Source: WHYY.org
Even during the pandemic, Nicholas Montero has managed to keep busy. The high school junior stays on top of his schoolwork at Neshaminy High in Bucks County. He runs track, works night and weekend shifts at Burger King, participates in about every club and extracurricular you can think of.
But for Montero, his packed schedule is also strategic: It’s a way to stay out of the house.
Montero and his parents are separated by a political and cultural rift that divides many families and communities throughout the country: His parents are a part of a small but vocal minority who oppose COVID-19 vaccinations, and refused to let him get the shots.
“The thing about these beliefs is that they alternate by the day,” said Montero, who is 16. “It’s not one solid thing that they’re going with, so it’s just really baseless. It’s like one thing they see on Facebook, and then they completely believe it.
“I try to explain to them that the vaccines are safe. They’re effective. I try to explain that we know people that have been vaccinated, even our own family members who’ve been vaccinated for months and experienced no side effects. But nothing seems to get through to them.”
He traces his parents’ views back to Donald Trump’s election as president. As the pandemic progressed, he said, their political stance evolved into an anti-vaccine attitude, which the couple had never had before. He tries to avoid conflict by spending as much time away from home as possible, visiting often with his aunts and grandmother in Philadelphia.
While bouncing between his two aunts’ houses, Montero’s friends were getting their first COVID shots. He was worried he might get sick. Worse, he was concerned he might transmit a coronavirus infection to his elderly, though completely vaccinated, grandmother. So he started doing some research.
He learned that it is possible for minors to get vaccinated without parental consent in some other states; that Pennsylvania minors can make their own medical decisions if they get married, are legally emancipated from their parents, enlist in the military, or are pregnant; and that in 2007:
Philadelphia’s Board of Health passed a regulation that allows anyone over the age of 11 to get vaccinated without a parent, provided the young person can give informed consent.
Current Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said the regulation was designed to remove any additional barriers to vaccination: “It can be very difficult, especially for lower-income parents, to get time off work to go to those appointments. It just makes it easier for parents and families to be able to make sure their kids are vaccinated.”
In addition, such policies give minors who are sexually active or parentally abused access to medical intervention, and also lay the groundwork for them to get vaccinated in the event of a disagreement, like the one between Montero and his parents.