Image Description: Kat Von D’s face in the middle of the photograph, and wears winged eyeliner and drawn stars on her cheek. Von D has her hand positioned slantly as she holds her eyeliner above the star on her cheek. 

Beauty entrepreneur Kat Von D took headlines this past week for posting an Instagram picture of her pregnancy and detailing on how she has received unsolicited pregnancy advice from strangers. That includes opinions from her vegan diet, her choice of doing an in-home birth, and not vaccinating her child. Wait..what?

Kat Von D writes in her post, “If you don’t know what it’s like to have the entire world openly criticize, judge, throw uninformed opinions, and curse you – try being an openly pregnant vegan on Instagram, having a natural, drug-free home birth in water with a midwife and a doula, who has the intention of raising a vegan child, without vaccinations.” Then, Von D finishes her post off with a strong finish, “This is my body. This is our child. And this is our pregnancy journey. But if you don’t dig a certain something about what I post, I kindly ask that you press the unfollow button and move the [f*ck] on.

Von D brought up a good point in her post – in which that most moms in their pregnancy journey receive overbearing and unwanted opinions on how they should raise their children, or even how to take care of themselves. However, the mom shame of choosing whether you will be doing a vegan or non-vegan diet has much less weight than choosing whether or not you will be vaccinating your child. Much because, bringing up that old and dreary vaccination debate comes with various myths, lies, and stigmas.

The main argument of the anti-vaxx movement is that vaccines cause autism. This stems back from a 1998 published research study, in which the hypothesis states that there is a direct link between children getting their routine vaccines and later being diagnosed with autism in their childhood. Shortly after, controversy erupted in public media, and vaccination rates plummeted in the region. For the following years, the link between vaccinations and autism were studied extensively, and no reputable case study had found for this link to be true. Furthermore, the doctor who was deemed the leader on this case study was stripped of his medical license because he falsified all data on the study.

And yet, national health organizations and those alike still need to reassure people that vaccines don’t cause autism. The CDC has a whole page debunking this myth, linking to various reputable case studies that show real data in that there is no link between vaccines causing autism. In fact, in one study, researchers provide evidence that autism forms as early as in utero, well before the child receives vaccines.

So..why is it that the anti-vaxxer movement continues to flourish? Because the anti-vaxxer movement and theory is based entirely on ableism. The root of this theory is bad science, and the root of the bad science is a result of the false case study’s ableism. The theory preys on the vulnerability of the ableist notion that people are scared to have a child with a disability, and thus pushing to eliminate every factor that could lead to a child having a disability. Every article that provides false data in order to convince people to not vaccinate their children, is another clear marker of this foundational ableism; children born with disabilities are a mistake and a defect.

But not only is there the preconceived disposition that anti-vaxxers give out about disabled people, but also that because of their stance of not vaccinating their children, they are putting other children at risk for illnesses. Such as children with immunodeficiency disorders, or other disabilities that leave children with weak immune systems.

Moreover, celebrities such as Kat Von D that use their influence in order to make people believe false information about their health and feed into socio-normative prejudice against people with disabilities is poised to spark a national controversy, and is markedly different than a conversation about a vegan diet.