Medical Freedom Is a Human Right and Always Should Be

Health Freedom Defense Fund launches Medical Freedom Act Coalition

By Leslie Manookian, Special to The MAHA Report

My chronic health issues arose shortly after a round of vaccines prior to a trip to South East Asia in the summer of 1992.

For years, I endured debilitating chronic fatigue, a sleep disorder, digestive issues, food allergies, chronic infections, hypersensitivity to light, sound, chemicals, and much more.

As I considered what happened to me after receiving those vaccines, my natural instinct was to protect my family.

Understanding that vaccines are often mandated in the United States, I also began contemplating the moral and ethical implications of coercive medicine.

Faced with the possibility that I might be forced to subject my own child to a medical intervention, I came to understand the evil of vaccine mandates.

Vaccine mandates are grounded in utilitarianism – the idea that it’s acceptable to sacrifice some individuals in service to the greater good – a notion so immoral, it’s hard to comprehend. I wrongly thought that utilitarianism had been consigned to the dustbin of history after the revelations during the Nuremberg trials, but I was wrong. Utilitarianism is wielded to shame, frighten and intimidate parents and society in general into compliance.

By the time the Covid era arrived, I had been deep into the vaccine safety awareness movement for many years. Covid heralded the arrival of coercive vaccination mandates for all, not just children.

I decided I had to do something to ensure that all Americans have the freedom to exercise their most basic and fundamental of human rights – the right to self-determination regarding health matters.

I founded the Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF).

Our first lawsuit forced the LA Unified School District to rescind its mandate that all employees take the Emergency Use Authorized (EUA) Covid shot.

Our next target was CDC’s July 2021directive that mandated masks for travelers on trains, planes, buses and in terminals.

Armed with the knowledge that health laws are state laws, I reasoned the CDC did not have the authority to dictate the behavior of millions of perfectly healthy Americans. We quietly filed a lawsuit challenging CDC’s directive. On April 18, 2022, a federal judge struck down the mandate as unconstitutional, siding with us on every issue. The court held that CDC had not only failed to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act, it lacked the authority to issue the mandate in the first place.

I will never forget the celebratory videos and photos of passengers and flight attendants jubilantly freeing their faces and airways from the assault of those restrictive and ineffective masks.

HFDF has enjoyed many other legal wins.

In late December, 2025, we filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Ninth Circuit Court ruling that state actors have virtually limitless power in the event of a perceived public health emergency.

While I’m proud of all our successes over the last five years, nothing compares to the joy I feel for having written and passed, in 2025, the Idaho Medical Freedom Act. This triumph would not have been possible without the help and support of my dear friends and colleagues at Health Freedom Idaho, Miste Karlfeldt and Sarah Clendenon,

For years, I have been pondering the principle of absolute health freedom. By the summer of 2024, in the aftermath of the unconscionable Covid era impositions into our private, personal medical choices, I felt the time had come to codify this most basic right.

In America, the U.S. Constitution grants states the right to make their own laws, which means that we must protect ourselves at the state level. This unique American structure safeguarded the U.S. from devolving into the virtual police state that happened during Covid in countries such as New Zealand and France.

Based on my belief that medical freedom is the most basic and fundamental of human rights, I drafted a bill to outlaw medical mandates in my state, Idaho.

The bill prohibits public or private entities in the state of Idaho from mandating any type of medical intervention, including tests, injections, masks, devices, chips, etc. Only without these can people live a normal life. .

Signed into law on April 4, 2025, the Idaho Medical Freedom Act also prohibits schools, businesses, and other venues from demanding submission to a public health intervention in order to access services or to enter premises.

Most importantly, it guarantees freedom from medical mandates in the state of Idaho. This ensures that the violations and intrusions of the Covid era can never happen again. It also restores medical decision-making power to the people, where it rightfully belongs.

However, we must not stop at Idaho. All Americans deserve to have their medical freedom rights protected. That’s why, together with Stand for Health Freedom, we’re launching the Medical Freedom Act Coalition, which includes Autism Action Network, Brownstone Institute, Children’s Health Defense, Citizen’s Council for Health Freedom, Feds for Freedom, Global Wellness Forum, Independent Medical Alliance, MAHA Action, MAHA Institute, Children’s Health Defense, We the Patriots USA, Mom’s Across America, and the Westin A Price Foundation and others.

As I explained on the January 14 MAHA Media Hub, ten other states are considering medical freedom legislation. “No one, and no government, has the right, power, or authority to tell us what we should put in our bodies,” I said. “We need to flip the tables and we need to assert our God-given right to make our own medical choices.”

Joined by our many allies, the movement toward true medical freedom is now on the horizon. But we need your help.

I call on all of you to join our cause. .

Leslie Manookian, MBA, MLHom, PHom, is president and founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund, a nonprofit which seeks to rectify health injustice through education, advocacy, and legal challenges to unjust mandates, laws, and policies that undermine our health freedoms and human rights. She is an award-winning filmmaker, homeopath, nutrition junky and all around health freedom fighter.