If you refuse to get the coming vaccine for Coronavirus then the government has a Constitutional right to drag you to a doctor and forcibly put a needle in your arm. At least, according to Alan Dershowitz.
Harvard Law School emeritus professor Alan Dershowitz claimed in an interview that the government has a constitutional right under the 10th Amendment to forcibly vaccinate a citizen to curb the spread of a contagious disease.
“Let me put it very clearly, you have no constitutional right to endanger the public and spread the disease, even if you disagree. You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask, you have no right to open up your business,” he said.
The interviewer, Jason Goodman, interjected, asking if the famed constitutional scholar was saying that if the government decides “you have to be vaccinated, we have to be vaccinated.”
“Absolutely,” Dershowitz replied. “And if you refuse to be vaccinated, the state has the power to literally take you to a doctor’s office and plunge a needle into your arm.”
“Where is that in the Constitution?” Goodman asked on his web show, “Crowdsource the Truth,” which was posted Sunday on YouTube.
Dershowitz clarified that if a person is threatened with a deadly disease that is not contagious, he can refuse treatment.
“But you have no right to refuse to be vaccinated against a contagious disease,” he said.
“Public health, the police power of the Constitution gives the state the power to compel that,” Dershowitz said. “And there are cases in the United States Supreme Court.”
Dershowitz added that there are “cases after cases after cases” in which courts have ruled in favor of “reasonable actions to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.”
The Harvard professor – who defended President Trump in his Senate impeachment trial – was referring to the state police power doctrine derived in part from the 10th Amendment.
The Supreme Court has recognized each state’s “police power” – defining “police” as polity or government rather than law enforcement specifically – which gives the state authority to enact health laws, including quarantine and vaccination requirements, to protect public health.
On Monday, amid a race for a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, the drugmaker Moderna received positive results from a Phase 1 clinical trial for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine, sparking a 900-point rise in the Dow.
