THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES ON THE PREËMINENT RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL
In conclusion on this most vital point, let me call your special attention, Mr. President, to a most significant and important decision of the U. S. Supreme Court in the vaccination case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, rendered in 1905, on appeal from the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. In this long and interesting decision, one of its most clear and conclusive paragraphs emphatically declares the preëminent rights of the individual in certain spheres, as follows:
“There is, of course, a sphere within which the individual may assert the supremacy of his own will and rightfully dispute the authority of any human government, especially of any free government existing under a written constitution, to interfere with the exercise of that will.”
Now, what is this “sphere” within which this highest court in our land tells us so clearly and emphatically that “the individual may assert the supremacy of his own will and rightfully dispute the authority of any human government, especially of any free government, existing under a written constitution, to interfere with the exercise of that will”?
The context both before and after this paragraph shows clearly that this “sphere” of individual right and freedom exists wherever any unalienable or inherent natural right secured by our constitution is invaded or violated, or where any act or practice forced upon the individual is potentially or actually dangerous to the health or life of that individual, such as I have shown every act of vaccination to be, in its very nature being an act of septicemic infection or blood poisoning pure and simple, which sometimes causes wide-spread epidemics and frequently causes serious injuries and many deaths, even more deaths than smallpox itself, as has been demonstrated beyond question.
Surely, therefore, there is no individual or personal right more inherent and natural and more sacred and obvious or more surely guaranteed in Declaration and Constitution than the right to medical freedom of the body, the right to health and life and the right of the individual to select and decide freely for himself the medical treatment of his own body, and the right to guard it against any medical treatment or operation which in his own judgment and conscience may be unnecessary or undesirable or may involve great risk or suffering to himself or may seriously endanger his health or life. This right is, I think, so obvious, so fundamental and necessary and so unquestionable under the letter and spirit of our basic laws and constitution, and by the decisions of our courts as well as by all common sense, logic and ethics, that I do not think another word of argument is necessary to establish this right in the conscientious conviction of every rational mind.
DECISION OF U. S. SUPREME COURT FURTHER ANALYZED
In further consideration of the meaning and significance of this important decision of the U. S. Supreme Court it may be now explained that the law of Massachusetts here considered was a Statute passed by the Legislature requiring the vaccination of all persons, child or adult, under penalty of fine of $5 for refusing vaccination. This law made an exception for children or minors in delicate health or such physical condition as would be injured by vaccination, but made no such exception for adults like the defendant Jacobson.
The Supreme Court of the State of Massachusetts in its decision, from which this appeal was taken, had already decided, as I have shown, that the State could not enforce actual compulsory vaccination upon any person, but could only enforce the fine of $5 if vaccination was not voluntarily adopted.
The U. S. Supreme Court concluded its decision in these words: