Does "my body, my choice" apply to vaccines? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15201405
Many employers, including government workers, are being forced by their employers to get COVID vaccines. New York City is also mandating all private sector employees to get the COVID vaccine: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/06/business ... index.html

If body autonomy rights are such an important right in the case of abortion rights ("my body, my choice"), why is the right to body autonomy not respected in the case of vaccine mandates?

Some will argue that the vaccines save lives, however not aborting babies would also save about a million lives per year in the US and abortion is still allowed because of body autonomy rights. Also, if you hit a person with your car doctors can't force you to give them the accident victim your kidney/organs to save their life because of body autonomy rights.

So why the hypocrisy? The only conclusion I can see is that most people just want whatever furthers their self-interests and don't actually care about the rights of other people, and are therefore hypocrites and tyrants.

PS. I agree with getting vaccinated, I'm not a fan of mandating physical violence on someone to keep their job etc.
#15201411
Nope, or perhaps not in the sense of "you can refuse vaccination and expect not to face some costs until you vaccinate". I don't even mean being locked up in your house or something as drastic as that, mind you, but I am not against those laws mandating fulfilling a vax schedule for being able to access public schools or universities, for example.

When I moved here to the US to study I had to get all the compulsory American vaccines (twice, at that, since the ones I got in Chile weren't recognized by the university, even those I got specifically so I would arrive to the US already immunized and not just from the usual Chilean vax schedule), or I would not be able to take any courses the next term. And so I got the vaccines (again), and I'm okay with that however annoying it was to pay for some of those in Chile (I at least had them for free at the University).

Vaccines are not the only example either. For instance, I also think it's fair that people who refuse to donate organs lose priority should they need ones and/or to have people to specifically say they do not want to donate and making donating organs the default. And this is specifically to provide incentives to donate, e.g.:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs ... 2/hec.3328
#15201420
Stealing the language of feminists is quite deliberate propaganda.

It's also utter BS.

Rule of law is always about balancing competing rights and interests. I must have typed that a hundred times.

Using the power of the state to deny women control over their lives is hardly striking a reasonable balance. It's medieval...

The first vaccine mandate was done by George Washington. Every schoolkid has to get a bunch of them. They're routine. They're also extremely important for the health of everyone in the country. There simply is no rational argument that something significant is lost here.
#15201422
The lockdown liberals have been lying through their teeth since this thing started. But perhaps the central lie has been that the vaccines would give better protection against spreading the China virus than having caught it. I caught it back in July, since I have recovered I have demand my privilege as being a relatively safe person, safer than someone who has been vaccinated, but who has not been infected with the actual virus. As far as I'm concerned these privileges are not up for negotiation. Even though I'm relatively safe and have opposed lockdown since the start, I still apply caution against meeting elderly vulnerable friends and relatives if I think I've been in contact with someone who has had it.

I would also like to add, that from my observations I was way more disciplined than the average person in maintaining social distancing with anyone wanting to social distance or anyone whose attitudes to social distancing were not yet known to me. I was generally happy to be the one who stepped out into the road when passing people. I tried to keep this up for as long as possible, but of course as I predicted from the start most people got bored with strict social distancing and motorists became intolerant of people stepping out into the road.

Some of the lockdown liberals have said grow up. Which is funny because that's exactly how I feel about the Lockdown Liberals, grow up you bunch of pathetic narcissists. It has seemed obvious to me since very early on that the spread of this virus could not be contained and protecting the vulnerable would always require that the less vulnerable be infected. This was certainly the case for most of the world.

It now seems that this may even apply to exceptional places like Australia and New Zealand. The Liberal hypocrites praised Australia despite the fact that success on containing the China vrius were dependant on its draconian immigration control policies that make the Trump administration look like a bunch of bleedin hearts
#15201426
Rugoz wrote:@Rich Shut up.

I'll take that as an admission that I'm essentially right, but you hope to use insults to avoid admitting it. Lockdown has failed! Lockdown was the strategy that by using lockdowns, social distancing and masks, either the China virus could be contained and eliminated, or that it could be contained until the arrival of vaccines and then eliminated. Over and over again the measures have failed to deliver the promised benefits.

Lockdown has been politically successful in the same way that the Afghan occupation was politically successful. The more people have invested, the more people have sacrificed the more people become psychologically invested in the success of the strategy. At no stage of this thing have I ever said that no one should isolate themselves or minimise their contacts with others. At no stage have I said that peoples' wish to social distance should not be respected. At no stage have I said that no one should wear masks or even that there are no situation where masks should be compulsory; if you're unable to wear a mask you probably shouldn't be heart surgeon. At no stage have I said that no one should take any of the vaccines.
#15201431
Getting a job is not a body autonomy right.

The example in the OP of NY mandating vaccines for workers is not an example of body autonomy rights being infringed. These people can simply choose not to work or can get a different job somewhere else.
#15201435
I've noticed before that mentioning that I've had Covid-19, that I had it mildly and that I didn't have the vaccine seems to enrage quite a few people. One poster even refused to read a post, that was only 299 words long (split into 3 manageable paragraphs if I remember correctly), because I had said this. Its rather like children who put their hands over their ears and jump up and down when they don't want to hear something.

The person I shared a room with while we both had it, also had it mildly. I've known loads of people by now, that have caught it and tested positive for Covid who did not have the vaccine. Some of them had it worse than me, but not one of them regretted not being vaccinated. On the other hand I've known a number of people who have taken the vaccine and regretted. My house mate had to be rushed into emergency heart surgery 3 days after taking the vaccine. Of course the hypocritical low life within the liberal media would say we mustn't rely on anecdotal evidence, despite the fact that their publications are full of relentless anecdotes in support of lockdowns and vaccines.
#15201440
late wrote:Stealing the language of feminists is quite deliberate propaganda.

It's also utter bs.


The point is to show how utter bs the feminist propaganda is since its rife with hypocrisy.

Rule of law is always about balancing competing rights and interests. I must have typed that a hundred times.

So how does one choose which rights should supercede others? Based on the whims of whatever the progressive orthodoxy prefers?

Using the power of the state to deny women control over their lives is hardly striking a reasonable balance. It's medieval.

But using the power of the state to deny women (and men) control over their bodies and lives is somehow different? Or only different because that's just want you want?
#15201442
Pants-of-dog wrote:Getting a job is not a body autonomy right.

The example in the OP of NY mandating vaccines for workers is not an example of body autonomy rights being infringed. These people can simply choose not to work or can get a different job somewhere else.

By this logic a woman can simply choose not to get pregnant or move to a jurisdiction where abortion is legal. So what you're saying is anti abortion laws do not infringe on body autonomy rights.
#15201444
Generally speaking, the answer to the question is yes. However, nothing in life is black & white, which is exactly what both sides try to make either issue be.

Both of these topics should be looked at separately as they have a different cost to society and the individuals that are making the choices about their bodies. A one size fits all answer to this question would be foolish.

That said, generally speaking....

I'm against vaccine mandates (but pro education and encouragement).
I'm against making abortion illegal (but pro education and encouragement around not getting pregnant)

I'm mostly pro-choice in both cases.

Funny enough, those are republican principles (fewer laws, more freedom). Funny.. aint' it?
#15201446
Unthinking Majority wrote:
So how does one choose which rights should supercede others? Based on the whims of whatever the progressive orthodoxy prefers?




That's a really good question, seriously.

A lot of legal theory is dedicated to parsing rights, and another section about how it interacts with legal philosophy.

So allow me to apologise, in advance, for my limitations here..

The principle is simplicity itself, you strike a balance. But it gets furiously complicated.

If we're really lucky, there is a lawyer in the gallery that can do a better job.

Abortion has a curious history. The Catholic Church held for about a thousand years that the soul entered the body at the Quickening. But when abortion was developed, they changed their minds about that. They wanted cannon fodder.

The problem with abortion is that neither science or religion will help. Religion can't help because law has to be secular.

Science can't help, because any dividing line is arbitrary, from a scientific POV.

Which leaves a political compromise between the vast majority, and the religious minority. I don't much care where the line is drawn, as long as nobody gets screwed, so to speak.

I'm not including extremists here. For them is this about power, same as it was when the Church banned abortion all those centuries ago.

We can have a discussion about feminism. As chance would have it, I know a great deal about it. That wasn't intentional, just the way things worked out. The first thing you need to know is that feminism isn't singular. There are academic feminists that don't like men. There are feminists, in the European style, that actually care about issues women face. Like kids. Then there are the glass ceiling feminists, they're mostly old now.
#15201448
Modern national socialism began with the French Revolution. The success of the French conscripted armies, forced other nations to respond. In time conscription became the norm on the continent in both war and peace time. Conscripting someone into the army for eighteen or twenty four months is serious socialism, far more socialist than a death tax or a mansion tax. And its even more serious socialism to order men, usually young men, barely out of boyhood, into battle where they may be killed, have their legs blown off, blinded, deafened or be left horrifically disfigured. These are extremely severe sacrifices for the collective.

Conscription is a massive infringement on body sovereignty yet it is churlish to say the European nations had no right to conscript their men folk. If a European nation didn't conscript it would just be walked over. It was easy for Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand to avoid conscription, protected from the great land armies by seas and oceans. Although if Britain had conscripted before 1914, maybe the Kaiser and the German high command would have taken Britain more seriously and the terrible slaughter of World War I avoided.

So bodily ownership can not be a moral absolute. But just because a moral principle is not a moral absolute does not mean it should not be taken seriously. For example due process can not be as a moral absolute. For starters there's not even any agreed definition of what constitutes due process. But no one so far has given me even the beginnings of a credible justification for denying due process to Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other "nothing to do with Islam" detainees. The same applies to conscription. Its not going to happen, but for example if our government did introduce conscription to go and fight Putin in Ukraine, don't expect me to meekly comply.

Rei was a fascist, perhaps that's one thing all those who remember her on the forum can agree on. Hence she loved Teresa May. Teresa May was fascistic as home secretary. She couldn't wait to tear up civil liberties, override due process and rip up habeas corpus. Now she's become one of our greatest champions against the Lockdown Liberals. Is she a hypocrite? Perhaps, but all I can say is that some of us like myself and David Davis opposed her fascistic agenda at every step.
#15201450
Rich wrote:
Modern national socialism began with the French Revolution.

The success of the French conscripted armies, forced other nations to respond. In time conscription became the norm on the continent in both war and peace time. Conscripting someone into the army for eighteen or twenty four months is serious socialism, far more socialist than a death tax or a mansion tax. And its even more serious socialism to order men, usually young men, barely out of boyhood, into battle where they may be killed, have their legs blown off, blinded, deafened or be left horrifically disfigured. These are extremely severe sacrifices for the collective.



Conscription is a massive infringement on body sovereignty yet it is churlish to say the European nations had no right to conscript their men folk. If a European nation didn't conscript it would just be walked over. It was easy for Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand to avoid conscription, protected from the great land armies by seas and oceans. Although if Britain had conscripted before 1914, maybe the Kaiser and the German high command would have taken Britain more seriously and the terrible slaughter of World War I avoided.





Nope. "National Socialism most often refers to Nazism, the ideology of the Nazi Party, which ruled Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. The term "national socialism" was used by a number of unrelated groups before the Nazis, but since their rise to prominence it has become associated almost exclusively with their ideas."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialism_(disambiguation)

That's a long story, but it's not socialism. Before conscription, people were pressed into service in a variety of ways. The larger story is the development of warfare. Technology made it possible to field more soldiers and sailors. Since Napoleon played such a big role in this transition, you implicitly describing Napolean as a socialist is actually quite amusing. Take a look at the history.

The modern definition of Socialism simply means robust social programs now. The old definition meant state ownership of the means of production. It's archaic, because that is usually called Communist now. Although the accuracy of that is also debatable.

All of which is a nice way of saying you're full of it.
#15201484
Unthinking Majority wrote:By this logic a woman can simply choose not to get pregnant or move to a jurisdiction where abortion is legal. So what you're saying is anti abortion laws do not infringe on body autonomy rights.


No

You are arguing that having reasonable consequences attached to a choice is the same as banning choice altogether.
#15201487
late wrote:Which leaves a political compromise between the vast majority, and the religious minority

I disagree. This isn't between pro-choice feminists and religious people, the 2 parties affected are actually pro-choice women (and male partners) and unborn children. Pro-choice women want the right to abort, but the unborn can't speak for themselves. This creates an uneven power dynamic. Just like animals and their rights, they can't speak for themselves, hey can only have advocates, which in this case are mostly religious types.

I'm not in any way religious so those arguments don't interest me. The ethical argument is one of right to life or right not to be killed after being created vs right to abortion of something you created within your own body. I am advocating on behalf of the unborn who can't speak for themselves and therefore have zero political power whatsoever.

If a fetus could speak at 4 months old and could say "Hey don't abort me, this is bullshit, i'm going to get a lawyer..." I wonder what we'd say?

And where do we draw the line for when is too late in a pregnancy to get an abortion? As you say, any line is scientifically arbitrary.
#15201488
Pants-of-dog wrote:No

You are arguing that having reasonable consequences attached to a choice is the same as banning choice altogether.

For most adults not working is not a choice, they have to eat and pay for housing therefore they must work. If they don't want to get the vaccine they would be forced by the state to move to another jurisdiction where vaccines aren't mandatory for work.

Similarly, most women who want an abortion don't see it as a choice, they need to have an abortion. So if they want one they need to move to another jurisdiction.
#15201496
Unthinking Majority wrote:For most adults not working is not a choice, they have to eat and pay for housing therefore they must work. If they don't want to get the vaccine they would be forced by the state to move to another jurisdiction where vaccines aren't mandatory for work.


Okay, but all of this os a criticism of how capitalism imposes obligations on us.

It is not an example of state actors depriving s person of body autonomy rights.

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