Vaccination bills are popping up in more than 15 states, including in Alabama. This comes as lawmakers aim to potentially resurrect or create new religious exemptions from immunization mandates, establish state-level vaccine injury databases or dictate what providers must tell patients about the shots.
Alabama lawmakers are debating a proposal that would require parental consent for any vaccine given to minors. Under current law, minors aged 14 and above in the state can consent to their own medical treatments without parental approval. The new bill would mandate written consent from a parent or legal guardian before any minor can be vaccinated, except in cases where the minor is living independently.
In Alabama and other states, lawmakers might see a political opportunity to rewrite policies in their states after President Donald Trump's return to the White House and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 's nomination as the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The agency oversees virtually every aspect of vaccination efforts in the U.S., from funding their development to establishing recommendations for medical providers to distributing vaccines and covering them through federal programs.
Childhood vaccination rates against dangerous infections like measles and polio continue to fall nationwide, and the number of parents claiming non-medical exemptions so their kids don't get required shots is rising.
In 2024, whooping cough cases reached a decade-high and 16 measles outbreaks, the largest among them in Chicago and Minnesota, put health officials on edge. Most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.
About half of Americans are “very” or “extremely” concerned that those declining childhood vaccination rates will lead to more outbreaks, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Yet only about 4 in 10 Americans oppose reconsidering the government’s recommendations for widely used vaccines, while roughly 3 in 10 are in favor. The rest — about 3 in 10 — are neutral.
Religious exemptions lead the pack
Religious exemptions for school vaccine requirements are among the most popular proposals so far. Lawmakers in New York, Virginia, Connecticut and Mississippi have introduced bills that would allow more people to waive routine shots. Indiana lawmakers will weigh religious exemptions for medical students.
Now, only four states allow just a medical exemption from childcare and K-12 immunization requirements: Connecticut, California, New York and Maine.
Given that the U.S. Supreme Court last year rejected a challenge to the Connecticut law and the statehouse is controlled by Democrats, GOP state Sen. Eric Berthel said he’s not optimistic legislative leaders will allow debate on his exemption bill but does believe the broader cultural shift means “maybe there is a bit of an appetite to look at things like this again.”
Vaccine injuries and consent laws
Other vaccine-related bills touch on some of the opposition that's been growing since the pandemic.
Alabama and Oklahoma have proposals that would require parental consent for any vaccine given to minors. Bills in Wyoming, Oregon and Oklahoma would prohibit “discrimination” against people who aren’t vaccinated against COVID-19 or other diseases.
New York and Oklahoma have bills that would require providers to give people getting shots a full ingredient list, and Florida legislation would ban edible vaccines, though none are approved for use in the U.S. and research is still in early stages.
Vaccine injury is also a popular topic, and bills in Indiana and North Dakota propose creating state versions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System — a federal database that drew the attention of vaccine skeptics during the pandemic.
Anyone can file a report about a potential issue after a vaccine, though the CDC’s website notes a report doesn’t prove the shot caused a health issue.
North Dakota Republican state Sen. Dick Anderson said he's not against people getting vaccines — he got one COVID-19 shot himself — but proposed the bill because many people don't trust the CDC. But experts note state databases are unnecessarily duplicative.
Policy should be focused on getting rid of barriers to vaccination, not adding to them, said Dr. Susan Kressly, a pediatrician and president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Many families miss vaccinations not because of ideology, she said, but because of lack of transportation or not having primary care doctors or clinics nearby, among other things.
But because most Americans are vaccinated, they haven't seen the effects of dangerous infections like bacterial meningitis that Kressly fielded calls about from fearful parents early in her career.
"Vaccines are really an American success story," she said.
