On Feb. 2, Texas Governor Rick Perry issued Executive Order RP65 , ordering the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to adopt rules requiring the girls to receive the new vaccine against the Human Papillomavirus before they enter the sixth grade. (Press release). The vaccine protects girls against later contracting a sexually-transmitted disease that leads to cervical cancer. The Executive Order, however, requires that parents be able to submit an affidavit of conscientious objection if they object on conscientious or religious grounds to their daughter receiving the immunization. Indeed it calls for making affidavits available online.
Perry used the Executive Order route in order to bypass opposition in the state legislature by conservatives and parents' rights groups. (Associated Press.) Responding to critics of his order, the Governor in a February 5 statement said, "Providing the HPV vaccine doesn't promote sexual promiscuity anymore than providing the Hepatitis B vaccine promotes drug use. If the medical community developed a vaccine for lung cancer, would the same critics oppose it claiming it would encourage smoking?"
Yesterday, the Catholic group "Children of God for Life" (CGL) issued a release setting out a rather elaborate-- and somewhat dubious-- legal theory as to why the conscientious objection provisions in Governor Perry's Executive Order will create problems. In 2006, the Texas Attorney General ruled in Opinion No. GA-0420 that private schools-- including religious schools-- not accepting state funds did not have to honor immunization exemptions granted by the state-- e.g. exemptions for those who object to chicken pox vaccines that may have been made from fetal cell lines. According to CGL executive director, Debi Vinnedge, refusing to recognize exemptions for vaccines from fetal cells, but recognizing the exemption for HPV vaccine, could amount to illegal religious discrimination by private religious schools. They may not be able to favor one religion's objections over another's.
