California may be called the Golden State, but all that glitters isn’t gold! Sometimes, it’s just the sheen from a highly polished load of lies marketed as urgently needed legislation.
This shiny number is AB-499, authored by pro-abortion California assemblywoman Toni Atkins. The anti-parent proposed new state law would allow the government to vaccinate children 12 years old and older, as well as provide other sexual health treatments, without any parental consent or involvement. Specifically, the bill will allow a child “who is 12 years of age or older, to consent to medical care related to the prevention of a sexually transmitted disease.”
California is the abortion capital of the nation, with 214,190 abortions in 2008 (the latest reported year). Empirical evidence of massive failure of the state’s public health policies is ignored as bills like AB-499 are heavily lobbied by the abortion industry. The state continues to fund failed health initiatives, awarding millions of taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood, for instance, which has proven ineffective in reducing soaring STD rates, unintended pregnancy rates and abortions (especially among minorities). Excluding parents has not improved any of these situations. Our children flourish, not in the care of government, but in the watchful and informed care of their parents.
Atkins’ office, in an official press release, claims that “70% of our young people are exposed to these [sexually transmitted] diseases by the time they are 19”. The CDC, however, indicates less than 50% of adolescents, ages 15-19 (let alone preteens that would be affected by the law) have even been sexually active.
When Atkins’ spokespeople were asked directly about the total numbers of 12-19 year old Californians infected with HPV and Hepatitis-B or what percentage of parents prevented their children from needed vaccinations, they admitted they didn’t possess any of that data. They couldn’t explain, either, why their numbers did not coincide with the CDC’s latest statistics on teens’ sexual behavior and STD rates.
Atkins also compares AB-499 to the effort to vaccinate against polio, claiming “America was able to eliminate polio in the 1950’s through vaccination, saving thousands of lives.” Polio is not a behavior-induced disease (unlike STDs that result from promiscuous sex), and Salk’s vaccination was not administered without parental consent. Polio is not preventable through any form of abstinence; sexually transmitted diseases are. Yet abstinence education, proven to be supported by the majority of parents nationwide in a recent Department of Health and Human Services study, is vehemently fought against by Atkins and the organization of which she served as a board member—Planned Parenthood.
AB-499 is predictably supported by mostly pro-abortion groups (i.e. NARAL, Planned Parenthood, ACOG, ACLU), who have succeeded in passing previous laws to eliminate any parental role in aminor’s access to abortion, contraception, and STD treatment. But their actions continually reveal the inherent hypocrisy of “pro-choice” ideology. They denounce governmental involvement (which really means protection of human life) when a woman chooses to kill her child via abortion. For them, this “sacrosanct right” of a women’s self-determination is inviolable.
Apparently, that same woman has no choice when it comes to raising the child(ren) she gives birth to. The government,according to AB-499, is better able to make crucial health choices than the mother, or father, of the child. This proposed law reinforces the disturbing philosophy that a state government, which has bankrupted California both financially and morally, is a better parent.
This is an ideological battle. As a parent, I am the one who will love my children, provide for them spiritually, materially, medically,educationally, and emotionally. No government can ever fill that role. Assemblywoman Toni Atkins proves that people need to be vaccinated from efforts like AB-499, protecting families from the unlawful intrusion of governmental control. Accuracy and context are potent antidotes to the infected reasoning that liberal legislators offer the public.
