By: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Former presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry has signed into law new legislation that requires all college students, including those living off campus, to get injected with a meningitis vaccine. The new guidelines, which reportedly received bipartisan support, require that all students under the age of 30 show either proof of vaccination or a signed affidavit of exemption before being allowed to come to class.
Effective beginning spring semester 2012 for all students enrolled at both public and private colleges and universities across Texas, the mandate expands a previous one enacted in 2009 that requires only students living on campus to get the shot. And even though all students still have the freedom to decline the vaccination as a matter of conscience or for religious reasons, many of them are not being told this by their schools, and are just going along with it.
Though the entire state of Texas had only 34 reported cases of meningitis among young people between the ages of 15 and 29 in 2009, Gov. Perry, the Texas Medical Association (TMA), and several state senators expressed vehement support for the new bill, S.B. 1107, which further expands the government’s reach into the personal health choices of Texans.