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Two medical freedom advocacy groups have launched a coalition to promote state laws prohibiting medical mandates.
Stand for Health Freedom and the Health Freedom Defense Fund this week launched the Medical Freedom Act Coalition, which Children’s Health Defense (CHD) has joined.
The coalition said it will work to “restore fundamental rights related to informed consent, parental authority, and the doctor-patient relationship.”
Jill Hines, director of advocacy for Stand for Health Freedom, told The Defender the coalition’s goal is “no mandates for everyone, without exception.”
“A foundational tenet of human rights and medical ethics is that the voluntary consent of the patient is absolutely vital,” Hines said. “No one should live under threat of job loss or lost educational opportunities because a medical intervention was not voluntary.”
The coalition seeks to build on its success last year in passing the Idaho Medical Freedom Act. The law bans medical mandates in the state, including school requirements for vaccines. It also prohibits schools from excluding unvaccinated children during an outbreak of a vaccine-covered disease.
Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, authored the Idaho law. She told The Defender that it “prohibits all medical mandates, not just vaccine mandates, because no one and no government has the right to mandate what we put into or onto our bodies.”
“No one else knows what’s best for us and no one else has to live with the consequences of our medical choices,” Manookian said. “It beggars belief that some powerful people believe they have the moral authority to dictate my medical treatment. The Medical Freedom Act ensures that they cannot trample our rights.”
Hines said the Idaho bill evolved from another successful Idaho law that banned government and school mask mandates — a response to COVID-19-era restrictions.
“Building on the reality that no one has the right to mandate a COVID-era medical intervention like testing, masking or vaccination, Idaho successfully passed legislation in 2025 that states no person and no government has the right to mandate any medical intervention,” Hines said.
Manookian said it’s “very concerning that the U.S. as a nation has embraced medical coercion” in recent years, despite “decades of acknowledgment that coerced medicine is utterly unethical.”
‘To protect the fundamental right to refuse is essential’
CHD is among the medical freedom organizations that have signed on to the coalition. “We wholeheartedly support this legislation modeled after the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, and we hope as many states as possible enact it,” said Michael Kane, CHD’s director of advocacy.
Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, said that the COVID-19 era taught us “how central medical freedom is to freedom in general.”
“Once the state or any institution is permitted to cross the line and invade personal autonomy with mandates to consume or inject a pharmaceutical product, anything and everything becomes possible,” said Tucker. “To protect the fundamental right to refuse is essential.”
“This coalition is the next step in bringing patient-centered reform to American healthcare,” said Dr. Joseph Varon, president and chief medical officer of the Independent Medical Alliance. “The Independent Medical Alliance is mobilizing thousands of independent doctors to dismantle medical mandates state by state, restoring true patient-informed choice and freedom.”
Other organizations supporting the coalition include the Autism Action Network, Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, Global Wellness Forum, MAHA Action, MAHA Institute, Moms Across America, We The Patriots USA and the Weston A. Price Foundation.
Coalition’s singular focus is to pass medical freedom acts across the U.S.
According to Manookian, the new coalition “will focus all efforts on passage of Medical Freedom Acts,” with the help of Stand for Health Freedom’s state directors and grassroots groups.
Manookian said approximately 10 states plan to introduce similar bills this year. Hines said Indiana has already filed a bill, but “more states are planned.”
Kane said Florida is also likely to propose such a law. He cited Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s announcement last year that Florida plans to eliminate all vaccine mandates in the state, including for school attendance.
Manookian said the coalition will focus on state-level legislation because the U.S. Constitution “reserves health laws to the states.” The federal government can only make recommendations about health-related issues.
“This is why it is imperative that work is done at the state level, to ensure our legislators are educated about the basic and fundamental human right to bodily autonomy and pass legislation which supports that basic right,” Manookian said.
Hines said the federal government’s “gross overreach during the COVID era” created a perception that the federal government “has the authority to mandate medical interventions, when it does not.”
“State laws are key in protecting individual rights, including the right to remain free of unwanted medical interventions,” Hines said.
Zen Honeycutt, founding executive director of Moms Across America, said that advocacy at the state level is critical for two reasons. “The first is because it is essential that local, state advocates create what is best for them. The second is because most federal regulation shifts do not happen without state-level advocacy.”
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Efforts to support vaccine exemptions aligned with ending mandates
Medical freedom groups that support religious, medical and philosophical exemptions to vaccination face frequent accusations that their efforts legitimize the mandates that make exemptions necessary.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Kane said. “Mandates are immoral and need to end, full stop. And that’s why we support this coalition.”
However, where mandates exist, “we can’t abandon those places,” Kane said. “We need to do whatever we can to help the families and the children and the parents in those areas who are suffering.”
Manookian said these efforts share the same goal — to end vaccine mandates and other medical mandates nationwide.
“While I understand the need for exemptions in some states, I think the goal for all of us who believe in health freedom should be to eliminate mandates. No one should have to ask permission to make their own medical choices.”
Related articles in The Defender- Idaho Governor Signs Law Prohibiting Vaccine Mandates
- Supporters Call on Idaho Lawmakers to Override Governor’s Veto of Bill Prohibiting Medical Mandates
- Florida to ‘End All Vaccine Mandates,’ State’s Surgeon General Announces
- ‘Science Is on Our Side’: Critics Fire Back at AP Report on ‘Wave of Anti-Science Bills’
- Breaking: Children’s Health Defense Sues New York in Bid to Restore Religious Exemptions
