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April 17, 2019 04:00 PM UTC

Congrats, GOP! You're The Anti-Vaxxer Party Again

  • 19 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: GOP Rep. Mark Baisley explains the GOP’s party-line opposition to House Bill 19-1312 in a lengthy post today–and it’s a worst-case scenario, invoking the most discredited of misinformation about vaccines:

The stated goal of the bill is to reduce the occurrence of childhood diseases. Colorado averages approximately 90% current vaccinations for children under 3 years of age. But recent epidemics such as autism have arisen and parents are understandably suspicious of vaccines as the cause. [Pols emphasis] Citizens should not be coerced by the State to permit pharmaceutical injections into their children. Nor should they be shamed by their own government for their choice.

Furthermore, Colorado citizens entrust billions of their hard-earned dollars every year to their government to provide K12 education. This bill threatens to withhold delivering that service to children whose parents do not cooperate with their government’s controlling ambitions.

I stand in strong opposition to HB19-1312.

In today’s Republican Party, pseudoscience has triumphed. Who can argue otherwise?

—–

Measles.

As the Denver Post’s Anna Staver reported in the wee hours, and then hopefully she went to bed:

A bill to make it harder for parents to get a vaccination exemption for their children passed out of a Colorado House committee on a 7-4 vote at about 4 a.m. Tuesday morning — nearly 14 hours after the hearing started.

It was the longest committee of the 2019 legislative session so far with hundred of parents bouncing and walking their children up and down the Capitol halls late into the night…

“This is about keeping Colorado’s kids safe. We need to be proactive, not reactive. We are in the midst of public health crisis and we can’t wait for a tragedy to occur,” Rep. Mullica, D-Northglenn, said in a statement released early Tuesday morning after the bill passed. “Experts believe this option will help improve Colorado’s dismal and dangerous immunization rates.”

Owing to the hefty Democratic majority in the Colorado House of Representatives, it should be noted that the 7-4 vote in favor of House Bill 19-1312 was in fact a party-line vote. All the Republicans on the House Health and Insurance Committee voted against the bill, which is itself a compromise from earlier proposed legislation that would have eliminated the personal-choice exemption for immunization of children headed to Colorado public schools. As we discussed previously, that proposal was considered too coercive by Gov. Jared Polis, leading to this compromise measure that should still help improve Colorado’s embarrassingly low child immunization rate.

The issue of childhood vaccinations, more to the point the highly prevalent misinformation suggesting a range of negative health effects from vaccinating children that has no scientific basis, doesn’t always divide cleanly along partisan lines. One of the areas of the state with a low rate of vaccinations is “progressive” Boulder County. Over the last few years, however, the “freedom” to not have children vaccinated has been championed almost exclusively in Colorado by Republican lawmakers on the fringy side of the caucus. Two now-defeated Republican Senators in particular, Laura Woods and Tim Neville, unapologetically championed both the pseudoscience behind anti-vaxxer ideology and conspiracy theories about children being “rounded up and vaccinated” without their parent’s consent.

In case you were wondering who was going to take up the anti-vaxxer cause now that Woods and Tim Neville are history, direct your attention to all the Republicans on the House Health and Insurance Committee.

Congratulations, Colorado Republicans, for taking ownership of this fringe issue. Again.

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19 thoughts on “Congrats, GOP! You’re The Anti-Vaxxer Party Again”

  2. I am still surprised that this is ongoing about fourteen or fifteen years after we ran a vaccination bill.  Why are republicans so anti-life?

  6. WHEN I WAS A BOY WE JUST ROLLED IN THE DIRT WITH THE HOGS… 

    The next thing you know the NANNY STATE will be putting up STOP SIGNS at intersections to COERCE motorists to STOP even if they have somewhere to go and despite people being REAR-ENDED from time to time at STOP signs! When will the DEMOCRAT OVER-REACH end???  

    2. Go tell it on the mountain, ct! I heard-tell the Nanny Staters even require  parents  to strap their precious children into car seats, which places our future – cuz I believe that children are our future – in direct physical contact with the many TOXINS in those devices!

      This is downright un-American. Parents are the only true experts regarding the safety of their own children. A mom has the God-given right to decide for herself, based on exercising the due diligence of attending Google University, that the dangers inherent in strapping her child into a DEATH SEAT far outweigh the dangers of having junior ride on her lap during those quick trips to the grocery store.

      And don't go citing any bullshit studies about the efficacy of using DEATH SEATS either! As all non-sheeple know, those "studies" are the product of Big Seat and its sniveling toadies in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

      Government needs to get out of the parenting business right  now, and take its filthy jackboot off the throats of loving parents. Anyone who says otherwise is basically Hitler.

  7. This has been one of the most exhaustively studied questions in scientific history. We need to come to the point where we can accept no for an answer and come to the conclusion that there is no causal link between vaccination and autism. We’ve invested, and Congress has invested, enormous resources in studying this question.

    ~ Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Trump-appointed FDA Commissioner

    Conglaturation to the Colorado GOP for casting its lot with thieving, lying hucksters such as Andy Wakefield, Mike Adams, Joe Mercola, Bob Sears, etc. It's all about making bank on the stupid and frightened.

    1. I understand we possibly will be subjected to the ever benevolent hand of the market for agricultural inspections of pork, too.  God will protect the observant Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Jains, but the rest of us will apparently follow Republican doctrine and trust Big Farma, not the evil Big Government.

       

  10. Rep Dave Williams of HD15 is trolling the anti-vaxxers for talking points. Seems he has a lil trouble coming up with those "ideas" and "arguments" on his own.

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