"Get Kids Vaccinated or Else"

My sister-in-law, Jenny, recently forwarded to me an interesting article from the Washington Post, Get Kids Vaccinated or Else, Parents Told. The article details the threat of legal action that a Maryland county may take against parents (of more than 2,300 kids) who have failed to "meet the state's immunization requirements." Maryland's state immunization requirements are laid out in Maryland Code/Education/Title 7. Public Schools/Subtitle 4. Health and Safety of Students/§7-403. §7-403 serves as a legal foundation for Title 10. Department of Health and Mental Hygiene/Subtitle 6. Diseases/Chapter 4. School Health Services and Required Immunizations before Entry into School, or more simply COMAR 10-06-04. As you may have noticed by now if you looked at these documents, any attempt at understanding state immunization requirements means a foray into legalese, obviously intended for all of us non-lawyers. (Please note sarcasm: reference annotation 1.239.b. Article12.) It actually isn't all that bad once you can find the pertinent documents online. Most states publish a list of "required" vaccines, following individualized or CDC-recommended immunization schedules.

What happens if you don't want you kid to be immunized? We, as parents, have the right to look out for what we believe is in our children's best interest, do we not? We should cede that right to the state only if we want to (or are forced to, as in extreme circumstances). I have no problem with the state recommending immunizations. Requiring them is a different story. It's like the policy of having to opt out of donating your organs (proposed now in the UK and already a common practice in many countries) rather the current state in the U.S. of having to opt in. It becomes a real bear of a task for parents to choose conscientiously to opt out of immunizations. Anyone opting out has to fill out an exemption waiver, according to the particular state's policy. Most states allow immunization exemption for religious reasons (Maryland included) and for reasons of medical contraindication. What about those of us who object to immunizations on conscientious, philosophical, medical, or statistical grounds? Nope. Sorry. Only religious reasons will work in most states. I suppose conscientious reasoning can flow into one's personal, religious reasoning. It's a bit of stretch, though perhaps a necessary one at times. In principle, however, immunizations in the U.S. lack a strong philosophical underpinning.

Personally, it doesn't bother me whether you are for vaccines or against them. What does bother me is when public or private institutions implicitly assume through legal protocols that they can usurp parenting decisions anytime they're acting for the public good. (Public agencies always seem to work for the public good, right?) Pro-abortion feminists love to tout, "my body, my choice." Why can't we use that same mantra for opting out of immunizations? Shouldn't individuals, or their legal/biological guardians, be able to formulate choices for their own bodies?

(Mary can probably provide more links: the internet is full of information for the brave and curious.)