Vaccination exemption in CA, personal down, medical up

[Catholic_Lady]

CL, I'll ask again:  if a child contracts Polio, suffers, and then dies because his/her parents made the decision not to vaccinate, would you consider those parents responsible for the death of their child?  Mind you, if the child had received the Polio vaccine, they wouldn't have died of polio.  

If you don't think that these hypothetical parents are 100% culpable for the suffering and death of their child, could you please explain why?

If do consider them culpable, then doesn't it follow that there should be legal ramifications for failing to provide the bare minimum of medical care as recommended by all reputable health authorities, to protect your child against 100% preventable deadly diseases?

No, I wouldn't say they are culpable for their child's death. They made a foolish decision that made their child vulnerable to the disease, yes, and unfortunately as bad luck would have it, the child caught the disease. But I don't see not giving a vaccine as an intrinsically dangerous thing to do, in and of itself. It's like the boy in Orlando who was splashing around in a pond of alligators (despite do not swim signs) and got killed by one of them. Obviously if the parents had taken the precaution and kept him away from the pond, this wouldn't have happened. But I don't hold them culpable because splashing around in a pond isn't an inherently harmful thing. I wouldn't equate it to a child playing with fire or walking off a ravine while the parents sat there and watched, because those things are inherently very dangerous. Sometimes parents make stupid decisions and then pay for them when something happens to their child. Where do we draw the line between poor judgement and crime? I don't think not giving a vaccine should be a crime.