Have a Deeply Held Spiritual Belief Against Vaccines? Too Bad.
The American Academy of Pediatrics wants to eliminate personal exemptions entirely.
Well, they finally said the quiet part out loud.
The American Academy of Pediatrics just updated its official vaccine policy statement, and it basically boils down to this: “Those 45 states that still let parents opt their kids out of vaccines for nonmedical reasons? Yeah, we’re coming for you. Enjoy your movie.”
In their statement, the AAP calls personal and religious exemptions “contrary to optimal public health” because they “erode the safety of school environments.” Translation: that tiny fraction of parents who file one of these get-out-of-myocarditis-free cards are singlehandedly making schools “unsafe.” (It’s not the TikTok challenges, hallway brawls, vending machines stocked with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, lockers full of vape pens, asbestos ceiling tiles snowing on third period, or the deep fried mystery-meat nuggets being dished out in the cafeteria. It’s the unjabbed kindergartener on the swing sucking on a Go-GURT. Really.)
Meanwhile, the AAP somehow manages to ignore the part where:
Not a single vaccine on the market has been tested against a true, inert placebo.
Not a single study comparing fully vaccinated kids to fully unvaccinated kids for all-cause health outcomes (you know, the one study everyone keeps asking for) has ever been conducted.
Vaccines are so “safe and effective” that the federal government has paid out more than $4.5 billion through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
Naturally, the AAP trots out measles as an example of the “vaccine-preventable illnesses” that pureblood kids are personally summoning like Beetlejuice. You see, there were 1,319 cases this year… in a country of 340 million people. Hold me. That’s about 0.0004% of the population. I’ve sneezed on more people in Trader Joe’s. But clearly the solution is to outlaw bodily sovereignty and auto-enroll every American child in the deluxe, state‑approved pharma subscription plan.
As of now, nearly every state in the union still allows some version of a “We’d actually rather not, thanks” exemption. And the AAP’s dream? To take that away across the board. If they get their way, only kids with a doctor-signed list of medical contraindications will be allowed through the schoolhouse door without an “I got all my shots” sticker.
Of course, the AAP can’t make laws. This isn’t a bill. It’s not a mandate. It doesn’t go to Congress or the President. It’s a policy statement—a PR blueprint they hope state legislatures will adopt. The problem is, a frightening percentage of pediatricians treat the AAP’s word like scripture… and an even more alarming majority of parents believe their child’s doctor is some sort of high priest. That’s how press releases turn into policy: one white-coated guilt trip at a time.
The entire statement reads like a public health fairy tale: vaccines have saved trillions of dollars, prevented 500 million cases of illness, and schools are “safe” only when compliance is near-total. (Sound familiar?) Nonmedical exemptions—currently exercised by a whopping 3% of kids nationally—they say, create “confusing” patchwork laws and “disparities in immunization coverage,” as if parents making different choices—you know, like they do and always have about discipline, religion, screen time, sleepovers, snack rules, social media, curfews, lunchbox contents, dating, gaming, driving, piercings, pets, language, and literally everything else—is a national crisis.
So here’s what they want:
No religious exemptions.
No philosophical exemptions.
No “we’d like to wait, thanks” exemptions.
Only medical exemptions, tightly policed, regularly recertified, and treated like parole.
If you’re wondering why you didn’t hear a peep about this on the “news”, it’s because every legacy outlet took one look at the policy update and said, ‘Let’s go live to the raccoons jumping on the trampolines!’ (Fine, they’re cute.) Funny how that works. Just let it slip quietly into the world, cross your fingers no one notices, and hope the policy seeps into law a few years down the road while everyone’s distracted with the promise of—finally!—the unsealing of the Titanic files.
p.s. Seriously tho, have you guys gone down the Titanic rabbit hole yet? It’s super sus. Just saying.
This makes my blood boil. Here in Maskachusetts we have a state senator who is forever introducing bills to eliminate the religious exemption. Fortunately none of her bills have passed due to the diligence of citizens rallying against her. I’m 72, never ever vaccinated, and it’s a hill I’d die on. My brother in law, a neonatal MD, called when the clot shot came out, asking if I was going to get the shot. I said no way. He said that’s all he needed to know, hung up and that was it. All I know is that it is a right to be able to decide what goes into my body, my body, my choice. It seems so simple to me.
It's a sign of how low we have fallen that we're even having this discussion. Forget for a moment the post-Nuremburg right to informed consent. Even without that, when did we give up our rights to bodily autonomy?
Why should any free man, woman, or child have to depend on religion to justify their medical choice? And I say that as one who believes we'd all be better off if more of our choices were religiously informed.