This study examines the issue of mandatory immunization for children in the State of California. The findings of this examination are presented in the form of a policy analysis within the contexts of the (1) social problem and its context, (2) current policies, practices, and outcomes, (3) and policy recommendation.
Immunization against preventable disease is one of the older social movements for children in the United States. The objective of the California School Immunization Law was to attain a 100 percent vaccination against preventable diseases for all children in the state's population. The objective was to be enforced through a denial of entry into public school of children were not immunized. In an effort to protect constitutional rights of citizens, however, the drafters of the law allowed children to be exempt from enforcement of the law for specific reasons such as religious beliefs against vaccination. Further, those children attending home schools were not covered by the law. Thus, the exemptions built into the law assured that the 100 percent vaccination objective of the law would not be met.
Parents object to mandatory vaccination for their children on a variety of grounds. Most of these reasons are philosophical or legal in character, i.e., freedom of choice, religious beliefs, logical interpretations of vaccine effectiveness, right of privacy, anti-government sentiments, and so forth. For some people, the costs associated with immunizations also provide a reason to object to mandatory immunizations. In many instances, however, people who object to mandatory immunizations do so on the basis of misleading information concerning vaccines that describes the efficacy and risks associated with vaccines in terms that are contrary to established and verified facts. This problem was illustrated well in an article that appeared in The New Republic in 1998, in which Arthur Allen reported that:
President Clinto...