On Wednesday, California lawmakers have advanced a bill under which the schoolchildren in the state are required to be vaccinated amid impassioned pleas from parents and doctors, even activist Robert Kennedy Jr. The bill passed out of the Senate Health Committee on a 6-2 vote.

As per the proposal, the parents would no longer be able to send unvaccinated kids to school with waivers citing religious or personal beliefs. Exemptions would be given to only those children who have health problems.

The supporters of the proposal have said that with the help of this measure, the number of vaccinated young people will increase, improving public health.

One of the parents, Ariel Loop told lawmakers that such a plan could have prevented her child from contracting measles at Disneyland. She said, "My infant shouldn't have had to suffer. He shouldn't, still months later, be having complications with his eyes," she said. "I shouldn't have had to fear for his life".

However, the opponents have said that vaccines can be as dangerous as the diseases they aim to fight. According to them, the bill would trample parental rights.

While opposing the bill, Karen Kain said that her daughter died of injuries from a mercury-tainted vaccine. She said that a lot can happen when vaccines go wrong, so it is risky, thus there must be a choice.

If the Legislature passes the bill and it gets signed by the governor, then California would join Mississippi and West Virginia as the only states with such strict vaccine rules.

Such kinds of measures to reduce exemptions were proposed at many places following a measles outbreak in December that started at Disneyland. It sickened over 100 people across the US and in Mexico. However, such proposals were recently rejected in the states Oregon and Washington.