DENVER-
Republican Sen. Nancy Spence is trying to build GOP support for a Democratic proposal to promote a cervical cancer vaccine for young girls.
Spence, the lone woman on the Republican side of the aisle, wants to make sure that a family’s decision about whether to get the shot or not is kept private, but she said they should know about the option.
“I’m giving them the perspective of a mother and a grandmother,” Spence said Friday.
The proposal (Senate Bill 80) requires doctors to tell parents about the availability of the vaccine that prevents infections from two strains of the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer. Last year, federal officials recommended that girls be vaccinated at 11 or 12, before they become sexually active.
Under the bill as it’s currently written, girls entering the sixth grade would have to show their school proof that they have been vaccinated or that their parents signed a form rejecting it.
Spence doesn’t want the vaccination sheet the students must present to school officials and sports coaches each year to say whether or not they had the shot since it relates to a sexually transmitted disease.
“The whole point of this bill is to give parents information and let them decide,” she said.
Sponsor Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, said she welcomed Spence’s amendment and hoped it would build bipartisan support for the bill, which is now stuck in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Members of the committee deadlocked in a 4-4 vote Friday on whether to send the bill on to the full Senate for debate. Two members, a Republican and a Democrat, were absent.
Sen. Stephanie Takis, D-Aurora, sided with Republicans in voting against the bill, but Williams said she would try again to get it out of committee.
Fiscal analysts estimate that it will cost about $34,000 to pay for shots for girls who are not covered by Medicaid or private health insurance because they assume about 60 percent of those girls will participate at first. A three-shot does of the vaccine costs $360.
But Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, said he was concerned that the costs are expected to grow to as much as $300,000 in the second year. Williams said that’s because more parents may decide to participate as more testing and different kinds of vaccine become available.
So far, the only HPV vaccine available is made by Merck & Co., and Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, said the state shouldn’t be a “marketing arm” for the company.
He said he is glad the vaccine is available but said the state shouldn’t be advocating its use because it’s not a public health threat since it is transmitted only through sex.
“There’s only one way to get HPV. You do not contract HPV sitting in a math class,” Brophy said.
Merck halted its lobbying for the HPV vaccine in Colorado and other states last month after pressure from parents and medical groups.
In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry bypassed lawmakers and signed an executive order last month requiring girls to be vaccinated in order to attend school.
Merck had funded a group called Women in Government, a national advocacy group made up of female state lawmakers, and many of the lawmakers who have introduced the bills, including Williams, are members.
