Why I Firmly Believe Jesus Christ Would Be Pro-Vaxx & Pro-Choice

I was not raised Jewish.

My maternal great grandparents, in order to survive a world hostile to "The Other" hid their Jewishness from the world, presenting a Catholic face in public, lighting Sabbath candles in the basement and telling their kids "Never you mind" when they asked why some things they did and said were not like what their Catholic friends did and said.

My mom, after her childhood of being beaten by nuns and seeing male relatives raped by priests, eventually became a Protestant, meeting and marrying my dad in a Baptist church.

As dementia started to loosen the previously silenced tongues of my great aunts and DNA started to be used in genealogy, the truth came out. With that I started to grab every book I could on Judaism from my local library. Books by Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Rabbis. Trying to understand and learn what my great grandparents felt they had to hide to save their own lives. Things started to fall into place, cookies grandma would make at certain times of the year - the cookies being Haman's ears and the time of year was Purim. Why I was the only kid in Sunday school who knew about Esther.

This is all important for you to know as to why I came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ would be both pro-vaccine and pro-choice.

See, while all these Rabbis had slightly differing beliefs themselves, one thing they all agreed on was that saving a life is the absolute most important thing you can do. Including your own life. This is why doctors, nurses, firefighters, etc are all allowed to work on the Sabbath. If you're in a situation where keeping kosher will kill you, then you are allowed to eat treif food. And even in the books by Orthodox Rabbis they said if a woman is pregnant and the pregnancy will kill her, she's allowed to have an abortion to preserve her own life. This, according to some Rabbis, also counts in cases of rape.

Now granted, they all said the woman has to go to the Rabbis and present her case to gain permission same as if she wants to go on birth control, but at the very least all the ones who's writing I read agreed that she should be given permission. While they didn't flat out say it, it was strongly hinted, in my humble opinion, that to not give permission is the same as killing her, which would break the 6th commandment of "Thou shalt not kill."

While none of the books I read talked about vaccinations, obviously the same rule would apply here. Vaccines, without question, save lives. They not only protect the vaccinated from death by diseases like measles, mumps, chickenpox, etc, but it protects those who cannot be vaccinated. Be it by protecting a child who's too young to receive a vaccine from dying from the whooping cough, to those who are immunocompromised. Herd immunity is real, no matter how many anti-vaxxers try to deny it. There's no question, it exists. Just like the earth is round, just like Patrick Stewart is bald, herd immunity does exist.

So to not vaccinate, without question, is to break the 6th commandment. A commandment part of the same ten that both Jews and Christians are supposed to follow.

Now we get to Jesus Christ.

Jesus, no matter how many false Christians try to deny it, was first and foremost a Jew. He was born to a Jewish mother. He was circumcised on his 8th day of life. He ate kosher food. If he was walking around right now you wouldn't see him eating a bacon cheeseburger. He'd be at a kosher deli.

And because he is first and foremost a Jew that means Jesus would also believe saving a life is the most important thing you can do. He would agree with the Rabbis who say if a woman will die if she carries a pregnancy to term that she should have an abortion. He'd be coming after anti-vaxxers who dare compare themselves to him or to Holocaust victims with the same whip he went after the money changers and merchants in the temple with. He would tell off, in his very Jesus way, the protesters outside Planned Parenthood and make them ashamed of how they're attempting to murder women by forcing them to carry on with pregnancies that are killing them in many ways.

There's no way the Jesus taught about in the Bible would allow for a child who is never going to have a life, who hasn't developed a brain, who's organs are outside their body, to suffer. He wouldn't agree to allowing a woman to commit suicide by pregnancy.

And by the same token, Jesus would never allow a child to go unvaccinated. He would be first in line to get his flu shot - for though they claim he's the son of God, he still has a human body and therefore can suffer human illnesses. He was put on Earth to learn about the human condition. It may not be in the Bible (for we know many chapters have been left out, there's ones all about his childhood that have been cut, for instance) but Jesus likely had colds and other illnesses in his short 33 years of life. Jesus would talk about how vaccines save lives. How everyone must be vaccinated. That God gave us the intelligence to create vaccines in order to save lives.

Though many so called Christians will no doubt rant and rail and call me names for this, there's no doubt in my mind. Jesus Christ would be both pro-vaccine and pro-choice.