I do not believe that Gardasil should be mandated by any government. That said, I do support the method being pursued by this New York lawmaker.

A Democratic state assemblywoman plans to introduce legislation next week that would require schoolgirls in New York to get shots meant to knock out the virus linked to cervical cancer.

The question of whether to inoculate girls against human papilloma virus recently touched off controversy in Texas where Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order requiring the vaccine.

''This is a revolutionary opportunity to eradicate a disease that kills many, many women. As a mom, I'm grateful my daughter will not have to fear having cervical cancer,'' Amy Paulin of Westchester County, whose 18-year-old daughter just received her first shot, told the New York Daily News for its Friday edition.

Paulin's legislation would require girls be inoculated with the three-shot series against HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that causes 70 percent of cervical cancers. Children whose parents have religious objections to the vaccine, called Gardasil, would be exempt.

I’ve explained my opposition to requiring this vaccine in the past, and won’t go into those reasons again. They have to do with the right of families to determine appropriate medical care, and the lack of a reasonable nexus between the vaccine and the right to a public education – and I have in a general sense rejected the “middle schoolers gone wild” argument espoused by a small minority of my fellow conservatives. I’ve also said that I would get the vaccine for my daughter if I had one, and that I believe girls OUGHT to be vaccinated without state coercion.

However, if such a requirement is the wave of the future, this method, not the dictatorial decree by a single officeholder, should be how the requirement is enacted into law.

It’s called democracy, folks, and it is how such decisions should be made – if it is proper that they even enter the realm of government decison-making at all.

Posted by: Greg at 11:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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