccinated and fewer kids get exempted from vaccinations need to elect a few of their own. Until that happens, we’re going to see more stories like this one.

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