By Jefferey Jaxen

In 2016, MSNBC host Melissa Harris Perry made a concerning statement. Discussing public education, Harris Perry said, “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families.”

In the four years since, concepts like “kids belong to the community” have been insidiously melded into “greater good” public health vaccination talking points from politicians deciding policy.

This move is now supercharged with the coronavirus response. We’re being told, ‘we’re all in this together,’ a mantra-like chant droned into society’s consciousness.

This debate is reaching critical mass because corporate media has long refused to provide public balance to the issue. Big Media has neutralized parents’ concerns via limited, unscientific Big Pharma talking points. The division between facts and propaganda has been percolating. 

Religious, medical and philosophical barriers protecting children from historically criminal, unethical corporations have been systematically removed. It was inevitable that the final battle would be to remove the ‘parent barrier.’ That’s where we are now. 

Directly before the world experienced the coronavirus, the vaccine debate had devolved to whether parents should be removed from the picture entirely when it comes to vaccine decisions. The health community and government representatives deemed parents and the need for parental consent ‘a barrier to obtaining vaccination.’ 

The world’s people are staring down a possible future reality in which they remain confined to their homes without an experimental COVID shot rushed to market. Meanwhile, Big Pharma is working through governmental officials and still targeting children.  

Washington D.C.’s B23-0171 is a big carny in the coal mine to make the medical-industrial complex the parents of future generations of American children. Put forth in 2019, the bill had no activity for over a year. During a public hearing in June 2019, pediatrician Dr. Helene Felman, representing Washington D.C.’s chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), stated:

“As a pediatrician, I like the legislation as it stands because it offers the opportunity to capture those young adults who can make informed decisions at technically any age.”

Several other proponents of the bill who testified similarly danced around committing to an age they believed would be appropriate for a child to make their own medical decisions.

Fast forward. Present-day. The bill was just passed by a voice vote in a virtual meeting of D.C.’s Health Committee and, as the DCPost.com put it in their headline, D.C. Paves Way for Permitting Vaccination of Kids Without Parental Consent.

They decided that 11 years of age was the magic number for kids to okay vaccination behind closed doors with a provider who is protected from liability and has no accountability for what happens to the child after vaccination. 

Don’t worry, the child still ‘has to meet the gatekeeper’ as described in hearing comments. “The physical still has to meet the judgment that the minor is capable of informed consent,” said Councilmember Mary Cheh. 

What if the parents find out? Don’t worry, they probably won’t, it’ll be our little secret. The bill contains “many protections so that the confidentiality and privacy of the minor’s actions are maintained.” 

The chair of the Health Committee who passed the bill, Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7), was quoted in the Washington Post saying, “the hope of an imminent corona­virus vaccine gave the bill new urgency.” This seems to imply that the Covid shot, sans parental consent, will be given to all children. Children are of the lowest risk of the coronavirus. Children are minimally if at all, represented in the current Covid vaccine trials.

Acknowledging that The Tuskegee Experiment was still in the minds of many people, Gray didn’t see that the legislation committee members were engaged in “would ever possibly have that kind of situation once again.” 

The bill now goes to a second reading on November 10th. If the bill passes the second reading, it goes to the Mayor, who has up to 10 days to sign the bill, let it go into effect without a signature, or veto it. If the Mayor vetoes the bill, the Council can override the veto by a two-thirds vote.

The National Vaccine Information Center’s advocacy portal gives further points seemingly unconsidered in the bill’s creation, stating: 

There is no justification to override a parent’s legal right to make an informed benefit and risk decision about vaccination on behalf of their minor children, ignore their religious rights to decline vaccination, and then hand that responsibility to vaccine providers who are protected from liability and have no accountability for what happens to the child after vaccination.

A child is less likely than their parent to understand personal and family medical history, including vaccine reactions, allergies, and autoimmune or neurological disorders.

Kids do not have the same kind of critical thinking skills or emotional maturity required to make a vaccine benefit-risk decision compared to an adult. Vaccines can cause injury and death, as evidenced by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which has paid out over $4.4 billion dollars to vaccine victims.

Children and adolescents are vulnerable to peer and authority-figure persuasion.

If a child consents to vaccination without their parent knowing and has a reaction, the parent may not recognize the reason for their child’s decline in health, and this lack of knowledge could be life-threatening for the child.

This puts minor children at risk of being pressured and coerced into getting a COVID-19 vaccine behind their parents’ back once it is available and added to the ACIP recommended schedule for children.

A new page has been turned. The medical community, with the help of the government, has created a beachhead in the nation’s capital, supporting the effort to remove parental consent.

Jefferey Jaxen

Jefferey Jaxen is a health journalist and featured in his weekly segment, ’The Jaxen Report’, on The HighWire. As an investigative journalist, researcher, and compelling writer, Jefferey serves as Lead editor of The HighWire News and Opinion Team.