Mom Claims She'd 'Rather Go To Jail' Than Vaccinate Her Son

And she just might, if she doesn’t comply with a court order

Even amid all the research proving the effectiveness and myriad of benefits of child vaccinations, there are still parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Legally, parents do have the right to ignore the advice of medical professionals and scientific data and abstain from adhering to a vaccination schedule in many states. One mom is taking her stance against vaccines to the extreme.

Rebecca Bredow, a Michigan mom of one young son, says she’d rather face imprisonment than get her child vaccinated. “I would rather go to jail for standing up for what I believe in than vaccinate my child,” Bredow told ABC News. She believes the decision to vaccinate your child is a “personal choice.”

Bredow and her ex-husband are currently at odds over their son’s vaccinations. When they were married, Bredow claims her then-husband agreed to space out her son’s vaccines, but changed his mind once they separated. He now wishes for his son to receive all his vaccinations. She was court-ordered to bring him up to the “fullest extent medically allowed,” which means she has only a few days to get her son up-to-date on eight vaccines in one dose.

The state of Michigan does allow parents to opt-out of certain vaccines for non-medical reasons. Bredow says she did her research and decided spacing out son’s vaccines was the route she wanted to go. “It wasn’t until they started grouping them together that I backed off of doing vaccines,” she tells WXYZ Detroit.

ABC News was able to obtain court documents from the case. According to the records, Bredow was ordered to vaccinate her son in November 2016, but as of September 2017 she still hasn’t complied with the court order. Whether she ends up spending time in jail is for a judge to decide.

Just a reminder: The American Academy of Pediatrics emphasizes the necessity of vaccines in regard to children’s health and safety. “Vaccines have been part of the fabric of our society for decades and are the most significant medical innovation of our time,” the AAP says on its website. “Vaccines are safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines save lives.”