title: Lowering the Age of Consent: Pushing Back against the Anti-Vaccine Movement.
abstract: This article examines the rise of the anti-vaccination movement, the proliferation of laws allowing parental exemptions to mandatory school vaccines, and the impact of the movement on immunization rates for all vaccines. It uses the ongoing debate about the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine as an example to highlight the ripple effect and consequences of the anti-vaccine movement despite robust evidence of the vaccine's safety and efficacy. The article scrutinizes how state legislatures ironically promote vaccination while simultaneously deferring to the opposition by promulgating broad opt-outs from mandatory vaccine laws. This article concludes by offering an alternative legislative approach to specifically combat the anti-vaccine movement's impact on HPV vaccination rates. Lowering the age of consent has not been widely attempted or proposed and provides an alternative statutory mechanism to push back against vaccine resistance.
authors: Allison M. Whelan, J.D., M.A., is currently a law clerk for a federal Circuit Court judge. She received her J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and her Master of Arts in Bioethics from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is a member of the New York State Bar.
authors: Allison M
authors: AM
authors: Whelan
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000070377:Anti-Vaccination Movement; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D053918:Papillomavirus Vaccines; D010290:Parents; D012574:Schools; D014611:Vaccination
chemical_list: D053918:Papillomavirus Vaccines