California anti-vaccine activists abandon initiative to roll back new law
Anti-vaccine advocates abandoned plans for an initiative that would undo a new law restricting medical exemptions for vaccines and complained that state officials made their effort more difficult by using “grossly misleading” language to describe their referendum to voters.
The organizers, Denise Aguilar, Heidi Munoz Gleisner and Tara Thornton did not gather enough signatures for the initiative to qualify for the 2020 ballot.
They expressed on Facebook their disappointment with the wording on the title and summary for the referendums to repeal Senate Bills 276 and 714, which they called “grossly misleading.”
“These misleading Title & Summary statements would inevitably make educating the voters to the egregious nature of these laws very difficult,” they wrote.
In order to get the referendums on the ballot, they had to collect 623,212 signatures.
SB 276 empowers the state to investigate doctors who grant more than five medical exemptions in a school year, as well as schools with vaccination rates lower than 95 percent. SB 714 allows children with existing medical exemptions to continue not getting vaccinated until their next immunization requirement, unless that exemption was granted by a doctor disciplined by the state medical board.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, said that SB 276 is intended to close a “loophole” in state law that allowed “unscrupulous physicians” to sell medical exemptions to parents.
As lawmakers were considering the bills, anti-vaccine activists filled the Capitol hallways and interrupted legislative hearings. At one point, an activist threw a menstrual cup filled with blood at state senators. At another, an anti-vaccine supporter shoved Pan as he was walking outside the Capitol.
Pan expressed frustration with SB 276’s opponents in a phone call Tuesday. He said that organizers and anti-vaccine proponents, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had the chance to put their time and money into a referendum effort if they really believed in the cause.
“This is all theater and drama for their own benefit. They’re not serious about policy. They’re not serious about the bill. They just want to create theater,” Pan said. “It’s all a sham.”
This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 11:26 AM.
