Pro-choice protesters support bodily autonomy...sometimes?

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On May 3, 2022, at 5 pm, we attended a mass protest in Foley Square, in front of City Hall, where New Yorkers gathered to challenge the Supreme Court’s leaked draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, ultimately reversing the right to access abortions at the federal level and giving individual states the power to grant or deny this “right.”

The protest stressed the importance of bodily autonomy and yet, every single protester that we spoke with believed that vaccine requirements were necessary and constitutional. It is hard to believe that the same people who say that a medical decision is to be made between a woman and her health practitioner, can turn around and say medical mandates are a health requirement, especially given the Covid-19 vaccines' experimental nature and notorious negative reactions. Much like the pro-choice argument, how can we allow the state to utilize a blanket medical mandate, when successful healthcare has to be individualized.

Every protester we spoke to said that vaccines need to be required because they prevent transmission. According to the CDC director, “vaccines can’t prevent transmission.” And if the counter-argument is that vaccines can’t prevent transmission anymore because the population was not inoculated at the same time (and because of those who refused to receive vaccines), then the global vaccine program was designed to fail because vaccines were never intended to be administered at once. In fact, studies show that the countries that were most successful at preventing Covid-19 deaths were those that utilized methods outside of the vaccine program: early treatment methods and repurposed medications. The countries that had the highest Covid-19 death rates were those that focused primarily on the vaccine program alone and denied access to healthy alternatives.

The overflowing hospital arguments have been debunked time and time again, and yet they are constantly repeated. If you are that upset that hospitals are understaffed and underfunded, then you are mad at their corporate heads who designate funding and the politicians who fired the unvaccinated.

The argument that low-income countries have suffered from vaccine inequity has been disproven by the mainstream media itself. For example, in Ivory Coast, Reuters stated that “vaccination centers have been quieter than expected, raising fears that doses will be left unused.” In “densely populated areas” Reuters saw "health workers sitting idle with no patients." Tanzania, which had one of the lowest Covid-19 death rates, declined lockdowns and COVAX vaccines. In Congo, Reuters saw that “10 days into their vaccine program, only 1,300 Congolese people out of 85 million went out to receive their Covid-19 vaccine.” Burundi’s government said that the “vaccines aren’t fully effective and long term side effects are not understood,” but ultimately accepted the COVAX vaccines after receiving a hefty IMF package. South Africa asked J&J and Pfizer to stop sending vaccines.

What I found most fascinating about the protest, as a pro-choice person from abortions to medical mandates, is the level of harassment we received from working with Rebel News at this event. While I understand the demographics that these kinds of protests draw, it saddens me to see people who think that they are “of the left” call me an “Alt-Right Christian Nationalist Fascist” for simply engaging openly and freely with people who the establishment deems my political adversaries. To that I say, no revolutionary change has ever been made through division. But I have to laugh at the fact that at a protest for violence against women, a man much larger than me tried to physically intimidate me.