A showdown with the state is brewing among at least two Oregon counties that already have or are taking steps to prevent 15-, 16- and 17-year-old residents from getting vaccinated against COVID-19 without their parents’ or guardians’ permission.
A state law grants these teenagers the power to make their own medical decisions. The Oregon Health Authority says that includes whether they get vaccinated. The law requires parental consent for anyone 14 or younger.
But last week the Linn County Board of Commissioners directed its local health department to deny shots to any 15- to 17-year-old residents who want them unless they have parental approval. A state lawmaker, Rep. Marty Wilde, a Eugene Democrat whose district also covers part of Linn County, says that’s a violation of state law and he’s sent a complaint to the Oregon Department of Justice asking it to investigate.
“It is neither legal nor ethical to require parental consent for vaccination of minors 15 and up,” Wilde wrote in an email to the Association of Oregon Counties, warning it of the movement underfoot.
But proponents of the effort say the law appears to allow medical providers to choose not to administer a vaccination without parental consent, and even the Oregon Health Authority now acknowledges the issue could fall into something of a gray area.
This week, using Linn County’s action as a model, two of the three county commissioners in Yamhill County have voiced enthusiastic support for a possible ordinance requiring 15- to 17-year-olds to get parental permission -- saying they think the vaccines are “experimental” and unsafe for all age groups, let alone teens, despite public health data showing more than 150 million Americans have been safely vaccinated so far.
Commissioners Lindsay Berschauer and Mary Starrett, both who say they have no plans to ever get inoculated against COVID-19 because of their concerns about the vaccines, plan to discuss the legalities of requiring parental permission at their board meeting Thursday.
Starrett said she already has asked the county health department to stop vaccinations of 15- to 17-year-olds without parental permission as of Monday, and she said director of Yamhill County Health and Human Services Lindsey Manfrin agreed. Manfrin didn’t immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.
After learning of Wilde’s opposition to what is happening in Linn County, Berschauer wrote a strongly worded email to Wilde telling him to “stay out of our family decisions.”
“My children are not the property of the State of Oregon, Rep. Wilde,” Berschauer wrote. “And if you think for a moment that the parents in Yamhill County, especially mothers like myself who went through agonizing labor to birth and bring these children into the world, are going to accept that state bureaucrats can bribe our kids with pizza and iTunes gift cards in order to be injected with an experimental, trial vaccine WITHOUT OUR PERMISSION, you are out of your mind.”
Berschauer told The Oregonian/OregonLive that she’s the mother of a 14-year-old son and two stepchildren, ages 15 and 17. She said Yamhill County’s lawyers are currently looking into the legal authority the county has to require parental approval for vaccinations for this age group.
Simply put, Oregon law -- ORS 109.640 – states: “A minor 15 years of age or older may give consent, without the consent of a parent or guardian of the minor, to … hospital care, medical or surgical diagnosis or treatment” by various medical providers.
Oregon Health Authority spokesman Robb Cowie, however, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that while it believes the intent of the law is to grant 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds the powers to make their own decisions, “the law is vaguer” about whether a medical provider can decline to administer the vaccinations.
A state legislative lawyer, however, took a slightly different position, saying that while Linn County’s theory is “perhaps plausible,” refusing to vaccinate a minor age 15 or older nonetheless appears to contradict the law and legislative intent. Senior Deputy Counsel Marisa James wrote in an email that she read through the health authority’s Frequently Asked Questions web page and “found it perplexing” and “not necessarily an accurate statement of law.”
A May 10 memo from one of Linn County’s lawyers, Deputy Counsel Jodi Gollehon, told the commissioners that while the law grants this age group of teens power to make their own medical decisions, the Oregon Health Authority doesn’t rule out “the possibility that a provider may ask for parental consent for minors.” Gollehon then gave commissioners the go-ahead to direct the Linn County health department to start requiring parental approval.
One way around that is that another medical provider -- Samaritan Health – recently held a vaccination clinic at West Albany High School. And because it wasn’t under orders from the commissioners because it’s not the health department, it didn’t require 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds to get parental permission before getting their COVID-19 shots.
Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist declined to comment, except to say that the board’s intent was to support families.
“We’re respecting family conversations and family decisions,” Nyquist said. “Personally, I got vaccinated.”
And when it comes to others, Nyquist said he encourages them “to talk to their medical providers.”
But in Yamhill County, Berschauer and Starrett think the COVID-19 vaccinations are potentially dangerous. So in addition to requiring parental consent for all minors under 18, they also said they’re interested in an idea to require all Yamhill County residents who are about to get vaccinated to receive a copy of all adverse reactions a small percentage of Oregonians might have had to the vaccines.
Starrett, the board chair, also is working on a proposal to ban businesses from verifying the vaccination status of customers before, say, letting them enter a store without wearing a mask.
But as far as the immediate proposal up for discussion at Thursday’s board meeting, it has at least one commissioner of the three in opposition.
“I oppose it because it appears to be illegal,” said Commissioner Casey Kulla.
He added that counties are “an agent of the state in much of what we do, and the state makes the rules. If we don’t like them, we don’t get to just say, ‘We’re not going to follow this law.’”
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-- Aimee Green; agreen@oregonian.com; @o_aimee
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