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I have voted No to this debate first of all because the title is misleading. American children do have the right to be vaccinated. The leading article is about the fact that some parents choose not to have their children vaccinated. That author wants the United States government to mandate vaccines for all American children and take the freedom of choice away from American parents. That author suggests that the fathers of our Constitution would have made it illegal not to vaccinate your children if the vaccines had been available in their time. That is completely absurd. The Constitution is about giving Americans the right to choose and an idea like this one is a complete contradiction of that. I am sure there are many different reasons why parents may choose not to vaccinate their children even though I an not one of them and you should not consider me a representative for them. I have four children ages 15, 13, 11 and 2. Each of them have received the vaccines required to attend public schools. I did however choose not to vaccinate my three oldest children against chicken pox for a couple of reasons. As children, my younger brother and I never had the chicken pox and as an adult I was tested and it was determined that I am immune to the virus. The doctor stated that I may have a natural immunity to the virus that causes chicken pox. Therefore, could I have passed this immunity along to my children? I did my research on the chicken pox vaccine, which was still very new at that time, and found that some children would actually contract chicken pox from receiving the vaccine along with some other side affects and I just didn't find the benefit in vaccinating my children against chicken pox. My three oldest children did end up contracting chicken pox in the usual way and it was fairly mild with no complication. I also have to admit that I do not entirely trust our government to make decisions and put a side any financial gain that may be involved. While we may not completely agree with all of the reasons parents may use to choose not to vaccinate their children, they should still be protected by the right to make the choice. It is fairly obvious that children are to young to make this decision for themselves so the decision has to be left up to the parents. The foundation of our country is that as American we have the right to make individual choices. And we can't make laws prohibiting or mandating anything just because one group of our population disagrees with the choices the another. If the government were to mandate that every American child must be vaccinated, I believe, that would be unconstitutional.

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