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Bill Advances To Change New Jersey's Vaccine Exemption

By Cleve Bryan

TRENTON, N.J., (CBS) -- With more than 9,000 parents state-wide claiming religious exemptions last to year to stop their kids from getting vaccines, New Jersey lawmakers are trying to tighten exemption guidelines.

"As we've allow the number of people to claim it, we have increasing numbers of people in our population that are unvaccinated. Those people are getting the measles now when we thought we had eliminated it from the country," says NJ Assemblyman Herb Conaway (D-Burlington) who is a doctor of internal medicine at St Francis Medical Center in Trenton.

Conaway is sponsoring an Assembly companion bill to S-1147 which passed a Senate committee on Monday and is heading for second reading.

The measures require parents who claim religious exemptions who provide documentation explaining how vaccines violate a doctrine of their religion.

"I think everyone should have a right to chose for themselves, I think there should be vaccine freedom," Kaely Harrod, a mother of 3 who lives in Trenton.

Harrod doesn't think it's right for lawmakers to make a distinction between religious beliefs and personal views.

"Religion is such a broad term that really encompasses so many things that my religion to you could be just a set of personal beliefs," says Harrod, who won't say whether or not her 3 kids are vaccinated.

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