Liberties Taken Away by State Forcing the Meningococcal Vaccine

DES MOINES, IA – Today, Libertarian Party of Iowa Chairman Keith Laube released the following statement in regard to Senate Bill SF 2136:

The Libertarian Party of Iowa strongly opposes the passage of State Senate bill SF 2136, now for consideration in the House of Representatives as H.J. 291 which would mandate public school students in grades 7 and 12 be given Meningococcal Vaccine as a condition of enrollment. There are scientific, epidemiological and medical ethical reasons to oppose such a law, but regardless of the specifics, any such mandate is antithetical to Constitutional American liberty. Everyone should be free to obtain vaccines for their children as they see fit, but no one should be forced or coerced into accepting a medical treatment. And vaccination is a medical treatment with risks as well as benefits.

Recent evidence that Gardasil—the much touted cervical cancer virus vaccine–causes premature menopause and infertility in young women is mute testimony to the fallacy of forcing people to accept at face value a medical treatment simply because the government approves or recommends it. Medical ethics requires informed consent and lack of coercion. No true informed consent is given in mass school inoculation. And it is certainly coercive to threaten to remove a child from school who does not submit to vaccination.

The Libertarian Party of Iowa supports the Constitutional guarantees of individual freedom. People who can be forced to undergo a medical treatment are not truly free. Please join with us in calling your state congressmen to support liberty by opposing H.J. 291.

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