"My Body, My Choice": the false equivalence between reproductive choice and vaccination
Infectious diseases affect entire communities and vaccination is a critical public health tool to control disease burden
“My body - my choice” an argument long used as a symbol of bodily autonomy associated with women’s reproductive rights, has increasingly been adopted by the same people who oppose this idea, however, for an entirely different reason - infectious disease control measures, such as vaccines, implemented by the public health professionals.
It’s a paradox of false equivalency during which it is assumed that two things are comparable because of certain characteristics that they share when in fact it is far from comparing apples to apples.
Abortion is a medical procedure that impacts only the people directly involved (e.g. the pregnant person, their healthcare provider, and often their partner). It is not an infectious disease that if not controlled on a societal level will pose a risk to the general public. In fact, access to safe abortion is associated with a much lower number of unsafe abortions, but NOT with a reduction in average rates of abortions. Every year 4.7% to 13.2% of maternal deaths are caused by unsafe abortions making it a leading but preventable cause of maternal mortality. Lack of access to safe, timely, and affordable abortions bears long-term risks to both the physical and mental well-being of a woman.
In addition, literature reviews have identified that abortion restrictions bear negative societal and economic costs by affecting women’s education, participation in the labor force, and negative contribution to GDP. In fact, it particularly affects the already underserved populations of our society - abortion access reduces teen pregnancy among black women and increases their high school graduation and college attendance rates (and nearly 50% of all abortions in the U.S. occur among women who live below the poverty level). So if anything, abortion restrictions negatively affect the person seeking abortion and the society as a whole in one way or another.
Vaccines tell a different story. Our life expectancy experienced the most rapid increase at the time when we learned to control infectious diseases, in large part with the help of vaccines. WHO estimates that 4-5 million lives are saved each year by vaccines. Vaccines have resulted in a massive reduction in childhood mortality and have successfully eradicated some of the most dangerous diseases. Ever since their invention, vaccines collectively have saved over 1 billion lives. For example, polio outbreaks used to cause 15,000 cases of paralysis and nearly 2,000 pediatric deaths every year before a vaccine became available. Today polio is considered eradicated thanks to the vaccination programs.
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