Senator Kagan, in a very bold move, has introduced legislation that will dismantle parental oversight when it comes to medical decisions of minors. In something that appears to be taken straight out of a California policy play book, the introduced bill establishes a new “age” for consent based on the premise that a minor has the same capacity to grant consent as an adult. Let’s take a deeper dive at what the bill proposes.
If you read closely this language specifies that a minor is able to grant consent to vaccination, despite a parent’s objection, but is not able to refuse vaccination when a parent wants their child vaccinated. This is a fascinating distinction and is clearly not based on making health decision based on an individual’s self-application of personal risks and benefits, but is instead about injecting as many arms as possible. Informed consent means that an individual has the ability to make a choice. What this legislation says is that we will only respect your informed consent if it aligns with being vaccinated, otherwise we will find a guardian that will grant informed consent.
It is interesting how this section, which defines informed consent, can exist in context of the entire bill. It is as if they are providing a definition for the words, but then using different definitions when they actually utilize the word. One notable aspect of informed consent is that it requires a health care provider to provide the patient of foreseeable complications and risks to the patient. In our most recent experiment with vaccines this was clearly not able to be provided. What you had was a vaccine being administered in which the foreseeable complications and risks were not even known, much less able to be communicated to a patient. Additionally, when presented with the most recent vaccine, the risks of the alternative were not provided (you were taking the vaccine for others remember!). In short, Kagan is proposing a bill based on informed consent coming on the heels of a massive culture of vaccination where informed consent was largely ignored. Additionally, when it comes to minors there should be a considerably high bar for “without coercion”. Haven’t we already decided that something as small as cigarette advertising targeting a minor is a form of significant coercion? Would the same high standard be applied to vaccines, or would advertising such as “Get vaccinated so your grandmother doesn’t die” be allowed?
Read closely here. There is NO age requirement for a minor having the ability to give informed consent. Section C says that a child under the age of 14, even a child that is developmentally disabled, has the capacity to consent (over a guardian) if a healthcare provider believes they can, or if the minor simply “is able”. How this is objectively tested or secured is truly unknown. The bill allows for the subjective evaluation of a child’s judgement to be cause enough to grant them the capacity. What other situations would Kagan apply this to?
Here is the protection clause to enable them to directly influence your child, without your knowledge, and then when you find out to not be held accountable. Scenario: a healthcare provider sets up a stand at a mall that encourages minors to get vaccinated. A child walks up and the health care provider also judges that the child is capable of giving informed consent. They administer the vaccine. The guardian finds out. And guess who is liable? NO ONE.
So what in the world is Kagan doing? What she is doing is using a recent public health emergency to capitalize on an opportunity to further erode parental oversight of a minor. By beginning to set the precedent in this area it can be expanded more widely. By removing the parent, law makers and culture shapers have a direct outlet to your child. ‘They’ become what knows best.
Where things get interesting is if you look at the most recent Financial Disclosure Statement for Sen. Kagan, filed 3/22/22. At that time Sen. Kagan disclosed that she owned stock in only 3 companies:
- Novavax Inc – advertises itself as the “new era of vaccines”. It has a COVID-19 vaccine on the market and has a pipeline of vaccines that includes influenza, RSV and MERS.
- Emergent Biosolution – manufactures a small pox vaccine and cholera vaccine. It has a pipeline that includes an influenza vaccine, quine encephalitic VLP vaccine, Marburg vaccine, and lassa fever vaccine.
- Aptevo Theraeutics – pipeline company focused on therapeutics.
You can voice your concern and disapproval of this legislation directly to Sen. Kagan by using the email: Cheryl.Kagan@senate.state.md.us
Let your voice be heard.
