UPDATE 3/17/15 

IMPORTANT UPDATE: HB 212 is being pulled down from the hearing on Wednesday!  
We do NOT need you to come and testify against it! 
Thank you everyone for your meetings, calls, emails and faxes to oppose HB 212 which would let minor children ages 14 and up in the Juvenile Justice System to consent to vaccination themselves!  Your efforts have made a huge difference. We have just received confirmation from the House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee Clerk that the bill author has requested that HB 212 be removed from the schedule of bills to be heard on Wednesday.  This does not mean the bill is dead, and it could be rescheduled for a hearing on a later date, but for now, it will not be heard by the committee on Wednesday and your testimony and registered opposition with this committee is not needed.  
HOWEVER, if you have not yet contacted your own representative and senator to oppose HB 212, PLEASE DO ASAP.  Not only will those communications help prevent this bill from resurfacing, it will help shift the vaccine conversation to parental rights which will help with all the other vaccine bills.  Please follow the steps on the alert for this bill posted on the NVIC Advocacy Portal at http://NVICAdvocacy.org to contact your own representative and senator.

Sincerely,
Dawn Richardson and Rebecca Rex
Texas Directors of Advocacy
National Vaccine Information Center
http://NVIC.org and http://NVICAdvocacy.org
PROVE (Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education)
http://vaccineinfo.net

by National Vaccine Information Center

Children should not be vaccinated by any health care provider for any reason without the voluntary, informed consent of their parents. Period.

HB 212, by Rep. Toni Rose ((D), D-110, Dallas) circumvents federal and state parental rights and consumer protection laws by allowing a minor child 14 years of age and older in the Texas Juvenile Justice System to consent to vaccination on their own without their parent. It also allows for a health care provider to consent to vaccination for the child if a parent has previously consented to any medical treatment not specific to vaccination. Unless the health care provider has “actual knowledge” that a parent has refused to give consent for a particular vaccine in the past, the doctor only has to make a “reasonable” attempt to contact the parent before he or she can shift the decision making to a minor child and themselves.  The bill also puts the responsibility on the minor child to reveal personal and family vaccine reaction and medical history to the vaccine administrator while protecting the vaccine administrator from liability for any harm caused by vaccinating a child without parental consent. (http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=84R&Bill=HB212)

By creating a loophole around parental consent and deferring the decision to a minor child, HB 212 creates too much risk of a minor child being vaccinated that shouldn’t be because the parents have strong religious, conscientious and medical reasons that their child should not be vaccinated.

HB 212 is scheduled for a public hearing this Wednesday, March 18^th at 10:30 am in the House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee in the Texas Capitol Extension Hearing Room E2.016.

Texas families who care about drawing the line in the sand to protect parental rights should:

1) plan on attending the hearing and either just registering opposition to the bill or providing meaningful testimony to the committee;

2) immediately contact committee members before the hearing asking them to oppose the bill; and

3) to contact their own representative and senator and ask them to oppose the bill.  

This is a fundamental parental rights, product safety, and informed consent issue.  The legal right of parents to give their informed consent for minor children to take medical risks with vaccination, which can result in injury or death, trumps the inconvenience of health care providers to obtain consent and the goals of state agencies, vaccine corporations and medical organizations whose employees, stockholders or members profit or professionally benefit from increased, widespread vaccine use.

Parents are legally accountable and financially responsible for the health care and education of a minor child when that child experiences a vaccine reaction and becomes chronically ill or disabled.

Consent to medical treatment does not equal consent to vaccinate.

This is just one of 16 bad vaccine bills filed in Texas and this provides an excellent opportunity to educate legislators about some of these issues before the other bills have a hearing.

LEGISLATIVE EDUCATION ACTION NEEDED NOW

1)  Choose how you would like to deliver your message to your legislators. The suggested modes of communication below are listed in the order of being more likely to be more impactful on educating your legislator.

a) Make an appointment for a direct personal visit;
b) Make an appointment to talk directly in a personal phone call;
c) Make an appointment to talk in person to a legislative aide;
d) Call and talk to a legislative aide to relay a message;
e) Stop by your legislator’s office and talk to the aid responsible for vaccine bills,
f) Send a letter, a fax, or an email through web contact forms or legislative email address.

2)  Lookup your State Representative and Senator and their contact information.
Enter your address here: http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/Home.aspx for your State Representative and State Senator’s contact information.
Or if you are registered with the NVIC Advocacy Portal, register/login at http://NVICAdvocacy.org. Click on “Check What is Happening in Your State” on the home page or “My State” on the STATE TEAMS Tab.  Your personal state legislators are listed on the right side of the page. Click on them one at a time to display their contact information.

3) Contact your own State Representative and Senator and Ask them to VOTE NO on HB 212. Explain to them why you, the parent, must have the final say as to whether or not your child is vaccinated. (See suggested talking points below)

4) Contact the legislators on the House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee before Wednesday 3/18 at 10:30 and tell them to VOTE NO on HB 212 at the hearing. (See below for table with committee contact information)
http://www.legis.state.tx.us/Committees/MembershipCmte.aspx?LegSess=84R&CmteCode=C340 –Committee Information

5)  Plan on attending the hearing and registering your opposition on HB 212.

What: House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee Hearing
When: Wednesday, March 18^th at 10:30 a.m. or upon adjournment
Where: In the Capitol Extension Hearing Room E2.016.

Hearing notice: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/84R/schedules/pdf/C3402015031810301.PDF

Plan on arriving no later than 10:15 a.m. (the bill is first on the agenda) and submit a witness affirmation card against the bill at the electronic kiosk outside the hearing room on behalf of yourself and/or any organizations you represent before the hearing starts.  If you are willing to testify, you can indicate that you would like to give testimony in addition to registering your opposition when you sign in at the hearing. Bring a 2-3 minute statement that you can share out loud and leave enough copies to leave with all the committee members and staff (10). If you don’t wish to testify, you can still show up and register your opposition before the hearing starts.  We need a lot of people registering opposition so the rest of the legislature can understand how bad this bill is.

Parking: Capitol Visitors Parking Garage located at 1201 San Jacinto, between Trinity and San Jacinto Streets, at 12th and 13th Streets. http://www.tspb.state.tx.us/spb/plan/Parking.htm. Another option is the parking Garage at the Bob Bullock History Museum on Congress Avenue with the entrance to the garage on 18^th street on the south side of the museum.  The fee is $8 for the day. http://www.thestoryoftexas.com/visit/plan-your-visit/parking-directions.

6)  Login to the NVIC Advocacy Portal often to check for updates.  http://NVICAdvocacy.org. Bills can change many times over the legislative process and be brought up for votes at different stages of the process.

7)  Please forward this email to family and friends and ask them to share their concerns with their legislators as well.
Register for email updates:
NVIC Advocacy Portal at http://NVICAdvocacy.org.
PROVE: http://www.vaccineinfo.net/subscribe/subscribe.aspx

SUGGESTED TALKING POINTS (Pick from the ones that resonate with you and apply to your family):

Introduce yourself and identify yourself as a constituent with your own representative and senator.

•                 HB 212, by Rep. Toni Rose ((D), D-110, Dallas) circumvents federal and state parental rights and consumer protection laws by allowing a minor child 14 years of age and older in the Texas Juvenile Justice System to consent to vaccination on their own without their parent. It also allows for a health care provider to consent to vaccination for the child if a parent has previously consented to any medical treatment not specific to vaccination. Unless the health care provider has “actual knowledge” that a parent has refused to give consent for a particular vaccine in the past, the doctor only has to make a “reasonable” attempt to contact the parent before he or she can shift the decision making to a minor child and themselves.  The bill also puts the responsibility on the minor child to reveal personal and family vaccine reaction and medical history to the vaccine administrator while protecting the vaccine administrator provider from liability for any harm caused by vaccinating a child without parental consent.

•                 Children should not be vaccinated for any reason without the voluntary, informed consent of their parents or legal guardian. If there is no parent or legal guardian from whom to obtain consent, the state already has laws to allow state employees to take the steps to gain medical and other control over the child.

•                 This is a fundamental parental rights, product safety and informed consent issue.  The legal right of parents to give their informed consent for minor children to take a medical risks with vaccination, which can result in injury or death, trumps the inconvenience of health care providers to obtain consent and the goals of state agencies, vaccine corporations and medical organizations whose employees, stockholders or members profit or professionally benefit from increased, widespread vaccine use.

•                 By creating a loophole around parental consent and deferring the decision to a minor child, HB 212 creates too much risk of a minor child being vaccinated that shouldn’t be when parents have strong religious, conscientious or medical reasons that their child should not be vaccinated.

•                 If minor children aren’t legally recognized for their ability to decide on and vote for a state legislator until they turn 18, how can the legislature say that a minor child can weigh benefits and risks of a vaccine that can cause serious side-effects or even death or adequately describe their own personal and family medical and vaccine reaction history? Doctors already do a terrible job disclosing vaccine risk information and vaccine injury compensation program information to adults.

•                 Doctors have spent hours complaining to the Texas Legislature over the years about getting consent for the vaccine tracking system including at a recent hearing on HB 465 in the House Public Health Committee this year.  Parents have every right to be concerned that doctors will try and coerce minor children into consenting to vaccination and not obtaining consent from a parent.

•                 There is scientific evidence that the physical, mental and emotional development of all children, including pre-adolescents, varies and is often not sufficient to enable children to make well-reasoned decisions about risk taking involving their health and well-being.

•                 A substantial body of U.S. law affirms the fundamental, legal right for parents to make medical, educational and other important welfare decisions for their minor children.

•                 Parents are still legally accountable and financially responsible for the health care and education of a minor child when that child experiences a vaccine reaction and becomes chronically ill or disabled.

•                 There are hundreds of new vaccines in development including some of the following in clinical trials: HIV, herpes, E. coli, dengue fever, avian influenza, smallpox, tuberculosis, typhoid, norovirus, cholera, smoking cessation, syphilis, and gonorrhea.  This bill would allow for minor children in the Juvenile Justice System to consent to not only vaccines on the current childhood schedule of 69 doses of 16 vaccines, but to consent to experimental vaccines and vaccines in clinical trials turning children into potential research subjects without their parent’s knowledge or consent.

•                 There won’t be anyone who is responsible to monitor the child and track and report federally required reporting of Adverse Events that occur within 30 days of the vaccine.

•                 There won’t be anyone as an advocate for the child to file claims with vaccine injury compensation program for or to track the time limits imposed in federal law for the statute of limitations on behalf of child to receive compensation for their care if they are hurt by the vaccine.

•                 Vaccines are pharmaceutical products that cause injury and death for some.  The United States Government has paid out more than $3 billion dollars to vaccine victims. Many more people have adverse reactions. Nobody can predict who will be harmed from vaccines.

•                 Vaccines manufacturers and the doctors who administer vaccines are completely shielded from liability for vaccine injuries and deaths.

•                 In the past 5 years, drug makers have paid the U.S. Government $19.2 billion in criminal and civil FRAUD penalties. Skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry is reasonable.

•                 HB 212 circumvents and is in violation of consumer safety protections upheld in federal law since 1986. NVIC’s co-founders worked with Congress on the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986,  42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-26 letters (c) and (d) which require that the legal guardian of a child receive “prior to the administration” of a vaccination information including “a concise description of the risks associated with the vaccine” and “a statement of the availability of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.”  How can that happen if the minor child is allowed to make vaccination decisions without the knowledge or consent of their parent?

Refer to NVIC’s “Reforming Vaccine Policy and Law” guide for answers to questions your legislators may have.  The fully referenced version can be found on our site posted at: http://www.nvic.org/Vaccine-Laws/state-vaccine-requirements/Reforming-Vaccine-Policy—Law-Guide.aspx. You can include this link in your letters as well.

COMMITTEE CONTACT INFORMATION: Texas House Juvenile Justice & Family Issues Committee – 2015

http://www.house.state.tx.us/committees/committee/?committee=340

 Clerk: Tamoria Jones

Address: EXT E2.202

Phone: (512) 463-0794

Comment on this article at VaccineImpact.com

See Also:

Texas Rushes to Medical Tyranny: 9 Bills on Vaccine Coercion Proposed!

Saying NO To Vaccines
By Dr. Sherri Tenpenny
You have legal options!

More Info

Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History
by Dr. Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk

Free Shipping Available!
Learn More