As COVID Vaccine Race Kicks Into High Gear, Will Teens Be Able To Get It If Their Parents Don’t Consent?
With several major pharmaceutical companies reporting promising results from clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccines they are respectively testing, conversations are already starting about whether people would even consider getting a brand new vaccines that has been expedited through the approval process, and if so, who is first in line. But for some teens, the question becomes about whether or not they’ll be able to get vaccinated at all without their parents approval.
Santa Monica-based high school senior Kelly Danielpour takes this issue on in a recent op-ed she wrote that was published in The Los Angeles Times, advocating for a change to laws in California and other states across the country that prevent teenagers from getting a vaccine without parental consent. There has been movement to address this in some legislatures across the country in an attempt to give teens with “anti-vax” parents the ability to make their own decisions about being immunized, but she argues the coronavirus pandemic has increased the urgency behind the conversation and says all 50 states should amend their laws to allow teens to be vaccinated without their parents’ permission.
Today on AirTalk, we’ll look at what California’s laws currently say about teens getting vaccinated without parental permission, explore what policy and legal options exist to update or amend the law, and take your calls. If you’re a teenager, are you going to get vaccinated when there is one available for you? If you don’t think your parents would consent but still want to get the vaccine, what will you do? For parents, how are you navigating this with your adolescent children? Even parents who are not anti-vaxx might still have concerns about their kids getting this vaccine -- how are you going to handle that? Join the live conversation by calling us at 866-893-5722.
GUEST:
Dorit Reiss, professor of law at UC Hastings, where her areas of expertise include vaccine law and policy, and a member of The Vaccine Working Group on Ethics and Policy, an independent, not-for-profit project that was formed to address key policy challenges associated with the testing and distribution of vaccines intended to prevent Covid-19 transmission in the United States; she tweets @doritmi