Anti-Vaxxers and the Right to Parent

Sad Shane Time

Sigh.

I don't even know where to begin. As someone who is incredibly pro-vaccination because, you know, the benefits far far far far far far far outweigh the risks (which do not include autism or harmful chemicals), I got a rage headache when I saw Chris Christie's vaccine comments. I was relieved when I saw that he walked those comments back the next day.

Then Rand Paul steps up to the plate and instead of swinging at the ball, he turned around began metaphorically beating science with a bat. In rationalizing his stance that parents should have a choice to vaccinate their kids, he claimed that vaccines can lead to mental disorders. He blew it. I'm going to ignore how incredibly dumb and unfounded that opinion is. I'm not a science or medical guy, but these people are and do a thorough job: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/.

Instead, he blew it for himself in order to make what is legitimately a grey area, a place for public debate. People are going to kill him for his shitty science, but we should be discussing compulsory vaccinations for children. With our laws and customs, I have to agree with him. It -should- be the parents's choice. While we have standards for how people are expected to raise their children, this threshold is higher than we've customarily done before.

Subpar Legal Analysis 

However, there are consequences for everything and not vaccinating your children is no different. Again, ignoring the medical side, the consequence of not vaccinating your children should disqualify them from attending public schools (medical exemptions are, um, exempt from that statement). I don't care if it's a religious exemption, though I'm sympathetic. I doubly don't care if it's a philosophical exemption and have no sympathy there. Philosophical objections aren't exactly protected by the Constitution. That's about one step away from being a sovereign citizen.

Requiring vaccinations has actually been tried at the Supreme Court level before, as noted in this piece on legal issues with vaccines. " In Zucht v. King, the Supreme Court upheld a local ordinance requiring vaccinations for schoolchildren.31 The Court invoked Jacobson for the principle that states may use their police power to require vaccinations, and noted that the ordinance did not bestow "arbitrary power, but only that broad discretion required for the protection of the public health."" That was in 1922.

1922. We've been having this argument awhile and it's been accepted legal precedent. I'd love to hear Rand Paul blame such "draconian" methods on President Obama.

The argument for a religious exemption holds some water as 48 out of 50 states allow for a religious exemption to vaccines for public schools. It shocked me that Mississippi and West Virginia were the only dissenters because, well, it's Mississippi and West Virginia. Lawsuits have challenged the lack of exemptions, but the Mississippi Supreme Court stood firm relying on Equal Protection and the Fourteenth Amendment saying the exemptions, "require the great body of school children to be vaccinated and at the same time expose them to the hazard of associating in school with children exempted under the religious exemption who had not been immunized as required by the statute." Brown v. Stone, 378 So.2d 218, 223 (Miss. 1979). Basically, all kids should be able to attend public school, including the medically fragile. While religious reasons to not vaccinate are legit and protected, the right to send an unvaccinated child to school is not protected because the medically fragile have the same right to public education and putting them at unnecessary risk is not acceptable.

So, while Paul and Christie (if he even knows what he's trying to say) have a valid point that parents shouldn't be mandated to vaccinate their children. However, when it comes to public schools, they should be able to ban unvaccinated children from their hallways because it protects the kids who have no choice in the manner.