West Virginia House of Delegates votes down vaccine exemption bill

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (WTAP) - Monday the West Virginia House of Delegates soundly rejected a bill that sought to allow religious exemptions to school immunization policies.

Associate Chief Medical Officer at WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital Dr. Jeff Lancaster said the medical community broadly agrees with the bipartisan group of lawmakers who voted against Senate Bill 460.

Lancaster said evidence shows childhood vaccines to be safe, reliable and effective. With today’s globalized world allowing diseases to spread quickly across international borders, Lancaster says childhood immunizations are a crucial way to protect children who are immunocompromised due to childhood cancer or other ailments.

“We just cannot protect those kids directly, so you protect them by keeping immunization rates high in the community so that those diseases can’t penetrate a community and then be spread around," Lancaster said.

Senate Bill 460 followed Governor Patrick Morrisey’s executive order mandating religious vaccine exemptions. A spokesperson for the governor released a statement following the rejection of the bill.

“The debate over vaccines has sadly derailed since Governor Morrisey put forth common sense policy to provide for a religious exemption from unworkable, rigorous mandates. West Virginia remains an outlier by failing to provide these exemptions, aligning with liberal states like California and New York.

SB 460 looks radically different from the bill proposed by the Governor, which remains the best chance for a compromise this session — addressing both public health and religious liberty concerns."

Kanawha County Delegate and head of the West Virginia Democratic Party Mike Pushkin said the failure of SB 460 was a victory for all West Virginians, the majority of whom Pushkin said don’t support loosening vaccine requirements.

“I think we carried the voice of the people yesterday in our bipartisan opposition of that bill, so I would now expect the governor to rescind his overreaching and really dangerous and deadly executive order,” Pushkin said.

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