Mandatory Vaccination Laws Without Exemptions Violate Human and Civil Rights

Right now, there are only two laws that require American citizens to risk their lives. The first is a federal law, the military draft, which requires all healthy male adults to risk their lives in a war declared by the government to protect national security. The federal government allows adults conscripted for military service, who object to killing other people for reasons of conscience or religious beliefs, to obtain a conscientious objection exemption and perform alternative civil service. The second law is a state law requiring all healthy children to risk their lives in a war on microbes that doctors declared two centuries ago. However, unlike adults who are not segregated and denied a school education or medical care for following their conscience and religious beliefs, parents can be punished for following their conscience and refusing to risk their children’s lives in a perpetual war on microbes that, today, the federal government has expanded from the concept of protecting the public health to a more military concept of protecting national “security.” The military draft in times of war and vaccine mandates are two different laws that legally require healthy Americans to risk injury or death: one law temporarily conscripts healthy adults in what the government clearly defines as an emergency military action; and the other law perpetually conscripts healthy children in a mandatory vaccination program that the government does not define as an emergency military action, but is certainly operated like one. In the 21st century, the biggest threat to individual and public health is not measles or pertussis or influenza. The biggest threat to our health is the increasingly unlimited authority that doctors exercise over the human right to autonomy and protection of bodily integrity.