As flu season approaches, many New Jersey parents are furious over a first-in-the-nation requirement that small children must get a flu shot in order to attend preschools and day-care centers. The decision should be the parents', not the state's, they say.
Hundreds of parents and other activists rallied outside the New Jersey Statehouse yesterday, decrying the policy and expressing support for a bill that would allow parents to decline mandatory vaccinations for their children.
"This is not an anti-vaccine rally -- it's a freedom-of-choice rally," said one of the organizers, Louise Habakus. "This one-size-fits-all approach is really very anti-American."
New Jersey's policy was approved last December by the state's Public Health Council and will take effect this fall. Children from 6 months to 5 years old who attend a child-care center or preschool have until Dec. 31 to get the flu shot, along with a pneumococcal vaccine.
The health council was acting on the recommendations of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has depicted children under 5 as a group particularly in need of flu shots.
"Vaccines not only protect the child being vaccinated but also the general community and the most vulnerable individuals within the community," New Jersey's Health Department said in a statement.
Opposition to the policy is strong. Assemblywoman Charlotte Vandervalk, one of the speakers at the rally, said she has 34 co-sponsors for a bill that would allow for conscientious objections to mandatory vaccinations.
State policy allows for medical and religious exemptions to mandatory vaccinations, but Vandervalk said that requests for medical exemptions have often been turned down by local health authorities.
New Jersey's health department has come out strongly against the legislation.
"Broad exemptions to mandatory vaccination weaken the entire compliance and enforcement structure," it said.
The department also says that New Jersey is particularly vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases -- it has a high population density, a mobile population and many recently arrived immigrants.
"In light of New Jersey's special traits, the highest number of children possible must receive vaccines to protect them and others," the department said.
Many of the activists in New Jersey accept the need for mandatory vaccinations for certain highly dangerous diseases, such as polio, but say that the state went too far in requiring flu shots.
"The flu is not a deadly disease," said Barbara Majeski of Princeton, N.J., who does not want her two preschooler sons to get the vaccination.
Flu kills about 36,000 Americans a year and hospitalizes about 200,000.
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