I was raised by anti-vaxxers. I’m terrified for today’s kids.

How many of those under 18 will be put at risk because of their parents’ poor decisions?

The author around age 11 or 12, playing dress-up.

We were lucky to survive.

My parents stopped vaccinating us when I was a year old. At three, I got the chicken pox; when I was 12, my six siblings got it, including the 14-year-old eldest. They remember dragging themselves down the hall, barely conscious and burning with fever, to run themselves a cold bath. Everyone else was too busy or sick to help them.

Not long before that, there was an outbreak of pertussis in the greater Seattle area, with around 100 cases reported. My siblings and I were seven of them. I spent three months feeling as though my lungs were trying to escape through my throat.

There were many other forms of medical neglect in our childhood—high-risk home births, waiting three days to have a broken limb examined, insufficient antibiotics, and few trips to doctors or hospitals even in urgent, dangerous situations.

But the lack of vaccination is a symbol for all of these and more. With many illnesses nearing eradication, my family was part of an early push that brought them back, repeatedly putting our lives (and others’) at risk.

Children deserve the keys to their own…