Professional tattoo artist and former reality TV star Kat Von D is pregnant for the first time, and she’s handling it about as well as you’d expect: she’s advertising her decision not to vaccinate the baby and lashing out at fans who disagree.

Von D makes a living by injecting people with synthetic inks that offer no medical benefit, but when it comes to her pregnancy, she’s going all natural. That means the baby will be vegan, and she’s not going to be seeing a doctor or getting the child vaccinated.

She posted on Instagram that she was fed up with “unsolicited advice” regarding her decision to skip potentially life-saving vaccinations and “ditch our doctor and go with a midwife instead.”

If you don’t know what it’s like have people around you think you are ridiculous, try being openly vegan. And, if you don’t know what it’s like to have the entire world openly criticize, judge, throw uninformed opinions, and curse you — try being an openly pregnant vegan on Instagram, having a natural, drug-free home birth in water with a midwife and doula, who has the intention of raising a vegan child, without vaccinations.

Being vegan is one thing — it’s possible to raise babies without any animal products — but avoiding medical care for your child is quite another. She goes on to say that “your negative comments” won’t influence her ideas but “actual research” will. Unfortunately, although she says she is “diligently doing” that research, it doesn’t show in her advertised conclusions.

This is my body. This is our child. And this is our pregnancy journey… So before anyone of you feel inspired to tell me how to do this, I would appreciate you keeping your unsolicited criticism to yourself. More importantly, for those who have amazing positive energy to send my way, I will gladly and graciously receive it with love!

Translation: “My baby is an extension of myself, not its own person, and I will ignore anyone concerned about my child’s best interests.”

That’s not to say they haven’t tried. Some of Von D’s fans stepped up and told her how wrong she is.

“I was on board until you got to the ‘no vaccinations’ part,” read one Facebook response, which fetched more than 17,000 likes. “That is not a “my kid, my choice” thing; you are actively putting other people at risk when you don’t vaccinate your child. Please talk to an actual medical professional about this!!” “While I agree it’s your body and your baby, you need to do more research on the vaccinations,” added a commenter. “You are putting your child at risk and other children around them at risk for things which have been medically gone for years [but] now have returned because of people refusing to vaccinate their kids and children have died needlessly for this nonsense. It isn’t right. Those are facts. And it’s selfish.”

I couldn’t agree with these commenters more. There were, of course, some supportive comments congratulating Von D on her anti-vax stance as well. But the fact that these informed, reasonable statements were so popular on her own post at least tells us that not everyone is easily influenced against vaccines and medicine in general.

I would also suggest watching this video by Rachel Oates for a rundown of why this stance is so problematic:

(Top image via Shutterstock)

