Commentary: Human Rights Court Gives Nearly Unanimous Support in Ruling For Mandatory Vaccines

The European Court of Human Rights has sided with the Czech Republic’s compulsory vaccination law after it was challenged by a number of parents who argued that the state requirements violated their right to privacy.

The case had been brought forward by the families after their children were denied entry to preschool because they were not fully vaccinated against “poliomyelitis, hepatitis B, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough and pneumococcal infections,” EuroNews reported.

The BBC noted that under Czech law, parents are legally obligated to vaccinate their children unless they have a medical exemption. They add that “the jabs cannot be forcibly given and unvaccinated children cannot be excluded on this basis once they reach primary school age.”

On Thursday, 16 out of the 17 ECHR judges determined that mandatory vaccines could be considered “necessary” to democracy and that the state was well within its bounds to require vaccination.

“The measures could be regarded as being necessary in a democratic society,” the court wrote, according to EuroNews, and that the government had not “exceeded their wide margin of appreciation in this area.”

“The objective had to be to protect every child against serious diseases. In the great majority of cases, this was achieved by children receiving the full schedule of vaccinations during their early years. Those to whom such treatment could not be administered were indirectly protected against contagious diseases as long as the requisite level of vaccination coverage was maintained in their community; in other words, their protection came from herd immunity,” they said.

Now, this ruling involved compulsory childhood vaccinations, but of course, the implications for the novel coronavirus vaccine are certainly being considered.