No one wants to harm their children. Parents who don’t vaccinate their children are doing so out of love. They think they are protecting them even while they are drastically increasing the risk their children face and raise the chances of harming other unvaccinated children. As a result, the world has seen several Measles and Chickenpox outbreaks in the last ten years. In April 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that “the number of measles cases reached 695 in 22 states” in the U.S. 2019 has been the worst year for measles in the U.S. since the disease was eliminated in 2000.

Why are the anti-vaxxers so scared of autism? Because they equate it with mental illness and brain damage, and assume that people with autism are damaged simply because they are different. Anti-vaxxers look at autistic people’s struggles with communication and their unusual behaviors, and they fear what they do not understand. This is similar to the way anti-gay activists treat the LGBTQ+ population—they take their own personal discomfort with LQBTQ+ people dressing and acting differently from them and conclude that what makes them uncomfortable is something to be feared and eradicated.