For a large part of my (albeit short) life, I was blissfully unaware of the anti-vaccination movement. I knew that some people dismissed medicine out of hand—generally on religious grounds—but I had no idea that a growing number of otherwise reasonable and educated people believed that vaccinating their children was somehow unhealthy.

My parents and their friends belong to community where due deference was given to the opinions of doctors and scientists, and wholesale rejection of scientific findings was considered irrational. How lucky I was. While my ignorance was bliss, the ignorance of anti-vaccination parents constitutes a grave public health risk—one that was recently thrust into the public consciousness by an outbreak of measles at Disneyland.

Measles is a disease that spreads easily through the air—much like the common cold—but is much more dangerous. In developed countries like the U.S., death only occurs in about 0.2 percent of measles cases, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, in less developed countries, the mortality rate can be as high as 10 percent.

But, there’s another difference between measles here and in the sort of place only National Geographic and the Navy SEALs venture: the infection rate is on the rise here. According to the CDC, between 2002 and 2007 there were well under 100 cases of measles in the U.S. each year. In 2014, there were more than 600. And just 37 days into 2015, there have already been 102 cases. Not surprisingly, nearly all of those who contracted measles were unvaccinated.

Parents have all sorts of reasons for refusing to vaccinate their kids, but none of them are valid. From religious objections to a rejection of anything unnatural, and from the demonstrably false belief that vaccines give kids autism to some really hilarious conspiracy theories, parents latch on to ignorant justifications that can hurt their own kids or others.

Of course, certain individuals have medical conditions that prevent them from being vaccinated, and they instead rely on the herd protection of a healthy populace to avoid contracting dangerous infectious diseases. The greater the percentage of people in a country that are immunized, the harder it is for a disease to gain a foothold. And because vaccines are not 100 percent effective, it is important for everyone who is able to get vaccinated.

Some parents of vaccine-ineligible children have threatened to sue the parents of unvaccinated children for endangering their kids. More power to them. It’s certainly not inconceivable that they win.

One parent who deserves such a lawsuit is Dina Check, a Staten Island mother who filed suit against the City of New York for its refusal to let her unvaccinated child attend school during a chickenpox outbreak.

“The devil is germs and disease, which is cancer and any of those things that can take you down. But if you trust in the Lord, these things cannot come near you,”  said Check, who did not vaccinate her child on religious grounds.

I’d urge her to tell that to children in the third world—many of whom, I’m sure, place a great deal of trust in God—who cannot obtain the measles vaccine, and are susceptible to contracting the disease and dying.

Check’s lawsuit, Phillips v. City of New York (2015), was dismissed in federal court. The U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit said that New York City’s refusal to allow unvaccinated students to attend school during an outbreak was constitutional, citing a century-old decision that stated the police power of the state extended to vaccination requirements, and that New York’s rule could have been much stricter and remained Constitutional.

Phillips and the previous case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), demonstrate that states’ interests in keeping their citizens safe are so important that they supersede even religious objections, which are usually protected by our constitution.

With the growing wave of antipathy towards vaccination, we should not forget that smallpox, one of the most horrific diseases known to mankind, was eradicated thanks to vaccines.

Barring the efficacy of lawsuits to force parents to vaccinate their children, states should move quickly to require vaccination for all those eligible and energetically pursue the goal of a healthy populace.

Perhaps the best argument that a court has laid forth that could support vaccine mandates comes from Prince v. Massachusetts (1945), which dealt primarily with child labor laws, but briefly delved into the issue of vaccination.

Justice Rutledge, writing for the majority argued that: “the family itself is not beyond regulation in the public interest, as against a claim of religious liberty…[a]nd neither rights of religion nor rights of parenthood are beyond limitation…[The state’s] authority is not nullified merely because the parent grounds his claim to control the child’s course of conduct on religion or conscience. Thus, he cannot claim freedom from compulsory vaccination for the child more than for himself on religious grounds. The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death.”

It may be true that we give parents ample opportunity to fuck up their kids. But this is a question of them fucking up other people’s kids, and we should absolutely prohibit the possibility.