The slogan “my body, my choice” is not a new one. It has been around for years and, until
practically yesterday, everyone who heard it – or read it on a placard – knew who
the person saying it –or holding the placard – was and what this person was
talking about. That person was someone
who identified as “pro-choice”, the choice in question being the choice of a
woman to have an abortion.
Those of us who were on the right side of the abortion
debate, the side that generally went by the label “pro-life”, would answer this
slogan by pointing out that it was not just the woman’s body that would be
affected by the abortion. The unborn
baby inside her would also be affected.
Indeed, its life would be terminated as that is the essential nature of
an abortion. The pro-choice movement
has gone to great lengths to disguise the true nature of abortion from itself,
and from those women contemplating one.
They use euphemistic language
like “reproductive rights”, “reproductive health”, and the like in order to
depict abortion as being merely a routine medical procedure. They object strenuously to efforts by the
pro-life movement to shatter this façade and bring the true nature of abortion
out into the open by, for example, showing graphic depictions of aborted
babies.
It can no longer be assumed, when one hears the slogan “my
body, my choice”, that the person speaking is talking about abortion. Indeed, it is probably safe to say that if
you hear that slogan today, the chances are that the person saying it is not
talking about abortion at all. This is
because in the last couple of months or so the slogan has been adopted by a
different group of people altogether, those who are on the right side of the
forced vaccine debate and are bravely standing up to the mob which, scared
senseless by two years of media fear porn about the bat flu virus, is supporting
governments in their efforts to shove needles into everyone’s arms whether they
want them or not.
The mob’s answer to this new use of the slogan, when they
bother to respond with anything other than “shut up and do what you are told”
is similar to the pro-life movement’s answer to the pro-abortion use of the
slogan. It is not just our bodies, they
tell us. It is our duty to do our part
to take the jab in order to protect others from the bat flu and if we don’t do
our part the government should force us to do so by making our lives as
miserable as possible until we do.
Before showing how and why the pro-life movement was right
in its answer to the slogan as used by the pro-abortion movement while the
supporters of forced vaccination are wrong in their answer to the slogan, it might be interesting
to observe another way in which these two seemingly disparate issues intersect. Among those of us who are on the side of
the angels against forced vaccination there are those who are merely against vaccines
being coerced and there are those who have objections to the vaccines qua vaccines. Those who object to the vaccines qua vaccines could be further divided
into those who are against all vaccines on principle and those who have
problems with the bat flu vaccines specifically. The latter include a large number of traditionalist
Roman Catholics and Orthodox, evangelical Protestants, and other religious
conservatives. One of the reasons more
religious conservatives have objected to the bat flu vaccines is that the mRNA
type vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna) are developed from research that used a
cell line originally derived from an aborted foetus and the Johnson &
Johnson viral vector vaccine used a cell line from a different aborted foetus
in its production and manufacturing stage.
Now, let us consider some differences between these
scenarios that render the pro-life movement’s response to “my body, my choice”
valid, and the pro-forced vaccination mob’s response to the same invalid.
The pro-life movement objects that “my body, my choice” is
not a valid defense of abortion because abortion causes the death of someone
other than the woman choosing to have an abortion. This is a strong argument because a)
abortion always, in every instance, and indeed, by definition, causes such a
death, b) the death is always of a specific someone who is known, to the extent
an unnamed person can be known, and c) the death is always intentional on the part
of the persons performing and having the abortion. The opposite of all of this is true in the
case of someone who rejects the bat flu vaccines. Someone not getting a vaccine is never the
direct cause of another person’s death.
An unvaccinated person can only transmit the virus to someone else if he
himself has the virus. Even if he does
have the virus and does transmit it to someone else that other person is far
more likely to survive the virus than to die from it. This is true even if the other person is in
the most-at-risk category. It would be
extremely rare, if it happens at all, that causing another person, let alone a specific
other person, to die would be part of the intent in deciding not to be
vaccinated. Therefore, the argument
that the pro-life movement uses against “my body, my choice” in the case of
abortion, does not hold up as an argument against the same in the case of
forced vaccination.
A second important difference is in how the expression “my
body, my choice” is used by the two groups.
The pro-choice movement uses it against those who would prohibit women from having an
abortion. The opponents of forced
vaccination use it against those who would compel
everybody to take an injection. To
compel somebody to do something requires a much stronger justification than to
prohibit them from doing something. This
is especially the case when it comes to medical procedures. A reasonable justification for denying
someone a medical procedure that is not urgently needed to save
the person’s life from immediate danger is far more conceivable than such a justification for
compelling someone to undergo a medical procedure. In the case of the bat flu vaccines, the
clinical trials of which will not be completed for another two years, many of
which include mRNA which has never been used in vaccines before, which increase
the risk of the heart conditions pericarditis and myocarditis, as well as
thrombosis (blood clots) and Bell’s palsy, and which is for a respiratory
disease that people who are young and healthy have well over a 99% chance of
surviving and even those who are not young and healthy are far more likely to
survive than not, the idea that compelling anyone to take these could ever be
rationally justified is morally repugnant.
So we see that “my body, my choice” is weak and invalid with
regards to abortion but is strong and valid with regards to forced vaccination
(vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, etc.) The only reason there is a mob supporting
and calling for the latter today, is because people and businesses have been terrorized by the media and their governments and subjected to hellish lockdowns and restrictions for almost two years, are sick
of it, would agree to almost anything to be rid of it, and so they jumped
aboard the forced vaccination bandwagon when the public health mandarins said that
we need vaccine mandates and vaccine passports to avoid another lockdown. The public health mandarins are lying,
however, as they have been lying since day one of the bat flu pandemic. All that is needed for us to avoid another
lockdown is for governments to start respecting our constitutional rights and
freedoms and the constitutional limits on their own power. They will only do this if we insist upon it. Letting them get away with forced
vaccination is not a step towards the return of freedom, but towards greater
tyranny.
Good post. I made a similar observation a while back: https://www.francisberger.com/bergers-blog/my-body-what-choice
ReplyDeleteThe successful global totalitarian coup of 2020 has laid bare the utter vacuity of the supposedly inviolable secular, humanistic rights upon which liberal democracy is (was?) apparently based. This is true both at the nation level and the global level.
I humbly suggest perusing the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights and comparing the declaration with our current circumstances.
I am pessimistic about the reinstatement or fortification of these so-called secular human rights. The only "human rights" that have escaped untarnished thus far are those containing blatantly destructive, anti-God elements.
Thank you, both for your remarks and the link to your own post.
DeleteI agree that the prospects of recovering much of what has vanished in the last couple of years - which could never have happened had not a total transformation of values and priorities already taken place - do not look bright. I am reminded of how the late John Lukacs used to talk about how he, although a Catholic, reactionary, monarchist, admired the liberalism of the nineteenth century, because it was preferable to any conceivable future.