Vaccination Argument Analysis

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For many first world nations, vaccination has benefitted their respective areas by drastically lowering the rates of disease, death, and infant mortality rates; thus, it’s an alarming finding that up to nine percent of American citizens believe vaccines are unsafe for human usage (Dost). Within this paper, it is my goal to explore the limits of autonomy in regards to parents and children, the ways in which this particular viewpoint can affect more than just the local community, the applications of a compounding moral good, and finally, put forth the argument that we are morally obligated to vaccinate both adults and children. The first contention for this paper will evoke Mills’ Harm Principle, which states that any action may be limited to prevent harm to other individuals (Ogunkoya). When we refuse to vaccinate, we put more than just ourselves at risk—our community is endangered as well, most especially the members that rely on the rest of their community to be …show more content…
The idea of special obligations is a common argument against consequentialism. The gist of special obligations is that there are obligations to certain individuals that are more important than the obligations we hold to all people (Jeske). To boil this down to a single point, this argues in favor that a parent’s obligation to their own child may hold more weight than a person’s obligation to all of the individuals within their community, as the bond between parent and child is special. This seems a bit unthinkable, as a parent’s obligation to a child should be to safeguard their child from harm, not push their radical beliefs onto a person that is incapable of knowing any better. To move further than that, the idea of special obligations allows us to wrong society for the sake of one individual. One child is not more important than the lives of a thousand others who will be put at risk when the one child is not

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