A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Florida's governor is calling lawmakers back for a special session today. He's put what he calls medical freedom - vaccine choice - on the agenda. WUSF's Kerry Sheridan reports on Florida Republicans' efforts to drop vaccine requirements for schoolchildren.
KERRY SHERIDAN, BYLINE: Last September, Florida's surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, made a sweeping proclamation. He said the Department of Health, with the support of Governor Ron DeSantis...
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JOSEPH LADAPO: Is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law.
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LADAPO: All of them. All of them.
SHERIDAN: According to state law, children have to get certain shots to go to daycare or school. But to Ladapo...
LADAPO: Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.
SHERIDAN: For some of the vaccines, the legislature would have to pass new laws to undo the mandates. But for four childhood vaccines against meningitis, chickenpox and hepatitis B, it's up to the state Department of Health. The department held a forum in Panama City last December. Public comment went on for hours. Larry Downs Jr. spoke out against any vaccine mandates.
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LARRY DOWNS JR: The default setting should be freedom, not these corporate chemical vaccine injections.
SHERIDAN: There were slightly more speakers who wanted to keep the current vaccine rules. One was a Florida schoolteacher, Marion Fesmire. She's also worked overseas.
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MARION FESMIRE: I've seen kids with polio. I've seen blind kids. I've seen kids die before they're even 10 years old. It's heartbreaking.
SHERIDAN: But there have been no more public forums since then. The department hasn't filed the paperwork needed to change the vaccination rules. This winter, a vaccine-related bill worked its way all the way through the Florida Senate, but it didn't remove any mandates. Instead, it allowed a new kind of exemption. In addition to a religious or medical exemption, a parent could exempt their child for reasons of personal conscience. Democrats are in the minority in the Florida legislature and came out against it. Here's Democratic state Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith.
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CARLOS GUILLERMO SMITH: It's currently very easy to opt out, for religious reasons, from school immunizations. Given that context, is your bill just about giving people more options to ignore school immunizations or is it intended to solve a public health problem?
SHERIDAN: A few Republicans also opposed it. Republican Senator Gayle Harrell brought up the measles outbreak. Florida has had over 140 cases this year.
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GAYLE HARRELL: I truly believe that this is a dangerous bill, and I cannot vote for it.
SHERIDAN: Once the bill got to the Florida House, it died. Aubrey Jewett is a political science professor at the University of Central Florida. He says Governor DeSantis has lost political capital because he's term-limited after this year.
AUBREY JEWETT: For Republicans, they're a little bit leery. They know we're in an election cycle, and - well, they know history. And it's pretty clear that the president's party tends to lose seats in the midterm election.
SHERIDAN: National polls still show broad general support for vaccine mandates for schoolkids. About 8 in 10 people, largely across party lines, support them. Kelly Whitener is a health policy professor at Georgetown University. She says in many state legislatures, some Republicans are making a lot of noise around this, but they don't have the backing.
KELLY WHITENER: For most people, they still support the idea of near-universal vaccination, still understand the importance of vaccinating children to protect people who can't be vaccinated.
SHERIDAN: All sorts of things can happen when state legislatures reconvene for rapid-fire special sessions. But so far, despite hundreds of bills introduced nationwide, no state has yet repealed its school vaccination laws.
For NPR News, I'm Kerry Sheridan in Tampa.
MARTÍNEZ: This story comes from NPR's partnership with WUSF and KFF Health News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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