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Cervical cancer bill bogs down

Senate sponsor says vaccination issue 'not dead'

Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 3, 2007 at midnight

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A cervical cancer bill is stalled in a Senate committee, but the sponsor says the issue remains "very much alive."

Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, said Friday that if she doesn't have the votes to get her bill out of the Appropriations Committee, she'll merge portions of it with another cervical cancer bill in the House.

"This issue is not dead," Williams said. "We've just hit a bump in the road."

The committee on Friday deadlocked 4-4 on the bill, but voted against permanently killing it.

Senate Bill 80 requires that girls entering sixth grade show proof they have been vaccinated against cervical cancer or that their parents opted out of the vaccination.

Last year, federal officials recommended girls be vaccinated before they become sexually active for the drug to be most effective.

Some groups have campaigned against the measure because many of the cancer cases are caused by the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus, or HPV.

Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, said he is glad the vaccine is available but added that 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," he said.

A separate measure, House Bill 1301, is awaiting a hearing there. Williams is the Senate sponsor of the House bill, which establishes a cervical- cancer immunization program and directs the state health department to investigate ways to make the vaccine available. But it doesn't mandate girls be vaccinated or opt out.

Williams said if the Senate bill dies, she will try to fold portions of it into her House bill.

But Williams has an ally for her Senate proposal in the lone Republican woman in the Senate, Nancy Spence, of Centennial.

Spence wants a family's decision about whether the shot is given to be kept private. She doesn't want the vaccination sheet that students must present to school officials and sports coaches each year to say whether they had the shot because it relates to a sexually transmitted disease.

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