Not only don’t the Democrats in California (and elsewhere) want parents finding out about what’s being taught to their children in our public schools, they really don’t want them informed about much else that goes on in their kids’ lives. That apparently includes medical decisions. A new bill being introduced in California this month would allow for children age 12 and older to be vaccinated against COVID without receiving consent from or even informing their parents. Of course, since we’re talking about California here, this isn’t entirely new ground that they’re breaking. They’ve been eroding the rights of parents for decades. But something about this bill seems particularly intrusive, especially when you consider the current controversy and debates over the COVID vaccines. Should some nameless official at a public school (or elsewhere) be able to not only perform a medical procedure on a child without permission but also hide the fact from the parents? (Associated Press)

California would allow children age 12 and up to be vaccinated without their parents’ consent, the youngest age of any state, under a proposal late Thursday by a state senator.

Alabama allows such decisions at age 14, Oregon at 15, Rhode Island and South Carolina at 16, according to Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco who is proposing the change. Only Washington, D.C., has a lower limit, at age 11…

“Giving young people the autonomy to receive life-saving vaccines, regardless of their parents’ beliefs or work schedules, is essential for their physical and mental health,” he said. “It’s unconscionable for teens to be blocked from the vaccine because a parent either refuses or cannot take their child to a vaccination site.”

As is noted in the linked article, this isn’t the first time that California has moved to grant such autonomy to young children. But the fact that not all vaccinations are treated in this fashion should be revelatory when considering the question. The state already allows 12-year-olds to choose to receive vaccinations against Hepatitis B and Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, substance abuse, and mental health disorders. Notice how these selections tend to involve at least the possibility of sexual activity, while not allowing them to opt for vaccinations against things like smallpox without at least notifying the parent. If your 12-year-old daughter came down with a sexually transmitted infection, don’t you suppose that you would like to know about that and demand an investigation into how it happened? Or if she was abusing drugs?

Also, as pointed out above, minors of various ages are currently allowed to make such choices in other states, including both red and blue ones. But that doesn’t make it right. Pointing to someone else’s bad behavior shouldn’t be a justification for you to carry on with your own. Perhaps the better question here would be why parents in those other states aren’t calling for an end to such practices.

The legislator pushing for this bill attempts to cloud the issue by claiming that it would help not only children whose parents don’t wish to get them vaccinated yet but those who are unable to take them to be vaccinated. In the immortal words of Sherman T. Potter, that’s a load of horse hockey. As with the rest of the country, it’s ludicrously easy to arrange for a vaccination in California. If you can’t make it to a vaccination pod or a doctor’s office, there is a toll-free number you can call and people will come to your home to administer the shot. And they’ll do it for free. This is strictly about overriding the decisions of the parents if those decisions are politically unpopular.

In California, as in most of America, if a school nurse gives an aspirin to a child without a note from a parent or guardian they can lose their job. If you give a tattoo to a minor you can literally go to jail. But if you want to hide from the parents the fact that their child was given a vaccine that was only quite recently granted emergency approval for distribution by the CDC, that’s apparently just fine and dandy.

In closing, since we’re talking about families and parental rights here, I’ll just make the same point that I’ve attempted to hammer home here in the past. Do you know who wants to be able to do things to children’s bodies and tell them not to tell their parents about it? Pedophiles. Just think about that for a while.