1998
At the birth of my first child, I researched being a parent like any nerd. I read entire books upon books about birth, breastfeeding, and vaccines. We didn’t have the internet back then. It was also before the days when you could self-publish any damn thing you wanted to in print.
I made the decision to not vaccinate my children. I took that decision very seriously after many books, discussing with my ex-husband, and feeling out for myself what was right for *my* children. It was a scary decision for many reasons, not the least of which was that I knew this meant I had an even greater responsibility to be sure my children would never be spreaders of disease if at all possible. This was a weight I was willing to bear to do what I thought was the very best for my kids.
In this time, the worst I had to fear about not vaccinating them was visits to doctors where I had to learn to stand up for myself and let the doctor know that I was fully aware of the risks and that I was choosing to not vaccinate out of research and education, and not because of ignorance. Before my first daughter was born, the only legal exemption from vaccines was to declare yourself Christian Science. I sometimes told doctors that we were Christian Science and then you could see they were just glad I was in a doctors office at all.
Shortly after she was born, a case was won in Texas that assured any religion could receive a vaccine exemption and mine and my children’s bodily autonomy was finally protected. What I did not like is that, to get an exemption, you were inevitably entered into a government system that knew who and where you were. But I silently thanked the Republicans who fought hard and won the right for me to make medical decisions for my children instead of taking it out of my hands. I have never wanted to be a child of the state. Any state, thankyouverymuch.
I suffered my parents kicking us out of their house when they learned I would not vaccinate my daughter. They were horrified and felt they had to take a stand. Please note that a few years later they came back and apologized and said they could totally understand my decision, after doing some reading. In general, though, vaccines weren’t something that people went around concerning themselves with or even a primary concern of many people unless you were a paediatrician. Even then, I found most doctors weren’t shocked or terribly worried for my kids. They handed me the pamphlets from the government that they were obligated to hand me as I exited the office, but no one was giving me dirty looks or looming over me like I actually thought they might.
I found a whole group of wonderful women who had formed a playgroup in my area of town. These women became my rock. Almost all of us had had home births and very few of our eventual 30+ children amongst us were vaccinated. We accepted the ones who were, ha! But the parents who did vaccinate knew that we preferred their kids stay home from playgroup for a few days to a week after so that viral shedding wasn’t a concern. We were a healthy happy lot of families who came from every socioeconomic status and background.
I think it’s important to point out that not vaccinating our children was not the highlight of our lives within or outside of our group. It seems to me that people today think that if you choose to not be vaccinated or choose to not vaccinate your children, that is all of who you are. I was probably the most vocal because I was one of 25 who had a radio show that centered around natural parenting.
2012
Let’s jump to about 10 years ago. This is about when I started to notice vaccine extremism online through Facebook. It is extremist to have a sudden visceral anger toward someone for their personal choices. That’s when I started to see that, in order to continue relationships with some friends and clients, that I should never speak of not vaccinating my children, who now were in early teen years. Some people did unfriend me right after these online threads. I was never angry at them, I would simply pipe in and say that I believed we all have the right to bodily autonomy and choices and there is no other place where we make medical decisions for other people, so why this one?
I know all of their arguments. And I still disagree. I have no desire to go into all the science I have read and why it is MY choice. Anymore than I want to argue with you that the two abortions I have had were necessary for me. In the same vein, I do not believe that giving the government, or society as a whole through shaming, the right to do anything with our bodies is ever valid. If you are pro-choice, then I heartily argue that you should be anti-mandate. Once the government has the pass to meddle, they fucking meddle, y’all. Once case law is introduced where the government has the right to tell you what to do with your body, the downhill slope is steep is slippery.
When *I* say “Get your laws off my body!” I mean ALL laws. Because if we don’t mean all laws, then we open a dangerous door that can never be closed. That’s just logic and history. It’s really simple.
If we are boiled down and demonised for the singularity of our personal health choices, then what kind of society are we even in?
5 years ago I watched the heat over vaccines become even worse and more inflammatory. I have no idea where this came from and I was baffled as to why people were so mean and charged about something that previously was mostly a choice that we might not agree with, but was now an issue everyone felt like they had the right to become cruel about.
If you haven’t gathered, I am extremely intelligent. I am often well-written and spoken. I am known to do a wealth of research and have helped hundreds of other people with health issues and even court cases from the sidelines. I am looked to, in my circle, as someone to reach out to when someone needs advice on a myriad of subjects.
So how could people who know me act like this to me? How could they treat me like nothing else about me mattered except this one personal decision? They would laud me for openly talking about my abortions (always in an attempt to destigmatize it for everyone) and then come at me with hatred when I said I believed in vaccine choice. The fallacy there was always beyond puzzling.
I don’t even think I need to go into what happened during covid. Do you see that the set-up here is important? Something, some campaign somewhere, got us riled up and viscerally upset about it long before covid.
This made the covid vaccine frenzy so easy for them to institute swiftly and immediately. The work of social psychological anger at people who didn’t vaccinate was already well-laid across America. Their work was so easy.
I posted a couple of times during the vaccine roll-out what my concerns were.
My first and most profound statement was that this vaccine absolutely would not stop transmission and would actually further it because it would lessen symptoms (at best) and people would go out and spread it unknowingly. This was my own pure logic after reading about vaccines for YEARS because I sought to deeply understand the thing I was NOT going to do to my children.
I WAS RIGHT. Has anyone apologized for the hatred they posted to me about my correct personal assessment? Of course not.
Side Story on Chicken Pox vaccine. The CP vaccine came about when my three children were between 4-8 years old. Finally, they got CP at school. My oldest was 8 and she got it first. I didn’t need to take her to doctor to be treated, I took her because she needed the doctors note for school.
Y’all, you’ve never seen a doctor so excited to see a sick child. She was THRILLED. She was a small woman in her 50’s from India who I enjoyed taking my children to. She worked with Austin Regional Clinic. Anyway, she gleamed at me, “WOW, this is so great! I wish all of my medical students could be here right now! We almost never see normal presentation of chicken pox because of the vaccine. Now doctors can hardly diagnose it because the vaccine is causing lessened and very different types of presentation. Kids still spread it (after vaccination), but then doctors can’t diagnose it properly.”
2021
I was so afraid of the world during covid, and not because I was super afraid of covid. I was afraid of anyone asking me my “vaccine status.” I had owned a retail shop in my little town in Colorado for several years before covid. Previous to that, I had developed a thriving online business where I sold what I make and partly people buy my products because I am an open book. I am extremely knowledgable in my field and people respect me greatly. But suddenly I couldn’t talk about what was going on in the world because I knew I would lose so many clients just because it was my own personal choice to not get this vaccine.
And maybe I’m wrong. I would like to believe that humans don’t go around ending a years long relationship with a small business over something so personal. But we all know that that’s not how it went down for a lot of business owners. I’ve lost a total of 3 clients out of hundreds when they realized I am lesbian. No love lost there, for me. I can shrug my shoulders at that with a “bless your heart.”
I kept quiet about anything to do with vaccines in my own shop. I formulated a tea that quickly brought every covid case amongst my clients to a close within 3 days of onset. But, you know, whatever about strong natural anti-virals. That’s probably a hoax perpetrated by witches for the last thousand years.
I did treat one young man with a vaccine injury that abruptly ended his pilot career with the US airforce. He couldn’t even drive a car by the time I met him. He had had a severe reaction to the first one and the air force required he get a second vaccine. He faced losing his career and he acquiesced despite common sense saying he should have never received another covid vaccine. The second shot left him debilitated and he lost his career anyway. There is no support in the medical community for souls like him.
The two posts I did make on my personal Facebook page resulted in comments so painful to me that I took them down within 24 hours.
We are divided. And they are dividing you from good people. If people are banned from talking about any subject, then they win.
Scarlet Pearl 