I’m not an antivaxxer. In fact, I’ve made it clear that I would be more than happy to take one of the Covid vaccines (such as Covaxin, Curevac, Sinophram) that have yet to be released in the United States of America that were not developed with or tested with a cell line derived from an aborted fetus (Sourced details can be found at https://lozierinstitute.org/update-covid-19-vaccine-candidates-and-abortion-derived-cell-lines/?fbclid=IwAR37Qb5yAf0uAImfaE2FDL3HkrjUrWNvsaUkZa2saXuxG5DtEJbpoSomcXk). My hesitancy is simply for that ethical concern, and my subject today comes from the ongoing debate about the concern of mandating these vaccines in society at large.
For the sake of this argument, we really have to acknowledge two givens:
- The vaccines currently avaliable (and made possible by an abortion) are safe and do safe lives.
- An abortion ends the life of a human organism.
If you can’t get onboard with a mindset embracing and acknowledging both, there’s little point continuing, cause you can get bogged down with any amount of conspiracy theories and solpisim (“Of course it’s alive, but only debatably human”). In fact, the most convincing pro-abortion arguments start by accepting basic biological reality, and from there go to the real question (relevant today) of which rights trump and under which circumstances homicide is acceptable. This is why, though both hypotheticals are absurd fantasies so removed from real life to be almost irrelevant, the Violinist Cult is a more convincing thought experiment than the Burning IVF Clinic. The latter laughably attempts to deny the verifiable scientific fact of the fetus’s humanity based on the rash decision of one desperate one-armed person in a burning building, whereas the former never tries to deny the life or humanity of the violinist, but rather asks, “Yes, the violinist will die if you detach yourself, but does that mean his followers have the right to keep you imprisoned?”
(I find abortion metaphors in general to be trite and distracting, self-evident by the bizarre lengths the hypotheticals go to. The only relevant “what if” is “what if this pregnancy is problematic? Does that justify an abortion?” and the answer clear enough.)
So to compare the ethical questions of abortion vs forced vaccination, we have to look at two factors:
- The violation of autonomy. (Call it V)
- The consequences of not taking this action. (Call it C)
Unless you get on board with conspiracy theories and all that, the idea that the vaccines will make you infertile, give you cancer, kill you eventually, all the way up to the Mark of the Beast, it seems clear enough that 9 months of pregnancy, carrying to term a baby you do not want, and then being responsible for that child (at the very least as far as putting her up for adoption) is a much bigger violation/ask/force than a shot you don’t want to take (before we factor int the moral objection). But what are the consquences, and this is my central question, of having an abortion vs NOT taking the vaccine? Is requiring V greater/worse than C?
Well, “required”? Is that accurate or even on the table? I would argue yes. No government agents are coming to your home and forcibly injecting the vaccine into your bloodstream. Yet if you look at the measures being pushed and passed in NYC and LA, politicians are trying to make proof a vaccination a requirment to enter all indoor businesses and social establishments. In New York, that extends to grocery stores with dining areas. Honestly, what is off the table at this point? Will we be unable to ride the bus, go to the hospital without proof of vaccination? Last year I saw the most sickening display of authoritarian overreach and American Christian subservience. The government of the United States of America CLOSED THE CHURCHES AND WE LET THEM. Because they said it was for our own good. This is not the attitude of the matyr.
So is it paranoid fearmongering to suggest that the government that successfully banned you from entering a church at all might one day make proof of vaccination a condition? Well, here are the cops breaking down the door of a private residence because there are too many Jews in the house. Same city the mayor threatened to close down churches and synagogues permanently for defying him. If you were one of the people, and I saw this many, many times in the last year, who railed against the police force as an inherently racist, corrupt insitution, Defund the Police, ACAB, but then celebrated any anti-Covid measure, not matter how fascistic, your hypocrisy is worth noting.
And when we’re talking about banning people from buying groceries, I am not at all interested in any attempt to brush that off as no big deal because they can always order Uber Eats.
At length I remembered the last resort of a great princess who, when told that the peasants had no bread, replied: “Then let them eat brioches.“— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions
That’s you. You can try to spin it any way you want, but when groceries are on the table, let’s not be coy, you’re suggesting that if someone doesn’t have a vax card or a Door Dash app, they should LITERALLY STARVE TO DEATH.
Or is that not your problem?
Well, let me track back for a moment to my own personal moral objections, sincerly religious, as my own Church has sent mixed messages. Certain Bishops and Catholic scholars have taken my hardline stance, no way am I taking a vaccine that required an abortion, whereas others, including His Holiness Pope Francis himself, have urged taking a vaccine, whichever one is furthest removed from abortion but still avaliable. The statement: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20201221_nota-vaccini-anticovid_en.html employs a number of terms I find weasely and week, such as “differing degrees of responsibility” and “passive material cooperation”. To me it evokes Revelation 3:16, and I wish they were more focused on pushing for the completely non-fetal vaccines in development, such as the one by their very own John Paul II Medical Research Institute. At any rate, the same document allowing for these vaccines to be morally licit also says
“5. At the same time, practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary. “
Nor has the Pope issued an Ex Cathedra statement of papal infallibility, so Catholics are free to come to their own conclusion. I certainly don’t claim to know more than The Pope or have a more morally refined compass. But I just can’t see how embracing the fruits of a sin, even of an action decades ago, are not endorsing said sin. And what of the precedent?
Now I’m not trying to talk about the compassionate, socially responsible decision, our general duty as good citizens. We live in a society, and taking the vaccine would be the best thing for our fellow citizens. It would give our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and strangers, a greater chance of survival. I’m not questioning it, and you are naturally free to call me selfish for refusing, as I already have been. I don’t subscribe to the utilitarian mindset, however, which is facile and sick. Killing 10 people to save 11 doesn’t work for me.
But the question I’m tackling tonight is not whether it is a social good to take the vaccine, but whether the dangers of not taking it are grave enough to justify violating what are otherwise considered the basic rights of the individual. The argument for coercing the vaccine is typically “You don’t have the right to endanger others”. It’s the standard Non-Aggression Pact. My rights end where yours begin. So I have the right to practice my faith, but not if it endangers your health.
And yet! Is the danger to your health so clear, defined, and grave that my not getting the vaccine is a threat to your life? I do not believe that it can be proved.
At the end of the day, laws are never suggestions. They have to be enforced. So if it comes to it, do we want the police, men with guns, to put people in cages for trying to buy food or go to church after refusing to inject something in their body that violates their religious beliefs? That’s the path we’re on. That’s on the table.
Let’s be frank: It is NEVER going to be 100% safe out there. Even if you get the vaccine, you’re not completely safe. The only total immunity belongs to the billion dollar megacorporations (Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson all have white male CEOs, by the way) from any possible legal consequences to any possible side effects. There will always be some element of danger. We’re kidding ourselves if we don’t acknowledge that we make some bargain each day between safety and practicality. We would all be much safer from Covid is we only went outside in hazmat suits and slept nude in oxygen tents. Yet asking everyone to do this would be too much? There is, it seems, some unspoken level of reasonable accomodations and sacrifices. We’re just in disagrement on where that line lies, exactly. Certainly, I don’t have the right to walk up and spit in your face. That would be assault and far more direct. I’m not asking for that “right”. And a private business can choose to ban the unvaxxed. But do I have the right to walk into a business without such a mandate, as I wear a mask even if that vaccine isn’t in my body? That’s what I’m asking for.
To wrap it up, the counterpoint from the intellecually honest pro-choicers who acknowledge the simple biological fact of the fetus is that even though it is a living human being, he or she doesn’t have the right to my body, and terminating its existence is therefore within my rights. Well I do acknowledge the humanity of my fellow citizens, vaxxed and unvaxxed. I’m not convinced that if I refuse these current vaccines but still wear a mask, that guarantees the death of anyone. There’s no guarantee me refusing the vax will give it to you, let alone that even if you get that virus with a 98.4% survival rate (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality) you will die. More to the point, it wouldn’t be intentional. You compare this to abortion, which has a nearly 100% fatality rate (survivors like Gianna Jessen are extreme outliers) always intentional, there’s no comparison.