CA ALERT: OPPOSE Bill AB2109 Restricting Vaccine Exemptions

[Guest guest]

Incredibly important information! Please read and act now to save your

exemption rights!

Sylvia

California Pediatrician

Legislator Pushing Bill to Make Parents

Pay For a Dr. Appointment to TRY to Obtain a Personal Belief

Exemption

Contact California Legislators NOW to Oppose AB2109

Dear California NVIC Advocacy Team Members,

Your rights to make informed independent vaccination choices for your

family are under attack by forced vaccination proponents in California

who want to profit from restricting your independent access to a personal

belief exemption to mandatory vaccination. We need your timely help

to contact California legislators to oppose Assembly Bill 2109.

AB2109, introduced by Assembly Member Pan, who himself is a

pediatrician, would impose these additional costly and time consuming

burdens on parents wanting to use a personal belief exemption

to:

1) pay for an expensive appointment at a medical

doctor’s office to be given vaccine risk and benefit information that is

already available online for free; and

2) jump through the bureaucratic hoops of obtaining yet

additional new forms provided by the Department of Public Health which

state that the health care practitioner has provided risk and benefit

information to the parent; and

3) find a health care provider actually willing to take

the appointment and then sign the new forms within 6th months

of starting school for the exemption to be valid.

This raises many questions legislators need to answer including:

· How will the state pay

for all these extra required office visits for families on public

assistance and for the kids of state employees who have their health

coverage provided by the state?

· What happens to a

parent who can’t find a provider willing to make these types of

appointments and then sign the form?

· What will stop doctors

from using this law to deny access to philosophical exemptions? It is

already hard enough for families to find providers who are willing to

just treat children in their practice at all when they deviate from the

required vaccination schedule.

The bill has been referred to the Assembly Committee on Health.

Text of the bill can be found here:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/asm/ab_2101-2150/ab_2109_bill_20120223_introduced.html

.. We will let you know as soon as we know the hearing date.

In the meantime, we need you to take the following actions to help oppose

this bill:

1) Contact members of the Assembly Committee on Health and ask them

to oppose AB 2109 (suggested phone call outline below).

Assembly Member

Phone and Fax

Link to Contact Form

Monning (D) - Chair

Tel: (916) 319-2027

Fax: (916) 319-2127

Contact Assembly Member W. Monning

Dan Logue ® - Vice Chair

(P) 916-319-2003

(F) 916-319-2103

Contact Assemblyman Dan Logue

Tom Ammiano (D)

Tel: (916) 319-2013

Fax: (916) 319-2113

Contact Assembly Member Tom Ammiano

Toni Atkins (D)

Tel: (916) 319-2076

Fax: (916) 319-2176

Contact Assembly Member Toni Atkins

Bonilla (D)

Tel: (916) 319-2011

Fax: (916) 319-2111

Contact Assemblywoman Bonilla

Mike Eng (D)

Tel: (916) 319-2049

Fax: (916) 319-2149

Contact Assembly Member Mike Eng

Garrick ®

(P) 916-319-2074

(F) 916-319-2174

Contact Assemblyman Garrick

.S Gordon (D)

Tel: (916) 319-2021

Fax: (916) 319-2121

Contact Assemblyman S. Gordon

Hayashi (D)

Tel: (916) 319-2018

Fax: (916) 319-2118

Contact Assembly Member Hayashi

(D)

Tel: (916) 319-2057

Fax: (916) 319-2157

Contact Assembly Assistant Majority Whip Hernández

Bonnie Lowenthal (D)

Tel: (916) 319-2054

Fax: (916) 319-2154

Contact Assembly Member Bonnie Lowenthal

Allan R. Mansoor ®

(P) (916) 319-2068

(F) (916) 319-2168

Contact Assemblyman Allan R. Mansoor

Holly J. (D)

Tel: (916) 319-2047

Fax: (916) 319-2147

Contact Assembly Member Holly J.

Nestande ®

(P) 916-319-2064

(F) 916-319-2164

Contact Assembly Member Nestande

Pan (D) – sponsor

Tel: (916) 452-0505

Fax: (916) 452-5525

Contact Assembly Member Pan

V. (D)

Tel: (916) 319-2080

Fax: (916) 319-2180

Contact Assembly Member V. Peréz

Jim Silva ®

(P) 916-319-2067

(F) 916-319-2167

Contact Assembly Member Jim Silva

Cameron Smyth ®

(P) 916-319-2038

(F) 916-319-2138

Contact Assembly Member Cameron Smyth

Das

Tel: (916) 319-2035

Fax: (916) 319-2135

Contact Assembly Member Das

Additional contact information for district offices is available by

clicking on the assembly members name here -

http://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/membersstaff

Emails are listed as

assemblymember.lastname@... , however most assembly

members prefer to be contacted via the online contact form linked in the

table above.

2) Contact your state senator and state assembly member and ask

them to oppose AB2109. If you log in to the NVIC

Advocacy Portal at

http://NVICAdvocacy.org and view

this alert on the California state page, we will automatically lookup who

your legislators are and display them to the right of this alert. You can

click on their names to open up their contact information. This

free confidential service requires your registration and login in order

for us to be able to calculate who you legislators are.

3) Let us know if you can help with the hearings by contacting NVIC

CA State Directors, Dawn Winkler or Gutierrez, at

CADirector@... or call Dawn Winkler at

(530) 283-1018 if you

a) are willing to attend the committee hearings and/or testify against

the bill; or

have a family member who has suffered an adverse reaction to a

pertussis containing vaccine and are willing to provide written or oral

testimony against the bill while describing that reaction; or

c) you have been thrown out of your doctor’s office for delaying or

declining a vaccine and are willing to share your story with legislators;

or

d) you are a health care provider who is willing to provide testimony

against the bill.

4) Send this to as many friends and family in California that you

can and ask them to please register for the NVIC Advocacy Portal

at http://NVICAdvocacy.org so they

can get added to this state email list and receive updates how they can

help fight this bill during this session. TO LIKE AND SHARE THIS

ALERT ON FACEBOOK, link to

http://nvicadvocacy.org/members/Resources/CAOPPOSEAB2109RestrictingVaccineExemptions.aspx

and click on “like” or “send” by the Facebook tag on the top of the

page.

Sample Phone Plan:

· Call the office

number and introduce yourself and ask to talk to someone about AB 2109.

If this is your assembly member’s office, let them know you are a

constituent and what town/city you are from.

· Let the appropriate

person know you are opposed to AB 2109 because it requires you to have to

pay for an extra medical office visit you don’t want or need, it requires

additional bureaucratic paperwork, and as a parent if this passes, you

have no guarantee you will be able to find a provider who will take these

appointments or sign the form. (If you’ve ever been harassed by a doctor

before or denied care, this is a great place to talk about this).

· Let the legislative

office know that this bill wastes your time and money because you are

already well educated on vaccine risks and benefits (explain the steps

you have taken to educate yourself above and beyond any handout could

provide).

· Let them know about

your personal story what got you involved in this issue and why an

unrestricted personal belief exemption is important to your family

especially if anyone in your family has had a vaccine reaction.

Additional Talking Points Against AB 2109 to be used in your

written letters/email:

· Forcing parents

into a paid contractual relationship with a health care provider they

wouldn’t otherwise utilize for their children’s health care is not only a

violation of basic parental rights, it creates distrust and resentment

towards public health programs run by the state.

· Especially in

California, many families utilize health care providers not reliant on

pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, and only practitioners part of the

pharmaceutical paradigm or medicine are allowed to provide the

information and sign the form under this bill.

· AB 2109 discriminates

against families utilizing complementary and alternative medicine by

forcing them into paying money to a medical practitioner they wouldn’t

otherwise use who is already philosophically opposed to the parent’s

personal and religious convictions regarding vaccination.

· Parents who utilize

vaccine exemptions are typically more educated regarding the risks

and benefits of vaccination than both the parents who choose vaccination

and aren’t required by this bill to receive this information and the

health care providers who would be required to sign the exemption in

order for it to be valid.

· Many doctors’ offices

throw families out of their practice for delaying or declining a

vaccine. There is nothing in this bill to prevent a doctor’s office

from refusing to take these appointments to begin with or for refusing to

sign the form once a family pays for a visit. These real obstacles

will restrict or deny access to the personal beliefs exemption for some

families currently using it.

· The state is not in the

financial position to pay for all these extra required office visits

within 6 months of school starting for families on public assistance and

for the kids of state employees who have their health coverage provided

by the state and who want to delay or a decline one or more vaccines.

· The information

required by this bill is already available to parents online for free and

coercive measures like this bill do nothing but create and further

distrust and resentment towards public health programs run by the

state.

· There is NO current

crisis that would indicate that CA needs to make it more difficult to

obtain exemptions from vaccination.

· Most vaccination rates

in CA for children 19 to 35 months old for individual vaccines are at or

above the CDC Healthy People 2020 goal of 90%.

(

http://www2a.cdc.gov/nip/coverage/nis/nis_iap2.asp?fmt=v & rpt=tab03_antigen_state & qtr=Q1/2009-Q4/2009

)

· Vaccination rates for

children entering kindergarten in California have increased from 2010 to

2011 and are at or above the CDC Healthy People 2020 goals of 90%, except

for one category, which is at 89.4%.

(

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2011SelectiveReviewResults.pdf

)

· Bill Sponsor Assembly

Member Dr. Pan,

claims in a press release that his bill will help prevent outbreaks of

pertussis. It is important for legislators to understand that the

pertussis outbreaks in CA are due to waning immunity of the vaccine, and

not because of families taking the exemption. Here are some

references to back this point.

o " The rise in pertussis doesn’t seem to be related to

parents’ refusing to have their children vaccinated for fear of potential

side effects. In California, pertussis rates are about the same in

counties with high childhood vaccination rates and low ones. And the

C.D.C. reports that pertussis immunization rates have been stable or

increasing since

1992. " (

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/vaccination-is-steady-but-pertussis-is-surging/

)

o Children can be susceptible to pertussis even if they are

completely vaccinated.

(

http://www.inewsource.org/2011/03/28/experts-zero-in-on-waning-immunity/

)

o The acellular pertussis vaccine’s failure to deliver

durable infection protection to children aged 7-10 years led to the 2010

California pertussis epidemic.

(

http://www.internalmedicinenews.com/news/conference-news/infectious-diseases-society-of-america-conference/single-article/acellular-pertussis-vaccine-s-waning-immunity-caused-california-epidemic/71de9826f4.html

)

o The pertussis vaccine has been found to wane after only 3

years, leaving a much larger population of fully vaccinated children

susceptible to pertusssis than unvaccinated children. KPBS and the

Watchdog Institute performed a joint investigation into the recent

increasing pertussis rates in California and found the majority of cases

of pertussis were occurring in fully vaccinated populations of children

in the 8-12 year old age group. They went on to show that the

vaccine wanes after only 3 years.

(

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/sep/20/whooping-cough-vaccine-wanes-after-three-years/

)

· Bill supporters claim

that vaccines are safe. The reality is there is real

risk. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was established by

Congress in 1986 to protect vaccine manufacturers and doctors from

liability for vaccine injuries and death. As of Jan. 3, 2012, there have

been 14,073 claims filed for vaccine injury and 1077 death claims.

The total dollar amount of vaccine injury and death awards granted and

paid to families of vaccine victims by our government is

$2,366,649,931.96.

(

http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/statisticsreports.html#Claims

)

· Just for pertussis

containing vaccines alone administered in the state of California,

11,516 reports of Vaccine Adverse Events have been filed with the federal

government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System where 77% of the

reports of adverse events are for children 6 and under. There have

been 5,775 disorders of the nervous system reported and 172 deaths.

96% of the deaths reported were in children three and under.

(http://www.medalerts.org/)

Sincerely,

Dawn , Director of Advocacy

National Vaccine Information Center

http://NVIC.org and

http://NVICAdvocacy.org

Dawn@...

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) works diligently to

prepare and disseminate our legislative advocacy action alerts and

supporting materials. We request that organizations and members of

the public forward our alerts in their original form to assure consistent

and accurate messaging and effective action. Please acknowledge NVIC as

originators of this work when forwarding to members of the public and

like-minded organizations. To receive alerts immediately, register

at http://NVICAdvocacy.org, a

website dedicated to this sole purpose and provided as a free public

service by NVIC.

Make

A Difference, support NVIC. NVIC is a certified 501©3

Charity.