The Medical Freedom Act: Preserving Liberty for the Next 250 Years
For 250 years, Americans have understood that one of government’s highest purposes is to protect individual rights. The Founders endured war, insurrection, epidemics, and other extraordinary challenges, yet remained steadfast in their commitment to securing liberty for their fellow citizens. If we are to preserve that liberty for another 250 years, we must remember that our constitutional system was designed not for a world without crises, but with the understanding that crises would inevitably come. It is precisely in moments of fear and uncertainty that we must guard most jealously the liberty of our fellow Americans. Recently, Pennsylvanians did just that.
Part Five │ Measles and the Medical Freedom Act
Five years after COVID demonstrated how quickly fear of disease could justify extraordinary government authority, Pennsylvania confronted a familiar sequence: emphasize the crisis, obscure important context, amplify fear, and use the resulting urgency to justify greater government power.
This time, the disease was measles.
Amid Pennsylvania’s largest measles outbreak in decades, Governor Josh Shapiro announced two “measles-associated” deaths, stressing that both individuals were unvaccinated while initially providing little information about their ages, underlying conditions, or causes of death. Simultaneously, he announced an expanded statewide measles response, citing the deaths as evidence of the outbreak’s severity. The response focused overwhelmingly on vaccination and surveillance, while offering little practical guidance on recognizing measles, caring for or treating those already ill, monitoring for complications, or knowing when urgent medical care was necessary.
Then important context emerged.
Both deaths involved infants too young for routine measles vaccination. One was a newborn who died shortly after birth from a ruptured spleen; the other was a six-week-old with Amish lethal microcephaly, a terminal genetic disorder. Thus, neither infant’s “unvaccinated” status reflected a parental decision to decline an age-appropriate measles vaccine.
When deaths are invoked to influence public behavior or justify government action, the distinction between dying with an infection and dying from it, and the underlying medical circumstances, deserves full transparency.
The parallels to COVID were difficult to ignore.
During COVID, shifting definitions, incomplete data, alarming projections, and statistics lacking critical context contributed to profound public distrust, while emergency declarations justified unprecedented restrictions on businesses, schools, churches, employment, travel, and individual medical decisions.
Rather than learning from that experience, it appears the Shapiro administration exploited the measles deaths in an attempt to advance a previously proposed 502-page rewrite of the state’s disease regulations. Far from a routine administrative update, the proposal would expand government authority over schools, students, disease surveillance and investigations—including entry into private premises with no warrant requirement specified—health and vaccination information, and exclusion from educational settings.
Among them was a provision allowing the Department of Health to exclude a healthy person deemed “susceptible” to measles from a school, college, university, or child-care setting until that person demonstrated immunity, received a measles vaccine, or 21 days passed without another measles case in that setting. Importantly, exclusion would not require an individual to have measles or even exhibit symptoms. The government’s classification of a healthy individual as “susceptible” would be sufficient to exclude that person from an educational setting. Insulting American values and principles, the healthy person was presumed guilty of measles until proven innocent of infection.
While measles was only one component of the proposed regulatory overhaul, the outbreak provided the perfect opportunity to exploit fear of disease to justify an expansion of government power reminiscent of the COVID era.
This is precisely why the lessons of COVID cannot be forgotten.
Fear makes distinguishing between necessary public-health measures and unnecessary expansions of government power more difficult. Policies that would receive intense scrutiny under ordinary circumstances can suddenly appear indispensable when citizens believe their health or lives are at immediate risk.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch described this danger while reflecting on the government’s response to COVID:
“Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action, almost any action, as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat.”
Pennsylvanians recognized the danger.
Public opposition to the proposed regulatory changes was substantial, with more than 10,000 comments submitted against the proposed regulations, alongside significant legislative scrutiny, including comments from 85 members of the Pennsylvania House and 21 state senators. On September 25, the Department of Health withdrew the proposal.
The response demonstrated that protecting public health and preserving individual liberty are not mutually exclusive objectives.
The Medical Freedom Act removes that question from the pressures of the next crisis by establishing the boundary in advance. It puts the power and decision-making in the hands of the people and their representatives, not a potentially rogue executive branch. Government may inform, recommend, investigate legitimate public-health threats, and make vaccines and treatments available. But it may not condition employment, education, public accommodations, government services, or participation in society upon acceptance of a medical intervention.
Once an emergency becomes sufficient justification for suspending individual liberty, future emergencies can be invoked to justify the same.
The lesson from Pennsylvania extends far beyond measles. The danger is not simply the crisis itself, but what government may ask citizens to surrender because of it.
For 250 years, our constitutional system has endured war, epidemics, economic collapse, civil unrest, and countless other emergencies. Preserving that system for another 250 years requires remembering that constitutional safeguards are not luxuries reserved for peaceful and prosperous times. They matter most when fear makes surrendering them seem reasonable.
Pennsylvania demonstrated the importance of establishing limits on government power before the next crisis arrives. Every state should do the same.
Pass the Medical Freedom Act before the next crisis arrives.
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.
