Breaking News – Connecticut has eliminated their religious vaccine exemption.
Don’t want to get your kids vaccinated?
You might be surprised to know that no one is out there trying to force you into vaccinating them.
Want to enroll your kids in daycare, preschool, school, or college?
Then they will need to be vaccinated.
How to Claim a Vaccine Exemption
Of course, depending on where you live, you could get a vaccine exemption and leave your kids unvaccinated and unprotected.
Does your child qualify for a medical exemption? All states allow kids to claim medical exemptions to getting vaccinated. True medical exemptions are rare though, as you can see from the rates in states that actually require screening and approval of medical vaccine exemptions.
Are you a Christian Scientist? In 44 states, laws allow religious exemptions to vaccinations. Ironically, these exemptions are often abused, as you don’t actually need to belong to a religion that is against vaccines to claim a religious exemption to vaccinations.
“When you are challenged by the viewpoint of a denomination, pastor, publication, or atheist authority: You do not worship any pastor, church, religious publication, or denomination. Your pastor’s personal view on vaccines is irrelevant to your stance because pastors do not learn about the biblical implications of vaccinating during seminary and your pastor isn’t God. (Though if you have a pastor willing to go to bat for you, use him.)”
Megan on How To Get a Vaccine Religious Exemption Like a Boss
It is not even a secret that parents abuse the religious vaccine exemption, claiming them even when they don’t have a sincere religious belief against getting vaccinated.
And in 20 states, it is even easier to claim a vaccine exemption. These are the states that allow philosophical or personal belief vaccine exemptions, in which you can typically just say that you are against vaccinating and protecting your kids “for reasons of conscience.”
What reasons? You don’t usually have to go into much detail…
Why Parents Abuse Vaccine Exemptions
It is not hard to understand why some parents abuse vaccine exemptions.
They abuse vaccine exemptions because they can.
In many states, it is easy to abuse vaccine exemptions because medical exemptions aren’t verified and approved and it is often easier and more convenient to get an exemption than to get vaccinated. Believe it or not, some doctors will even sell you a medical exemption for your child. Also, parents are made to feel so scared by anti-vaccine propaganda that they think that they need to get an exemption.
“Permitting personal belief exemptions and easily granting exemptions are associated with higher and increasing nonmedical US exemption rates. State policies granting personal belief exemptions and states that easily grant exemptions are associated with increased pertussis incidence.”
Omer et al on Nonmedical exemptions to school immunization requirements: secular trends and association of state policies with pertussis incidence.
But just because you can claim an easy exemption in a state without strong vaccine exemption laws doesn’t mean that you should.
While there are no benefits to delaying or skipping vaccines, there are plenty of risks. And the risks aren’t just to your unvaccinated child. We continue to see and hear about kids who are too young to be vaccinated or who couldn’t be vaccinated getting caught up in outbreaks caused by others who simply chose to not get vaccinated.
“I also warn them not to share their fears with their neighbors, because if too many people avoid the MMR, we’ll likely see the diseases increase significantly.”
Dr. Bob Sears in The Vaccine Book
Not surprisingly, websites and organizations that give advice on getting kids easy vaccine exemptions never mention these risks. They also overstate the risks of vaccines and don’t mention the benefits of getting vaccinated.
Vaccines are safe and necessary. Unless your child has a true medical contraindication to getting one or more vaccines, do a little more research before getting a non-medical exemption.
What to Know About Claiming a Vaccine Exemption
While it is typically not hard to claim a vaccine exemption for your child, since vaccines are safe and necessary, be sure you understand the risks of delaying or skipping any vaccines if your child doesn’t need a true medical exemption.
More on Claiming a Vaccine Exemption
- ACIP – Contraindications and Precautions
- CDC – Who Should NOT Get Vaccinated with these Vaccines?
- AAP – Medical Versus Nonmedical Immunization Exemptions for Child Care and School Attendance
- CDC – State School and Childcare Vaccination Laws
- School Exemption Laws by State
- States With Religious and Philosophical Exemptions From School
- The problem of nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates
- Vaccine Exemptions Often Result of Laziness and Lies
- Personal Belief Exemptions for Vaccines
- The Impact of Personal Belief Exemption Policies
- Non-Medical Vaccine Exemptions: Balancing Parental Rights and Public Health
- Why Is There a Religious Exemption for Vaccinations? Almost No Religions Object to Them.
- A review of religion and vaccinations
- Exemption Abuse – Too many kindergarteners aren’t getting vaccinated.
- Religious exemptions for vaccination – abuse and reform
- Religious Exemptions to Vaccine Mandates and the Law
- Do parents misuse religious exemptions to excuse kids from vaccines?
- Medical exemptions to vaccine mandates for sale after SB277!
- When healing turns into killing: religious and philosophical exemptions from parental accountability
- The problem of nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates
- New Study Emphasizes Harm of Vaccine Refusals
- Study – Nonmedical exemptions to school immunization requirements: secular trends and association of state policies with pertussis incidence.
- Study – Rising rates of vaccine exemptions: problems with current policy and more promising remedies.
- Study – A longitudinal analysis of the effect of nonmedical exemption law and vaccine uptake on vaccine-targeted disease rates.
- Why You Shouldn’t Shop for Medical Exemptions
- There is a Whole Cottage Industry of Doctors Helping Parents Skip Their Kids’ Vaccines
- Change in Medical Exemptions From Immunization in California After Elimination of Personal Belief Exemptions
- California Doctors Are Advertising Ludicrous Medical Exemptions to Anti-Vaxxers
- After SB 277, medical exemptions for sale, courtesy of Dr. Bob Sears and other antivaccine quacks
- Why hasn’t California cracked down on anti-vaccination doctors?
- After California got rid of personal exemptions for vaccines, medical exemptions went way up
Last Updated on April 6, 2024