Vaccination exemption in CA, personal down, medical up

[LadyForCamus]

I value freedom as well, CL. But, neglecting children is not a legal freedom we afford people in this country. We need to be sending a clear, non-negotiable, tough-love message to antivax parents; not giving them wiggle room to perpetuate a harmful and demonstrably false, anti-science conspiracy theory.

I'll tell you - I browse the BabyCenter forums from time to time, and I have seen this type of post multiple times:

"My son has his six month check up tomorrow and is supposed to get shots. What do you guys think I should do?! Should I not get him vaccinated?"

The last thing we should be doing is feeding into the paranoia by giving them special treatment.

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Or...or!  We could just require all kids going to public schools have all their vaccinations, lol.  It's really as simple as that.  Why on earth would we humor an anti-science movement in this way?  Why should schools be forced to waste their time, room, and resources on people who don't accept demonstrable facts about reality?  All that would do is fan the fire of a controversy that's factually non-controversial.  It would essentially be enabling them.

Would the "all kids" include the unvaxxable kids who, due to having a compromised immune system, would have a bad reaction to the vaccine? They may be rare, but they have a damn valid reason to not have them.

Overall, I think that the best solution to the problem is to close the "personal belief" loophole, because the personal beliefs that prompt it seem to always be based on bullshit claims that have been debunked a thousand times over. I don't particularly relish the prospect of forcing people to do something that's physically painful, but I do believe in this case, forcing it is a necessary evil.

Apologies for the misunderstanding.  Of course we need to make exceptions for rare cases where there is a legitimate health risk associated with the vaccines.  I'm talking specifically about the anti-vax crowd.