"Mandatory" does not mean that all parents have to do is say they opt out.

What "Opt out" means differs from state to state.

All states have religious "opt outs" -- My kid opts out because it is against my religion.

Some, but not all states have "medical opt outs" -- My doctor says my kid should not have this.

Some, but not all states have "personal opt out" -- My kid opts out because we don't agree with it.

In some states they check on what your religion actually believes. If they decide your religion does not opt out, you can't choose opt out.

To get a medical opt out, you need to find a doctor to write that note. Your doctor may disagree with you.

In many states you cannot opt out of A and then opt in to B. It is not your decision to pick and choose. If you opt out, you opt out of all vaccines, including vaccines that you may approve of.

How come the editors don't know this and star bogus misinformation? Is this a blog or a magazine based on journalism?

That's brilliant Laurel, and thank you for passing that along. If the "editors" asked me, your letter would be an editors' choice.

I find it remarkable that so many of Broadsheet's blogrolled blogs, like Pandagon, that are so adamant about keeping the government off our bodies, are also so adamantly pushing a mandatory Gardasil vaccine bill that specifically mandates the government to inject foreign, unknown, dubious substances into our bodies.

As recently as two days ago, Amanda Marcotte was declaring that it is misogynistic to be against Gardasil.

http://pandagon.net/2007/04/19/take-my-uterus-please/

And why does Pandagon wish Gardasil to be injected into adolescents? Because they explicitly have an agenda where women can have as much sex as possible. I don't think that's such a horrible agenda, I just note how their agenda takes importance over the civil liberty agenda of "keep the government off our bodies."

Why does Broadsheet blogroll Pandagon? What does Pandagon actually have to offer besides illogic and authoritarianism in the name of feminism?

(First, I am actually pro-choice and think the decision was wrong, and I am trying to make a point about "best interest of the XXX" tests that basically enable judges to do anything they want constitutional or not.)

But I think a calf, giraffe, pony, ... is capable of standing up on its feet and finding mom.

I think it's pretty well known that in contrast to other mammals similar in other regards to humans (like other primates) babies don't yet have the physical or neurological development to enable them to survive on their own. They have to come out because our "intelligent designer" apparently forgot to create the "exit hatch" big enough for a fully developed toddler to emerge without killing the mother.

Evolution - August 1996: The love of an erectus mother

http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199608/0078.html

Effectively, if humans are a fundamentally precocial species, our gestation is (or should be) 21 months. However, no mother could possibly pass a year old baby's head through the birth canal. Thus, human babies are born "early" to avoid the death of the mother. Walker and Shipman write:

"Humans are simply born too early in their development, at the time when their heads will still fit through their mothers' birth canals. As babies' brains grow, during this extrauterine year of fetal life, so do their bodies. About the time of the infant's first birthday, the period of fetal brain growth terminates, coinciding with the beginnings of speech and the mastery of erect posture and bipedal walking."

(Walker and Shipman won the General Prize in the 1997 Rhone-Poulenc Prize for Science Books, the most prestigious award for science writing in english. Chapter 10, Skeleton Keys speaks to this topic. Try reading it LeCastor. Try reading!)

Or in 3rd grade language for the lawyers amongst us:

Human development - gestation and birth

http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/origins/development.html

If you don't like this, then take it up with the intelligent designer.

Note to LeCastor, .... (all I have to see is "LeCastor" to know the comment is ill-informed, ill-intended, biased, and futile to engage in conversation with. Cheers!)