California law would let kids 12 and older be vaccinated without parental consent

California state senators have introduced a bill to allow children 12 and older to receive vaccinations against diseases like COVID-19 without parental consent.

State Sens. Scott Wiener and Richard Pan on Thursday introduced SB 866, which clarifies eligible vaccines as those that are "approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration" and meet "the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

The vaccines that children would be able to receive without their parents' knowledge must be provided by authorized vaccine providers that have state licenses, The Hill reported.

"This is about empowering teenagers to make decisions on their own health and their own safety," Wiener said of the bill, the Los Angeles Times reported. "Almost a million California teenagers are unvaccinated, and for a lot of those teens it's because their parents either refuse to get them vaccinated or they have not yet gotten around to it."

The bill states are other circumstances, such as contracting a contagious disease that legally must be reported to the state, ion which minors can be authorized to receive medical services without parental consent.

If the bill passes and is signed into law, it will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023.

The introduction of the bill follows an incident last month in which a Los Angeles mother said her 13-year-old son with asthma and allergies was vaccinated against COVID at school in exchange for pizza without her consent.