The Connecticut legislature’s public health committee on Friday voted to raise a bill that would eliminate religious exemptions for vaccinations among schoolchildren, with one key change from last year’s version of the bill: this year’s version would only grandfather in older children.
Committee co-chair Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, said the raised bill will be nearly an identical copy of last year’s bill, which sought to eliminate religious exemptions. (Medical exemptions, based on a doctor’s advice, would still be allowed.)
Steinberg said there is one difference in this year’s bill, though: while last year’s bill would have allowed for the grandfathering in of any child already in school with a religious exemption, this bill would only allow students in seventh grade or above to retain their religiously exempt status.