A state lawmaker in Allegheny County will soon introduce a bill to give teenagers the option to supersede the will of their vaccine-hesitant parents to get the COVID-19 shots themselves.
Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, the ranking member of the Legislature’s Health Committee, said he’s concerned about instances where minors want to get vaccinated but can’t because their parents won’t allow it — even though those same minors could make other choices about their health, including to get mental health treatment, without the consent of their guardians.
He plans to unveil a bill next week that would allow people age 14 and older to personally consent to immunizations that are recommended by the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. That includes vaccines for COVID-19 and measles, among others.
“We know there are parents that are listening to and reading internet sites that don’t believe in having themselves or their children vaccinated for COVID when they’re eligible,” Mr. Frankel said. “It’s putting not only themselves and their families at risk but our community at risk, both in terms of spreading a disease and thwarting our ability to have a full-throated economic recovery.”
For it to pass, his legislation will have to convince a handful of Republicans in the majority whose party has drawn a hard line on issues of authority. Leaders in the caucus recently rejected a request by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf to come back to session and pass a mask mandate for K-12 schools and child care centers, saying that local officials should be able to make the decision for their own communities.
But Mr. Frankel, decrying that public health has become a “culture war” issue, said his efforts are “very reasonable” and propose regulations that are “not onerous.”
He’ll also propose a bill that would require parents to consult with medical professionals if they want to claim a religious or philosophical exemption as to why their children won’t get mandatory school vaccinations. Parents currently have to sign a form. The medical consultation would “make sure the parents at least get good information before they opt out of the normal vaccine requirements,” he said.
Mr. Frankel said even before the COVID-19 pandemic, diseases like measles were seeing a resurgence because of many parents’ growing vaccine hesitancy. A sponsorship memo for his bill said that in 2018, the U.S. recorded the second-highest rate of measles cases since the disease was deemed eliminated in 2000.
And now, with the virus’s delta variant spreading and there being no statewide mask mandate for schools, it’s reached a “really urgent level” of trying to get everyone vaccinated,” Mr. Frankel said.
He said he’s still circulating the sponsorship memo and doesn’t have a number of cosponsors to share yet.
“Obviously, we don’t control what gets to the House floor. I can’t control what gets considered in the health committee as the ranking member,” he said. “I certainly will ask my counterpart, Chair [Kathy] Rapp, if she’ll consider it.”
*story by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
