Teens for Vaccines Co-Sponsors Senate Bill SB 866 “Teens Choose Vaccines Act” – Minor Consent Bill in California
Teens for Vaccines is a proud co-sponsor of SB 866 "Teens Choose Vaccines Act," a bill that will allow California minors 12 years and older to consent to life-saving vaccination.
SB 866 builds on existing law, which currently allows minors 12 and over to make choices about their bodies around reproductive healthcare. SB 866 protects the ability of young people to live healthy lives, helps keep schools open and safe, increases vaccination rates, and promotes public health in California. https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/sb866
Arin Parsa's speech during the press conference on SB 866
"Thank you Senator Wiener, Senator Dr. Pan, and fellow youth leaders. Hello everyone my name is Arin Parsa. I am a ninth-grader from San Jose, and I am the founder of Teens for Vaccines, a youth organization with ambassadors across many states in the U.S., promoting the life-saving power of vaccines and empowering teens to get vaccinated.
I founded Teens for Vaccines during the 2019 measles outbreaks, when many distraught teens of vaccine-hesitant and anti-vax parents were going to Reddit and other social media to know how to get vaccines to protect themselves. During this time, Brooke Balck, a ten-year-old in Orange County, a few hours away from where I live, couldn’t get vaccinated due to a heart transplant. She couldn’t go to school because the measles vaccination rates were so low in Orange County with some parents refusing to get their children vaccinated. To me, it was shocking and gut-wrenching that children and teens in modern times still faced threats from the same diseases plaguing us 50 and even 100 years ago. Since then, I have been tirelessly advocating for every child’s right to life-saving vaccines and healthcare.
With the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging our communities for over two years now and we are facing incessant waves of the virus, the crisis faced by teens of vaccine-hesitant and anti-vax parents has only gotten worse! Because they can’t get the vaccine, teens live in fear and isolation, not knowing if they might infect their grandparents or younger siblings or may catch COVID themselves and miss school, friends, and family. It has been devastating for me to see so many teens live in sadness for a life-saving vaccine that the rest of us fortunate teens can easily get. COVID-19 is taking their happiness and futures away…
We cannot ignore this crisis anymore. We cannot sit on the sidelines while so many teens are suffering and unable to access life-saving vaccines and healthcare they need.
COVID has also highlighted significant inequities. So many teens have parents who work two jobs and teens can’t keep up their doctor visits and get vaccinations due to lack of transportation. Teens need easy access to vaccines in schools, after-school activity centers, and pharmacies. HPV is a preventable cancer but our rates in California especially in rural counties are in the single digits, nowhere close to 80% that we aspire for! Every year we lose so many healthy teens to flu and meningitis. And COVID continues to claim teen lives and futures. It is time we take action.
It is time we remove barriers for teens to get life-saving vaccines and healthcare. It is time we recognize that it is not only a public health issue but also a severe mental health issue when teens don’t have basic rights to protect themselves from deadly diseases.
We have tremendous leadership here in California and we have shown in the past that we can forge the path and set an example. It’s time to pass the Teens Choose Vaccines Act so teens can live healthy and happy lives without worrying about preventable diseases. Let’s do the right thing. Thank you." -- Arin Parsa
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