Childhood Immunization Bill Dies On House Floor

The West Virginia House of Delegates has rejected Senate Bill 460, which would have required public schools to accept unvaccinated students with a religious exemption. Currently West Virginia has one of the strictest policies on vaccination requirements for school age children in the nation. 

The religious exemption would have been fairly easy to get. All it would have required is a written statement from a parent or guardian stating the child has a religious belief that precludes him or her from receiving one or all of the required vaccinations. 

Currently public school children in the Mountain State are required to be vaccinated against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella; and hepatitis B, unless they have a medical exemption for all or one of those vaccines. West Virginia is one of five states to not accept a personal or religious vaccine exemption. 

Last year, the legislature narrowly passed a similar vaccine exemptions bill, but then-Gov. Jim Justice vetoed the bill. 

The bill before the House today followed a winding path, starting at the governor’s office. That bill was then changed by the Senate to allow for wider exemptions, stripped private schools of the ability to set their own vaccine policies, and did away with reporting requirements. 

Then the House Health committee again changed the bill to only contain medical exemptions, similar to the law now. Once the bill hit the House floor it changed again, when religious exemptions were put back into the bill. Between the House and Senate floor, the bill had a dozen amendments thrown at it. Only two were added to the now-dead bill. 

West Virginia has one of the lowest vaccination rates for children under five, then, for school-age children one of the highest vaccination rates. A difference Del. Tristen Leavitt, R-Kanawha, said is likely thanks to vaccine requirements for attendees at public schools. 

“That’s extremely difficult for me to believe that the parents – 44.4% of two year olds – have religious, moral, philosophical or medical objections to the vaccine schedule,” Levitt said. “Based on those, it seems to me a lot of our parents don’t regularly take their child to see a pediatrician, and since those numbers jump the mid-90s for school aged children, our school vaccine mandates seem to be the reason.”

Leavitt said that vaccine requirements protect people who can’t receive vaccines or are otherwise immunocompromised, like pregnant women, the elderly, and young children. 

“For pregnant women, contracting something like measles increases the risk of serious complications like miscarriage or stillbirth. For those who have gone through that is a heartbreaking experience,” Leavitt said.  

Supporters of the bill said vaccine mandates infringe on an individual’s freedom. Del. David Green, R-McDowell, introduced the only successful secondary amendment on Friday that put religious exemptions back into the bill. He said the bill is not about vaccines, but about religious freedom. 

“People aren’t pushing this bill so they don’t have to vaccinate their children, but they are pushing this for them to have liberty and freedom to choose how to take care of their children,” Green said. 

Del. Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, said he doesn’t trust that vaccines are safe. 

“I’m voting for the scores of families that have sent me emails over the years leaving this state to go across the border because they educated themselves enough to know they needed to get somewhere where they weren’t getting treated like a petri dish, where they weren’t a scientific experiment national corporations,” Steele said. 

Del. Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, pushed back on the idea, saying the legislature was choosing conspiracy theories over science.

“There was a time when we would listen to the white coats in the gallery today and rely on them, and when we relied on them, we eradicated diseases,” Fluharty said. “Now all of a sudden, we want to govern by conspiracy theories and not believe them, not trust them.”

Only one other time this session has the House rejected a bill. The bill failed by a 42-56 vote. All Democrats and a majority of Republicans voted no.