Anti-vaxxers are seemingly spreading their opinions (and diseases) all around the U.S., as their popular views continue—along with preventable diseases.

There reportedly have been 940 cases of measles in 26 different states as of May 29. This is the highest level of the illness seen in 19 years. Vaccines prevent this disease, but with the increasing reluctance by some people to allow vaccinations for their children, these highly contagious diseases have been spreading like wildfire.

These outbreaks raise the questions: are anti-vaxxers deserving of respect for their unorthodox opinions? Are they selfish for doing this to their children?

Personally, I feel this anti-vax position is entirely unfair to your child. Your child is unable to make this decision for themselves, and no parent should shove their beliefs onto their children, especially medical-related beliefs. Instead, doing what your doctor would recommend until the children are old enough to make their own decisions is what would be best.

Anti-vaxxers have varieties of “reasons” for why they disagree with vaccinations, such as the most popular claim that your children will develop autism. Yet this claim repeatedly has been proven to be false, and the doctor who came up with this claim even lost his medical license (with good reason). But like a bad weed, the bogus claim keeps popping up.

This issue has also been identified as one of the top ten global health threats of 2019. Bills for mandatory vaccination have been offered for legislation, but none have been passed so far. But if people would just listen to medical science and ignore social media myths we wouldn’t even have an issue to legislate.