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Re:Courts block two Biden administration Covid vaccine mandates by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @11:37AM (#29405633)
How about if it's the 1960s, and you're a flight attendant, and "being sexy" is semi-officially part of your job. And your job is requiring you to get an abortion (which is still illegal in the US, and so you're going to have to go to Sweden to get it). And if you won't, well, nobody's making you - you can get a different job.

This is, as far as I can see, the most directly analogous situation. Those who support vaccine mandates, how do you feel about this situation? (And note that this was just an "unofficial" employee mandate - there was no government entity involved.)

Re:Courts block two Biden administration Covid vaccine mandates by tfehring on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @02:45PM (#29408248)
Pregnancy was explicitly added as a protected characteristic under the Civil Rights Act in 1978. Government has a bona fide interest in preventing conduct that could discourage people from becoming pregnant. It has no interest in encouraging people to remain unvaccinated against deadly communicable diseases, and in fact it has an interest in exactly the opposite of that. Accordingly, unvaccinated people aren’t a protected class, nor should they be.

Also, this is a minor point but illegal abortions are many orders of magnitude more risky than COVID vaccines.

I strongly oppose broad-reaching government-imposed vaccine mandates, but I strongly support a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers specifically. The US government has already taken on the responsibility for setting employment eligibility standards for healthcare workers, and it makes sense for being vaccinated to be one of those criteria.

Re:Courts block two Biden administration Covid vaccine mandates by kelnos on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @12:00PM (#29406057)
If you truly believe that these situations are comparable, I don't think I could expect you to engage in good-faith discussion.
Re:Courts block two Biden administration Covid vaccine mandates by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @01:32PM (#29407327)
That's a handy way for you to dismiss the point, while completely refusing to engage with it. But that's OK. You can expect whatever you expect.

I think the two situations are comparable in some ways, and not in others. The "have to do something medical in order to keep your job" part is one of the ways it's comparable. The "bodily autonomy" is another. It's different in that it's not a government mandate. It's different in how it affects others.

So: Did you actually want to engage, or did you just want to give a plausible dismissal?