GOP Candidates Rail Against Perry Over Mandatory HPV Vaccination

During CNN's Tea Party Debate Monday night, all eyes, and ire, turned to frontrunner Rick Perry over questions surrounding Perry’s executive order mandating HPV vaccines for girls. Several other candidates, notably Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, found the mandate “offensive.”

Mediaite reports:

Perry didn’t seem to 100% support his decision to mandate the HPV vaccine against cancer, noting that the “way I went about it” would change if he had a second chance. That didnt’ stop Rep. Bachmann from attacking strongly. “I’m a mom,” she responded, “and to have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat-out wrong.”

Perry replied that his decision was “about trying to stop a cancer,” arguing, “at the end of the day, you may criticize me about the way that I went about it… [but] I am always going to err on the side of life.”