Your body, your choice! My home, my choice!

Aug 26, 2021 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The Opposition has become pro-choice. The chant of the Opposition supporters during yesterday’s poorly attended rallies was “My Body, My Choice!”
The argument behind the “My Body, My Choice” movements is that no third party has a right to tell someone what to do with their bodies. And if no one has a right to tell you what to do with your body, then no one should require you to wear a face mask in a bus or to sanitise your hands when entering a supermarket.
Unfortunately, there is no absolute right to bodily integrity. Society has always placed limitations on human freedoms. You are free to smoke but not in a public place. Your body is yours but it is against the law to commit suicide or to physically harm yourself.
The exercise of your rights is also conditional on respecting the rights of others. So you cannot expose others to harm by your exercise of the right to your choices. In other words, you are not free to place others at risk. And the function of government is to protect the general population from being harmed. This is why children are required to be vaccinated soon after birth. You are not allowed to go to school if you have infectious small pox or chicken pox.
Your personal health is not independent of public health concerns. If the unvaccinated poses a threat to the wider society, then it is within the right of the public health authorities to take actions to protect society.
The claim to a right over what happens to our physical bodies has been a rallying cry for those who support abortion. They contend that they have a right to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to full term or to terminate it since it is their body and it is their choice.
During the campaign to pass the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act in 1995, the pro-choice brigade – who made the same cry: “My Body, My Choice!” –argued the right to determine what happens with their bodies.
The matter was supposed to be decided by a conscience vote in the National Assembly. But when the time came for the vote, one side voted almost totally in support of abortion and the other almost totally in opposition to abortion.
The PNC parliamentarians voted overwhelmingly against abortions under eight weeks. Ironically, today, the same PNC/R is using the “My Body, My Choice!” argument to buttress its declining support in the face of the attempt to benefit from electoral rigging. The PNC/R is using the public restrictions imposed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic to seek to regain political credibility. And it has chosen, the pro-choice slogan, “My Body, My Choice!” as its rallying cry.
Perhaps now that the PNC/R is touting “My Body, My Choice!” it may wish to revisit its previous Opposition to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill. After all, if a person has absolute control over their bodies, then should that person be constrained by law from terminating a pregnancy whether it is before or eight weeks?
The present campaign launched by the PNC is misguided. First of all there is no person who has any absolute right of their bodies. If it is accepted that life starts at conception, then any medical termination of pregnancy constitutes murder and murder of the helpless unborn child.
Secondly, if it is your body and your choice, then by extension no one can force you to wear a mask. Yet, it was the very PNC/R which has passed regulations which required the mandatory wearing of masks in public places. So does the “My Body, My Choice” policy relate to the wearing of face masks?
There is no COVID-19 vaccination mandate in Guyana. No one is being forced to take the COVID-19 vaccine. However, there are consequences for those wishing to exercise that right. If you are not vaccinated your right to your choice is respected but you have to also respect the choice of those who do not wish to be placed at risk by your non-vaccination.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has expressly said that international labour standards do not directly address the question of mandatory vaccinations as a condition for work. Thus, the legal basis for such a measure would largely depend on the national regulatory framework.
No one is being denied government services. But if you are not vaccinated then before you can enter certain places you have to prove that you are negative. It is same as if you want to go to a foreign country. It is your body and your choice but you are not going to put persons at risk in a foreign country by arriving without a negative PCR test certificate or without being vaccinated.
Your right, your choice! My country, my business, my office, my home, my choice!

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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