Here we go again. According to a poll by Research Co., nearly three-quarters of Canadians — 72% — believe childhood vaccinations should be mandatory in their province. That’s up five points from last year. To many, this seems a mark of progress: more public trust in science, more protection for the vulnerable. But before congratulating ourselves on our civic virtue, we ought to ask a harder question: what kind of society are we becoming when we endorse the state’s right to inject anybody – even children whose parents object — against their will?The common sense angle is obvious. A lot of vaccines have been around for decades, we know they work and there are some countries that you would be a chump to visit without taking them. Also notwithstanding the autism concerns, if I had kids, they’d be vaccinated against measles.However, if you approve mandatory vaccination for children, adults are next. Well, for practical purposes, they were during COVID, especially if you worked in a federally regulated industry. That didn't turn out so well, and to find that some at least in the medical/health industry were aware of the risks even as they pressed forward with vaccination was... not reassuring..Some of us also remember the 1993 Parachute Regiment deployment to Somalia. Some troopers were ordered to take Lariam as a precaution against malaria, even though the drug was known to cause paranoia, lack of judgment, neurosis and other mental side effects. Neurosis and lack of judgment followed unfortunately. But if you’re a soldier and they tell you to take the pill, you don’t argue.For the armed forces, it turned out to be the same attitude during COVID, with some horribly bad results. It’s worth rereading Linda Slobodian on the subject..SLOBODIAN: Lawsuit challenges 'malicious, unlawful armed forces COVID vaccine mandates'.Bottom line, vaccination may be good, it may be bad, but mandatory vaccination cannot be morally justified, not for adults and not for kids. The state has no right to override the individual’s bodily autonomy, or parental authority, and every argument that pretends otherwise collapses under scrutiny. Let's look at a few, and here I acknowledge a well-thought out rationale from a University of Hong Kong professor who would have had a very close look at what happens to people when governments mandate vaccination....Let’s start with the so-called libertarian argument, that unvaccinated individuals endanger others and can therefore be forced to vaccinate in self-defence. It sounds plausible, until one distinguishes between material and statistical threats.A material threat is immediate and direct: someone points a gun at you. A statistical threat is probabilistic: one in a hundred people might point a gun at you someday. The former justifies defensive coercion; the latter does not. Most unvaccinated people are healthy and non-contagious. They are not material threats to anyone. To treat them as such is to equate potential risk with present harm — a standard that would justify limitless government intrusion, for everything in life involves risk.Moreover, to compel vaccination is itself an act of violence against the person. It is not “defence” but assault. In a liberal democracy, bodily integrity is not conditional upon majority opinion or epidemiological models. It is the foundation of freedom itself..There’s another line they use, that refusing vaccination is akin to tax evasion.No. Paying taxes deprives you of a portion of your money, which can later be replenished. Compulsory vaccination deprives you permanently of your unaltered bodily constitution. The state may fine you, but it may not commandeer your bloodstream. Taxation is a temporary economic transaction; vaccination is a permanent biological modification. The analogy is obscene.Then there’s the “social liberty” argument, the claim that coercive vaccination actually increases freedom overall by allowing society to reopen and the vulnerable to feel safe. This confuses freedom from coercion with the presence of options..It’s true that widespread vaccination may increase certain options, but when those options are purchased by forcing dissenters to submit to medical procedures they reject, the cost is freedom itself. The “freedom” of the compliant majority is not expanded; it is purchased at the expense of the minority’s right to say no.In any case, coercion cannot create liberty — it can only disguise its absence. During COVID, politicians and public health officials repeatedly invoked “freedom” to justify lockdowns, mandates, and censorship. The unvaccinated were branded a threat to democracy. Yet it was not the unvaccinated who closed schools or shuttered businesses. It was the state, wielding guns, fines, and social ostracism. The true tyranny lay not with those who refused the jab but with those who demanded it.Finally, the argument that “life” has absolute priority — that saving lives justifies any infringement — must be rejected outright. A government that claims authority to violate bodily autonomy in the name of saving lives claims authority over life itself. Such reasoning is pernicious.If the preservation of life is paramount, why not harvest organs from healthy citizens to save others? Why not compel all risky behaviour out of existence? Life is precious, but it is not the highest good. Liberty, dignity, and consent are higher still — for without them, life is not worth living.Canadians have a dangerous tendency to trade freedom for the illusion of safety. The Research Co. poll suggests most are willing to let governments make vaccination legally inescapable. But history’s caution is clear: the more the state controls the body, the less the citizen controls the state. The same coercive principle that justifies forced vaccination today can justify forced sterilization (which was the law in Canada not so long ago for the mentally incompetent) or euthanasia tomorrow. MAiD may be “for the common good,” but it’s getting too easy to qualify.Parents would be wise to vaccinate their children against common diseases, using trustworthy (and real) vaccines. They should not be forced to. There are plenty of indications where that ends, if you do but once start.
