MORE and more states have stopped allowing parents to cite personal reasons for not getting their children vaccinated. Oklahoma still gives parents that option, although with any luck that exemption will come off the books sooner rather than later.

State Sen. Ervin Yen, R-Oklahoma City, tried during the 2016 session to end the personal exemptions, as 32 other states have done. The session saw parents, many wearing T-shirts that read “Oklahomans for Vaccine Choice,” pack the room when a Senate committee voted to kill Yen's bill.

Yen's goal is simple: to protect more public school children from contagious, preventable diseases such as whooping cough and measles, which can be especially dangerous to youngsters. Opponents say the 1.6 percent of Oklahoma kindergartners who have exemptions equals about 600 children, a drop in the bucket compared with the total school-age population. But Yen and others concerned about this issue note that the exemption rate in Oklahoma has doubled in the past 10 years.

As that trend continues to grow, so does the likelihood of a potentially damaging outbreak. In the past several months an outbreak of the mumps in Arkansas has impacted Oklahoma, particularly Garfield County.