Campaigning intensifies ahead of Assembly vote on vaccination bill

The state Assembly is expected to vote Thursday on SB 277, the controversial bill that would require all children to be vaccinated in order to attend daycare or school. The bill would eliminate the personal belief and religious exemptions to vaccination, while maintaining the medical exemption.

Ahead of that vote, there's been a flurry of last-minute politicking by the bill's opponents and supporters. 

A group calling itself the Public Health Council paid for anti-SB 277 robo calls. In the automated message, a woman claiming to be a mother says the bill would "take away our right to make important medical decisions for our children." She urges people to call their assemblymember and tell him or her to vote "no" on SB 277.

A Voice for Choice placed four advertisements in the Sacramento Bee this week. The ads look like political cartoons and show the supposed consequence of the bill becoming law: One depicts the tombstones of children who allegedly died of so-called "lethal vaccination."

Another ad in the Bee pictures an unvaccinated child who's barred from school property and reads, "No shots, no school." The ad reflects the concern – one that was shared by the American Civil Liberties Union of California - that the bill would violate the state constitution's guarantee of access to public education for all.

According to the amended bill, parents who choose to not vaccinate their children can participate in a multiple-family private home school, or home-school their kids using a public school independent study program.

One of the ads placed by A Voice for Choice  in the Sacramento Bee ahead of the state Assembly's vote on SB 277.

In recent months, A Voice for Choice also paid to place anti-SB 277 ads in 30 BART cars and three BART stations in the Bay Area. The ad says SB 277 entails a loss of parental rights and a loss of informed consent, and claims vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe." It reads: "Because there is a risk, there must be a choice."

Another group paid for radio ads in Northern California.

Meanwhile, the website of the organization Vaccinate California is asking people to contact their lawmakers to voice their support for the bill.