In 2015, state legislatures across the United States experienced an unprecedented flood of bills backed by the pharmaceutical and medical trade industries to restrict or remove personal belief vaccine exemptions, expand electronic vaccine tracking systems, and require more vaccines for children in school and adults in the workplace.
While much of the media attention and gloating by lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry and organized medicine focused on the loss of the personal belief and religious exemption in California and the loss of the philosophical exemption in Vermont, there was little recognition of the huge successes in states where attempts to restrict informed consent rights failed.
In 2015, citizens took a stand for their informed consent rights in the following states and derailed legislative attempts by special interest lobbyists to outright eliminate the conscientious/philosophical exemptions: Maine, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington.
Additionally, during the 2015 legislative cycle, activist citizens in the following states came out on top of attacks that would have eliminated or severely restricted religious vaccine exemptions: Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont.
Regarding adult employees, bills to mandate vaccines for child care employees were passed in California, but bills to require vaccination for health care workers in Connecticut, Missouri and New Jersey and school employees in Texas all failed.
Leading the way to stop these bills was the web-based National Vaccine Information Center's (NVIC) Advocacy Portal, which was utilized more in 2015 than in any other previous year. The NVIC Advocacy Portal is a free online communications network that connects registered users with their legislators through their smart phones, tablets and computers.