My Body My Choice

Thoreau advocated for and insisted upon limited government involvement in the personal lives of its citizens. Yet I stand before you today to discuss the blatant violation of our civil liberties that is occurring regarding our medical freedom. Who are they to enforce mandatory vaccinations that only protect the individual against communicable disease? Who are they to decide that chemotherapy is the only reasonable method to fight cancer? Who are they to decide what we can and cannot do with our bodies?
Through manipulative and coercive scare tactics the government is leading people to believe that we do not have a choice in our medical fate. We have forgotten a time when the government existed by the people and for the people and have succumbed to a government that purports to better know what we need and what our children need than we do. The time has come to stand up and take back our rights, our freedom to choose, to make intelligent, informed decisions regarding our health and our bodies without invasive government legislation. It is an insult to our intelligence. We are being undermined. Patted on the head and complacently allowing the government to remove us of our integrity, intelligence and conscience as it opts to make major, life-changing decisions for us and for our children.
Mandatory vaccination and chemotherapy laws are unreasonable, arbitrary and oppressive and are therefore hostile to our right to care for our own body and health in the way we feel is best. By adopting Thoreau’s attitude of non-violent revolution we can show legislators, doctors and school officials that we will not sacrifice our right to choose what is best for our children and ourselves in order to validate the claims by the pharmaceutical industry that these treatments are not more harmful or dangerous than the diseases they allegedly protect against.
While Socrates may have agreed that any government mandate on individual health is unjust, he would likely argue that we choose to live in a country where this is the case and so we must therefore try our best to change it as our principles insist we do, but if we are unsuccessful we must agree to comply or be willing to face the consequences. His methods would be unsuccessful at promoting any real change and would essentially let the healthcare industry and the government succeed in ruling our lives and dictating our personal health. In Australia, medical intervention is not compulsory, free will is honored, yet epidemics do not occur. In fact, disease case and fatality rates are lower than in the United States.
Martin Luther King Jr. worked to change the laws regarding segregation and discrimination. He sought out peaceful, non-violent means of getting his message across and utilized his gift for words to encourage people to peacefully stand up against those things that they did not believe were right. This may be an effective method to bring about changes in the policies requiring mandatory vaccinations for children entering schools and for parents being strong armed into chemotherapy as the only legal treatment for their child’s cancer. Mr. King may suggest utilizing the religious, medical and personal exemptions that are available to us while we work to increase public awareness through speeches and public demonstrations and work to pass legislation that restores our right to choose what is best for our child.
Thoreau would be outraged at the government’s disregard for our civil liberties and it is likely that even if he believed in the value of vaccinations and chemotherapy he would have spoken out against government mandates on personal health decisions. This is the position that I urge you to adopt on this matter. Even if you believe that these medical treatments are life-saving and beneficial please support my belief, and the beliefs of others and my freedom to carry those different beliefs.
While Martin Luther King’s methods are undoubtedly effective, Thoreau’s philosophy of intolerance toward oppressive government policies teaches us that even if we do not agree with the focus of the issue, we can all agree that government control has gone too far when it uses threats and scare tactics to promote its policies and disregards our natural given right to control our own body. It is not my desire or my goal to convince each individual to refuse vaccinations or chemotherapy if they believe that is the best option for them. What I am asking you to consider is whether you want to live in a country where you do not have a choice. Where the government decides what is best for you and what is best for your children. Where mandatory medical treatments may be just the beginning of a slippery slope of government control over our health and the health of our children.