CLEVELAND, Ohio -- “My body, my choice” is a phrase used by some of the 100 million Americans that continue to refuse vaccination against COVID-19, but many in this country seem ready to respond differently if the same concept of “my body, my choice” was used by women who want to make their own choices when it comes to reproductive rights.
There are people, based upon religious convictions or political ideologies that do not want the government intruding into their lives even when it comes to a vaccine or mask mandates that can protect people from the deadliest health crisis to impact this country in the last one hundred years.
Yet, a great many of those same people seem to think it is perfectly acceptable for mostly middle-aged and older, male politicians and judges to place tight restrictions and outright bans on a woman’s choice concerning reproductive rights. Suddenly the mantra becomes, “Her body, our choice” or “Her body, no choice.”
The argument seems to be that people ought to be able to resist and even refuse a COVID-19 vaccination as a matter of individual liberty. People walk around school board meetings and political rallies carrying placards that tout their right as an American citizen to make health decisions for themselves. They make that claim while this nation is in the midst of a health pandemic that has already resulted in more than 600,000 deaths and the infection over four million Americans.
Hospitals are filling up once again with COVID-19 patients. Intensive Care Units are running beyond capacity. All this is because, in the words of Dr. Rochelle Walensky ,the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the delta variant of COVID-19 has become “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
That is the result of “my body, my choice.”
The Rev. Marvin McMickle is pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland.
While proven vaccines that save lives are being refused by millions of Americans, states across the country are finding ways to restrict access to reproductive rights for women. Just last month, the attorney general of Mississippi filed an action with the United States Supreme Court that could effectively declare Roe v. Wade as unconstitutional. That could take away from many women the right to say, “My body, my choice.” If life in the womb is sacred and should be protected, is life in a world teetering under a staggering rate of new COVID-19 infections any less sacred? Should we not be doing everything we can not only to protect ourselves from infection, but make sure that we are not passing a COVID-19 infection to someone else?
The truth is, “my body, my choice” regarding vaccines is a shortsighted view of reality. A better statement would be “your choice, my body.”
This new delta variant is highly contagious and transmissible. Unvaccinated persons can pass that infection on to others in their family, at the workplace, at a religious service, a civic event, on public transit, in a grocery store, or at a shopping center. In other words, “your choice about your body” can result in many other bodies being negatively impacted.
Why do women not get to assert the same personal liberty involving reproductive choices claimed by those who say “my body, my choice” concerning vaccinations? Why are women not allowed to choose a medical procedure in the same way others are choosing not to be vaccinated?
Why are more and more restrictions being placed on access to reproductive rights, while unvaccinated people continue to refuse a vaccine against a disease that has already resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths just in the last 18-months?
If all life is sacred and should be protected, should we not be as insistent about people getting vaccinated to save lives as some people are about ending reproductive choices to accomplish the same goal?
The Rev. Marvin A. McMickle is pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland and retired president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York.
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