About 50 people, many of them carrying babies, pushing baby strollers or with young children by their sides – and a few expectant mothers – demonstrated outside the Vermont Statehouse on Tuesday, urging Gov. Peter Shumlin to veto H.98 and give them a choice on whether to vaccinate their children for school.

Shumlin is expected to sign the bill into law.

The legislation eliminates the so-called philosophical exemption, which gives parents the right to opt out of immunizations required by schools.

The law does not remove the religious and medical exemptions to the vaccines required for school entry, although it does make minor changes to the process of maintaining a medical exemption.

“The governor believes that vaccines work and that parents should get their kids vaccinated,” Shumlin’s spokesman, Scott Coriell, said. “He knows there are strong feelings on both sides of this issue.”

Coriell said the law passed two years ago did not increase vaccination rates. The governor hopes the elimination of the philosophical exemption will boost the number of children who are immunized in Vermont.

The Vermont Coalition for Vaccine Choice, which organized Tuesday’s protest, has published an online petition urging the governor to veto the bill; more than 300 people had signed it by Tuesday morning.

The petition language can be seen here.