For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better.
She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.
Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”
She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there.
You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.
mosquitoes had the nerve…the audacity…the unmitigated gall…to come into my home…where i pay the bills…and suck the blood out of my veins…veins i’ve had for 22 years…
Yet when someone tells me that they are going to pray for me, genuinely, with nothing but love in their hearts, I just smile and say thank you….
…because I’m not an insufferable jackass.
I’m an athiest, but I live in the south so there’s always religion being thrown in my face. For context of this story: I had surgery in July, the fifth in a row for a medical issue I’ve had for two years.
One weekend before my surgery I went and got a facial (let me tell you. if you’ve never had a facial, YOU NEED TO). This was the most relaxing experience I’ve ever had, tbh. But my esthetician and I had been talking sometime during my facial that I was having surgery soon. So, at the end, she asked, “Can I pray for you?”
This put me in a damn weird position because I don’t believe in the “power of prayer” as my aunt calls it. So I had two choices: say yes and just go with it, or say no and look like an ass.
So I told her “Yes” and I suppose I expected her to pray for me at a later date? But she prayed for me, with me, right then and there in the room. And honestly?
I bawled.
Look, I don’t believe in a god. I don’t believe that her attempting to contact an entity would have changed my outcome of my surgery at all. But the sheer fact that this woman, whom I’d known for all of an hour while she did my facial, was willing to take 5 minutes out of her day to sit down and use her faith to help me.
Shame on the people who put others down for their willingness to pray for and help them.
Bro u people are still getting mad at me saying religious schools shouldn’t exist like that even tho every other comment is about how students were given below the standard education and were abused by their teachers many of whom didn’t have the adequate degrees in education
not strictly a school, but served to separate and indoctrinate kids :
it literally took a local amateur to bring this to light….like the church was giving these orders directly and staged cover up after cover up….
here she is btw; her name is catherine corless and she had to battle the clergy to make this come to light
The last point though, there are rumored to be hundreds of similar homes for unwed mothers with similar circumstances in Germany. There are no records of many of these homes even though they existed, but they operated as late as the 80s, some kids born there barely being older than I am (turning 30 soon).
I’m sure there were plenty more all over the world.
I hope I’m not derailing but I just read an article (in German) about it. That topic should be discussed in a separate post though.
Christian schools and colonialism are so intertwined and linked that that in itself is already the only argument you need against them. Other examples only serve to illustrate the point further, but the breaking point for people should be that.
speaking of – an old article but still very much important, especially given all the marches and demos wrt to recent pope’s visit:
Astronaut bird 