If people would vaccinate then we would not need laws to make them. It is the lack of common sense and the resistance to all fact that has created the need to have laws that require vaccination. Even now the laws allow for opt out. Yep it means those people may not be able to use public school or daycare and the un-vaccinated children as adults might not be able to get some jobs if by being there they ran the risk of killing those they worked with. That all makes sense. If you make a decision that risks the lives of others then those who have taken the steps to protect their children deserve to have their kids protected from an nonfactual damaging choice made based on pseudo science and with a misinformed conscience.
And all of the people who opt out for any reason other than medical are basically doing damage to the ones who are opting out for medical reasons. Because they are hurting herd immunity.
The Church has said vaccinate should be done for the common good and to protect children. Not to do it has no foundation in faith or science.
A law requiring vaccination does not mean men will come in 20 years to inject us with whatever the government wants. That is just fear mongering and hyperbole. This is not a place for the slippery slope argument. The laws are written very tightly and specifically. They allow opt outs for valid reasons and are not some gateway to Men In Black coming and imposing a new world order.
Less people have serious reactions to vaccines than people injured on escalators in a year. That does not discount the nature of the serious reactions but it does mean that if someone is concerned about vaccines and seeks a philosophical exemption they should not drive, fly, use escalators, and...beds.
Anti vaccine proponents say that between 2004-2015 100 people have died from the MMR vaccine. This is not provable and the claim has serious issues due to how they are getting the stats (basically they are not right). But let's, for the sake of this argument, accept it. How many people have died from falling out of bed in that same time period? Provable. Cause of death...falling out of bed. Around 5,000.
Falling icicles in that time...just in one country (Russia by the way)...over 1,000.
So no driving, flying, no beds, watch out for icicles...oh hot water from the tap has scalded and killed about 350 in the time frame given so no hot water.
Best to just sit inside. Except 5.3 million deaths a year are attributed to being too sedentary. Better exercise. Except....590 people have died in that time after exercising. And all of the stats I use are far more provable than the anti-vaccine number of 100 in 11 years.
See the point. Any single death is a horrible tragedy. But to look at vaccines and say they are deadly means that you need to look at almost every other human activity and say it is deadly too...in fact far more deadly. And in most cases it does not save millions of lives at the same time.
The Church instructs that in the case of vaccines, even fetal line ones, without alternative:
"as regards the vaccines without an alternative, the need to contest so that others may
be prepared must be reaffirmed, as should be the lawfulness of using the former in the
meantime insomuch as is necessary in order to avoid a serious risk not only for one's
own children but also, and perhaps more specifically, for the health conditions of the
population as a whole." (Pontifical Academy for Life)
So even in the case of the fetal cell vaccines we can use them (while we fight for alternatives) and have a responsibility to our children and the population as a whole to use them. In the case of those not made from fetal cells we simply have an unambiguous responsibility to see that we, and our children, are vaccinated.
So by both science and our Catholic faith we should vaccinate unless there is an issue of a medical nature. And I do not mean the fake vaccines cause autism when they are statistically less dangerous than sleeping in a bed. I mean there is another medical issue that makes vaccination and actual risk. So no excuse not to by our Catholic faith...no excuse not to by science.
But if you will not get an MMR for any reason other than medical, well then...you should not be allowed to potentially kill other people's children. And if that means isolating those people from society, well yes. Love them. Pity them. Pray for them. But do not place the lives of children at risk to accommodate delusion.
People should not get the choice to endanger others by the choice to not vaccinate any more than you should have the choice to have an abortion because you think your child may have a heart attack at 60 because of heart disease in your family. To vaccinate while fighting for alternative lines is Pro Life. To not vaccinate even though the Church says we can and should...is Pro-Choice. There is no ground in our Catholic faith or our moral theology where the excuse that they are from fetal lines is an allowable reason to not vaccinate. If a conscience is formed in that way it is misinformed because it is in opposition to clear teaching. There are some Catholics who have written convoluted arguments about how it is proper not to vaccinate because of the descendant cell lines. All of those arguments are torn to shreds with the slightest application of Moral Theology.
