We need your help to pass a wonderful 3 bills for the families in Arizona, HB 2470, HB 2471, and HB 2472 by Representative Nancy Barto.

These bills are scheduled for a public hearing in the House Health and Human Services Committee at 8:00 a.m. in Room HHR 4., (agenda)  We need you there to register your support of these bills, there has never been a bigger day in the Arizona legislature to affirm informed consent, religious freedom and parental rights! Our Arizona State Director Irene has requested that everyone wear something YELLOW. Everyone should be making their calls and emails to committee members TODAY whether you can be there or not! You can watch the hearing live here: https://www.azhouse.gov/live-proceedings/ and click Hearing Room 4.

HB2470 deserves support because it adds a religious exemption to vaccination for students through 12th grade. Currently school aged children only have a medical and personal exemption. Having a protected separate religious exemption immunizes parents who have religious exemptions from future possible legislative attacks on personal/philosophical exemptions (Vermont vs California in 2015). This is the companion bill to SB 1114 which lost on a close 4:4 committee vote yesterday.

HB2471 deserves support because it insures that parents and individuals are able to exercise full informed consent prior to vaccination by requiring disclosure of information on the vaccines and their ingredients created by the vaccine manufacturer and the Centers for Disease Control. This bill improves vaccine safety by increasing knowledge of the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System so parents can make sure vaccine reactions are reported and tracked to spot safety issues with particular vaccines.  Most families that have experiences with vaccine reactions were never notified this could be a possibility beforehand. 

HB2472 deserves support because it requires notification that state law provides that positive titer screening results meets vaccination requirements. It doesn't make sense to over vaccinate with unnecessary extra doses especially for someone who has had a past reaction.  This lets vaccine recipients know about this option already established in state law.  This will help lower the number of vaccine reactions and exemptions filed since positive screening will count as vaccinated for school requirements. 

ACTION ITEMS

1) Plan on attending the hearing for HB 2470, HB 2471, and HB 2472 and signing in to register your support.

Thursday, February 21. 2019, at 8:00 a.m. in Room HHR 4 (arrive at least an hour early, there is limited seating and you will need to Register Your Support for HB 2470, HB 2471, and HB 2472 at one of the Committee Sign-in Kiosks), Arizona State Capitol, 1700 West Washington Phoenix, Arizona 85007.  Map of the capitol grounds and directions. There is free parking at the following locations:

Wesley Bolin Memorial Park Plaza 1690 W. Jefferson St Phoenix, AZ 85007 (across the street from the Capitol Complex) 

Capitol Parking Lot 1798 W. Jefferson St Phoenix, AZ 85007 

Overflow Public Parking 1218 W. Adams St Phoenix, AZ 85007

Parking Lot 1717 W. Jefferson St Phoenix, AZ 85007

To make things easier, Please CREATE AN RTS (Request to Speak) Account PRIOR to the hearing. You will need to activate your account while you are physically in the Capitol building in the House of Representatives or the Senate Lobby.  Once your account is created and then activated at the capitol, you will be able to access it remotely. This allows you to submit a position for bills showing you are FOR HB 2470, HB 2471, and HB 2472 for the Committee Members and other legislators to see. It is important for legislators to see how many people support these bills.

Read this: https://www.azleg.gov/alisPDFs/RTS_Manual_public.pdf

Create Account: https://apps.azleg.gov/Account/SignOn

Wear business attire (with some YELLOW somewhere) and be polite and respectful.

2) Call and email all the members of the House Health and Human Services Committee and ask them to VOTE YES on HB 2470, HB 2471, and HB 2472. Explain why these three bills are important to your family.  It is important to call and then follow up with an email. See talking points below.

Members in the House Health Committee

Alma Hernandez  (D)  (602) 926-3136

Amish Shah  (D)  (602) 926-3280

Becky A. Nutt  (R)  (602) 926-4852

Gail Griffin  (R)  (602) 926-5895

Jay Lawrence  (R)  (602) 926-3095

John M. Allen  (R)  (602) 926-4916

Kelli Butler  (D)  (602) 926-5156

Nancy Barto  (R) SPONSOR  6029265766

Pamela Powers Hannley  (D)  (602) 926-4848 

ahernandez@azleg.gov, ashah@azleg.gov, bnutt@azleg.gov, ggriffin@azleg.gov, jlawrence@azleg.gov, jallen@azleg.gov, kbutler@azleg.gov, nbarto@azleg.gov, ppowershannley@azleg.gov

3) Call or Visit your own 2 Arizona Representatives and ask them to Support HB 2470, HB 2471, and HB 2472.  Follow up with an email to both.   See talking points below. If you do not know who your Arizona State Representatives are, or their contact information, you can login to the NVIC Advocacy Portal, click on the "State Teams" tab and then "My State," and your elected officials are automatically posted on the right hand side of the page http://NVICAdvocacy.org. You can also find your state legislators here: https://www.azleg.gov/alisStaticPages/HowToContactMember.asp

4) Login to the NVIC Advocacy Portal OFTEN to check for updates.  http://NVICAdvocacy.org. We review bills and make updates daily. Bills can change many times over the legislative process and your timely visits, calls, and emails directed at the correct legislators are critical to this process. 

5) Please forward this email to family and friends and ask them to register for the NVIC Advocacy Portal at http://NVICAdvocacy.org and share their concerns with their legislators as well.   

6) Please forward any legislative responses regarding this bill to our Arizona State Director Irene at AZDirector@NVICAdvocacy.org.

TALKING POINTS

HB2470 deserves support because it adds a religious exemption to vaccination for students through 12th grade. Currently school aged children only have a medical and personal exemption.

Having a protected separate religious exemption immunizes parents who have religious exemptions from future possible legislative attacks on personal/philosophical exemptions. In 2015, both Vermont and California sustained legislative attacks on the philosophical exemption.  Because California did not have a separate exemption for religious beliefs, the religious exemption disappeared with the philosophical exemption but Vermont still has their religious exemption intact. 

This does not create a new exemption and will not create more people taking exemptions overall.  Those with religious exemptions now are utilizing a personal exemption and they would just switch categories.  The number of those utilizing a personal/philosophical exemption would drop as some switch to religious. 

HB 2470 makes the necessary correction to vaccine exemption law to make it consistent with Arizona policy in so many other areas which respect and protect religious beliefs:

• Religious Freedom Restoration Act (A.R.S. §§ 41-1493 through 41-1493.02) - Protects the free exercise of religion from government interference, unless there is a compelling reason and the government uses the least restrictive means.

• Parents' Rights (A.R.S. § 1-602) - Parents have the right to direct the religious upbringing of their children.

• Patients (A.R.S. §§ 36-114, 36-184, 36-754, 36-787, 36-2208) - State and county health departments may not impose or require treatment against a person's religious beliefs as long as sanitary, preventative, and quarantine measures are followed to protect against the spread of disease. A person also is not required to be transported or provided emergency medical treatment if the person objects on religious grounds.

It's hypocritical for doctors to oppose adding a religious exemption for vaccine mandates for school children when The American Medical Association, in section 9.133 Routine Universal Immunization of Physicians of the AMA Code of Ethics, affirm the right to religious and philosophical exceptions for themselves to not be vaccinated.  Doctors and other medical professionals already enjoy Arizona statutory protections where they are not required to provide services that conflict with their religious beliefs including abortion, abortion-inducing medication, emergency contraception, end of life care, and collection of umbilical cord blood. (A.R.S. §§ 32-3212; 36-112; 36-2154; 36-3205).

HB2471 deserves support because it insures that parents and individuals are able to exercise full informed consent prior to vaccination by requiring disclosure of information on the vaccines and their ingredients created by the vaccine manufacturer and the Centers for Disease Control.

This bill also improves vaccine safety by increasing knowledge of the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System so parents can make sure vaccine reactions are reported and tracked to spot safety issues with particular vaccines.  Many families that have experiences with vaccine reactions were never notified this could be a possibility beforehand. 

Vaccination occurring with a lack of informed consent is such a significant problem that the following states, along with Arizona, have bills filed this session to help correct this:  Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Illinois, Mississippi, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

Vaccines are just like other pharmaceutical products in that they can cause injury and death in some people, and come with contraindications for others. The United States Government has paid out more than $4 billion dollars to vaccine victims through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Parents are often not told about these risks and when their child ends up with a reaction, they feel betrayed.  The real risks, regardless of perceived frequency, should be disclosed, because when it is your child, the risks are 100%.

Vaccines manufacturers and the doctors who administer vaccines are completely shielded from liability for vaccine injuries and deaths through the combination of the law passed by Congress in 1986 establishing the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the 2011 Supreme Court Decision BRUESEWITZ ET AL. v. WYETH LLC, FKA WYETH, INC., ET AL.  Informed consent is even more critical when there is lack of accountability for the harm vaccines can cause.

Children today receive 69 doses of vaccines for 16 different viral and bacterial illnesses which more than doubles the government childhood schedule of 34 doses of 11 different vaccines in the year 2000.  There is no end in sight. America's biopharmaceutical research companies are developing more than 260 vaccines.  Insuring informed consent in an arena where science outpaces ethics and sound policy is essential.

The U.S. Vaccine Market alone was $36.45 Billion in 2018, and expected to reach $50.42 billion by 2023. This is a very powerful industry with lots of resources to lobby and create a negative public perception of legitimate vaccine concerns and questions. 

A child injured or killed by a vaccine is just as important as a child who gets sick from a highly recoverable childhood illness in the United States like measles.

Where there is risk, there must be informed consent and ultimately choice.

HB2472 deserves support because it requires notification that state law provides that positive titer screening results meets vaccination requirements. It doesn't make sense to over vaccinate with unnecessary extra doses especially for someone who has had a past reaction.  This lets vaccine recipients know about this option already established in state law.  This will help lower the number of vaccine reactions and exemptions filed since positive screening will count as vaccinated for school requirements. 

VOTE YES on HB 2470, HB 2471, and HB 2472.

Sincerely,

NVIC Advocacy Team
National Vaccine Information Center
http://NVIC.org and http://NVICAdvocacy.org
https://nvicadvocacy.org/members/Members/ContactUs.aspx

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