Sitting in the Ohio House Health Committee is state House Bill 561, a measure for which authors appear to have given as much thought to a catchy acronym as they did to the well-being of Ohio children.

HB 561, “to revise the law governing childhood immunizations and exemptions and to name this act the Parental Clarity on Health Options and Information on Conscientious Exemptions ‘C.H.O.I.C.E.’ Act,” would eliminate the requirement for some Buckeye State children to get the hepatitis B vaccine and make changes to other vaccine regulations. It is similar to a host of other socio-cultural nonsense bills in statehouses throughout the region that pretend to be about parental choice.

HB 561 is dangerous. It would remove hepatitis B vaccine requirements for day cares and preschools and force public schools to allow unvaccinated students to continue going to school in the case of disease outbreak, according to a report by the Ohio Capital Journal. It would also change when and why a child can be denied access to school based on health or vaccination status.

Despite repeated studies published by the likes of the World Health Organization; the scientific journals “Autism,” “Pediatrics” and “Vaccine;” and the “Journal of the American Medical Association” that determined long ago there is NO connection between autism and vaccines, supporters of HB 561 are still dragging out those willing to testify that vaccine exemptions are “the only way forward to build our program (in this case, at a private academy where tuition can range from $500 for a general education student to nearly $30,000 for a special needs student) and to serve kids with autism.”

According to the Capital Journal, health data organization KFF said changes to vaccine laws “have important implications on childhood immunizations and U.S. public health broadly, especially given the context of already declining childhood vaccination rates and ongoing outbreaks of diseases such as influenza and measles.”

If schools, nurses and other officials are incorrectly carrying out the laws already in place regarding exemptions for medical, religious or conscientious exemption in Ohio, that is one thing — and lawmakers are right to want to address it.

Opening the door further to weaken efforts to protect school children (and the rest of us) with HB 561 is not the answer.