Vaccination has received a lot of media attention over the past few months following recent measles outbreaks and the introduction of rigid vaccination policies in some countries. Amid this discussion, a rather strange story hit the headlines a few weeks ago. According to reports, a woman in Michigan was sentenced to 7 days in jail because she refused to vaccinate her child, adducing personal religious reasons. Newspapers reported the story with somewhat misleading – though factually correct – titles, such as “Michigan mother jailed for refusing to vaccinate her son” or “Michigan mother sent to prison for failing to vaccinate her son.”

The titles are misleading because they suggest that in Michigan someone could be jailed merely for failing to vaccinate their children. This is not true. Vaccination in the U.S. is mandatory, but this only means that it is a condition for enrolling children in day care or school. Parents can still refuse to vaccinate their children, since home schooling remains an option and no penalty is attached to it. Besides, most states (with the exception of California, Mississippi, and West Virginia) allow parents to opt out of vaccination mandates by requesting an exemption for their child for personal philosophical, moral, or religious reasons (depending on the State) – what is sometimes referred to as “conscientious objection” to vaccination. In particular, Michigan allows conscientious objection and requires parents who apply for an exemption to attend educational sessions where they learn about the benefits of vaccination. Thus, it would have been within the woman’s right to simply file a vaccination exemption request for her child. Once again, no punishment would have been attached to such decision. So why was the woman jailed?

The woman was sentenced for contempt of court. This was on the basis of a previous court order to vaccinate the child that was part of an agreement with her ex-husband regarding the terms of custody of their son. It was the non-compliance with that agreement and the court order, rather than the refusal to vaccinate her child per se, that was punished. In other words, the fact that the matter of the agreement was the vaccination of their child was just a contingent fact: the mother would have been punished for failing to comply with the custody agreement, whatever its particular conditions. Thus, to say that a woman was jailed because she refused to vaccinate her child, though strictly speaking correct, is misleading. Non-vaccination is not legally punished in the U.S., either with imprisonment or with any other means. Also the prohibition to enrol non vaccinated children in school or day care – which is implemented in the U.S. and in some other countries as I discussed in a previous contribution – is not meant to be a punishment for those who choose not to vaccinate their children. Rather, it is a safety measure intended to protect other children – for example, those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons – from infectious diseases.

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Image: By Photo Credit:Content Providers(s): CDC/ Mary Hilpertshauser – This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #7224.Note: Not all PHIL images are public domain; be sure to check copyright status and credit authors and content providers.English | Slovenščina | +/−, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1831994

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