The Medical Freedom Act: Preserving Liberty for the Next 250 Years
As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, we should remember that the American Revolution was fueled by the freedom to speak, write, debate, and challenge government authority. The colonists’ ability to expose injustice and argue for independence helped establish the principles on which our nation was built. That same freedom remains essential today. Medical freedom depends on the ability to access information, question official policies, discuss competing medical views, and make informed decisions without censorship or coercion. To ensure that Americans retain control over their own medical choices and preserve these liberties for generations to come, every state should enact the Medical Freedom Act (MFA).
Part Four: Mandates, Compliance, and the Censorship Machine
During COVID, Americans were not simply given public-health recommendations and left free to make their own decisions. They faced behavioral mandates governing where they could go, whether businesses could open, whether children could attend school, and whether people could gather. Later, millions faced medical mandates that conditioned employment, education, travel, and participation in ordinary life on accepting a medical intervention.
Mandates require compliance. And maintaining compliance becomes much more difficult when people are free to question the policy, challenge its scientific basis, discuss risks and alternatives, or hear from physicians and scientists who disagree with the government.
That is what makes the censorship revealed during and after COVID so important to the medical-freedom debate.
Censorship Revealed
Evidence uncovered through Missouri v. Biden, later Murthy v. Missouri, provided an extraordinary look at communications between federal officials and major social media companies regarding COVID-related speech and other content, communications later corroborated in part by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The district court found that numerous federal officials had likely violated the First Amendment through their interactions with the platforms.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately did not decide whether the government’s conduct violated the First Amendment, ruling instead that the plaintiffs lacked standing to obtain the injunction they sought. But discovery made public extensive government communications concerning content officials labeled false or misleading, even when the content was true.
This occurred while officials were promoting, and in many circumstances requiring, compliance with unprecedented public-health policies. The same government imposing or encouraging those policies was also exerting influence over the public debate that could cause citizens to question them.
Mandates Demand Compliance
When a medical intervention is recommended, individuals remain free to consider the evidence, consult their physicians, weigh their individual circumstances, and ultimately accept or reject the recommendation.
A mandate fundamentally changes that relationship.
Once a medical intervention becomes a condition of employment, education, services, travel, or participation in ordinary life, the policy depends upon people complying. Information that causes people to resist the mandate can then become an obstacle to the policy itself. Questions about effectiveness, adverse events, natural immunity, alternative treatments, necessity, or proportionality are no longer merely part of scientific debate; they can undermine the compliance necessary to carry out the mandate.
This creates an inherent conflict when the same government promoting an intervention also possesses the power to compel it and influence the public debate surrounding it.
The lesson is not merely that government should refrain from censorship during the next emergency. The lesson is that no one should possess the power to compel the medical decision in the first place.
Informed Consent Requires the Freedom to Say No
Informed consent requires more than access to information. It requires the freedom to act upon that information.
A person may hear every argument for and against a medical intervention, but if refusing it means losing a job, being removed from school, or being denied access to ordinary life, the decision is still being made under coercive pressure. The right to refuse becomes even less meaningful when consequences for refusal are coupled with efforts to influence the information that might support that decision.
Information cannot produce meaningful informed consent when the ultimate answer is compelled.
That is why protecting free speech, while essential, does not fully solve the problem revealed by COVID. The more durable protection is to eliminate mandates that demand medical compliance.
The Answer: No Mandates
States cannot guarantee that federal agencies will always respect the boundaries of the First Amendment, that technology companies will preserve every viewpoint, or that scientific institutions will always welcome dissent.
But states can address the underlying problem that made control of the debate so consequential during COVID:
They can prohibit medical mandates.
This is the purpose of the Medical Freedom Act.
The MFA establishes a simple principle: no one and no government should be able to coerce an individual into accepting a medical intervention as the price of employment, education, services, or participation in ordinary life. It protects the individual’s ability to accept or refuse medical interventions without discrimination based upon that decision.
Without a mandate, public-health officials can recommend. Physicians can advise. Scientists can debate. Citizens can consider competing information and make their own decisions.
Some will agree with the recommendation. Others will not.
That is informed consent.
Remove the Incentive to Censor
As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, Benjamin Franklin’s reminder remains as relevant as ever: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Keeping that republic requires protecting not only our ability to speak and hear competing ideas, but our ability to act upon the information we receive.
The COVID era demonstrated how closely these freedoms are connected. Mandates required compliance, and the demand for compliance created an incentive for censorship. Without free speech, there can be no meaningful exchange of medical information. Without competing information, there can be no informed consent. And without the freedom to say “no,” a compelled “yes” is not consent at all.
The Medical Freedom Act places a durable barrier between coercive power and an individual’s medical decisions. By eliminating mandates, the MFA removes the demand for medical compliance and with it, the perceived need to control information or silence dissent to achieve that compliance.
The lesson of the COVID era must extend beyond “never censor again.” To remove the incentive to censor, remove the medical mandates that create the demand for compliance.
For further information on this policy position and more, see our Guarding Liberty page, just for you. We stand ready to be a resource as you consider this critical legislation.
If you have questions or would like additional research or legislative resources, please contact Jill Hines at jill@standforhealthfreedom.com.
