The first time I saw a photo of an anti-vaxxer with a sign that read “My Body My Choice,” I was sort of puzzled. I thought perhaps the photo editor had used the wrong image to accompany the story—but then I saw that the sign also included a picture of a mask with a red line across it. No, these people weren’t protesting a government that was regulating uteruses, a government that was telling women when they could end a pregnancy that was going on in their own bodies. They were instead protesting a simple and painless public-health measure. They were mad at the idea of having to wear a piece of fabric on their faces. For this particular group, government regulation was fine unless it was regulating them—at which point it became a horrible infringement on their constitutional rights.
These anti-vaxxers are becoming a bigger and bigger part of today’s Republican Party, and they aren’t only against inoculation and mask wearing; they’re also against any kind of COVID restrictions whatsoever and the existence of vaccine passports. Never mind that the only way to stop the virus is to get people vaccinated; Republicans seem not to have made this connection. Instead, they have started treating this group as a protected class—recently, they have started pushing bills that would protect against discrimination toward unvaccinated people. The irony, of course, is that a lot of these Republicans have no problem with discrimination on the basis of race or sex; many of them have argued that there is no need for an Equal Rights Amendment. Yet they want to protect their constituents from a safe, effective, free vaccine that could save their lives from a highly preventable disease.
Members of the GOP represent the most vehement proponents of government regulation when it comes to abortion. Some of them have gone so far in their war against a woman’s right to choose that they are now interested in limiting birth control options. And if that weren’t enough, Texas is about to enact a law that would allow private citizens to sue people who helped women get abortions—like in The Handmaid’s Tale or the Salem witch trials. Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University, explained the law to The New York Times: “If the barista at Starbucks overhears you talking about your abortion and it was performed after six weeks, that barista is authorized to sue the clinic where you obtained the abortion and to sue any other person who helped you, like the Uber driver who took you there.” Yes, the people who consider masks a check on their freedom want your barista to be able to sue you if they suspect you’ve had an abortion.
In October, the Supreme Court will hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that was crafted in order to either overturn Roe v. Wade or kick abortion back to the states, which would effectively overturn Roe v. Wade. “If you look at [Roe] from the originalist perspective, which all of [the conservative justices] are now espousing, you know, it’s indefensible,” Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana recently told a group of activists during a closed-door meeting. With six conservative justices on the bench, abortion rights have never been in greater danger.
We are on the precipice of the end of Roe and the beginning of a period of Republican legislation of women’s bodies, but this change comes steeped in irony. The same group that wants to make it impossible for you to end your pregnancy is furiously insistent that showing proof of vaccination should be illegal.
At this past weekend’s conservative CPAC convention, the crowd cheered low vaccination numbers. Low vaccination numbers mean more people get sick with COVID, just like less access to birth control leads to more abortions and less access to legal abortions leads to more women dying from unsafe illegal abortions. Maybe the leaders of the Republican Party don’t understand cause and effect, but more likely they don’t care. Abortion isn’t about abortion, and the pandemic is no longer about public health. For Republicans, it’s a case of government regulation for thee but not for me.