Just
because one's thoughts are banal doesn't mean they're true. Ideas
that have been run round the block and back a dozen or more times are
exhausted, but not necessarily toned in their intellectual
muscularity. Take for example the proclamation by a number of
anti-vaccination zealots that parents know what's best for their
children. Rand Paul, United States Senator from Kentucky and alleged
presidential aspirant, has gone even further down the road:
“Parents own the children.” And, therefore, one presumes,
can do whatever they wish to do to their little ones.
And
they have.
Bash,
smash, shoot, stab, strangle, starve, poison, torture,
crush, suffocate, drown, and drop from high
places--what parents have done a lot is filicide, the murder of their
offspring--so much so that it is the third-leading cause of death of
children between the ages of 5 and 14 in the United States. According
to Dr. Phillip Resnick, a professor of psychiatry at Case Western
Reserve University,
one out of every 33 homicides in the United States is the killing of a child under 18 by their parent, or between 250 and 300 of the country's killings each year.*
USA
Today has come
up with an even higher number of filicides:
three decades of FBI homicide data shows that on average, 450 children are killed every year by their parents.**
So,
perhaps, offering one's child the opportunity to contract measles is,
in comparison, an act of loving-kindness.
***
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