Europe’s human rights judges are right not to ban compulsory vaccines

If you think public health authorities in England are overbearing, spare a thought for the Czechs. Parents who fail to have children vaccinated face being fined or having their offspring excluded from nurseries. Now, in a landmark ruling, the European Court of Human Rights, has backed that policy. But even critics aghast at the thought of compulsory vaccinations should welcome the court’s verdict. Why? Because human rights judges should not be butting in here.

The Czech law bends over backwards to accommodate welfare concerns: vaccinations are free; there are exceptions for good medical reasons; and any vaccine-generated injury is automatically compensated. Yet it was still an obvious target for human rights challenge on individualist grounds. 

An indignant gentleman called Pavel Vavřička, who objected on principle to being ordered to expose his children to what he saw as unjustifiable risks and punished when he refused, duly obliged. He complained in Strasbourg that the law infringed his rights to a private life and to freedom of thought and conscience.