Source: One News Now, By Charlie Butts, August 18, 2020
A legal expert is taking issue with the idea of forcing people to take a coronavirus vaccine.
Doctors Michael Lederman, Maxwell Mehlman, and Stuart Youngner have published an opinion piece in USA Today that contends people ought to be forced to take the vaccine. They suggest there should be tax penalties, higher medical insurance costs, and denial of government service for anyone who refuses.
LifeSiteNews reports that the original subhead of “Defeat COVID-19 by requiring vaccination for all. It’s not un-American, it’s patriotic” originally read, “Make vaccines free, don’t allow religious or personal objections, and punish those who won’t be vaccinated. They are threatening the lives of others.” It has since been changed to “Make vaccines free, don’t allow religious or personal objections, and create disincentives for those who refuse vaccines shown to be safe and effective.”
Liberty Counsel‘s Mat Staver disagrees with the doctors’ claim that getting the vaccination would be “our great patriotic duty.”
“The fact that someone even raises an argument that you ought to have mandatory vaccinations is absolutely un-American,” he responds. “It is not patriotic; it’s unconstitutional, it’s coercive, and it’s never happened before in America. We should never go down this road.”
“What we ought to do is free up a drug that’s been on the market and approved by the FDA for over 65 years: Hydroxychloriquine,” says Staver. “It has shown over and over again in multiple studies … to be very, very effective at reducing and eliminating coronavirus in the early stages.”
When a virus vaccine does prove to be effective, and the Trump administration is hopeful that will be accomplished fairly soon, people will be able to volunteer for it — just as they do with the flu vaccine each year.
