As Utahns, we value personal responsibility, parental choice and government that stays in its lane. That’s why the new executive order on childhood vaccines deserves a skeptical look. Not because it changes what we can do, but because of what it tries to do to states that don’t fall in line.
Here’s the headline most Utahns need: This order doesn’t change much for your kids. Every vaccine currently recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics is still available, still covered by insurance with no copay for nearly all families and still something you and your clinician decide together. That choice was never taken away. Utah families have always been able to talk with their clinician about their child’s vaccine schedule.
An extra burden on families and physicians
However, the order calls for splitting the combined MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine into three shots, each administered at separate doctor visits. What is currently a two-dose vaccine would require six separate patient visits if adopted, placing an unnecessary burden on busy families.
Additionally, this is placing unneeded pressure on already overburdened clinicians and their offices. There’s no scientific reason to do this. Multiple independent reviews have found no new evidence to justify breaking apart a vaccine that already provides safe, effective protection against all three diseases in a single shot.
No country manufactures, licenses, or routinely uses separate single-disease MMR shots. Merck, the only major U.S. manufacturer of a combined MMR shot, stopped making standalone versions back in 2008. Building separate versions from scratch and getting them through FDA approval could take the better part of a decade.
In the meantime, spreading out shots means more appointments, more time away from work and school, and more time when a child is unprotected, during a year when measles cases in the U.S. have already outpaced any year since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. It also means more needle sticks for kids. Ask any child whether they’d rather get one shot or three, and the answer isn’t complicated. That’s more burden on families, with no new science to justify it.
Other concerns about the vaccine executive order
And that’s the real issue worth sitting with: this isn’t a story about expanding choice. It’s the federal government substituting its own non-scientific judgment for the judgment that states, doctors and parents already make every day.
This concern isn’t fringe. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician and Republican from Louisiana, has raised concerns about the order’s scientific basis, as have the American Academy of Pediatrics and public health voices across the spectrum.
Data shows childhood vaccines remain popular among most Utahns. Utah has spent years building a model that balances personal liberty with sound science. Parents retain the final say, while the state still leans on the evidence to guide recommendations. That’s small government done right. A one-size-fits-all mandate handed down from the White House, not backed by the CDC’s own advisory process, is the opposite of that.
What should worry Utahns most is the enforcement mechanism. The order directs the Department of Justice to pursue lawsuits against states that don’t provide broad religious and medical exemptions to school vaccine requirements, and directs the Department of Education to consider pulling grant funding from states that don’t comply.
School vaccine requirements have always been a state decision, not a federal one. Using litigation and funding threats to strong-arm states into rewriting their own laws isn’t returning power to states or parents. It’s the federal government using the checkbook and the courts to get its way. That’s big government, full stop, and it should trouble anyone who believes decisions like these belong closer to home. Utah already provides broad exemptions and keeps decision-making in the hands of parents and doctors.
So what should Utah families actually do? The same thing they’ve always done: talk to your doctor. Ask questions. Make the decision that’s right for your child, grounded in the evidence, with the person who knows your family’s health best. That’s not something any executive order can take away, and it’s not something that should be dictated to us from three thousand miles away, either.
Utah doesn’t need Washington to tell it how to balance freedom and science. We’re already doing it.