Mandating A Behavior Based Vaccine Does Not Foster Family Restoration

Big Girls Don’t Cry…They Take the HPV Shot?
By: Angela Riddle

Debate over mandatory vaccines is continuing in the face of the newest mandate - the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine. In fact, Angela Riddle (Regent Law 2010) lays out the case against this mandatory vaccine in her article "Big Girls Don’t Cry…They Take the HPV Shot?"

The HPV vaccine mandate has been a prominent and heated battle within states since 2006, particularly as the vaccine targets school vaccination requirements. In 2007, 24 states including Washington DC proposed legislation to mandate the HPV vaccine for school attendance. In October of 2009, 12 states proposed legislation or resolutions dealing with the HPV vaccine. The development of the HPV vaccination raises questions about whether the mandate of the vaccine for school age girls is constitutional when the contraction of the disease is behavioral in nature.

As a nation founded on the ideas of individual freedom and responsibility, America values personal liberty. As Angela Riddle states in her article, "The basic foundation of this idea is that nobody should be directly beholden to another person's irresponsible personal actions. Sadly, over the last two hundred years, this idea has been slowly losing ground to various decisions in courts and legislatures. It has instead come to be what the government considers to be in the best interest of public health, and personal responsibility is only an afterthought. The latest is the attempt by state legislatures to mandate the HPV vaccine for all school aged girls, which is a virus that only affects people who engage in a specific type of lifestyle."

Mandating a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease could create new legal precedent, and Riddle shows how the hepatitis B vaccine mandate brought about the materialization of a new trend of mandatory vaccines. The issue still remains, however, whether behavioral drug vaccines meet the constitutional requirements of mandatory vaccines laid out by the Supreme Court. Government mandates of vaccines for behavioral based diseases increases the importance of religious exemptions. A case history of available exemptions reveals that issues have arisen regarding the use of religious exemptions. Such statutory provisions have not always been upheld, however, and have often been found to violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Most state immunization statutes are unclear about whether partial exemptions are permitted, while at least one specifically prohibits partial exemption.

Riddle is persuasive in her argument that there are less extreme solutions. If mandated, the HPV vaccine would become the most expensive mandatory vaccine to date. Instead a better solution would be to establish a parental opt in provision as part of the state’s immunization statute. As part of that, or as another possible solution, would be programs that provide funding for the education and administration of the vaccine.

Her article first discusses the constitutionality of mandatory vaccination. Section II then describes the Hepatitis B vaccine and whether it is a frontrunner for a mandatory HPV vaccine. Then her article outlines how religious exemptions have not been upheld and how some states may not allow partial exemptions even though some parents may rely on them. Finally, her article presents a better solution in state or federal programs in the form of a parental opt in provision as well as a funding initiative.

Read it here.

HPV Vaccine