"Life Skills"

 Tumblr education analysis would become instantly better if any of you even step foot into a "life skills" class and saw how people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are treated from ages 3-21 (yes, it hardly varies).

My Body, My Choice

 Political discourse in the U.S. is currently consisting of an endless back-and-forth of “You’re a hypocrite for saying ‘My body, my choice’ about abortion but not about vaccines”/ “No, YOU’RE a hypocrite for saying ‘My body, my choice’ about vaccines but not about abortion.”

And y’all, you are in fact, both hypocrites, and tyrants, if you support bodily autonomy in one instance and not another. You are, in fact, highlighting that the vast majority of you have never cared about bodily autonomy as a foundational principle. Bodily autonomy should be a fundamental human right for all people, in all circumstances. No one should ever be subjected to a medical treatment or procedure against their will, nor denied the right to control their own body, whether a person is seeking or refusing an abortion, seeking or refusing a vaccine, seeking or refusing psychiatric treatment, or any other situation. This is fundamental.

But. Yet.

We can go even further.

While continuing to affirm bodily autonomy in all circumstances, we can draw attention to the pervasive social, political, and economic systems of oppression that form barriers to individuals’ right to exercise their freest form of self-determination over their own bodies.

Let’s take these examples one at a time.

The first example, the right of a pregnant person to seek an abortion to end their pregnancy. From a perspective of universal bodily autonomy, this is a choice the pregnant individual has every right to make – just as a non-pregnant person can not be forced to donate blood, or a kidney, for the benefit of another person, likewise a pregnant person should not be forced to donate the use of xyr uterus to an unborn person. Laws requiring a pregnant person to continue physically hosting an unborn person are, therefore, unjust.

However, aside from these laws, a myriad of external circumstances impede the free exercise of a person’s choices about whether or not to be pregnant. Lack of health insurance, money, transportation, time, available facilities, and freedom of movement (for example, being controlled by abusive family or partners, or being under guardianship) are barriers to accessing services like birth control and abortion. 

Conversely, many people seek abortions as a result of external circumstances that constrain their freedom to give birth to a child in safe, secure, and supported circumstances. People may lack the financial resources to support a child, or they may be at risk of losing their jobs, housing, or access to education, or they may face social stigma on pregnancy or parenthood in certain circumstances (like being poor, or unmarried, or young, or disabled).

If we collectively demanded it, we could have societies with guaranteed universal healthcare, universal housing, universal income. We could have paid family leave, child care, free education at all levels. Universal home-based assistance for disabled people. Rights and resources for adopted children and their parents. Social values affirming the equal value and dignity of every person regardless of disability, gender, education, race, or other status. We could ensure that everyone had both the legal rights and material resources necessary for every individual to have the full spectrum of reproductive options available to xyr. This would expand people’s freedom to make choices about pregnancy and childbearing.

Now, let’s look at the second example, vaccines. Vaccination is also a bodily autonomy issue, of course. No one should ever be forced to be vaccinated against xyr will. In the U.S., free adults (those not incarcerated, institutionalized, or under guardianship) are not at risk of forced vaccination. Generally, for free adults in the U.S., the right to refuse vaccination (unlike the right to abortion) is not at risk. However, many schools, employers, and public places make vaccination, especially against COVID-19, a requirement for attendance, or require unvaccinated people to take other preventive measures like regular testing.

But it is difficult for many people to make an informed choice about whether to get vaccinated when misinformation about vaccine safety is widespread, and the basis of that misinformation is often rooted in pervasive social oppressions of racism, ableism, queerphobia, antisemitism, poverty, eugenics, and colonialism. Once again, we can reimagine a freer social landscape without these oppressions, in which all people have the tools and resources to make informed choices about their health.

Some criticisms of vaccines are straightforwardly based in bigotry. People claim that vaccines are designed by Jewish people (which is supposedly bad), or that vaccines make people autistic, gay, or transgender (which are supposedly bad). We can not only correct these misconceptions, but challenge the bigotry underlying them. We can demand a society in which people of all religions, all neurologies, all genders and sexualities, are equally valued.

Other criticisms of vaccines are based on certain understandable misconceptions. A common misconception about vaccines is that they cause infertility, or that they are part of a covert agenda to forcibly sterilize people. This is false, but it is not baseless – there is in fact a long history of medical authorities governments, including the U.S. government, practicing forced sterilization under the pretext of standard medical care. Forced sterilizations of Black women under false pretenses were so common that they became called “Mississippi appendectomies,” and incarcerated immigrants were subjected to forced sterilizations as recently as 2020. https://msmagazine.com/2020/10/28/ice-immigration-mississippi-appendectomies-usa-eugenics-forced-coerced-sterilization/

Another common misconception is that vaccination is a cover for some sort of government surveillance program. This, again, is false, but not baseless – healthcare, including vaccination, has been used as a pretext for government surveillance. Notably, in 2011, the U.S. government used the pretext of a vaccination campaign in Pakistan to collect DNA while searching for Osama Bin Laden. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2277145-cias-hunt-for-osama-bin-laden-fuelled-vaccine-hesitancy-in-pakistan/

Is it any surprise, when governments have very recently engaged in surveillance and forced sterilization under the pretext of vaccines and routine medical care, that people would be skeptical of all public health initiatives?

How, under these conditions, can people make informed medical choices?

As long as we live under systemic oppressions, artificial resource scarcity, government disinformation, institutional racism, sexism, ableism, queerphobia, ageism, classism, religious bigotry, and neurobigotry, our ability to make free, autonomous, informed choices about our healthcare are constrained.

Finally (because this post is getting long…), let’s look at the example I write about most often, psychiatric medication. Mad/neurodiversity liberation advocates have a massive uphill battle to abolish forced psychiatric drugging, fighting the power of medical authorities, family advocates, gentrifiers, religious authorities, and politicians who believe that forcibly drugging us is “for our own good” or for the good of society. We have made so little progress in this fight – much of it undermined in the haste to scapegoat us for mass violence – and have so far to go.

Likewise, the converse freedom – the right of people to take psychiatric medication if they choose to – is also under constant threat, as poverty, lack of healthcare access, gatekeeping, and lack of medical services prevent people from accessing their medication.

We need to demand both the complete abolition of forced treatment (and all its attendant coercive apertures, institutionalization, conservatorship, incarceration) and completely universal access to voluntary healthcare.

But. Yet. We can go even further.

We can demand a society in which people do not need to “fit in” in order to survive. We can demand a society in which constant stress, violence, abuse, and trauma do not drive people to anxiety and depression and despair. We can build a society in which people are accepted in all their cognitive and emotional diversity, and given the resources and support to become the happiest versions of themselves.

We can fight for universal bodily autonomy in all circumstances, for everyone. And then we can do even more.