Does liberty mean a right to kill other people’s children, slowly and painfully? It would, if the Trump administration had its way. It’s pressing states to allow broad vaccine exemptions as part of its larger campaign against settled medical practice.

The danger is clearest with measles. Children usually recover from it, albeit often with some permanent damage. But a 2016 California study found that when infants under a year old are infected, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) – in which the virus lingers in the brain and slowly destroys it – develops in about 1 in 600 cases, far higher than the 1-in-100,000 figure doctors had long cited.

Long after the initial infection, the child becomes clumsy and forgetful, then experiences headaches, fevers and seizures, loses motor control and finally becomes bedridden and dies.

Babies can't be vaccinated on the standard schedule until 12 to 15 months old – earlier doses, at six months, are given only for travel to outbreak areas and don't count toward full protection. (Under the schedule revisions the Department of Health and Human Services just proposed, some of that timeline would push even later.)

Until children are protected, the only way to guard against SSPE is to keep them away from unvaccinated people.

In Germany in 1999, an........

© USA TODAY