The California Senate passed SB 277 this week, a measure that would eliminate the “personal belief exemption” for childhood vaccination, according to Benchmark Reporter. Up until now, California parents had the option of not vaccinating their children based on “personal beliefs” about the risks and merits of certain vaccines.

As a result of the bill’s passage, children who aren’t vaccinated would not be allowed to attend daycares, preschools and public schools throughout the state. Many parents are outraged by the measure. The bill was introduced by State Senator Richard Pan of Sacramento after last year’s measles outbreak at Disneyland rekindled a heated debate on the merits of vaccination. The outbreak affected over 100 people, and vaccination is widely cited as the reason for the national decrease in measles cases over the last century.

There is a growing camp of au-natural parents who believe that certain vaccinations can increase the occurrence of autism in children. As a result, a growing number of parents throughout the state, albeit particularly concentrated in the highly liberal southern region, have declined to have their children vaccinated at all. The problem with this trend is that there actually haven’t been any scientific studies that can prove a link between vaccinations and autism actually exists.

Some schools in California are already below the accepted safe rate of 92 percent vaccinations. As a school passes this critical benchmark, the student population suddenly faces a drastically increased risk of a widespread infection. The more people that are resistant to a disease, the more isolated cases of that disease will be. This makes infections easier to identify and treat.

Californians have taken what would normally be a scientific issue and turned it into a rights issue. Nobody wants the government to tell them exactly what to do, but when children unnecessarily are exposed to potentially deadly diseases, what was once considered common sense becomes required by law.