Health is a precious gift that comes easily to some, and not so easily to others. It reflects the complete uniqueness of each person in their life circumstances, experiences, and journey. It is a full-time job to maintain health, whether you are a parent or guardian looking out for someone else, or whether you are plain old looking out for yourself.
Health Freedom is essential to health. It is the ability to freely make decisions for your health and survival, whether they are easy day-to-day decisions or decisions that could impact your quality of life or longevity. From the time we are young we get a lot of practice in making health decisions: “eat your supper,” “wash your hands,” “get to bed.” And as we get older, we may need to make harder decisions.
My first memorable experience making a hard decision was when I was a teenager and I had repetitive strep throats. My mother said the doctor had recommended that I have my tonsils taken out, just like my brother had experienced. Yikes! The thought of someone cutting my tonsils out was perfectly unacceptable to me, so I told my mother “NO.” Years later when I was in my 30’s, I once again had a bout of repeated strep throats. I researched my options and went to a homeopath. I took the remedy that they recommended, and I never had another strep throat again.
The unique thing about these two events is that in both cases I was able to exercise my freedom to decide. I was so glad that my parents honored my decision about my tonsils. And that years later I could seek out a solution other than surgery for my illness. These may seem like small circumstances, but they reflect the depth and importance of the laws in our country that protect the right of all people to have a say over their own health and survival and the importance of access to all kinds of information and options to maintain health.
Health freedom plays out in more serious matters in many people’s lives, with conditions and circumstances that require hard choices to make. Health freedom also plays out in local and national circumstances, as we all know and have experienced during attempts at health emergency mandates of the last decade. The powers that be, whether they are the laws on the books, the government, large corporations with new inventions that advertise and dominate the marketplace, or community norms, pressures, or policies, these can all play into the jeopardization of true health freedom. As a result, we need to be vigilant to protect this precious gift, the gift of health freedom.
The rising up of the people to protect their own bodily autonomy is happening. What some have thought was a given, (that no one could ever force someone to make a health decision against their will), has not been a given in this decade, and we have learned that we need to protect these rights of health and survival.
The team members at NHFC and NHFA spend all of their days helping to educate and protect the right of all people to make their own health decisions and to have access to all the health options that a person deems important for their health We know that health freedom is both personal and precious, and we are dedicated to protecting it.
