Horrors of vaccination exposed and illustrated: $b Petition to the President to abolish compulsory vaccination in Army and NavyHiggins, Chas. M. (Charles Michael)
History
Horrors of vaccination exposed and illustrated: $b Petition to the President to abolish compulsory vaccination in Army and Navy
Higgins, Chas. M. (Charles Michael)
Vaccination
Surely, therefore, there is no individual or personal right more
inherent and natural and more sacred and obvious or more surely
guaranteed in Declaration and Constitution than the right to medical
freedom of the body, the right to health and life and the right of
the individual to select and decide freely for himself the medical
treatment of his own body, and the right to guard it against any
medical treatment or operation which in his own judgment and conscience
may be unnecessary or undesirable or may involve great risk or
suffering to himself or may seriously endanger his health or life.
This right is, I think, so obvious, so fundamental and necessary and
so unquestionable under the letter and spirit of our basic laws and
constitution, and by the decisions of our courts as well as by all
common sense, logic and ethics, that I do not think another word of
argument is necessary to establish this right in the conscientious
conviction of every rational mind.
DECISION OF U. S. SUPREME COURT FURTHER ANALYZED
In further consideration of the meaning and significance of this
important decision of the U. S. Supreme Court it may be now explained
that the law of Massachusetts here considered was a Statute passed by
the Legislature requiring the vaccination of all persons, child or
adult, under penalty of fine of $5 for refusing vaccination. This law
made an exception for children or minors in delicate health or such
physical condition as would be injured by vaccination, but made no such
exception for adults like the defendant Jacobson.
The Supreme Court of the State of Massachusetts in its decision, from
which this appeal was taken, had already decided, as I have shown,
that the State could not enforce actual compulsory vaccination upon any
person, but could only enforce the fine of $5 if vaccination was not
voluntarily adopted.
The U. S. Supreme Court concluded its decision in these words:
“We now decide only that the statute covers the present case,
and that nothing clearly appears that would justify this Court
in holding it to be unconstitutional and inoperative in its
application to the plaintiff in error.”
From this conclusion Justices Brewer and Peckham dissented, thus
evidently holding that the law of Massachusetts, which inflicts a
fine of $5 for refusing vaccination, was unconstitutional, whereas
the majority of the Court seem to hold that this State law, which can
enforce the fine but cannot compel the vaccination, was legal and
constitutional, but that nevertheless this fine could not be enforced
against any persons who could show that vaccination was dangerous to
their health and life, and that the Courts would interfere to prevent
its enforcement in all such cases and thus protect the constitutional
rights of the individual within that “sphere” of preëminent individual
right as already quoted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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