California’s controversial vaccination bill awaits Jerry Brown’s signature

California currently exempts children from mandatory vaccinations based on the personal or religious beliefs of their parents, but that may change in the near future. At least, that’s what can gathered from the decision by California lawmakers on Thursday to approve an extremely controversial law that would require more children who enter into daycares or schools to be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including measles and whooping cough.

Obviously children with medical conditions such as allergies and immune-system deficiencies would be excused from immunization so long as their disorder has been confirmed by a physician. Parents who wish to educate their children in private, home-based schools will also be able to decline immunization if they so desired. Even so, the implementation of this bill would give California some of the nation’s toughest mandatory vaccination requirements.

Should the bill become law, this would make California the 32^nd state to disallow exemptions based on moral or personal beliefs, which isn’t particularly special. However, it would be just one of three states to also deny exemptions based on religious beliefs, with Mississippi and West Virginia being the other two states to have such laws in place.

“The three great mysteries in life are the Holy Trinity, transubstantiation and Jerry Brown’s mind,” Claremont McKenna College political science professor Jack Pitney told Mercury News in reference to the fact that the bill now only needs Governor Jerry Brown’s signature in order to become law.“He knows the science. I’ve tracked his statements over the years on various issues, and he is aware of the need for vaccinations — he knows how measles spreads,” Pitney said. “The question is whether he sees this as an issue of religious freedom.”