Reproductive Justice, Vaccine Refusal, and the Uneven Landscape of Choice

Abstract

Public health programs facilitate access to resources that not only provide individuals’ options but also often foreclose individual preference through prescriptive requirements. This chapter takes two disparate cases from public health – vaccines and family planning –that reveal patterns of inequality in who has access to individual choice and who requires state support to exercise choice. Looking specifically at dynamics of funding and compulsion, this chapter elucidates how reliance on the rhetoric of individual choice as an expression of freedom rewards those with the greatest access to resources and fails to make sure that all members of the community have the resources to shape their own outcomes or to make sure collective health is protected.

Citation

Reich, J.A. (2017), "Reproductive Justice, Vaccine Refusal, and the Uneven Landscape of Choice", Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 73), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 49-72. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-433720170000073003