Just over a year ago, when my friend Mandy was still pregnant and I was seriously considering going off birth control in hopes of having a baby, I was involved in a short conversation about vaccinations. Mandy was the one about to have a baby, and several people in our social circle were advising her against vaccinating little Meg once she was born. I spoke up in defense of vaccinations and was quickly shut down.
I mentioned that in order for vaccinations to really work, everyone needs to be vaccinated, and that not vaccinating your children is putting a lot more people at risk than just your immediate family. “So you would risk autism just to keep someone else’s baby from getting sick?” I was asked.
First of all, yes. Yes, I would. Autism, while a difficult thing to deal with, is not fatal. It doesn’t kill those who have it. I have read the accounts of several autistic people online who explain that their autism is a part of who they are, and that it’s not some terrible thing. Of course there are terrible cases of autism that lead to difficult lives for both the children affected and their families, but when it comes down to it, vaccines don’t cause autism, so I don’t actually have to worry about taking that risk.
Because that’s actually the point: vaccinations don’t cause autism. Period.
Since that conversation with Mandy and our friends, I have done a lot of reading and studying on vaccines to help me understand why they are important. The discussion of their pros and cons raised its head around me a lot before, during, and after my pregnancy, including in an episode of Law & Order: SVU, on Momversation, and on my favorite website, Jezebel. It has also come up in real-life conversations with one of the doctors at my pre-natal care provider, at the lactation group I attend at the hospital, and with a number of friends.
Still, nothing summed things up better than this article, An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All. It’s an excellent article, and I hope you read the whole thing. It is more respectful toward the anti-vax crowd than some other articles I’ve read, which is important. Both those in the anti-vax movement and those who preach vaccinations have the same goal: protect children. I simply feel that the anti-vax folks have been misled by well-meaning and yet completely misinformed people.
I could summarize the pro-vax arguments here, but the article does a much better job. (So does that link to Jezebel, and the extremely intelligent comments by Jez readers.)
What’s important to me is keeping the people around me healthy, including Chuck, my husband, my grandparents, my parents, my classmates, my siblings, my niece and nephew, etc. I want to be informed about what vaccines Chuck is receiving and why, and I definitely think I should have the right to refuse them if I want to, but I also think that it’s important to vaccinate my daughter. When I encounter anti-vaxxers, I have to suppress a lot of anger and frustration, not targeted at them, but targeted at the sources of bad information who promote the idea that vaccines lead to autism, or that vaccines are innately bad.
If my baby catches measles because she’s too young for the vaccine and someone else gives it to her, or if Ben catches pertussis because his vaccination didn’t work and he catches it from some unvaccinated toddler, I’m going to be pretty angry. I can’t imagine the pain of losing a child or loved one because someone else didn’t vaccinate their children. (For some interesting statistics on the risk of death from a lack of vaccines, check out Jenny McCarthy Body Count.)
It’s funny, when I meet someone new who doesn’t vaccinate and promotes home birth and homeschooling, I don’t envision the liberal crunchy parent that a lot of people do. On the contrary, I think of ultra-conservative, government-mistrusting, paranoid members of the Word of Faith movement. The associations I draw are of the closed-minded right-wingers of my childhood and my parents’ early days of marriage. I think of the numbers of preventable deaths associated with the church movement my parents were involved in, whether from home births or refusal of medical treatment, and I can’t shake those associations. I know that these are people who want to do the right thing — and I certainly know that not everyone who promotes one or all of these things is a terrible or selfish parent — but I can’t ignore the close connection I make to those deaths and illnesses. I remember the stupidity of things preached to me as a child and teenager, and I can’t help but think that they are the same sort of people who could believe that God will heal you if you demand it, that a healthy life is a sign of a good relationship with God while an illness is a sign of spiritual weakness, or that the government is out to get you.
It’s hard for me not to make those associations, even though I try.
So those are my two biggest reasons for taking Chuck for her first shots today:
1) The perceived risks of vaccines don’t match up with the scientific reality of vaccinations
2) I don’t want to be one of those people I remember from my childhood.
I hope I haven’t angered anyone with this post. There are some people that I really like who don’t vaccinate. . .and who homeschool and promote homebirth. However, I can’t be that person. For so many reasons, I just can’t.
