Sally Kohn: I Didn’t Vaccinate My Child—And I Regret It

From Sally Kohn writing at The Daily Beast:

When I first told my mother that my partner and I would be taking our daughter to a friend’s wedding in India, my mom cried. “But she’ll have to get vaccinated,” she eventually said, through heavy tears.  Because my daughter, who was then 4 years old, still hadn’t been vaccinated. And not vaccinating her is a decision I now regret.

Having a child, especially as an upper-middle-class white lesbian couple, felt like it came with a million decisions. Do we use sperm from a friend or a sperm bank? Do we have the baby at home or in the hospital? Co-sleeper or crib? Björn or Ergo? Cloth or disposable? On and on and on.

So to be honest, when my mom—a mathematician with a fast Internet connection who I love deeply and trust implicitly—sent us a 46-page report on the pros but mostly cons of vaccines, it just seemed like one less decision to make. “In most cases the risk of harm to a healthy, breast-fed infant from a vaccination far exceeds the risk of harm from the disease itself,” my mom wrote on page 1.

Read the rest of the story at The Daily Beast.