Mandates impose on freedom of choice

The argument

Vaccines should not be mandatory, this argument holds, because people should have the freedom to choose. The claim is about who decides rather than about what the right decision is: adults should have the autonomy to decide whether they want to be vaccinated, and whether they want their children vaccinated. Bodily autonomy is treated here as the baseline that a mandate has to overcome. A vaccine is administered to a person's body, and a law requiring it therefore does something the state does not ordinarily do — compels a medical procedure on someone who has declined it. The objection stands whatever the merits of the procedure, because the principle at stake is consent rather than efficacy. The objection is pressed hardest where children are concerned. Legislation that mandates vaccines is wrong, proponents argue, and especially legislation that mandates children be vaccinated, because the state doesn't own children — parents do. Parents should be free to choose how they keep their children healthy, in the same way they make the rest of the decisions about their children's care. What the argument asks for is symmetry rather than a particular outcome. If one set of parents is worried about their children catching a disease that can be prevented by vaccination, they should be free to vaccinate them; and if another set of parents does not want their children injected with a vaccine, that should be allowed too. Both families act on their own judgement about their own children, and neither is compelled by the other's view. The federal government should therefore not force vaccines upon people. Vaccine mandates impose on freedom of choice, and on this argument that is reason enough to reject them, whatever position one takes on vaccination itself.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Vaccines should be mandatory because freedom of choice does not take precedence over the common good. Jacobson v. Massachusetts was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. The Court's decision articulated the view that individual liberty is not absolute and is subject to the police power of the state. The Supreme Court has consistently upheld the rights of the government to impose on individual liberties to protect the public’s health. Vaccination mandates are necessary because the state needs to protect the collective public's health.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Bodily autonomy and parental authority are strong presumptions rather than absolutes in any legal system: parents cannot decline schooling, seatbelts, or medical treatment necessary to save a child's life. [Rejecting P2] Most mandates do not compel a procedure but condition access to particular settings — school enrolment, certain occupations — and typically carry medical and often religious exemptions, so the description overstates what they do. [Rejecting C] The choice is not purely self-regarding, because immunity is partly a collective good: people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons depend on others being vaccinated, which is the ground on which the sibling position and, as the counter notes, Jacobson v. Massachusetts rest.