The House, Thursday, February 19, 2026

Rep. Matthew Coker (R - Belk 2)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate it. So, I rise today to speak against House Bill 1792. I really debated on whether or not I wanted to speak about this, but honestly, I just can't sit there in silence. I just kind of live with that. What disturbs me most about this bill isn't the bill itself, it's the pattern. When one side gains power, it immediately looks for ways to silence the other side, to restrict ideas, and to control what can be discussed; to punish what makes it uncomfortable. We criticized the left when they were doing this, and now we're trying to do this. We used to believe in debate. We used to believe bad ideas should be defeated in the open, not banned, not buried, not outlawed by government force. To my colleagues on this side of the room, I've spoken to many of you privately. You've told me you don't think this is a good bill, but you feel pressure from the party platform. I understand that. But maybe it's time we lead the party when it strays from what normal people, just trying to afford to live their lives, actually want. We were not elected to be mindless robots. We were elected to think. If I could trade my seat in this body to kill this bill, I would do it in a split second, because I believe the principles of free thought are that important. There is no chance, none, that I'm going to replace left woke with right woke, and that's exactly what this bill does. Vote no. Thank you.

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithThe House will be in order, and it'd be nice if the House quieted down so we could hear the speakers. Representative Peternel is recognized to speak for the committee report.

Rep. Katy Peternel (R - Carr 6)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is a speech that I was really hoping I wouldn't have to give. The title of this bill is the Countering Hate and Revolutionary Leftist Indoctrination and Education Act, or the Charlie Act. It was written in honor of Charlie Kirk, a man we saw murdered in cold blood because he dared to speak freely and truthfully. He boldly dared to hold events on college campuses with the express purpose of having open dialogue with fellow citizens who hold opposing viewpoints. He should not have lost his life defending our right to free thought and speech. Unfortunately, this is where our country is, largely due to the progressive leftist ideology that gaslights us with their upside down view of the truth.

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithThe member will suspend for a minute. So, I guess what I want to ask is, how long would you like this to take? Because every time there's a disruption in this hallowed chamber, I am going to stop and talk, I don't know, for 15 or 20 seconds. My advice is, if you can't handle hearing things you disagree with, maybe this is not the room for you to be in at the moment. The member will continue.

Rep. Katy Peternel (R - Carr 6)They use words like kindness, love, and tolerance. They claim that hate has no place here. What they mean is, they will be kind, loving, and tolerant if we blindly follow their philosophy. How do I know this? Because I have friends of 30 years who will no longer look me in the eye, avoid me at the sign of peace during mass, yet I am the same person I have always been. But because I have been elected by a particular party with a philosophy that differs from them, because I dare to speak freely, I am treated like I am not a human being. Recently, I had a phone conversation with a teacher, a friend, a friend of almost 30 years. We raised our kids together. We have had many thoughtful conversations, and I tried to remind her of that, but she tossed headlines at me as if to reduce my humanity to the level of the propaganda that she seemed to idolize. When I got off the phone, I was devastated. My thought was that this must be how people felt during the Civil War, when brothers had to fight brothers. The left tells us that we are creating the division, but the division has already been created by the media and the leftist indoctrination in the public schools. While attending a class at Columbia Teachers College, I watched my friend take notes about their prescribed ideology causing division. Having witnessed this from the highest teaching institution, I know that what I say is true. In the words of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, a popular television evangelist from the 1950s, America is suffering not so much from intolerance, which is bigotry, as it is from tolerance, which is indifference to truth and error, and a philosophical nonchalance that has been interpreted as broad-mindedness. Please vote ought to pass on House Bill 1792 and return truth to public education, because this is how we improve our public schools. Mr. Speaker, I request a roll call.

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithDoes the member yield for a question? The member does not yield. Members are reminded to talk about the bill and never assign motive. It's just words on paper. Discuss those words and their legal impact, what you think will happen, I guess, but not the reason the words were put on the paper. Representative Selig is recognized to speak against the committee report.

Rep. Loren Selig (D - Straf 10)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to HB 1792-FN. If this bill becomes law, it will create expensive lawsuits, not better schools. It opens new avenues to sue school districts and even individual teachers over vague complaints. That means higher legal bills, higher insurance premiums, and more taxpayer money diverted away from classrooms. Local property taxpayers, not the state, would foot the bill. We should be investing in literacy, math support, career pathways, and student services, not attorneys and liability coverage. Second, this bill is simply too vague to follow. Terms like revolutionary leftist indoctrination and LGBTQ ideologies are not clearly defined educational standards. They are political talking points. Teachers and administrators will have no consistent way to determine what is permitted and what is prohibited. That guarantees confusion, uneven enforcement, and fear-based censorship. It invites politically motivated complaints meant to silence legitimate differences of perspectives. Laws should be clear and workable. This one is neither. Let me be plain. Teachers in New Hampshire are not indoctrinating students into Marxism or any other political ideology. As a former teacher, if I could indoctrinate my students, it would have been to shower and show up with their homework. They are teaching students to teach, sorry, teachers are teaching students to think deeply about complex issues, to ask hard questions, to analyze evidence, and to articulate their own ideas. That's not indoctrination. That's education. Strong classrooms encourage inquiry, discussion, and respectful disagreement. They prepare students to be thoughtful citizens, not passive followers. Third, this bill clashes with the school's duties to protect all students. Educators are legally required to stop bullying and harassment and ensure that every student feels safe. When a student is targeted, teachers must respond and affirm that every child deserves equal respect. Under this bill, doing so could expose them to accusations and legal risk, which creates a no-win situation. Fourth, this bill further undermines local control. New Hampshire has long trusted local school boards to oversee curriculum and reflect their community's values. HB 1792-FN micromanages classroom speech from the State House and locks partisan culture war language into statute. We should ask ourselves, would Republicans support a bill censoring conservative viewpoints if Democrats controlled the legislature? Of course not. Neither should Democrats support a bill that goes the other way. Overly partisan provisions have no place in statute, regardless of which party advances them. Finally, this bill weakens honest, old-fashioned education. Real education does not require condemning ideas before students can examine them. It requires teaching students how to compare systems, Marxism and Fascism, Communism and Capitalism, and evaluate their strengths, their weaknesses, their historical consequences. How can clubs function if certain arguments are off limits? How do we foster critical thinking if teachers fear personal lawsuits for facilitating discussion? Our history shows that questioning government policy is not unpatriotic. It's profoundly American. The suffragettes secured women's right to vote because citizens spoke out. The civil rights movement expanded liberty because people challenged unjust laws. We do students a disservice if we teach only our triumphs and hide our failures. A mature democracy studies both, celebrating progress while learning from mistakes. HB 1792-FN does not strengthen education. It invites litigation, spreads confusion, puts educators in jeopardy, undermines local control, and chills the inquiry that makes education meaningful. Our students deserve classrooms where they are taught to think, not what to think. Where informed, respectful dissent is recognized as the cornerstone of American democracy. And thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also ask for a roll call vote.

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithRepresentative Osborne is recognized to speak for the committee report. And to quote the sergeant from Hill Street Blues, "Hey, let's be careful out there."

Rep. Jason Osborne (R - Rock 2)All right. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today in support of HB 1792. Let me start with a question. What is the purpose of a public school? Is it to teach children to read, to write, to do math, to understand science and history? Or is it to sort six-year-olds by their skin color and tell them who's the oppressor and who's the victim? Because right now, in schools that you and I fund with our tax dollars, children are being subjected to critical race theory and radical gender ideology, not as mere topics of discussion, but as doctrine, as gospel, as the very price of admission to participation in public education. A self-described liberal parent from the Hillsborough-Deering School District testified before the committee that her son is, I quote, "overwhelmed with sexual content and racial misinformation at his high school." Now, this woman has worked as a sex offender counselor at the New Hampshire State Prison. Her words, "it's obvious to me." Now, when someone who has spent her career identifying predatory behavior tells you that something is wrong in our schools, you listen. And she's not alone. Over 300 people submitted testimony in support of this bill, parents, grandparents, and taxpayers. A gay man from Newton wrote that the woke agenda, his words again, pushed by the education establishment does not speak for him. A couple from Hillsborough said simply, education used to be about reading, writing, and arithmetic. Let's get back to the basics. These aren't culture warriors. These are just parents who want their kids to learn to read and do math. Now, what does this bill actually do? Because we're being told that it bans books, that it silences teachers, that it erases history. Read the bill. HB 1792 prohibits school districts from instructing, not discussing, not mentioning, instructing children in critical race theory and radical gender ideology. It does not ban a single book from a shelf. It does not prevent a teacher from teaching the full unvarnished history of this country, including slavery, including the civil rights movement, including every hard truth that we want our children to learn about. But what it does do is draw a bright line. You cannot use a public school classroom to tell a child that they are inherently racist because of the color of their skin. You cannot use a public school classroom to push sexual ideology on children whose parents do not consent to it, and if a school district crosses that line, parents have the right to hold them accountable, and that's what the private right of action in this bill does. It gives parents, not bureaucrats, not unions, parents the power to enforce it. Now some are going to call this bill extreme. Now let me tell you what's actually extreme. What's extreme is telling a third grader to rank their racial privilege. What's extreme is a teacher telling a 12-year-old girl that maybe she's actually a boy without her parents' knowledge. What's extreme is spending millions of dollars on DEI consultants, while our kids fall behind in reading and math. That's extreme. This bill is the correction. A former representative of this body said it best in her testimony. She doesn't want New Hampshire to become another Venezuela, a country destroyed by the very ideology that's being smuggled into our children's classrooms under the banner of equity and inclusion, and she's right. When schools stop teaching children to be Americans and start radicalizing them to become activists, we are on a dangerous path. And I'll close with this; the Constitution that we all swore oath to, the First Amendment, it doesn't just protect speech, it protects conscience. No child should be compelled by the state to affirm an ideology that contradicts their own values. No parent should have to choose between a public education and their child's innocence. A vote for the Charlie Act is a vote for parents, a vote for academic excellence, a vote for the basic idea that schools should teach reading, writing, and arithmetic and leave the rest to their families. And a vote against it is to maintain the status quo. And the status quo, unfortunately, is indoctrination. I urge you to support this bill, Mr. Speaker, and thank you very much.

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithDoes the member yield for a question? The member does not yield. Representative Cornell requests a roll call. Is that sufficiently seconded? That is well seconded. This will be a roll call vote. Members take your seats. The question is on the majority committee report of Ought to Pass on House Bill 1792. Representative Balboni is recognized for a Parliamentary Inquiry.

Rep. Peggy Balboni (D - Rock 38)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If I know that the language in HB 1792 is too vague and similar to that of the 2021 Divisive Concepts Law, which the federal court has ruled unconstitutional, and if I value local decision-making and believe that communities, parents, and school boards are best positioned to guide curriculum and instruction, as well as address discrimination and bullying issues, and finally, if I believe in free expression and thoughtful civic discourse, and I am concerned about exposing local taxpayers to potentially costly litigation over due process, First Amendment, and equal protection claims, would I now press the red button to join the 1,271 granite staters who registered their opposition to this bill and allow our teachers to focus on educating and protecting all students while avoiding unnecessary state overreach and legal risk?

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithRepresentative Noble is recognized for a parliamentary inquiry.

Rep. Kristin Noble (R - Hills 2)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If I know that public schools should be promoting universal values such as resilience, kindness, and respect, if I know that public schools should be neutral and not tipping the scale in either direction of the political spectrum, if I know that we need to get the culture wars out of the classroom, and if I know that parents have been self-segregating from the public schools for years so that their family values are not undermined, and that is a fact, would I then press the green button?

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithThe question is on the majority committee report of Ought to Pass on House Bill 1792. This is a roll call vote. If you're in favor, press the green button. If opposed, press the red. Voting stations are open for 30 seconds. Have all members present had an opportunity to vote? The House will attend to the state of the vote. 184 in the affirmative, 164 in the negative. The committee report is adopted, and House Bill 1792 is referred to the Committee on Finance. HB 1083-FN, requiring the disclosure of the source of certain political donations in state elections. MAJORITY: INEXPEDIENT TO LEGISLATE. MINORITY: OUGHT TO PASS. Rep. Clayton Wood for the Majority of Election Law. By requiring disclosure of the "original sources" of funds for independent expenditures, the bill would create additional administrative complexity and enforcement burdens for both regulated entities and the Secretary of State. Current campaign finance laws already impose robust disclosure requirements, and expanding them in this manner risks unintended consequences without clear evidence that it would meaningfully enhance transparency or public trust. Vote 9-8. Rep. Russell Muirhead for the Minority of Election Law. Transparency is the heart of combating political corruption. Citizens need to know who is contributing to campaigns to understand the influence that weigh on elected officials. When no one can tell where political donations come from, big money can corrupt democracy. This bill would require any organization that makes huge contributions to statewide elections to show citizens where the money comes from. It does not cap or regulate donations - it only imposes the basic requirement of transparency. More specifically, this bill would require that any person or entity that contributes more than $500,000 to a governor's race or more than $50,000 to a campaign for state house, state senate or executive council to disclose the names of those whose donations constitute the original sources of the funds. Voters deserve to know who is paying for their elections and who is trying to influence their elected officials. For that reason, the minority opposes Inexpedient to Legislate. The question being adoption of the majority committee report of Inexpedient to Legislate. Rep. Wood spoke in favor. Rep. Muirhead spoke against and requested a roll call; sufficiently seconded. Aldrich, Glen Bogert, Steven YEAS 188 - NAYS 161 Dumais, Russell Freeman, Lisa Harvey-Bolia, Juliet Minor, Sheri Terry, Paul Toner, Travis YEAS - 188 BELKNAP MacDonald, John Avellani, Lino Crawford, Karel Smith, Jonathan Peternel, Katy Bordes, Mike Mattson, Rita Ploszaj, Tom Thackston, Dick Murphy, Denis Hunt, John Nalevanko, Rich Qualey, James CARROLL Morency, Pete Davis, Arnold Durkin, Sean Hamblen, Joseph Bjelobrk, Marie Louise Ouellet, Mike King, Seth Taylor, Brian McFarlane, Donald Barton, Joseph Beaulier, Calvin CHESHIRE Barbour, Liz Franz, Linda Ladd, Rick Corcoran, Travis Sellers, John Karasinski, Sly Drew, Matt Rhodes, Jennifer Fedolfi, Jim Alexander, Joe Gorski, Ted Berry, Ross COOS Kofalt, Jim Creighton, James Mazur, Lisa Dumont, Dillon Korzen, Lori Morton, Jonathan Griffin, Gerald Tremblay, Marc Paquette, Kathleen Gould, Linda Presa, Adam Labrie, Brian GRAFTON Scully, Kevin McLean, Mark Tenczar, Jeffrey Noble, Kristin Berezhny, Lex Wherry, Robert Pauer, Diane Louis, Darrell Proulx, Mark McGuire, Carol Sheehan, Vanessa Ammon, Keith HILLSBOROUGH Gonzalez, Ernesto Mannion, Tom Boehm, Ralph Pitaro, Matthew Kelley, Diane Boyd, Bill Seaworth, Brian Andrus, Louise Dupont, Pierre Colcombe, Rich� Wood, Clayton Cambrils, Jose Gagne, Larry Daniels, Gary Hill, Gregory Kenny, Catherine Erf, Keith Bridle, Nicholas Plante, Raymond Lascelles, Richard Giasson, Henry DeSimone, Debra See, Alvin Miles, Julie Kesselring, Steven Dunn, Ron Notter, Jeanine Murphy, Mary Guthrie, Joseph Ball, Lorie Katherine Peeples, Raymond Mooney, Maureen Katsakiores, Phyllis Bryer, Scott Reinfurt, Sherri Ohm, Bill Walsh, Lilli DeVito, Sayra Sirois, Shane Post, Lisa Lundgren, David Edwards, Jess Ulery, Jordan Schneller, John McGrath, Linda Guzofski, James Slottje, Jeremy Nelson, Jodi Khan, Aboul Aures, Cyril Warden, Mark Potucek, John Layon, Erica McGuire, Dan Selby, Donald Lynn, Bob Mehegan, Peter MERRIMACK Sytek, John Melvin, Charles Polozov, Yury Vandecasteele, Susan Osborne, Jason Walsh, Thomas Aylward, Deborah Weyler, Kenneth Prudhomme-O'Brien, Devoid, Ricky Soti, Julius Bennett, Cindy Moffett, Michael DeRoy, Susan Dolan, Tom Mannion, Dennis Boyd, Stephen Kaczynski, Thomas Verville, Kevin Donnelly, Tanya Thibault, James Walker, David Foote, Charles Bailey, Glenn Harb, Robert ROCKINGHAM Aron, Judy Farrington, Samuel Kuttab, Katelyn Potenza, Kelley Litchfield, Melissa Bernardy, JD Pearson, Mark Thomas, Douglas Drye, Margaret Milz, David Drago, Mike Aron, Michael Perez, Kristine Ford, Mary Pearson, Stephen Janigian, John Summers, James Miner, Laurence Tripp, Richard Love, David Vose, Michael McDonnell, Valerie Nadeau, Brian DeDe-Poulin, Denise Porcelli, Susan Granger, Michael Sabourin dit Choini�re, Matt Hall, Robley Sweeney, Joe Tudor, Paul Grant, George MacDonald, Wayne Rollins, Skip

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithRepresentative Potenza is recognized to speak.

Rep. Kelley Potenza (R - Straf 19)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Honorable colleagues, where there is risk, there must be choice. The sky is not falling without mandates and the arguments claiming otherwise simply do not hold water. Much of what we hear from the departments, the special interests, the lobbyists and pharmaceutical stakeholders is double speak. This bill does not prohibit vaccination. It restores individualized medical decision making in circumstances where no population level risk exists. Mandates have no place in a constitutional republic, particularly when the evidence demonstrates real harm, serious implications and loss of life. Denying a person the right to informed consent is a denial of their fundamental human rights. Informed consent is not a technicality or a courtesy. It is the ethical line that separates medicine from coercion. The existence of my rights does not extinguish yours. Where your rights begin, mine do not end. A society that claims to respect bodily autonomy cannot selectively suspend it when doing so becomes politically convenient. And let me be clear about something else; a system that requires people to ask permission to exercise their rights is not freedom. An exemption is not choice. An exemption is an admission that the mandate should not exist in the first place. In a free society, the default position is liberty, not compliance, followed by bureaucratic forgiveness. People should not have to disclose private medical or religious information, fill out forms or seek approval from the government to control what happens to their own bodies. That is not freedom. That is not choice. Mandates do not belong in a free society. Before I give this next example, we need to acknowledge a basic truth. All medical interventions carry risk, including vaccination. There is no such thing as a risk-free medical procedure, which is precisely why informed consent and bodily autonomy matter. If we accept the logic used to justify vaccine mandates, we must confront its implications honestly. Ask yourself this. Would it be ethical or lawful to kill one healthy human being to save ten others through forced organ donation? The answer is unequivocally no. We reject that scenario because we recognize a foundational principle. No human being may be reduced to a means to an end. Bodily autonomy is not overridden by utilitarian math. Yet vaccine mandates rely on that very same reasoning, that an individual's bodily autonomy may be violated for a perceived collective benefit. This is where the argument collapses under its own weight. If bodily autonomy is inviolable in every other area of medicine, organ donation, blood transfusion, participation in clinical trials, it cannot subtly become conditional when the subject is vaccination. Ethical standards do not change based on political urgency. Supporters of mandates often speak out of both sides of their mouths. They champion my body, my choice in one context while dismissing the same principle in another. They claim to support informed consent while endorsing policies that punish refusal, coerce compliance, or deny employment, education, or participation in society. Consent obtained under threat is not consent. It is coercion. Public health does not require abandoning ethics. Trust, transparency, and voluntary participation are not obstacles to public health. They are its foundation. Once the state claims the authority to override informed consent, there is no limiting principle left. At that point, the issue is no longer about vaccines. It's about power. Who decides when your body is no longer your own? The government? Not on my watch. A free society does not compel medical procedures through force or penalty. It persuades with evidence, respects individual judgment, and upholds human dignity, even when doing so is inconvenient. Please press the green button and support the committee's recommendation. Thank you.

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithRepresentative LaMontagne is recognized to speak.

Rep. Jessica LaMontagne (D - Straf 17)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. HB 1811 will repeal all of the childhood immunization requirements that have been keeping children safe from potentially serious diseases for decades. You have heard that this bill is about restoring trust in medical authorities and conformed consent. Informed consent for childhood vaccines takes place in the doctor's office between the provider and parent. We already have that. This bill does not change that. Rather than restore trust, this will decrease trust in vaccines. For the state to say that we no longer require vaccines for children to go to school suggests to the public that the state was wrong about them before and that maybe vaccines aren't safe after all. This will reduce vaccination rates across the state. Declining vaccination rates around the country have led to diseases we once had under control to come back, as we have seen, with measles. A decade ago, we had an average of 200 measles cases a year. As of February 13th, the CDC has confirmed 900 cases so far in 2026. Empirical evidence from any injury resulting vaccines in the current schedule is one in a million. Measles will kill one in a thousand infected children. Our committee heard overwhelming testimony from public health experts and every medical professional association in the state. From primary care providers, nurses, pediatricians, they all begged with us not to pass this bill. But the majority chose to ignore this in favor of anecdotal testimonies in their previously held convictions. It does not give more parental choice. We already allow exemptions, no questions asked. That's not coercion. But if passed, this bill would threaten public health programs that protect all of us, including the unvaccinated. We have heard that other countries don't have vaccine requirements and have high vaccination rates. Well, those countries also have universal healthcare and high participation in all aspects of healthcare. In Japan, one country cited people visit their doctor an average of nine times a year. They have a primary care-based pro-wellness healthcare system. We have some kids showing up to school that haven't been to a doctor in years. Now, the committee amendment, which failed, would have just left polio in. Many people were afraid of not having a polio requirement anymore. But do we really think polio was the only disease we have to worry about? Last year, I told this body about my husband's father becoming permanently paralyzed from polio in 1955. Let me tell you another story. A good friend's older brother died in 1958 from meningitis; a brain infection now prevented by the HIB vaccine. Jerry never knew his brother because Jeffrey died before Jerry was born. His parents lost their first son, a healthy two-year-old, who succumbed rapidly to his infection and died in the hospital in the middle of the night. It was a tragedy from which his mother never fully recovered. There seems to be a generational amnesia about what childhood diseases were like before universal vaccines. As a late baby boomer, I had several illnesses like mumps and chicken pox. The vast majority of children survived these episodes without serious illness. But many children were very sick, became permanently disabled, or died from diseases we now protect them with, with vaccination. Prior to 1963, measles resulted in annually around 48,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths a year. Measles was the leading childhood cause of deafness and death. My brother at five years of age was in the hospital for an entire month from pneumonia resulting from his measles infection. The American Academy of Pediatrics find that our nine vaccines required from school prevents every 10 years a million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations, saving over $500 billion in direct medical costs. Do we want to bring that back? In other words, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Science has since taught us that vaccines significantly reduce the emergence of the virus and later complications such as shingles from chicken pox, brain damage from measles, and male sterility from mumps. What is right down the road if HB 1811 passes? New Hampshire has the lowest vaccination rate for measles in New England. Do you want to be the legislature that ushers in the next outbreak of measles a year or two down the road, costing the state millions of dollars in healthcare costs and perhaps the lives of a few children? Please believe in public health, believe in science, and vote against the OTP. And I ask for a roll call vote.

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithRepresentative Drew is recognized, speak for the committee report.

Rep. Matt Drew (R - Hills 19)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm going to start off again with what this bill is not. HB 1811 is not a ban on vaccines. It does not reduce the availability of the vaccines. It does not interfere with state or federal recommendations or funding. It does not stop your doctor from administering any vaccines to you or your children. What it does do is remove the vaccine mandate from statute. What a vaccine mandate does is force some children to accept risk and injury in order to protect others. I urge you to listen to the op- ponents of this bill. They will tell you about the dangers of contagious disease, which are real. They will tell you about the benefits of the vaccines. If they mention safety at all, they will assure you that the vaccines are very safe and effective. What they won't ever do is talk about the risks in detail. This is a narrative playbook designed to elicit compliance. The same narrative was deployed to support the COVID shot and for the same reason. Those who have been vaccine injured know this narrative because they've heard it all before, even as their vaccine injuries were occurring. Family after family has been belittled, mocked, and dismissed. Their young children quietly sacrificed on the altar of public health. That is the uncomfortable truth about vaccines. While they may work to protect the public from contagious disease, there is also a large group of people who have been hurt by these vaccines. Vaccine injuries are real, and they are not nearly as rare as opponents of this bill would have you believe. There are a number of people in this room, your neighbors and colleagues, who have been injured by vaccines, vaccines mandated by our State, and they have been ignored. I want you to look them in the eye and tell them that yes, you believe that their children should be forced to suffer so that yours can be safe. Don't force the risk of mandates on their children. Vote for this bill. Thank you.

Rep. Robert Wherry (R - Hills 13)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, would you believe that vaccines are not very safe and that they are so unsafe that they are the only medicinal product that has to have a liability shield so that people can't sue the manufacturer?

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithMaybe next time the member should just sign up for a speech. Would you believe that I really mean that? Thank you.

Rep. Robert Wherry (R - Hills 13)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well noted. Would you believe that vaccines are not very safe at all and that the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has had to pay out over $5 billion to compensate those who have been injured by vaccines and their claims have been substantiated?

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithRepresentative MacDonald requests a roll call. Is that sufficiently seconded? That is sufficiently seconded. This will be a roll call vote. Members take your seats. The question is the motion of Ought to Pass in House Bill 1811, and Representative Weber is recognized for a Parliamentary Inquiry.

Rep. Lucy Weber (D - Ches 5)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if I know that correlation is not causation, and if I know that childhood diseases present less of a threat now than they did before, and that is not because they are not dangerous, but because they are relatively rare, and if I remember that my daddy dragged his left leg behind him for all of his life after the age of two because of his polio, would I remember and vote red?

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithRepresentative Wayne MacDonald is recognized for a parliamentary inquiry.

Rep. Wayne MacDonald (R - Rock 16)Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if I know that parents want to take care of their children's health and make their own best decisions as to how they proceed to do so, and Mr. Speaker, if I know that this bill seeks to achieve that end by respecting the rights of parents, and Mr. Speaker, if I know that parents will not be prevented from getting their children vaccinated under this bill, and Mr. Speaker, if I know that this legislation is consistent with other pro-parent and pro-family bills we have already passed in this chamber, then, Mr. Speaker, would I press the green button and support the Ought to Pass motion? Thank you.

Deputy Speaker Steven SmithThe question is the Ought to Pass motion on House Bill 1811. This is a roll call vote. If you're in favor, press the green button, if opposed, press the red. Voting stations are open for 30 seconds. Have all members present had an opportunity to vote? The House will attend to the state of the vote. 155 in the affirmative, 192 in the negative. The motion fails. Representative Palmer moves Inexpedient to Legislate. Are you ready for the question? All those in favor, say aye; any opposed, nay. The ayes have it. The motion is adopted.