Comment by at_a_remove | Hacker News Reader

Comment by at_a_remove | Hacker News Reader

I think some of the concern is warranted. And it's a slope which has been proven slippery in the past. Remember how we used to -- hah hah -- sterilize the undesirables?

Well, it was supported by a personage like Oliver Wendell Holmes. I will quote, and then add my own emphasis:

"We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes."

Let me repeat: The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. From the Supreme Court, no less. You can read about Buck v. Bell on your own time, but even in 1978 that sort of thing was rippling down to a minor being sterilized without her consent and the judge responsible prancing away scot-free (Stump v. Sparkman).

Any vaccine mandate needs to come with a hell of a lot of fences (thou shalt not change vaccines) and traps (if you try to extend this past vaccines we cut off your head on the steps of the White House). It needs to be surrounded by thou-shalt-nots to avoid the kinds of overreach that are actual matters of historical record.

For the people in favor of a mandate... What happened to My Body My Choice?

It’s very simple: your freedom to choice does not apply to choices that harm others in society. Frankly nobody cares about your body when you’re putting their lives at risk by continuing to remain uneducated on the topic and stalwart. Now that we have FDA approval, there is no more guinea pig argument. I don't know if I support a mandate yet, but wouldn't oppose one on principle because this is a matter of public health. I absolutely support discrimination based on vaccine status and government and private sector mandates (like there always have been for other vaccines), for schools, hospitals, companies, etc. If you don’t want to participate in society and put everyone at risk because of some misguided principle of absolute power over your body, GTFO.

As my original quote shows, it is not that simple. "Harm" is a very nebulous term. The sterilization I mentioned above was harm to the body politic, namely the drain on the economy and society by the support of people who would never be productive. That was the reasoning.

You have to be more specific than mere "harm," which is the point of why I posted that. You need boundaries, clear ones, pre-defined and inviolable, else you are setting yourself up for the scenario which has already happened once in history.

“My body, my choice” is a political slogan about a woman’s right to abort a fetus in her body, which implicitly does not involve anyone else, unlike a transmissible pathogen.

More importantly, political slogans are not logical arguments, so one should not rely on them to prove things.

You speak about a fetus like it’s a thing. For me and for many others, it’s a person. Because it is.

I am aware, but that does not seem relevant because the commenter I replied to was trying to insinuate that the people who say the “my body, my choice” slogan were being inconsistent in their principles regarding abortion choice and vaccine choice.

So the explanation for why this is not inconsistent is because “my body, my choice” has an unstated caveat.

Okay well for others it's not. Did you mean to add to this?

I always find arguments like this so hilariously brain dead that I can't understand why anyone ever repeats them.

Other's have already pointed out the false equivalence of this statement but for a moment let's ignore it.

Your logic here is that, again (incorrectly) assuming equivalence, that people that are pro-choice are being hypocrites by asserting a contradictory policy of a vaccine-mandate. The assumption here is that to avoid contradiction these people must either a.) reject their pro-choice beliefs or b.) reject their vaccine mandate belief...

but this is a gun with a barrel that points both ways... because the same hypocrisy holds for the person making this critique! If you are "pro-life" and anti-mandate you are also, according to this argument, in a position of contradiction. You can either a.) reject pro-life beliefs or b.) reject anti-mandate beliefs

By the internal logic of this argument either we have a vaccine mandate and have make abortion illegal, or don't have one and therefor never question a woman's right to choose again.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if everyone that holds the pro-choice/pro-mandate "contradiction" responded with to this issue with "you're right! forget the mandate, and I expect I'll never see another protest outside of an abortion clinic by anyone else against a mandate again!" many people relying on this argument would be quite upset.

This of course is really just demonstrating that the false equivalent is inherent because otherwise this contradiction would not be present in both sides of the argument. You can't evade hypocrisy simply by being the first to point it out.

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