this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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His argument was against vaccines and not pro abortion. In the anti-choice mind, you can both be anti-choice and anti-vaccine as the choice to abortion impacts not just your body but someone else’s (i.e., the baby’s).
They can make both arguments without being in contradictions from each other.
Abortion is not a good counterargument for the modern "medical choice" movement. Because the addition of another theoretical human life that is directly affected is enough to make the question more complex, at least in their minds. I'm happy to spell out why I don't actually think it should change anything -- why body autonomy of a pregnant person is hierarchically more important than any right to life the fetus may have -- but that's still a factually more complex argument.
A better counterargument is gender-affirming care. The same people that make all these anti-vax and medical choice arguments are the ones who are blocking parents, kids, and doctors from working together to come up with a plan for gender-affirming care. Who are insisting that the state needs to step in and slap parent and doctor-approved, safe treatments like hormone blockers out of the hands of adolescents.
It's the same argument for the "parental choice" policy advocates in education. They don't really want parent choice because they don't want parents to be able to chose to have their kids taught certain materials about race, identity, or sexuality. They just want the materials banned.
The "pro-choice" crowd -- of which I am one -- should be very wary of the "choice" framing in the movement. 99% of the time, "choice" as a concept is invoked disingenuously. Maybe that's why conservatives are so frightened by the idea. When they say they want choice, it means they want any other option from their "choice" banned. So I guess they hear "pro-choice" and assume they want the option of not getting an abortion banned.
Another example to show the double-standard is the public education vs charter schools debate. The same people that are anti-choice regarding abortion are very pro-choice when it comes to how their tax dollars are spent on education, and in both cases the underlying motivation is wanting to use the mechanisms of the state to advance their religion.