2020: Both Sides All In, As Vaccine Legislation Revs Up

There were a record 221 vaccine-related pieces of legislation introduced across 40 states (plus Washington, DC) in 2019. Some battles were won, some were lost, while other battles loom in the near future.

2020 is likely to be a crucial year in the U.S. for medical choice, parental consent, religious freedom, open debate, and Constitutionally-guaranteed free speech.

Will freedom be protected? Or, will America descend further down the dark path of mandating medical products with, at best, questionable safety profiles—dictated by government bureaucrats?

Certainly the latter was attempted by many state government in 2019. The prevailing trend saw attempts by state governments to all but eliminate medical exemptions for vaccinations, absent very narrow criteria. California set a precedent with SB 276 in 2019, rammed through amidst massive protests, to investigate doctors in the state for writing more than a handful of vaccine exemptions. Bills were proposed that would allow minor children to be vaccinated without the knowledge or prior informed consent from the parents.

On the surveillance front, some Americans witnessed forced inclusion and reporting to electronic vaccine tracking registries and enforcement systems. Finally, there was an expansion to authorize other professions such as dentists, podiatrists, pharmacists, and optometrists, to give shots.

Not all of the more than 200 bills concerning vaccinations were oppositional—77 of the bills filed in 2019 expanded individual liberty, choice, and autonomy up from only 47 in 2018.

The National Vaccine Information Center reported:¹

There were many more positive bills filed in 2019 than any other year to expand vaccine exemptions and informed consent rights, to restrict addition of new vaccine mandates, to disallow adding vaccine mandates by health department rule making, to require doctors and other vaccine providers to report vaccine reactions, and to prohibit abuse claims, custody restrictions or discrimination for vaccine refusal.

Straight out the gate in 2020, New Jersey will hit the ground running as it doubles down on the religious rights-canceling bill it was forced to abandon in late 2019. Headlines were made in mid-December,² as thousands of parents protested inside and outside the New Jersey State Capitol for over ten hours in winter conditions to postpone the vote on S2173.

New Jersey’s controversial bill, S2173/A3818, aims to put an end to a rule that allowed more than 14,000 state students to forgo vaccination because of their family’s religious beliefs. It was similar to recent bills passed in California and New York State. Starting tomorrow [Monday], a week of protests are planned at the state capitol with the bill back on the legislative calendar for a vote either January 9th or the 13th.

Some are claiming, however, it could be rushed through on the 6th.

On Monday, New Jersey is also contending with a bill in the Assembly Appropriations Committee³ that would establish mandatory mental health screenings for depression and anxiety disorders for public school students grades 7-12 without the ability for a parent to decline.

This slew of mandatory vaccine bills and mental health screening directives would transform New Jersey schools into marketing hubs, funneling ‘student customers’ towards pharmaceutical product lines.

A 2019 Rutgers University study found⁴ the rate of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in four-year-old children in New Jersey rose by 43 percent from 2010 to 2014, to an estimated rate of 1 in 35 children—the highest of any state in the United States.

Virginia, Washington D.C. and Massachusetts have active bills that will allow minors to consent to vaccines. The bills are all very similar, allowing minors of any age (or no specified age) to consent to vaccination. Since the minor is considered an adult in this circumstance, the parent is also denied access to information about their child’s vaccine status.

Virginia’s bill, for example, states, “minor shall also be deemed an adult for the purpose of accessing or authorizing the disclosure of medical records.”

Massachusetts H4096/S2359 is an example of the escalating trend towards “bill-bundling.” in which several points (historically floated as single bills), are combined into one “Frankenbill.” The twin Massachusetts bills seek a government takeover of medical and religious belief exemptions, along with the elimination of parental consent. Reporting and publishing of vaccination and exemptions rates to programs and health departments would also be compulsory.

For those who oppose ever-increasing vaccine schedules mandated by government bureaucrats, 2020 will see the introduction of state bills which provide hope. For example, Pennsylvania’s HB286‘s ‘Informed Consent Protection Act’ seeks to do four things:

• Deny health care practitioners and facilities the ability to refuse to treat a child solely because the parent has chosen to delay or decline one or more of the CDC recommended vaccines

• Remove the need for the parent to sign a self-incriminating form to receive medical care

• Eliminate vaccine status as a sole reason to initiate a Child Protective Services investigation

• A health care practitioner may not accept a financial incentive from an insurance or pharmaceutical company for vaccinating patients or for maintaining a certain rate of vaccinated patients within his or her medical practice

Legislation in Arizona seeks to establish parental choice on vaccines and make any future federal mandates more difficult. The Tenth Amendment Center⁵ writes:

[The bill] would give parents of children…the sole right to decide whether or not their children are vaccinated. It would also prohibit schools from requiring that pupils receive the recommended vaccinations and prohibit schools from refusing to admit, or from otherwise penalizing, pupils who have not received them.

The bill would additionally eliminate a requirement that children be vaccinated in accordance with the recommended schedule in order for their parents to receive cash assistance from the state on their behalf.

It is interesting to note how some states are ramping up their vaccination legislation just as new studies suggest trending in the opposite direction would be wiser. Recently published scientific studies suggest the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommended vaccine schedule may be dangerous for some individuals.

Looking only at the burden of injected aluminum, a new paper⁶ published in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology concluded CDC’s vaccine schedule was 15.9 times over the recommended safe level of aluminum, as adjusted for body weight. Study researchers also estimated that a child who followed the vaccine schedule would be in a state of “chronic toxicity” for 70% of the child’s first seven months of life (149 days, from birth to seven months).

Many eyes are on Maine in 2020, as their citizens’ veto petition⁷ has instigated a special ballot, making it the first state to put government vaccine mandates to a popular vote.

In the summer of 2019, Maine’s LD 798 passed. It removed religious, philosophical, and personal belief vaccine exemptions in one felled swoop, among other directives. Grassroots opponents were able to quickly gather over 95,000 signatures from registered voters in the state, leading to a vote on March 3rd.

So far, corporate media has smothered any open discussion on the topic of vaccine safety, while simultaneously claiming there is no debate. Big Tech and social media giants have waded deep into authoritarian censorship of speech, ideas, and debate over vaccinations.

Despite all the censorship, however, there are counter- prevailing bills continually being introduced across America, protecting against mandatory medical products with questionable at best safety profiles—yet another concrete example that the science isn’t settled and the debate isn’t over.

In America, the individual and the family unit remains as sacrosanct today as when the framers drafted our nation’s founding documents.

And even as vaccines continue to adhere to an unscientific one-size-fits-all approach, many in government, science, and medicine have been roused from their Big Pharma/Corporate Media slumber.

We can be sure the increasingly open debate over vaccine safety will continue in 2020–only louder and in greater numbers than ever before.

This article was reprinted with the author’s permission. It was originally published at JeffereyJaxen.com. Jefferey Jaxen is an independant journalist, writer, and researcher.