Celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D is facing backlash after she revealed her plans to not vaccinate her baby.
The television personality announced her plans in an Instagram post on Saturday. She also claimed she would be raising her child as a vegan.
“I knew the minute we announced our pregnancy that we would be bombarded with unsolicited advice,” Von D started the post.
READ MORE: Canadian children should get vaccinated for hepatitis B at birth, experts say
She continued: “I also was prepared for the backlash and criticism we would get if we decided to be open about our personal approach to our pregnancy.”
The 36-year-old Kat Von D Beauty founder also said she plans on having “a natural, drug-free home birth in water with a midwife and doula” and that she “has the intention of raising a vegan child, without vaccinations.”
“This is my body. This is our child. And this is our pregnancy journey,” she wrote alongside the baby bump photo.
WATCH BELOW: The latest on vaccines
READ MORE: These are the Canadians less likely to vaccinate — and why they’re hesitant
Many fans became infuriated by Von D’s decision and announced a boycott of her cosmetics line.
Beauty blogger Caroline Hirons shared an image of her then 23-year-old son when he was bed-ridden in the hospital after contracting mumps, a contagious disease that is easily preventable with vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
She tagged Von D in her caption, saying: “When I see people like @thekatvond using their platform to promote raising her unborn child ‘without vaccinations,’ I want her and the droves of ill-advised people underneath … to see and know that this is the reality of ‘benign disease.'”
READ MORE: Bowmanville student may be suspended for getting vaccinations two days too early
Following the backlash, Von D took to Instagram again to explain her decision.
“My husband @prayers and I are NOT anti-vaxxers. We are not against vaccines. Just because we have hesitancies and valid concerns about injecting our baby with specific chemicals and toxins does not mean we are anti anything,” she wrote.
“When it comes to vaccinating our child, is also no one’s business — regardless of what I post on Instagram,” Von D wrote.
She also added that she has been receiving death wishes onto her “unborn child.” She turned the comments off on her most recent post because she doesn’t “plan on continuing this topic” and is not interested “in fighting anyone.”
READ MORE: Why this mom is blaming anti-vaxxers for her daughter’s hospitalization
When parents choose not to immunize their children, Dr. Joan Robinson, chair of the Canadian Pediatrics Society’s Infectious Diseases and Immunization committee, says they are putting other kids — especially children with compromised immune systems — at risk.
When they contract an infectious disease like chicken pox or measles, for example, their reaction will be far more severe than if a healthy child were to contract the same infectious disease, Robinson explains.
But when it comes to measles, Robinson says that’s where things can get dangerous.
“We still have no treatment for measles,” she says. “So there’s actually far more concern that a child can die from measles.”
Besides staying away from infected individuals, children with compromised immune systems actually have no preventative way of protecting themselves from contracting infectious diseases. While healthy children can be vaccinated, immunosuppressed children are unable to receive any vaccination that contains a live virus, Robinson explains.
“Now the virus has been what we call attenuated, which means it’s been changed into a much weaker form of the virus,” Robinsons says. “So anyone with a normal immune system, if they’re given that vaccine, there’s no way they would ever get — for example — full-blown measles or chicken pox. They might get a bit of a rash but they will not get very sick and probably not even be contagious. But someone who is immunosuppressed, if you gave them the vaccine, the concern is they might get full-blown measles or chicken pox from the vaccine and can even die from it.”
So bottom line, says Robinson, is that when parents vaccinate their kids, they’re not only protecting their own child, but others as well, especially those who are vulnerable and unable to protect themselves.
—With files from Dani-Elle Dube