Parents who don’t vaccinate love to frame their actions as simply a “choice.” In their telling, they just want to be able to choose not to vaccinate their children, and you can choose whatever you’d like for your kids. As if we all live in a bubble.
Sadly, we don’t. As we’ve seen with outbreak after outbreak, the choices of other parents come knocking at our doorsteps. Your choice not to vaccinate your child against measles, chickenpox, or any other vaccine-preventable illness could lead to hospitalization or even death for a baby too young for inoculations or someone whose immune system is too compromised to be vaccinated themselves.
The publication Parents published a piece earlier this year about how parents should handle close family and friends who don’t vaccinate, and leading up the holiday season, it recirculated online and reignited controversy. The headline of the piece asks, “Should You Ban Unvaccinated Kids from Your Home?”
The writer of the piece, Sarah Bradley, was deluged by anti-vaccine activists this week after her article’s recirculation. And she tried in vain to appease them in light of the harassment she was facing.
For some reason, I have been contacted just today (12/24) by many people who oppose vaccination, all accusing me of supporting “segregation” and neglecting any kind of journalistic integrity in writing this piece. (2/7)
— Sarah Bradley (@sbradleywriter) December 25, 2019
However, if you actually read the article, I make it quite clear that outright banning unvaccinated kids from your home is pointless, because there is exposure to infectious diseases everywhere. (3/7)
— Sarah Bradley (@sbradleywriter) December 25, 2019
It’s also not the best practice among parents with different vaccination beliefs, who would be better off learning to engage one another respectfully in these difficult conversations. (4/7)
— Sarah Bradley (@sbradleywriter) December 25, 2019
But many of the angry anti-vaccine activists clearly never read her full article (shocking, I know), which was actually a measured take on how to handle a sensitive issue, advising parents that they could invite whomever they wanted into their homes unless they had an extremely vulnerable person living there. Instead, they took to Facebook to marshall their troops to harass Parents into removing the article and apologizing.
This is typical of extremist anti-vaccine activists, explained Dorit Reiss, a law professor with a focus on the interconnection between the law and vaccines. She told me, “It’s a little group of extremists trying to silence a position they don’t like. And a careful, measured one. I wouldn’t call it a controversy. It’s another attempt by the anti-vaccine movement to intimidate.”
This is precisely why Bradley’s semi-apology and walk back was exactly the wrong way to handle the digital deluge thrown at her by anti-vaccine activists. They are loud and outspoken in their opposition to a general public that vaccinates. These activists are extremists and are much louder than the vast majority of parents who are content to vaccinate their kids to protect both them and the general public’s health. Online anti-vaccine activists are unrepresentative of other parents who don’t vaccinate on schedule, in my experience. One of these activists literally compared asking other parents about the vaccine status of their children to the creation of ghettos in the Holocaust.
Germans were also made to believe Jews were spreading disease and had to be quarantined from society. Thus the creation of ghettos and later concentration camps to justify isolating Jews from the larger population. Same rhetoric is used today when it comes to the unvaccinated.
— Angelika Stalman (@angelikastalman) December 25, 2019
Meanwhile, most parents who don’t vaccinate understand that their choices have consequences, as any choice does. Parents of vulnerable children set parameters all the time: Parents of young babies and medically fragile children ask those entering their homes to use hand sanitizer or stay away if anyone in their household is sick. So, too, do parents with vulnerable children when it comes to vaccine-preventable illnesses.
We recently canceled a play date with a family because one of their children had chickenpox. When we told them we couldn’t risk a get-together with a baby recovering from RSV and too young for the shot, the other mother told me, “we don’t do the full vaccine recommendations, so I’m sensitive [to potentially compromising another child’s health], but I also totally understand your wanting to be extra cautious.” This is how adults behave — being honest and open and disclosing if there’s a reason why you need to be especially careful.
The lesson here? There’s no appeasing the mob living inside the echo chamber that anti-vaccine activists have created, so it’s pointless to try.
On an individual level, parents of vulnerable children should be clear about vaccine expectations before spending an extended period of time with other families, especially during outbreaks. But anti-vaccine activists as a movement cannot be reasoned with — nor should their outsize voice be given unearned and undeserved legitimacy.
Bethany Mandel (@bethanyshondark) is a stay-at-home and homeschooling mother of four and a freelance writer. She is an editor at Ricochet.com, a columnist at the Forward, and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
