Amish Mothers Are “Not Against The Vaccine,” Says Midwife Seeking To Give Them Measles Shots
Roberta Devers, a midwife of 38 years who serves many Amish mothers in Lancaster County, wants Pennsylvania to let midwives give the measles vaccine. But that’s something state law does not currently allow.
Devers made the request in an interview with 6abc Action News published yesterday. On Monday, the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced the state has passed 1,000 measles cases this year. Lancaster County has the highest count, with 383 reported to date.
However, in order to do that, she is asking the state to allow midwives the opportunity to administer the vaccine to any Amish mothers who ask for it. She said it’s important to meet people where they are in an effort to achieve herd immunity.
Devers is not Amish. She is a traditional midwife, a type of midwife not regulated by the state and barred by state law from practicing medicine, including giving vaccines.
Since many Amish women deliver their babies at home, midwives, both Amish and non-Amish, provide important services in their communities. Devers has decades of experience in the field, and you would assume has a good sense of views within the community.
When she raised the idea in September, the Department of Health told the Philadelphia Inquirer it does not have the authority to allow it, and that adding to the list of who can give vaccines would require a change to state law.
Midwife Says Amish Mothers “Not Against The Vaccine”
Devers told 6abc that most Amish births in the area happen at home with midwives’ assistance. She said the families she serves are not against the vaccine, but tradition factors heavily into their decision-making on it.
But she acknowledged the influence that she and others like her can have on encouraging immunization in the community:
“I think it’s fair to say that they are aptly suspect of these vaccines… They are a community that really values holistic medicine, and values that kind of holistic care. So, because we provide that, they trust us to give them accurate information.”
Devers has been trying to provide the mothers she works with a balanced view of the MMR vaccine. According to her, that “view usually leads them to say, ‘I think I better get immunized.'”
The Inquirer reported in September that Amish families had begun asking Devers, as she drove between prenatal checkups, whether she had the vaccine with her in her car.
Devers also described attending the burial of a 17-week-old unborn baby:
“I had the privilege and sadness of carrying a little baby to a grave, a 17-week-old fetal demise. I stayed for that service,” Devers explained.
According to the Inquirer, the mother was recovering from an active measles infection at the time of the miscarriage, and had at least one other underlying medical condition.
Devers sees the threat as something she can affect to save very young lives:
“When I’ve seen babies die, and I’m thinking about what it’s going to take if we don’t vaccinate these people to reach herd immunity, there’s going to be a lot of baby deaths before we reach herd immunity unless they get immunized,” she explained.
Five Confirmed Measles-Associated Deaths In Pennsylvania; Four Of Them Amish
The story of how measles has affected the Amish has steadily progressed over recent months. At the end of August, officials were still declining to name Amish communities in connection with the outbreak.
That changed in early September, when a New York health director reported cases among the Amish in three western counties and the Lancaster County coroner confirmed a 6-week-old Amish girl died of measles.
Lancaster County Amish parents have since described differing responses, from vaccinating to natural remedies to leaving it in God’s hands.
The state has now reported five measles-associated deaths this year. Four of them were Amish, according to news reports, including the sad story of a 20-year-old Amish woman from Lancaster County, reported last week in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The account of what happened came largely from her grandmother.
The young woman had been diagnosed with leukemia about two years earlier, and married in November 2025. When measles went through her household in late summer, her parents, her husband, and all eight of her siblings got sick. As the illness spread, she asked her doctor about getting the MMR vaccine. But she was not able to, because the chemotherapy had weakened her immune system, and the vaccine contains a weakened live virus.
She seemed to recover in early September, then took a downturn before passing away in the hospital. The young woman’s grandmother said no one in the household was vaccinated, but that the family does not oppose vaccines on religious grounds and considers it an individual choice. “We wouldn’t tell people not to get vaccinated,” she said.
The state announced the fifth death on September 30, describing it only as an unvaccinated Lancaster County resident. The Inquirer reported that the 20-year-old appears to be that case. The state has not confirmed it.
We’ve already looked at the case of two Amish infants in Lancaster County who died in August, including the 6-week-old girl whose death the coroner attributed directly to measles.
A 40-year-old Jefferson County woman with serious lung disease died earlier in September.
And an 18-year-old from Mifflin County died of complications of measles, specifically a rare condition that causes inflammation in the brain, according to Mifflin County Coroner Andrea Alcalde, as reported by abc27. The Inquirer now identifies the 18-year-old as an Amish woman.
Mifflin County is home to the sizeable Big Valley settlement. In late September, a report from a clinic serving Amish families in and around Belleville, a town in the center of that community, described the area (along with Lancaster County) as being “at the heart” of the outbreak.
As of Monday, Mifflin County had 118 reported cases, second only to Lancaster, according to the Lewistown Sentinel.
Finally, CNN reported today from the Central Pennsylvania Clinic in Belleville, which serves Amish and other Plain families.
After the 18-year-old’s death was announced, the clinic received many calls from patients and others in the community who wanted to know what happened. At “pop-up” vaccination clinics the clinic hosted in August and September, nearly 100 people were vaccinated, the majority after the young woman’s death.
Of particular concern are those with other conditions, which is who the Central Pennsylvania Clinic would be seeing (it is primarily focused on diagnosing and treating genetic disorders, largely in the Plain population). Three of the five deaths reported were people who had another significant medical issue, presumably leaving them less able to fight an active measles infection.
Masern?!
Mit 5 Jahren hatte ich Masern, mit 6 Jahren überstand ich Windpocken und Mumphs (Ziegenpeter). Seit wann bestehen die lieben Menschen aus Seidenpapier?
Die bestmögliche Geheimwaffe: eine deutsche Mutter.