AUSTIN — House members voted Wednesday to bar doctors from vaccinating new foster children, even against cervical cancer and head and neck cancers caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV.

The ban was part of an ongoing push in the name of parents' rights by members of the House Freedom Caucus, a dozen GOP rebels who left their mark on a broadly popular bill that would prod Child Protective Services to make a variety of improvements.

Among them would be limiting how many "high-needs" kids a CPS worker supervises and making sure all of the agency's front-line employees have top of the line training in child trauma.

The measure by Houston Democratic Rep. Gene Wu won tentative approval, 120-15.

To stay alive in a session that ends May 29, it must receive final House approval by midnight Friday.

A key provision would require CPS to provide faster medical assessments of kids the state has just removed from their birth families on suspicion of abuse or neglect.

For children in urban areas who enter foster care or "kinship" care, in which relatives or family friends care for the youngsters, the initial medical exam would have to occur within three business days. In rural regions, the checkup would have to occur within seven business days.

Staunchly conservative Republicans conceded that some of the 17,000 Texas children who are removed each year are unlucky and have abusive and neglectful parents. But sometimes, CPS wrongly accuses parents, they stressed.

"Immunizations do not qualify as emergency care. No vaccine cures a disease," said Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington. (Courtesy / 2008 File Photo)

Until a judge terminates parental rights, the parents' wishes on medical treatment for their children should be honored, argued GOP Reps. Bill Zedler and Tony Tinderholt, both of Arlington. That includes desires such as not having children immunized or given a tonsillectomy, Tinderholt said.

"You get that child back five, eight, 10 days later, and they've now had that surgery or they've had these vaccinations," he said. "That's an issue of liberty."

By a vote of 74-58, House members approved Zedler's anti-vaccine amendment — but only after a lengthy floor fight.

"Immunizations do not qualify as emergency care," he said. "No vaccine cures a disease."

Vaccine skepticism

Zedler initially proposed a prohibition on vaccinations by doctors or other health care providers performing Wu's required checkups.

Eventually, Zedler accepted a Wu proposal to make an exception for tetanus shots that doctors say are urgent and end the prohibition as soon as a judge names the Department of Family and Protective Services as a child's "managing conservator." That can be as soon as two weeks after removal.

Tempers flared when Houston Rep. Sarah Davis, a cancer survivor who is the House's top budget writer for health and human services, challenged Zedler and his allies.

Davis proposed to exempt from Zedler's immunization ban any vaccination that "has been proven to prevent cancer."

"We have a unique opportunity as a state to step in and prevent this young woman or young man from getting diagnosed with either cervical or head and neck cancer," said Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place. "To not do so is immoral." (Ashley Landis / 2015 File Photo)

Her target was HPV, a virus that causes genital warts. It also causes 30,700 cancers in men and women in the U.S. each year.

In Texas, cervical cancer killed 429 women in 2014, Davis said. Men are at risk of cancers to the head, neck, anus and penis.

Davis noted, though, that only 41 percent of girls and 24 percent of boys in Texas were fully protected against HPV in 2015, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says "nearly all sexually active men and women get [HPV] at some point in their lives."

Zedler, though, said parents are the best judges of whether vaccines are needed — and especially of whether to hew to public health authorities' recommended schedules for shots.

Like 'oil change'

"I am against the vaccine schedule that we're treated like automobiles, like to get your oil changed every 3,000 miles," he said.

To Davis' assertion that providing vaccinations is a moral issue, Zedler replied, "Much of this is totally unnecessary."

Quoting the Bible, he said, "children are under the authority of the parents because that right hasn't been abrogated — yet." He said "it may significantly harm or even kill the child to give them the vaccine."

Davis, who has done battle all session with anti-vaccine groups, said adults have social obligations.

"I want to know who in this body does not believe in the science of vaccines, doesn't understand your herd immunity and wants to risk not only their children but other people's children," she said.

Freshman Baytown Republican Briscoe Cain, though, suggested that former Gov. Rick Perry harmed his White House prospects by unsuccessfully proposing in 2007 to require schoolgirls to receive the HPV vaccine. The Legislature shredded the order, and the effort cast a shadow over Perry's conservative credentials, Cain noted.

Davis' push to exclude cancer shots from Zedler's vaccination ban appeared just shy of passing.

But after a check of the roll-call vote, her amendment lost, 74-64.

In other votes, members accepted McKinney Republican Scott Sanford's proposal that CPS create a new category of temporary caregivers, which he calls "fostels," a hybrid of foster care and youth hostels. They blessed a watered-down parents' rights measure by Hillister Republican James White. It would prohibit CPS from pressuring parents into "duplicative" services and therapies — and ones not relevant to safety issues in their homes.

Members rejected Houston Democrat Armando Walle's push to limit CPS conservatorship workers to 20 cases each, and investigators, to 15 each. This is the fifth session Walle has tried to cap CPS workers' caseloads. The House also rejected Clint Democrat Mary González's push to restore a requirement that CPS workers have a bachelor's degree. Gov. Greg Abbott's appointees have allowed some two-year degree holders to become caseworkers.