Originally posted by Bigfella
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There are things that everyone agrees parents should not be able to do to their children. Yet certain kinds of inaction can be more dangerous than certain kinds of action. The act of not doing something never registers with an act of doing something on equal terms even if the outcome is equivalent. This is a human mental bias that ignores results in favour of the nature of a cause. Not vaccinating your child for a disease that has a mortality rate that exceeds the very rare, or can cause serious long term physical disability, should be considered a form of child abuse, just like hitting a child in way that only has a low chance of causing mortality or long term physical damage is considered abuse.
That is if we are comfortable defining abuse not by the motivation of the person in a position of power, but to the risk of a child in a position of vulnerability.
The fact that this threatens other children strengthens the case, but I think the case is already a strong one.
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