Have you noticed a certain irony in the vaccine mandates? The issue of “bodily autonomy” or “bodily integrity” has come to the forefront. Can the State or an employer demand your submission to a medical procedure, even a vaccine? (In making my case for bodily autonomy, I do not mean the autonomy of the person before God. I mean, the freedom to refuse a medical invasion into their bodies. The requirement to receive a medical treatment for employment, housing, education—to participate in society—autonomy not in the face of God, but of other humans).
The irony is this: since 1973 in the United States and 1969 in Canada, millions of children were denied their bodily autonomy by the medical community, Planned Parenthood, and NGOs. But all involved knew that the killing the “product of conception” is killing a real child. The preborn child is no less a human than a born child or an adult.
Killing an innocent is the ultimate violation of bodily autonomy—there is no consent, certainly no safety—the child has absolutely no opportunity to say, “My body, my choice.” Where is the choice of the preborn? What child would choose to be tortured or burned to death? Does the child voluntarily surrender her organs to labs?
When abortion was legalized in the US, the buzzwords were, “It’s just a blob of flesh,” or “it’s not a human,” “an abortion is just like having a tonsillectomy or an appendectomy.” Where was the scientific community when these false claims were circulating? Certainly, any biologist knew in 1969 and 1973 that these were human babies, not mere blob of flesh. The scientific community let millions of children down and let them die. Many scientists and doctors participated in this lie.
So “my body, my choice” has nearly vanished as a rallying cry for abortion rights. This is good because 1) the phrase was never true. It is obviously a case of the “preborn child’s body, someone else’s choice.” An abortion kills a human. 2) But the phrase is also gone because it is so inconvenient for those who demand state rights over each person’s body. How can, “My body, my choice” help the vaccination cause? It cannot. What has been a battle-cry for the pro-abortion crowd is now unutterable.
So there’s one irony—a decades long demand for bodily autonomy of the mother is now set aside in favour of a demand to submit all to vaccines, even by coercion and force. I don’t have statistics on this, but I would venture to guess that the vast majority of those who demand unrestricted abortions will also demand total restrictions on human liberties, including the liberty to decline a medical procedure. “My body, my choice” has finally found a home in science, logic, and morality.
But there is even a greater irony here: the demand for the abortions of millions, in the name of bodily autonomy, has brought us to the point where we are fighting for what is lost . . . bodily autonomy!
Yes, we have denied the protection of the body in the womb for so many decades, and God has brought us to this point—where we are finally willing to fight for the protection of the body. This doesn’t apply to non-Christians who are all two happy to surrender their bodies (and yours, and your children’s) to vaccine mandates.
The church, overall, has been complacent in the face of the abortion holocaust. We might make some donations, protest a bit, but we have made little progress. There are, of course, some shining stars. Compare the protesters in Ottawa—they are raging over this issue, and most of them do not even understand that our nation is under the judgement of God. They know deeply that there is a serious problem but are unlikely to identify its source as the idolatrous aspirations of the atheist State. They have lost the rights to their own bodies and can only explain this as Christians.
Because we have permitted abortions, we have surrendered the rights to our bodies. The State can invade the womb, and so it can invade your body too.
Everyone is affected by this war of the State against its people, but it is the church that needs to confess and repent of her sin of complacency. We know why this is happening. When a million people or more didn’t show up to protest abortion, and refuse to leave until it was declared unlawful, we knew how little the church cared. Now it seems that the loss of bodily autonomy for all the born reflects the loss to the unborn.
So what is it, church? Will we be revived and reformed?
For decades pro-life folk have been patronizingly reminded that, “Abortion is an emotional issue.” With a pat on the head and a sympathetic frown, we have been told in so many words that we are too emotional, too fragile, too unstable to discuss abortion rationally. We let our emotions run away with us. This by media types, politicians, and those whose own emotions never seemed to get in the way of compassion for the victims of abortion.