A vaccine mandate fundamentally violates the God-given rights men and women inherently possess, affirmed by the Constitution.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced their intention to end vaccine mandates for school-age children within the state. The declaration has since faced tremendous backlash from the medical community and skepticism from President Donald Trump. But not only is it completely within Florida’s right to pursue this, it is also the morally upright decision.
If the Florida legislature upholds their end of the agenda, Florida would be the first U.S. state to implement this policy. Traditionally, states follow federal guidelines regarding vaccines, but school mandates are ultimately the responsibility of states’ health departments.
An elimination of vaccine mandates does not entail a lack of availability of vaccines for those who want them, but provides freedom of choice. Religious exemptions already exist in most states, but some parents don’t know these exceptions exist. This is a matter of principle. Mandate and vaccine should remain separate terms.
It is consistent with the Constitution to support this measure. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to property, which also applies to one’s body.
“No person shall,” it reads, “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
Agency over one’s own body and one’s children’s bodies is no exception to the application of liberty or property rights. This has been upheld in several legal cases throughout U.S. history.
McFall v. Shimp (1978) ruled that a man could not be legally compelled to donate bone marrow to save another man’s life. The judge ruled this a violation of bodily autonomy.
“For our law to compel [the] defendant to submit to an intrusion of his body would change every concept and principle upon which our society is founded,” Judge Francis Flaherty wrote. “To do so would defeat the sanctity of the individual and would impose a rule which would know no limits, and one could not imagine where the line would be drawn.”
Other cases such as Winston v. Lee (1985), forbidding the state from retrieving a bullet from a suspect’s body without consent, and Union Pacific Railway Co. v. Botsford (1891), preventing the court from compelling a plaintiff to undergo a surgical examination, also defended decisions over our bodies as a constitutional human right.
If the Founding Fathers believed this, what should be made of George Washington’s decision to mandate inoculation for his troops against smallpox in February 1777? The ethics of that decision are debatable, but it is important to note that the Continental Army was composed of volunteers. The same logic cannot apply to the general population of schoolchildren. Washington’s was a military decision. Though these soldiers may not have explicitly agreed to vaccination, they made an initial decision to put themselves under the authority of Congress and their general.
We may not compromise individual rights to ensure a more disease-free society. The only time a citizen’s rights are justly impeded is when their exercise leads to the violation of someone else’s rights.
Parents’ decision for their children to abstain from any or all vaccinations, while it arguably increases the risk of disease for others, do not violate their rights. No one has the right to live in a society free from, or at low risk of, disease. This environment has been created by man. Rights must be inherent and bestowed by God.
During a recent interview with CNN reporter Jake Tapper, Ladapo commented on this distinction between the societal consequences of the decision and the real heart of the issue. Tapper asked Ladapo whether his department had done any analysis or projection on the rise of disease cases to be expected following the implementation of this policy.
“Absolutely not,” Ladapo said. “There is this conflation of the science and what is the right and wrong thing to do.”
Later in the interview, Ladapo called the vaccine decision an issue of parental rights, questioning whether it was appropriate for the government — rather than parents — to decide what goes into kids’ bodies.
Many supporters of DeSantis and Ladapo’s push have expressed concerns with vaccines’ health risks outweighing their benefits. Pharmaceutical companies rake in billions every year from vaccine distributions with effectively no means of accountability due to the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The idea that parents should be made to pay companies for a vaccine they don’t want and be unable to hold that company accountable for injuries is outrageous. Government needs to respect parents’ God-given rights.
This is not a medical or scientific issue. It is a moral and constitutional one. The government ought to wield its authority strictly to protect the rights of its citizens and never to trespass upon them.
Vaccine mandates, like any medical decisions made for an individual, by nature constitute a misuse of the government’s power. Any effort to repeal the mandates is commendable. The various provisions of this effort still have long journeys through legislative and administrative checkpoints. But if it succeeds in any measure, Florida will pave the way for other states to follow suit in granting schoolchildren and parents their constitutional rights.
Lucy Billings is a freshman studying the liberal arts.
