How much say should a person have in what they do with their body when it has consequences for other people's health?

The line should be drawn when it affects other people. Babies or otherwise.

I think the situation can be very tragic, but we all have a right to choose whether or not we are vaccinated and I support it.

Side-note EDIT: I am totally up to date.

We could have a nice little police state where everyone with all vaccinations could carry a card allowing them to travel out in the open, but folks without vaccinations would have to wear gas masks around other people, including their own children.

That’s just a bit of sarcasm, folks.

This in not the kind of thing you can legislate. If people want to engage in antisocial behavior, then the rest of us just have to bear the cost. If people want to smoke or drink or eat unhealthily, and no one can be turned away from the hospital for lack of insurance, then the rest of us have to pay for it.

The best we can do is to educate people and hope they will be persuaded to do the pro-social thing. But there is so much behavior that affects others—from colds and flus to whooping cough and measles to cervical cancer and AIDS—that affects others and as far as I know, you can’t be sued for negligence for not having your vaccinations.

If we do need to assign blame, then I would think the legal system is the way to go. Sue the unvaccinated who cause an illness to spread. Let them pay damages to the others who have been hurt. I’d be totally fine with that.

You have a choice carry to term or abort. If you choose the former you are accepting responsibility for the resulting baby until such time society deems it capable of being responsible for itself. I believe this ought entail a compromise such that if you knowingly or through blatantly willful ignorance take actions that cause it harm, society must hold you responsible as though you had committed the same actions against any other of its members. However, the choice in those actions must remain yours.

I am tired having high health insurance premiums to cover all those people who’s only exercise is filling their pie holes. It’s OK to kill yourself. Just don’t expect me to pay for it.

This will be an interesting discussion that we’ll probably have post-mortem (those of us who are left, anyway) after the next pandemic. Most lay people don’t understand that the 1918–19 Spanish Flu pandemic was more devastating to the world at large than the Black Plague of the Middle Ages. Yes, many American civil liberties were curtailed as a public health measure in attempts to limit the spread of infection, out of absolute need.

Surely such an event will occur again. The only questions are what, when, how virulent, and how it can be stopped. And with today’s modern transportation infrastructure, which certainly didn’t exist 100 years ago (when the most modern form of mass transport was by rail), the restrictions on travel and other civil liberties will be necessarily more dire.

On the other hand… even though the event you refer to is tragic, and other public health issues such as antibiotic-resistant strains of TB are on the rise, as well as hepatitis and various STDs, I don’t think we want to become health nazis, either.

The answer, as always, lies in better education and self-education. In general, those who refuse the vaccinations are most at risk, and the infants you mention are “collateral damage”. Unfortunate, but that’s how life is. We can’t protect everyone from everyone else. To attempt to do so would make us a society we wouldn’t want to be members of. Like the Patriot Act.

Smoking should only be with other consenting adults.

I think there may come a time when Health Insurance companies put more verbage and disclaimers when they are insuring you. They are already doing it and I suspect it will not be too long before it goes deeper.
For now I think the question is how much say does a person have when someone else does something that affects our own health. We can control our own health, but need to be more aware and act on things that are risks to our health in the hidden things around us.
We quickly have forgotten that many walked around a few years ago due to the risk of the flu pandemic. We certainly are aware of those that are obvious and newsworthy. A household member smoking is obvious, but a stressful home is not so obvious or easy to deal with.
If only people were respectful and acted on some of the very things that they do to others and did it out of respect as opposed to some medical news of the day.
Better self awareness, respect and action to correct would be a good start. Those that are ignorant are I guess, just ignorant.

Although I think the anti-vaccine movement is one of the biggest acts of dumbassery in existence, I’m not sure how I feel about mandating it. I do think we should feel free to restrict people who aren’t vaccinated from going into schools, daycares, hospitals, etc. And charge them high insurance premiums.