COVID-19 Vaccination Should not be Mandatory for Health and Social Care Workers.

A COVID-19 vaccine mandate is being introduced for health and social care workers in England, and those refusing to comply will either be redeployed or have their employment terminated. We argue that COVID-19 vaccination should not be mandatory for these workers for several reasons. First, it ignores their genuine concerns, and fails to respect their moral integrity and bodily autonomy. Second, it risks causing psychological reactance, potentially worsening vaccine hesitancy. Third, Black and minority ethnic workers are less likely to have been vaccinated and therefore may be disproportionately impacted by the implications of the mandate. Fourth, a mandate could have a significant negative effect on service provision. Fifth, waning immunity and new variants mean that booster doses are increasingly likely to be regularly required, meaning that what constitutes being 'fully vaccinated' will be a constantly shifting target. Finally, vaccine mandates may have an adverse effect on health and social care recruitment. We argue that daily rapid antigen testing is a viable alternative to a vaccine mandate that is non-coercive and fair. This could also be supplemented by monetary incentives to be vaccinated.

If fetuses are persons, abortion is a public health crisis.

Pro-life advocates commonly argue that fetuses have the moral status of persons, and an accompanying right to life, a view most pro-choice advocates deny. A difficulty for this pro-life position has been Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist analogy, in which she argues that even if the fetus is a person, abortion is often permissible because a pregnant woman is not obliged to continue to offer her body as life support. Here, we outline the moral theories underlying public health ethics, and examine the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of public health considerations overriding individual rights. We argue that if fetuses are regarded as persons, then abortion is of such prevalence in society that it also constitutes a significant public health crisis. We show that on public health considerations, we are justified in overriding individual rights to bodily autonomy by prohibiting abortion. We conclude that in a society that values public health, abortion can only be tolerated if fetuses are not regarded as persons.