NYers Ready To Nix Religious Exemption For Measles Vaccine: Poll

NEW YORK — A proposal to end New York's religious exemption from the measles vaccine has widespread support across the state, a new poll shows.

Some 84 percent of Empire State voters support requring parents to vaccinate their children against the virus for the kids to attend school regardless of religious beliefs, according to the Siena College poll released Monday.

Democratic state lawmakers have proposed a bill to do just that as a measles outbreak roils New York City and other parts of the state. Some 550 people in the city had caught the virus since October as of May 28, according to the city's Department of Health.

"New Yorkers overwhelmingly support legislation requiring parents to vaccinate their children regardless of religious beliefs," Siena College pollster Steve Greenberg said in a statement. "More than three-quarters of voters from every party and region support it."

That support also cuts across religious lines amid an outbreak that has hit Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn especially hard.

Some 84 percent of Jewish voters support getting rid of the religious exemption, along with 86 percent of Catholics, 81 percent of Protestants and 84 percent of voters of other religions, the poll indicates.

Parents do not have to follow the state public health law's mandate to vaccinate their children against measles and other diseases if they have "genuine and sincere religious beliefs" that go against the law's requirements.

A bill sponsored by state Sen. Brad Hoylman would get rid of that exemption, meaning every child in the state would have to get vaccinated to attend school unless there was a medical reason they could not.

Supporters of the measure worry that skeptics of vaccines are using the religious exemption as a loophole to avoid immunizing their kids. But its opponents say the bill would constitute a coercive attack on parents' religious freedom and autonomy.

Siena's poll was released with barely more than a week left in the state Legislature's annual session. The college's Research Institute surveyed 812 registered voters in New York State by telephone from June 2 to 6. The poll has a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points.