Katie Jennings was scrolling on her phone last April when a headline stopped her cold. A second unvaccinated child had died of measles in her home state of Texas.
It was a tipping point for the 40-year-old stay-at-home mom who had grown up in a staunchly anti-vaccine, fundamentalist Christian community. “What are we doing? Why are we doing this?” she remembers thinking. “I wanted to protect my kids.”
She took all six of them to get the measles, mumps and rubella shot. Then she posted an emotional TikTok aimed at the anti-vax crowd she used to be a part of: “You can change your mind,” she said in the video that’s been watched more than 422,000 times.
I went into that article assuming it would be a tragic ‘leopards eating faces’ scenario. But…
Good for her breaking free from a lifetime of antivax indoctrination and doing what’s right for her kids. It’s easy to mock antivaxers. But sometimes they are set up to fail by their parents/local community. And they deserve kudos when they succeed despite that.
And credit to get for speaking out and trying to change song minds with her action.