Posted on 08/14/2015 8:45:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Lotta media buzz this morning over what she said yesterday — or at least, the first part of what she said — about vaccines, but her stance on this isn’t new. She argued for some degree of parental choice back in February when BuzzFeed asked her about it. But now that she’s cracked the GOP field’s top tier, I guess the “gotcha” effort needs to begin in earnest. What better place to start than with an issue that tripped up Chris Christie and Rand Paul earlier this year?
She draws the line where most Republicans would, I imagine: The state can’t dictate to a parent over their child’s health, but that parent has no right to put other parents’ children at risk in the schoolyard.
Speaking at a town hall on Thursday in Alden, Iowa, Fiorina responded to a question from a mother of five who claimed that one of her children had an adverse reaction to a vaccination, saying “It’s always the parent’s choice.” She continued by referencing her daughter, who Fiorina said was bullied by a school nurse into vaccinating her pre-teen daughter for the Human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease. “Measles is one thing…,” Fiorina said.
“When you have highly communicable diseases where you have a vaccine that’s proven, like measles or mumps, then I think a parent can make that choice, but then I think a school district is well within their rights to say, ‘I’m sorry, your child cannot then attend public school,’” Fiorina explained to reporters after the event.
“So a parent has to make that trade-off,” she continued. “I think when we’re talking about some of these more esoteric immunizations, then I think absolutely a parent should have a choice and a school district shouldn’t be able to say, ‘sorry, your kid can’t come to school’ for a disease that’s not communicable, that’s not contagious, and where there really isn’t any proof that they’re necessary at this point.”
Back in late January, when vaccinemania first broke out in political media, Josh Earnest told reporters that Obama is strongly pro-vaccine but believes “people should evaluate this for themselves,” which … puts him squarely in line with Fiorina from what I can tell. In fact, considering that 47 of the 50 states do allow unvaccinated kids to attend public school so long as their parents are claiming a religious and/or conscientious exemption from the law, Fiorina’s actually more of a pro-vaccine hardliner than most state legislatures are. (Of the three states that don’t grant exemptions, two are deep red West Virginia and Mississippi. The other is California, which eliminated its exemptions this year after some upper-class new-age liberals stopped vaccinating their kids for measles because it was “unnatural” or whatever.)
Fiorina’s compromise, letting parents make choices for their kids but then effectively quarantining those kids from schools so that immunosuppressed students aren’t put at risk, obviously isn’t perfect. An unvaccinated kid could still encounter another who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons at the playground, at the mall, wherever. If you think society should take whatever legal measures are necessary to promote herd immunity, individual choice be damned, there shouldn’t be any room for parental oversight. That’s an easy position if you’re a liberal since you’ve already bought into far lesser mandates in the name of public health, but for someone who still cares about liberty, Fiorina’s (and Obama’s) position is probably the best you can do. As Dan Foster wrote back in February:
If you support mandatory, full-spectrum vaccination and oppose “death panels,” you’d better be able to at least gesture at a limited principle located somewhere between the two. To anticipate your reply, of course I think there is such a limiting principle, but there are plenty of tough cases. Children aren’t routinely vaccinated against anthrax, for instance, because of the level and nature of the threat. And the vaccine causes enough serious adverse reactions (to about 1 percent of recipients) that there were lawsuits and injunctions filed in response to a Clinton-era program making them mandatory for military personnel. Do you support mandatory anthrax vaccination for all kids?…
Remember, when progressives argue for coercion in health-care policy, it’s almost always under the principle that the cost of individual bad behavior is borne by society. So while a measles outbreak is a pretty clear-cut illustration of this, so too is the “obesity epidemic,” according to some.
People who care about liberty would do well to put some thought into what distinguishes one from the other.
The reason liberals get excited when Republicans equivocate, even a tiny bit, about mandatory vaccination isn’t because they fear 10 million cases of measles under President Fiorina, it’s because they’re eager to mainstream the idea that Uncle Sam should have broader powers over people’s health generally. Framing Republicans as kooks on this issue is a small way to make opposition to government diktats on health seem kooky generally. Exit question: Speaking of kooky, isn’t there another, more prominent Republican in the race whose views on vaccinations are a lot more … interesting than Fiorina’s? Weird that the media’s focused on her this morning instead of him.
If people were cattle, and did not have the ability to research and make informed decisions about their children, then I could see this argument. Additionally, if there were no God, and we were evolved from primordial slime, I may be able to see this argument (although I could argue the survival of the fittest).
No one died in the Disney measles outbreak.
Sure I agree that parents should make educated decisions with regard to their own kids, even if they disagree with my own educated decisions with regard to my own kid.
In this case, the “education” on which many parents relied to make their “informed decision” was a study linking vaccines to autism that was trumpeted by a celebrity. That study was shown to be a complete falsehood but the parents didn’t receive that piece of “education” so they’re making their decisions based on bad information - decisions which could very well inflict SERIOUS diseases on their own kids!
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4546421/rep-bill-posey-calling-investigation-cdcs-mmr-reasearch-fraud
As it turns out, the study that exonerated the mmr may have itself been fraudulent.
Now the CDC is offering to investigate itself on the matter. Just like the IRS and Lois Lerner.
I felt the same way until I began reading about the fact that there is a small percentage of those for whom the vaccination does not “take”. There is evidence that at least whooping cough and scarlet fever can be passed on by “carriers” of the illnesses who never actually get the illness themselves.
I did no realize that.
No vaccinations, no public school admission.
Heck, I got a lot of my vaccinations AT school!
Many millions did not. Google the Black Plague.
My information is incorrect because you don’t know anyone who’s decided to forgo vaccinations due to a celebrity?
There are 300,000,000 or so people in the U.S. I imagine the number of them you know is a reasonably small percentage.
Just because you don’t know anyone who didn’t do so doesn’t mean no one did so. Yeesh.
What religious grounds are there to not be vaccinated? That seems like a manufactured reason. Isn’t it really just the fear of negative health reactions to the vaccine?
I guess there are those whose religious beliefs do not allow any treatment by doctors at all. I mean other than that narrow view, what religious reason could anyone have against a simple vaccination?
I thank God for vaccinations. We live in a healthier world because of them. They are a grace from God. There is risk in everything we face every day. Vaccines lessen risk far more than they add to them.
Come on...you spoke using a sweeping generality. So I responded with an unsupported response. Since the inception of vaccinations, there have been faith based movements to forego vaccinations, long before Jenny McCarthy.
Faith is faith. I don’t get between people and their faith. If you had said, in your first post, that faith was why people weren’t vaccinating I’d have said exactly that.
However, that’s not what you said.
You were talking about parents making educated decisions. I inferred that “educated decisions” meant meant reading about the subject, talking to / listening to doctors or celebrities or whoever they thought was in position to disseminate the info they needed and then making a conscious, educated decision. My response was based on this line of thinking.
Are you OK with what planned parenthood did with the aborted babies?
You realize most vaccines are grown in cell lines derived from abortions, right?
I think there may be some kids who for health reasons or immune system problems can’t get vaccinated, so they would be vulnerable.
Ray, I should have researched a little further before shooting off my big mouth. I am living in the 90’s where vaccinations are concerned. It looks as though Texas hasn’t required the small pox vaccine in some time And that a scarlet fever vaccine was a figment of my imagination. Sorry if I gave you a “bum steer.” (Just the cow girl in me)
Did they survive because they were sanitary or did they survive because they were forced to live apart from everyone else due to anti-Semitism? And if I remember correctly, the plague came from the infected fleas that came off the rats that came off the ships at port. Even the cleanest house can get a flea infestation. They're looking for blood, not dirt.
I don't know. Just asking.
If said schools are being supported by taxes paid by the parents of non-vaccinated kids, the issue becomes a bit more complicated.
I have not had to get a vaccine for a child for years. I was unaware that the rubella and chickenpox vaccines had been started that way. It is important to note that each were started with an already aborted fetus and that no babies are continually aborted to support it. Just two, and the killing was chosen by the mother and not done for the purpose of obtaining vaccines. Still, that is a valid religious reason. Thanks for telling me, albeit in a round about way.
Interesting info: http://www.drwalt.com/blog/2008/07/09/vaccine-myth-13-vaccinations-are-made-from-aborted-babies/
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