Not quite anti-vaxxers

fayanora commented the other day about the folks who are protesting a bill in the Oregon Legislature that would remove all non-medical exemptions for vaccination.

Some of them *may* be anti-vaxxers. But their stated stance is that the state shouldn't be interering with the right of parents to make medical decisions for their children.

Sounds nice. But that ship sailed *long* ago. It's well established that the state can file *criminal* charges against the parents if they fail to get proper treatment for their child's medical conditions or illness and the child takes serious damage or dies as a result.

So parental authority regarding this (and a number of other things) has limits. Fairly sharp ones.

Children have certain rights *regardless* of their parents wishes on the matter. Not nearly enough in my not-so-humble opinion, but still.

And failing to vaccinate your child doesn't merely endanger them. It also endangers every other person they come in contact with who hasn't been vaccinated.

And in the case of folks with legit medical exemptions, *they* are rather likely to get serious complications or even *die* if they get a disease from your unvaccinated child.

That's because most of the legit reasons for not getting vaccinated amount to "their immune system is badly compromised" Which means that the *actual* disease will do terrible things to them.

The other legit reasons are things like allergies to something the vaccine is made with (which is why there are alternative vaccines for some diseases)

*your* decisions about *your* child have consequences for other people. *Serious* consequences.

Being part of a society sometimes means that you have to go along with things you don't like/want because the consequences of letting you have your way harm others.

I don't know about Oregon, but at least *some* states with such laws will allow you to home school your unvaccinated kid.

As I've said before, maybe they should set up seperate schools for the willfully unvaccinated. Of course getting the kids to/from those schools without exposing other kids is a problem...