If your child is not vaccinated, they should be barred from attending public school

[Fisherking]

Meh. Not vaccinating yourself is stupid, endangering others and so on and so forth but we are by and large still agreed it's your choice to be stupid, irresponsible and we'll overlook how you are endangering others in the process.

That is not really at issue. The 'red' line is where it concerns bodies that are not your own.

Thus far you lot are continuing blithely with the freedom grandstanding but still avoid answering my simple question: why should you be free to decide against vaccinating your children, or anyone else, too?

The concept in parental rights have the same root as individual right. Children are the property of the parent until they reach the age of majority, to care for and to keep safe.

The concept at issue is if they are under the care of the parents or at the direction of the state.

It is still a question of fundamental human rights.

[drone]

Maybe set aside a school in the district for kids not vaccinated by choice. If they don't want to contribute to the herd immunity, they shouldn't benefit from it as well.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Children are the property of the parent until they reach the age of majority, to care for and to keep safe.

Two issues: children are not property, and what if either care or safe keeping is lacking? See this earlier post of mine in the thread:

Why not? We do so routinely for non-life threatening situations, nobody starts wringing hands about the freedom to make a dishonest choice which the child will be the victim of. Child labour is banned. Minimum education is mandatory. Children may be taken away and placed into care if abuse is discovered.

We do that precisely to limit the damage that may be wrought by irresponsible, incompetent or uncaring parents.

We go on to do much the same to competent adults.

What in particular makes the decision to deny your children vaccination fundamentally different from the decision to rent them out as cheap labour? Or to deny them their education?

From a strict individual's property rights point of view, both cases are quite equivalent: your property, your decision to make. Except, of course that we don't accept your decision in some cases and take matters out of your hands (child labour). Why then, should we not do the same with vaccination given what we know namely that to deny vaccination is tantamount to abusing your positing as a parent and failing in your duty of care?

[Fisherking]

Two issues: children are not property, and what if either care or safe keeping is lacking? See this earlier post of mine in the thread:



What in particular makes the decision to deny your children vaccination fundamentally different from the decision to rent them out as cheap labour? Or to deny them their education?

From a strict individual's property rights point of view, both cases are quite equivalent: your property, your decision to make. Except, of course that we don't accept your decision in some cases and take matters out of your hands (child labour). Why then, should we not do the same with vaccination given what we know namely that to deny vaccination is tantamount to abusing your positing as a parent and failing in your duty of care?

Ownership is just the terminology. Like self ownership. You cannot sell your self or your children into slavery any more but it is still deemed as ownership. It is just a part of parental rights.

Rights are very incontinent things. They don’t allow us to tell others how they should behave or to see the sense of our arguments. We either trust people to do what they believe is best or we remove rights and make it a function of the state.

The state will never object to your surrendering your rights unless they accrue some financial obligation in the transaction. They are most happy to tell you what to do with your self and your children, just not pay for the undesired outcome.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Ownership is just the terminology.

Property simply means that what may be bought and sold and what may be exploited for your own benefit. I'm fully aware there are degrees of ownership, for example the difference between cattle and spanners. Cattle imply a duty of care towards them (indeed, failure to do so means they may be taken away from you), spanners can be left to rust away without a second thought.

However, property rights don't apply to human beings in your care not even if they are your children because humans are not property.

The way you phrase it, it seems you are trying to build an argument from notions of property rights that were widely considered abhorrent even in the 18th century!

Could you please explain yourself more fully, taking the time to actually engage with my question? Could you explain why the state mandating vaccination of children would be wrong (again, given what we know about the consequences of not vaccinating) whereas it's completely fine for it to ban child labour or mandate minimum education?

I simply fail to see the appeal of a 'pure' rights argument on this issue, given the world we live in. I think it is wholly divorced from reality, and harkens back to outmoded views of rights which if anything were very much a minority view and never established and enshrined in the way you seem to imagine they were.

[Xiahou]

An HPV vaccine is a bad example, imo. Kids aren't supposed to be having sex in school- so you don't need to mandate that particularly vaccine for school attendance. I believe the OP said something about the government protecting people from themselves- that's not it at all. It's protecting us from them.

I support their right to be stupid and think vaccines cause autism or whatever. But, the health and well-being of my children depends on their getting their children vaccinated against certain contagious diseases before coming to school. (see Herd Immunity) If they were only putting themselves at risk, I'd have no issue with it. But the more people who don't get vaccinated, the greater the risk to us who do get vaccinated.

Therefore yes, certain vaccines need to be compulsory for school attendance.

[Don Corleone]

It doesn't stop with immunization. If what you're arguing is that if the state has the right to control behavior whenever individual choice introduces risk on a larger scale, you've opened a really nasty can of worms.

Using the very justifications for forced immunization introduced in this thread (and mind you, my kids are immunized) shouldn't we ban alcohol and tobacco? Other people are injured by drunk drivers, and other people do get impacted by second hand smoke.

[Pannonian]

It doesn't stop with immunization. If what you're arguing is that if the state has the right to control behavior whenever individual choice introduces risk on a larger scale, you've opened a really nasty can of worms.

Using the very justifications for forced immunization introduced in this thread (and mind you, my kids are immunized) shouldn't we ban alcohol and tobacco? Other people are injured by drunk drivers, and other people do get impacted by second hand smoke.

Drink driving is one of the bigger no-nos among drivers here, with designated drivers on nights out (who refrains from alcohol for the night) and smoking has to be done in the open. Alcohol and tobacco has also been a politically risk-free source of added tax revenue with every budget.

[Greyblades]

It doesn't stop with immunization. If what you're arguing is that if the state has the right to control behavior whenever individual choice introduces risk on a larger scale, you've opened a really nasty can of worms.

Using the very justifications for forced immunization introduced in this thread (and mind you, my kids are immunized) shouldn't we ban alcohol and tobacco? Other people are injured by drunk drivers, and other people do get impacted by second hand smoke.

Sometimes I wonder why americans keep using the slippery slope argument in these cases considering that can of worms has been open since the patriot act. Even the liberals dont want to put the lid back on pandora's box. Seems like you might as well make the most of it.

[Xiahou]

It doesn't stop with immunization. If what you're arguing is that if the state has the right to control behavior whenever individual choice introduces risk on a larger scale, you've opened a really nasty can of worms.

Using the very justifications for forced immunization introduced in this thread (and mind you, my kids are immunized) shouldn't we ban alcohol and tobacco? Other people are injured by drunk drivers, and other people do get impacted by second hand smoke.

Most minors are already prohibited from using alcohol and tobacco..... not that it does much good....

Further, vaccines shouldn't be mandated by penalty of law- only as precondition of attending school. If they don't want vaccinated.... home schooling is always an option. Good luck attending any university without vaccines though.

So what do people think of this? All you have to do is pluck a single hair, way less intrusive than a vaccine. We could do this in every school in the country and expel from normal schools all the students who repeatedly fail the drug test.

Nah. Possession or use of drugs on school property or at school events should be and is punishable. Use outside the jurisdiction of the school should be beyond the realm of their control