A couple of recent articles here and here give an overview of the mistake that had been made in the New Jersey State Senate in December which will hopefully be corrected when the legislature reconvenes in February. In a development that helps make New Jersey an embarrassment, a bill to bar all religious exemptions to vaccination requirements was defeated in the senate, thanks to the concerted thuggery and propaganda campaigns of anti-vaxxers, fringe religious zealots, and conspiracy theorists.
I just realized what the anti-vaccination movement and its vocal activists remind me of. They make me think of several recent criminal cases where people who encouraged their depressed friends to commit suicide. Take the Conrad Roy case, for example, where the troubled teenager was coerced into killing himself by his girlfriend through a series of texts and phone calls. Then there was the case of Boston College student Alexander Urtula who was allegedly (the case has not gone to trial as of this writing) harassed, demeaned, and goaded by his girlfriend through a series of some 47,000 text messages into killing himself.
The anti-vaccination movement similarly preys on the fears and insecurities of parents, bombarding them through a twisted cyber network of blogs, web pages, and social media sites with deceptive and destructive messages that wind up leading those parents to harm their own children. Telling parents not to vaccinate their children, propagating the lies and fabricated conspiracy theories of Internet charlatans is no different than pressuring someone who is depressed or struggling with various forms of mental illness into committing suicide. There is absolutely no credible scientific evidence to suggest that childhood vaccines are dangerous. Read this op-ed about the issue of vaccine safety and this story about yet another major study that proves no connection between vaccines and autism for a detailed discussion about vaccines and science for more details. And, again, telling a worried parent to the contrary is akin to pressuring and goading a dangerously depressed person into harming themselves. In fact, the woman who had allegedly sent her boyfriend 47,000 texts telling him to kill himself looks like an amateur when compared to the sewage of lies and distortions that flood the internet from the anti-vaccination movement every day. As the Globe and Times articles point out, the New Jersey legislature was basically caught off guard by the sheer size and organization of the anti-vaxxer extremists and the power their deception has over people who are scared, who have to medical training, who are alienated from institutions of expertise and authority. Unfortunately this reprehensible, destructive movement has the power to pressure and intimidate lawmakers as well, intelligent individuals who should know better.
So how frustrating is the defeat of the religious exemption bill in light of the fact that New Jersey’s Lakewood community was hit with a measles outbreak in 2019? It’s frustrating enough to make me wish that anti-vaxxers who encourage parents not to vaccinate their children be treated exactly the same way by the law as the people who manipulate others into committing suicide. Yes, I am most often a knee-jerk, free-speech, staunch libertarian, but cases like these shake the very foundation of some of my beliefs. It almost makes me wish that the purveyors of the anti-vaccination propaganda and the conspiracy theories they are founded on would not be protected by the First Amendment. We can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, after all. Moreover, religious liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment are not absolute either. For example, if your religion tells you to commit human sacrifice, the law would certainly take issue with you. And no, parents do not—and should not—have absolute authority over every aspect of their children’s lives. You DON’T have the right to do anything to your children and be free of government interference. You can’t beat your children, for example, and you can’t sexually abuse them either. So you also shouldn’t be allowed exemptions from vaccines based on your religious and philosophical beliefs.
Last year, in fact, I was glad to see the stories about the FBI memo suggesting that some circles of today’s conspiracy community should be viewed as a new form of domestic terrorism. I had written about that on this blog, and it was energizing to see that society is opening its eyes at last to the destructive threat people like the Alex Jones crowd, the Millennium Report, State of the Nation extremists and the rest of their ilk pose to this country. The anti-vaccination movement should be added to this new domestic terror list.
So let’s hope that New Jersey’s elected representatives come to their senses in February and reject the lies, fearmongering, and (what should be criminal) manipulations of the anti-vaxxer terror movement.
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