"My Body, My Choice"? Stop.

A few years - I was talking with a friend of mine about the death penalty. He asked me if I was pro-life and I said, "yes, of course". He said, "well, then you can't be in favor of the death-penalty". He went on to say that if you are pro-life, then you uphold life in all of its forms, regardless of the circumstances. That is the only intellectually honest way to look at it. It is one of the rare times in my life where my opinion on something was truly changed. I no longer support the death-penalty, no matter how much I think it might apply in a given situation.

Recently, I have seen Christians and others who are against vaccine/mask mandates using the slogan 'my body, my choice'. That phrase, of course, is 'stolen' from the pro-choice movement. While I do not disagree, ideologically, with the message the anti-vaccine mandate folks are trying to send - I think that kind of messaging is intellectually inconsistent. First, it is legitimizing of their argument. If you are pro-life, you don't even recognize that 'my body, my choice' is the right argument. After all, in the VAST majority of abortions, the baby is being killed simply because the mother doesn't want the inconvenience of a child. The choice was made, well before a child was conceived, to engage in sexual relationships. That was the choice - the baby was the consequence. It is never one's choice to prematurely end the life of another, whether that life exists within the womb or otherwise.

Second, it is sending mixed messages. If you are staunchly against abortion, and argue against 'my body, my choice' when its about something you disagree with, but then embrace the phrase when it is convenient for the argument you're trying to make, then you've muddied the waters and watered down what you believe in. Regarding an issue as grave as abortion, we cannot afford to water down our convictions.

There are much stronger reasons to be against taking the vaccine or against vaccine mandates in general. For instance, if you're under 50, the iCFR (infection case fatality rate) for that age group and COVID is something like 0.2%. In other words, about 200 out of every 100,000 people infected with COVID, under the age of 50, end of dying from COVID. 99.8% of that age group that gets COVID survives COVID (source). So you could simply argue that you do not need the vaccine. Especially in light of the fact that the CDC has admitted that getting the shot doesn't mean you can't spread COVID. 

Vaccine mandate-wise, one need only to look to the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which provides a number of protections for individuals and The People, against government overreach. Some have tried to argue that the are extenuating circumstances, but it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will agree with that. In some ways, it is besides the point - rarely does the Federal Government override the sovereign power of States and several states around the country have already decided that vaccine and mask mandates are not something they are going to be doing. Without a Constitutional amendment supported by 2/3rds of the members of Congress and ratified by 2/3rds of the states in the country, its hard to argue that any Federal mandate can override that of a State Mandate.

I realize all of this has gotten unnecessarily political, but in our haste to defend our 'turf', let us not cut off our noses to spite our face, as it were. 'My Body, My Choice' is a terribly misguided slogan to begin with so there is no need to legitimize it by using it with mask/vaccine mandates.