Hi all,
Without getting deeply mired myself (right now) in the normative implications here, it might still be worth noting that: 1. Exemptions from vaccination requirements only become a serious public health issue when they increase to the point of threatening "herd immunity." That is to say, we can -- from a public health perspective -- tolerate some exemptions, but not too many. 2. According to some studies, states that allow "personal" in addition to "religious" exemptions, and states that grant exemptions "easily," have (not a surprise) a higher rate of non-vaccinators than states that limit exemptions to "religious" motives or put more hurdles (documentation, etc.) in the way of folks seeking exemptions. See, e.g., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17032989 3. It might even be possible, though I don't have any numbers to support this, that limiting exemptions to genuine "religious" objectors, and defining religion in any of the standard ways, would produce a rate of non-vaccination low enough not to pose a major public health risk. (That still leaves, of course, the question of risk to the individual unvaccinated child. But even that risk might be considerably reduced if "herd immunity" is in place.) That is to say, vaccination might be one of those contexts in which society has a solid compelling interest in enforcing a rule overall but not necessarily a compelling interest in enforcing that rule on genuinely religious objectors. (That was, for better or worse, Burger's argument in _Yoder_). The obvious challenge here is to the "religion is not special" view. If "leveling up" produces distinctly bad results (of a sort not produced by more limited religious exemptions), should that be a reason to "level down" and eliminate all exemptions? That is to say, should religious objectors lose rights they might otherwise have if too many non-religious folks want to get on the bandwagon? And even for the rest of us, who do think that "religion is special," the intrusion of these sorts of facts creates a quandary. What if, for example, one part of the country has a number of religious objectors below the "herd immunity" threshold and another part of the country has a number above the threshold? How should law respond? As I said, I'm just asking the question here, not trying to answer it. Perry
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