Even though the states of Michigan, Maryland, and Indiana have killed, pulled down, or gutted proposed legislation to mandate the controversial new vaccine called Gardasil made by Merck for the sexually transmitted virus HPV, our Texas governor Rick Perry did the unthinkable by bypassing the entire Texas legislature from the process and issuing an intrusive executive order forcing all of our 11 and 12 year old little girls to be vaccinated against this sexually transmitted virus in order to attend the 6th grade!

IMMEDIATE responses to your Texas state senator and representative expressing your opposition is needed!

There are several brave legislators that are working hard at trying to reverse this, but in order for other legislators to be receptive and sign onto and support these efforts, they need to know that the people who voted to put them into office are outraged by the governor’s actions. Please make your voice heard NOW!

The governor is hiding behind the claim that parents can opt out of this mandate, but he is not telling parents the truth that in many cases, the exemption isn’t worth the piece of paper it is printed on: private and parochial schools don’t have to accept the exemption, physicians do not have to accept the exemption and many throw families out of their practices for not receiving all state mandated vaccines, and some insurance companies are discriminating against families whose kids have not received all the vaccines on the state’s required list. Additionally, the exemption process is a bureaucratic nightmare requiring written requests to the State Health Department in Austin forcing the disclosure of your children’s full names, birthdates, and mailing address. Sometimes these forms take weeks to be mailed out by the health department disrupting school attendance and the forms must be notarized and repeatedly submitted every 2 years.

If you don’t know who represents you, you can link to http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/  and enter your address. Click on the links provided for your Texas State Senator and Texas State Representative to obtain their phone, fax, and email. Forward this alert to your friends and family and ask them to help flood the legislature with messages that this is a totally unacceptable abuse of power and demanding that something be done by the legislature to reverse this and prevent it from happening again.

Thank you!
Sincerely, Dawn Richardson Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education (PROVE)
www.vaccineinfo.net

Here are a handful of talking points to consider:

1) Governor Perry's Executive Order, that MANDATES the HPV vaccine for 6th grade girls, circumvents the legislative process by usurping the authority of our elected representatives to debate and decide bills already filed in the Texas legislature.

2) This MANDATE usurps the rights of the parents of Texas to make medical decisions for their minor children by requiring this vaccine. It is the parents who have to live with the consequences if their child is injured by the HPV vaccine, not the governor or the state of Texas. Texas vaccine exemptions don’t apply in many cases so parents aren’t really free to say no to this shot if it is mandated.