HB 3063 was voted out of the Oregon Joint Committee On Ways and Means Subcommittee On Human Services today with a Do Pass recommendation.
God used your phone calls and email messages to cause the Committee to drop plans for a homeschool immunizations tracking system, which had been a Recommended Amendment to the bill.
HB 3063 now goes to the Joint Committee On Ways and Means for a work session on Friday and then heads to the House and Senate floors for votes by the individual legislators.
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What has been happening with HB 3063?
The bill started in the House Committee On Health Care. Oregon law currently prohibits public and private school students from attending school if they have not received a substantial list of vaccinations. Parents may get exemptions for a religious or philosophical belief or for medical reasons. Medical exemptions are difficult to obtain in Oregon. HB 3063 eliminates the religious and philosophical exemptions.
The bill then went to the Joint Committee On Ways and Means Subcommittee On Human Services. A Recommended Amendment was written to add a new statewide system to track the status of immunizations for individual homeschooled students.
That amendment was withdrawn today by the amendment’s sponsor due to your phone calls and emails. The structural threat in existing statute toward homeschool coop activities in locations where there are also certified daycare facilities was not addressed.
As we said earlier:
OCEANetwork is neutral on vaccinations because parents should make those choices for their own children. But we oppose the government dictating to parents what happens within their families.
HB 3063 is not just about vaccinating students. For all parents, including homeschoolers, it is about the State interfering with their ability to do what is best for their children.
This particular bill has two serious defects. It lumps many vaccines together as necessary for school attendance. If only a single vaccination is omitted, the child is excluded from school. So a parent who has a concern about a particular vaccine cannot just keep the child from getting that one vaccine.
Then HB 3063 assumes medicine to be an exact science — with no errors — by requiring a “medical” exemption. Doctors can deny an exemption even while knowing that other doctors might approve the exemption. There are many cases nationally where doctors disagree on treatments.
Yet HB 3063 strips parents of the ability to protect their children, by eliminating the philosophical and religious exemptions
Please pray that God will protect Oregon families.
Then contact your State Representative and State Senator and ask them to oppose HB 3063. Make sure they know you are a constituent.
Politely give your own reasons. Use your own words. If you do not feel expert on vaccinations, per se, just write a few sentences about how eliminating the philosophical and religious exemptions prevents parents from protecting their children as only parents can do. There will be others who make more detailed arguments.
To deliver a consistent message to the legislators, OCEANetwork suggests you write as a concerned parent, which you are. References to homeschooling will only dilute the focus. This is about parents being free to do what is best for their children.
You can find your State Representative’s and State Senator’s contact information at https://www.oregonlegislature.gov in the Find Your District and Legislators box at the right side of the page.
Thank you for again defending the legal ability for parents to do what is best for their children.
Rodger Williams
OCEANetwork Freedom Watch Team
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If you have questions about this alert / update, please contact us here so that we can funnel questions and concerns appropriately to the Freedom Watch team.