Mass. Health Bill Would Allow Warrantless Arrests, Quarantines

A pandemic and disaster preparation bill (S. 2028) passed unanimously by the Massachusetts Senate earlier this year is receiving wide-spread criticism as citizens mobilize to oppose its passage in the commonwealth’s House of Representatives. “Under this bill, Massachusetts becomes a medical police state. There is no debating it,” wrote Natural News editor Michael Adams in an August 28 article entitled “Wake Up, America: Forced vaccinations, quarantine camps, health care interrogations and mandatory ‘decontaminations,’” where he suggested America was delving into medical fascism. “The citizens of Massachusetts will have no rights, period. The Constitution is ancient history. You are now the property of the State.”

The bill contains a number of controversial, alarming, and blatantly unconstitutional provisions. Under an emergency declared by the governor, the statute purports to give the health commissioner, and law enforcement and medical personnel  broad authority to mobilize forces, vaccinate the population, enter private property with no warrants, and even quarantine people against their will.

The legislation provides severe penalties — $1,000 fine per day and possible jail time — for not complying with state orders, while also claiming to shield everyone involved from liability. It gives local health authorities the power “to restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons” and gives government agents the authority to “arrest without a warrant any person whom the officer has probable cause to believe has violated an order” while using “reasonable diligence to enforce such order.” Also, law-enforcement authorities “shall assist” medical personnel in the “involuntary transportation” of people to “treatment centers.”

The provision on vaccines does give citizens the authority to refuse the vaccination, but people who do can be “isolated or quarantined.” The same fate awaits those are “unable or unwilling to submit to decontamination or procedures necessary for diagnosis.” One part of the legislation requires that owners or occupiers of a property “permit entry into and investigation of the premises,” and another section creates price controls.

Draconian measures like this to supposedly deal with pandemics and outbreaks of disease are getting a boost with the hysteria surrounding swine flu, but critics are warning of the dangers of such tactics and fighting back. “In this time of fear, we can’t let that fear take away our freedom to make voluntary health decisions,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, the president of the National Vaccine Information Center. She offered a chilling analysis of the legislation in Massachusetts and the national situation, saying “it looks like few choices will be allowed.” But she encouraged people to find out what their rights are.

Though it breezed past the Senate with a 36 to 0 vote, the Massachusetts bill is still languishing in the House after being referred to the committee on health care financing. “One of the reasons the bill is stalled in the house is because those house reps are being bombarded with phone calls from constituents saying, ‘I will refuse the vaccine,’” explained writer Devvy Kidd in a piece about important bills to defeat where she said the reaction to this legislation may have been blown out of proportion.

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