Aletho News

Saying No: The Winter of My Non-Consent

The prerogative to refuse medical intervention is a basic human right

By Claire O’Driscoll | OffGuardian | January 21, 2022

As parents with young children will attest, the most frequently uttered word your toddler will use is not ‘mama’ or ‘dada’, or any word you desperately want them to say, but the word ‘no’.

At around 2 years, this word will issue from your child’s mouth at an astonishing and infuriating rate. ‘Yes’ isn’t any real competition in the pantheon of formative words for a two-year-old.

It would seem that this right to refuse is hard-wired into us, long before we develop a sense of self or begin to retreat into that private, internal landscape that becomes so important as we move away from childhood and into our teenage years.

So important is this formative word, that it has become enshrined in our laws and our culture. The right to refuse, to say ‘no,’ is the mark of a civilised, democratic society.

We had the Nuremberg trials and the civil rights movement. We said ‘no more’ and ‘never again’ to segregation, apartheid, eugenics and forced medical experimentation.

Any society that historically abused these most fundamental of human rights has been paraded in front of us (and rightly so) as a cautionary tale of what ‘not’ to do and what should ‘never’ be repeated.

In more recent history, the citizens of Northern Ireland said ‘no’ to sectarian violence and voted for the Good Friday Agreement; we said ‘no’ to homophobia and the awful violence that was perpetrated against our gay citizens.

We said ‘no’ to misogyny, sexism, ageism. We said ‘no’ and ‘never again’ to the horrific crimes perpetrated against children by those who chose to abuse their power and authority within the Catholic Church.

In fact, we said ‘no more’ to the historical interference of church within the State. We legalised contraception and divorce. Let us not forget that divorce only became legal here in 1995, a fact that often shocks those international students I teach Irish history to. And even in 1995, the ‘yes’ vote in the divorce referendum was only narrowly won with 50.3% voting in favour and 49.7% against.

This separation of church and state in an Irish context is perhaps best exemplified by the 2018 abortion referendum. Whatever your opinions may be on this subject, Irish people voted ‘yes’ for a woman’s right to say ‘no’ to a pregnancy. “My body, my choice” became the mantra of the pro-choice movement.

This referendum was won by a much larger majority than the divorce referendum of 1995, with 66.4% voting ‘yes’ to the legalisation of abortion, dealing perhaps the final blow to any significant influence the Catholic Church might have had in matters of state.

In the ever-changing world of today’s identity politics and its fluid nomenclature, it’s now ok to say ‘no’ to the gender you were born with and ‘no’ to the gender specific pronouns others label you with. I have learnt that words like ‘sex change’ or even ‘gender realignment’ are considered offensive to many trans citizens and that ‘gender confirmation’ is the appropriate description to use.

My point is that the right to say ‘no’ to something you fundamentally disagree with or which you feel is threatening to your person or liberty or identity is absolutely sacrosanct.

Or at least I thought it was, until now.

I have chosen not to participate in the Irish state’s Covid 19 injection programme.  I am not going to try and convince anybody of the merit of my reasons. I know they are sound reasons, and my decision not to participate is not based on right wing, crazy conspiracy theories as the mainstream media repeatedly and disimulatively asserts, but on many months of research: reading and listening to epidemiologists, virologists and medical doctors with different specialities (from both sides of the argument).

It is not a decision I have taken lightly, and that decision to say ‘no’ has changed my life and affected my relationships with those around me so dramatically I barely recognise it anymore.

Since July 2021 I have become persona non grata. I got my first taste of what this feels like while on holiday in Wexford at the end of last summer. Myself and my brother were refused entry into a rural pub after a long walk during which we’d worked up quite an appetite. It was both embarrassing and humiliating.

Now I can’t go into bars, restaurants, cafes, nightclubs, cinemas, theatres or even a gym to get a bit of exercise. Arranging to meet a friend in winter in Ireland is challenging to say the least.

Dublin’s hospitality is no longer extended to all citizens

Last Christmas, the twinkling lights on Grafton Street felt like a personal rebuke. I walked the streets, permitted the luxury of spending money in crowded shops, but not allowed to take a load off by sitting down and having a coffee.

I ended up getting a takeaway sandwich and eating it standing up outside, alone in the cold on Grafton Street, until I was joined by a homeless man who convinced me to buy him some cigarettes.

And it got me thinking. I am not trying to compare my situation with the horrific life of somebody living on the streets in our capital. I do have a home, and I’m not alienated from my family (as so many homeless people so sadly are), but it gave me a small taste of what it must be like: the exclusion, the judgement, the physical moving away from you, as if you’re unclean or diseased in some way.

But luckily our free, democratic and liberal society would surely never discriminate against or encourage discrimination against its citizens for a personal medical decision?

Let’s just recap what our global leaders have been saying recently, shall we?

In France, president Emmanuel Macron says if you are unvaccinated you are “not a citizen” and that he wants to “piss (you) off.”

In America, Joe Biden advises parents to keep kids away from the unvaccinated and asserts that “this continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

In Canada, Justin Trudeau blames lockdowns on the unvaccinated and claims that this group is “extremist”, “racist” and “misogynist” (this coming from a man who thought dressing up in blackface was hilarious in his student days).

Justin Trudeau (pictured above) claims the unvaccinated are racists

In Australia, Michael Gunner (Northern Territory Chief Minister) says that “work is not a reason to leave the home for the unvaccinated.”

And we all know how the world’s number one tennis player has been treated in Australia: leaving his detention centre (ahem ‘hotel’) to go to work was clearly not a good enough reason for him either.

I suppose Leo Varadkar’s remark that the 5% of the population who are not vaccinated are causing “a lot of the trouble” is relatively mild in comparison.

What is beyond dispute at this stage is that the State and mainstream media have been systematically encouraging (and applauding) vitriolic discrimination against Irish citizens for what should be a personal and private medical decision.

In March of last year, barrister and chairman of the ICHR (Irish Council of Human Rights), Tracey O’Mahony, initiated an email campaign to encourage Irish citizens to lobby Irish MEPs to vote against digital green certificates on the basis that they were unconstitutional and would potentially cause serious divisions among the population.

Irish MEPs received at that time an unprecedented number of emails from concerned citizens. Yet, we were portrayed in Irish mainstream publications such as the Irish TImes as crazed, right-wing lunatics, somehow intent on preventing others from being able to travel freely, while the same outlets totally ignored the very real human rights violations the introduction of these passes would mean.

Hindsight is a great thing as they say, so I can’t help but include a quote from MEP Billy Kelleher, who voted in favour of the digital green certificates. This is taken from his response, on 24th March 2021, to my email, which of course is a bulk response to all those who lobbied him:

January 21, 2022 - Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights