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Members of West Virginia's House Health and Human Services Committee have injected a measure of common sense responsibility into the conversation about vaccine requirements for public and private school students in the state.
When state Senate Bill 460 made its way over to the House of Delegates, it included questionable exemptions for religious and philosophical reasons.
In an 18-7 vote, members of the House committee removed them.
Good. However, some of those provisions returned on Friday when the full House took up the bill. We ask House members to consider carefully their actions as this bill comes up for passage.
The amended version of SB 460, before it was changed by the full House to include religious exemptions, still would allow a licensed physician, physician assistant or nurse practitioner to submit a written statement to the school administrator or operator of the state-regulated child care center providing a student with a medical exemption for a specific required immunization. In its current form, it also allows families to provide a written statement indicating their religious objection.
"This country was founded upon religious freedoms and religious liberty," said Delegate David Green, R-McDowell. "As a young person, a teenager going to school, I pondered the thought often why our state didn't allow for religious exemptions. Today, we get to change that."
Surely there will be further discussion on the merits of that exemption when the bill comes up for House passage as early as Monday. Given the measles outbreaks happening around the nation, now is not the time to be tinkering.