A bill expanding parents' rights to waive mandatory childhood vaccines is advancing through the Florida Senate.
On Monday, the Health Policy Committee voted in favor of the "Medical Freedom Act," which would require health care workers to provide risk and benefit information about specific vaccines to parents before administering them to a child.
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"I believe that parents are wanting to get information related to vaccinations and different information related to those that, now more than ever, we have that information available if they wish to take advantage of it," said Jacksonville Republican Sen. Clay Yarborough, who sponsored the measure (SB 1756).
The act proposes limiting state health officers' power to mandate emergency vaccinations, expanding religious exemptions for school kids to include conscience exemptions and requiring new parental acknowledgment forms before vaccinating minors.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 89% of Florida kindergarteners were fully vaccinated. The recommended threshold is 95%.
Florida already allows parents to waive vaccines for religious reasons. The expansion would allow an exemption for philosophical reasons, Yarborough said.
"There's no barrier to them seeking immunizations for their children," he said. "But we're making sure that they have the information for the risk, for the benefits, a balance of information available so that they can review it before they do that."
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Republican Sen. Gayle Harrell of Stuart raised concerns, arguing that if parents seeking vaccines must receive vaccine education, the same should be true for parents seeking an exemption.
"We don't want to teach medical students how to deal with so many of these diseases that we've essentially eradicated. We're going backward," Harrell said.
She proposed an amendment to the bill adding language that would require information for parents seeking an exemption, but it was voted down.
"If we're going to go back and try to put a requirement, I would call it a barrier before folks can get a religious exemption," Yarborough said. "That would equate the two with regard to what you have to go through to get the exemption, but for us to add that one on, that's a bridge too far."
The bill would also allow pharmacists to dispense ivermectin to patients from behind the counter and without a prescription. Ivermectin is a prescription antiparasitic medication largely used on horses. During 2020, misleading information about ivermectin as an effective treatment against COVID-19 circulated online, but studies have since shown that to not be the case.
A House companion bill (HB 917), sponsored by Republican Jeff Holcomb, is making its way through the chamber. The bill has similar language to the Senate bill but includes lines about barring discrimination based on vaccine status.
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