In the case, the State of Illinois v. Parents Against Vaccinations (PAV), the jury heard that Jennifer White, is the proud mother of a beautiful two-week-old baby boy. In his first two weeks of life, he has made a number of visits to his pediatrician, which is routine for a newborn. Her perfect world would be shattered with a single phone call. A nurse from the doctor’s office called a few days after their last visit and informed her that there was a child who has the measles in their waiting room at the same time she was there with her son. The measles can be spread without physical contact, and it was possible her son was infected. There was a long period of time where children were at risk for contracting diseases such as the measles, polio, and smallpox, just to name a few. These illnesses were leaving children crippled, or even worse, dead. All of this changed with the invention of the vaccine, but in recent years, more and more parents are choosing not to have their children vaccinated for various reasons. Although the United States government does not require parents to vaccinate their children, the government should require vaccinations because it is safe and effective, could save lives, protects others around the children, and because it could be expensive to treat the illness a child contracts from not being vaccinated.
Parents should be required to vaccinate their children because if their child contracts a vaccine-preventable disease, it could be expensive to treat. A boy in Oregon had a cut on his forehead, and because he was unvaccinated, he contracted Tetanus, which is a disease that causes clenched muscles and spasms. The boy spent 57 days in the hospital mostly in intensive care. He was suffering and could not even eat or drink without feeding tubes. According to the National Public Radio news story, "This illness could have been prevented with five doses of the tetanus vaccine, for $150”, but “the ordeal cost $811,929”. When faced with a choice of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars versus just a little over a hundred dollars, the less expensive option would be the most financially smart choice to make. Because the child was not vaccinated, he had to spend close to two months in the hospital and mainly intensive care, which increased the medical bill. The parents could have vaccinated their child, and it would not have ended up costing them and the hospital so much money. Requiring parents to vaccinate their children for preventable diseases like Tetanus would prevent a similar costly and potentially deadly situation like this one in the future. According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “the cost of treating unvaccinated children for preventable diseases is costing the federal government millions of dollars each year”. When citizens are receiving federal aid due to financial needs, they should be required to follow rules for the use of these funds. Since people who are receiving federal aid are opting not to have their children immunized, their decision is costing the federal government even more money. Therefore, the government should require all parents and especially those who receive aid to have their children immunized in order to reduce costs. By requiring parents to vaccinate their children, the cost to taxpayers, parents, and medical systems will be less expensive.
Requiring parents to vaccinate their children will save lives. Though getting the flu might seem like a non-life threatening common occurrence, the flu still kills thousands every year in the United States alone. In an October 2020, Atlanta Journal Constitution article, over 20,000 people died from the flu from 2019 to 2020 and this trend is consistent in past years with some statistics showing three times as many deaths as last year. Putting the flu to the side, there are other deadly diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), that have been eradicated due to vaccinations. Polio, tetanus, hepatitis are just some of the diseases that can kill and be spread to others leading to their deaths. Most recently, there has been a push to vaccinate college students against Meningitis. Katie Strickland, in her viewpoint essay, "Meningitis Vaccination Should Be Mandatory for College Dorm Residents", states, "Although not as contagious as the flu, bacterial meningitis can still be spread through coughing, kissing or sharing drinking cups or cigarettes." She goes on to explain that college students are particularly at risk because of how closely they live to one another in dorms, and according to the Meningitis.org website, 90% of children and teens who die from the disease die quickly within the first 24 hours of diagnosis. No one wants to die. Vaccinations effectively prevent millions of deadly diseases every year based on World Health Organization findings. Therefore, by requiring parents to vaccinate their children regardless of parents' opposition to it, the lives of their children will be saved and those who they might have infected without a vaccine will be saved. While parents may argue that they have the right to decide whether or not their child should receive a vaccine, people who they infect do not have a choice. Their need to maintain their freedom not only might kill their child but it might unknowingly kill another human being. Surely, one's freedom to live supersedes another's freedom of choice.
Similarly, there are parents who object to mandatory vaccinations on religious grounds. Their main claim is related to the way in which the vaccinations are derived. There are some vaccines cells derived from human fetuses electively aborted decades ago, according to Sciencemag.org. Since many are opposed to abortion, the fact that vaccines are developed from aborted fetus tissue cells, presents an ethical problem. Matthew Staver, in his viewpoint essay, "Mandatory Vaccinations Threaten Religious Freedom", uses the example from the Catholic Church where the Vatican sent a letter to a parent stating "it would be a sin for the parent to allow her child to be injected with aborted fetal tissue". Though the use of aborted fetus cells does appear like a person who gets vaccinated is supporting abortion, that just simply is not the case. There are still a number of vaccines that are not obtained in this manner, and at this point, for those vaccines that need an embryo's cells, technology is not yet at the point where these cells can be extracted other then in an aborted fetus. One way those with religious exceptions could view getting vaccines could be, with the understanding that though a life was taken and this is why the vaccine is available, millions more lives will be saved with the vaccine. As the medical field improves, however, there should be a focus on obtaining these cells from non-aborted fetuses or through synthetic or plant-based options.
It is important that parents vaccinate their children whenever possible in order to protect their own families, potentially save their lives, protect others in society, and save money. Though it is understandable that parents want the freedom to choose whether or not their child is vaccinated, children who contract deadly diseases because they are either not vaccinated or another child is not vaccinated have no choice. Parents and other voters can contact their lawmakers to address this issue with a bill requiring that any time a child visits a doctor or medical facility, the doctor will automatically update the child’s vaccinations. Furthermore, vaccination manufacturers can calm concerns by testing the effects more thoroughly and providing literature about their safety to parents and hospitals.
In the postscript chapter of Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, he presents a situation eerily similar to Walter McMillian's story, except Anthony Ray Hinton had been on death row for 28 years for a murder he did not commit. He was released from prison in 2015 while Walter spent eight years and was released in 1993.
Both Walter and Anthony Rae's stories are equally tragic though. In the True Justice documentary Hinton recounts his arrest, trial, and eventual sentence to death row. One summer day, Hinton was mowing his lawn when two police officers confronted him about their suspicions. They asked him about a gun used in the two murders. While the same type of gun that Hinton's mom owned was used in multiple robberies and murders, there was no clear evidence that it was the same gun. Unfortunately, like in McMillian's case, Hinton's defense attorney was woefully lacking expertise to handle a case involving firearms analysis. Without a proper defense, Hinton was convicted and sent to Alabama's death row.
Once Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative became involved, they worked tirelessly to exonerate Hinton even bringing the FBI's firearms and toolmarks unit, who testified that there was no way that the firearm was the one used in the murders. Just like Walter's case, despite the overwhelming evidence proving Hinton's innocence, the courts refused to give him a retrial. Stevenson had to take Hinton's case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In Hinton V. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Alabama courts were in the wrong and granted Hinton a retrial. Like Walter, Anthony Ray's case garnered plenty of media attention but unlike Walter's case, media attention was not enough to grant Hinton's release.
Hinton wrote a book about his experience and has since gone on to be a justice system activist for other wrongly accused, but his situation and how long it dragged out in the court system begs the question, why? There are laws and rules that are supposed to be followed and when there is a preponderance of evidence, only then, should someone be found guilty. As in Walter's case, Anthony Ray's innocence was blatantly obvious but his case lingered for 12 years in the court system. It had to go all the way to the Supreme Court even though there was precedent set about Hinton's deplorable defense. The Supreme Court even stated that Alabama was in the wrong in their ruling, and according to the EJI website, there have been a number of Alabama wrongful death penalty convictions overturned. All of these cases are linked by race, poverty, or inferior defense attorneys. Now, one could argue that perhaps death row convictions are a problem only in Alabama, but according to the Death Penalty Information site, there have been more than 170 wrongly convicted exonerated since 1973 with Illinois and Florida surpassing Alabama in the number of death row sentences overturned. Unsurprisingly, however, is the fact that the majority of these exonerations were for wrongly convicted African-Americans.
I'm in jail for murder. I had it all before. I was married, I have kids, but then I got back into drugs. I was addicted to drugs throughout my life but thought I finally cleaned up my act when I got married and had two daughters. But you know how it goes, addiction can difficult to beat and I started using again when my marriage started to go downhill. I met Walter McMillian while I was waitressing at The Waffle House in Monroeville, Alabama and we hit it off. He was married though, and being a black man, other people frowned upon our relationship because according to the state of Alabama black and white people could not be in a relationship together. It was an actual state law although against federal laws. I read up about this in the prison library while I was earning my degree to be a paralegal. Well, though I was truly attracted to Walter who flirted with all the waitresses at the Waffle House, I really was trying to make my husband jealous. We ended up getting a divorce because of my cheating ways.
Afterwards, my life took even more of a downward spiral, I murdered Vickie Pittman, a young girl who had her whole life in front of her because of my drug addiction. I don't even remember how or when it happened because of how many drugs I was on, but the prosecutor said I did it, so I confessed along with Ralph Myers, the town liar.
Ralph thought it would be a good idea and might reduce his sentence if he told the police that Walter McMillian committed another murder. I made the mistake of mentioning my relationship with Walter when I first started hanging around Ralph. He and I had a mutual addiction to painkillers since he was badly burned as a child and suffered from nerve damage. Nevertheless, he remembered Walter's name; that combined with his predilection to lying turned into Ralph confessing to another murder and claiming that he was with Walter.
Now, Walter is on death row and Ralph has a life sentence. I am hopeful that my 60 Minutes interview convinces enough people and the courts to offer Walter an appeal. I told the interviewer, Ben Bradley, that Walter was arrested because of me and that I feel so bad about what happened to Walter and how he was treated. Sheriff Tate was so rough with him and called him a bunch of names, threatened to lynch him even. Walter is a good man and does not deserve to be on death row and have his whole life and the lives of his family destroyed because of Ralph's stupid lie, my relationship with Walter, and the systemic racism in Alabama's court system.
The death penalty should be stopped because many times the evidence used to convict these men and women is not credible. The evidence is not strong enough. Also, there are times like in the Walter McMillian case when the reason someone gets convicted is racially motivated. For example, in the 60 minutes episode that aired before McMillian was released we see Ralph Myers describing how his testimony was not taken seriously. The death penalty alone imposes an irrevocable sentence. Once an inmate is executed, nothing can be done to make amends if a mistake has been made. There is considerable evidence that many mistakes have been made in sentencing people to death. Ralph Myers in the Walter McMillian case explained that he told four different doctors that he was lying about Walter's involvement in the murder. Chapman, the district attorney of the case, stated in the 60 Minutes interview that it did not matter that Myers told four different doctors that he was lying. First of all, juries always need to know all the evidence in the trial. Stevenson, Walter's attorney, even says in the interview that it is the D.A.'s job to want justice. Justice is not served if all the evidence is not presented to the jury.
According to the Death Penalty Information website, "our capital punishment system is unreliable. A recent study by Columbia University Law School found that two thirds of all capital trials contained serious errors. When the cases were retried, over 80% of the defendants were not sentenced to death and 7% were completely acquitted." Now, I am going to write about why this matters in Walter's case and in general
Often when the wrongly convicted get out of death row, their lives are not improved. While they are not in threat of impending death in an electric chair or lethal injection, they suffer health issues because of the trauma of being on death row. For example, Walter suffered from dementia, which is memory loss similar to Alzheimer's. According to many research journals on this topic, traumatic events are often linked to early onset dementia.
