Hold me back folks! Did he just say that?!

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. Image by Orlando Sentinel via Getty Images

The Hill's, Filip Timotija, wrote Saturday morning (September 6th, 2025) that Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said of vaccine mandates, “This isn’t actually a scientific debate. This is about whether the parent’s interest should prevail over the sovereignty and the autonomy of their bodies and their children’s bodies, or whether the government should prevail. It’s that simple,” Ladapo said Friday during his appearance on NewsNation’s show “Cuomo.”

As a parent of four and a grandparent to eight, I’ve spent a lifetime making tough decisions to protect my family’s health and future. As a veteran, I wore the uniform of this nation and swore an oath to defend the very freedoms that are now being used as political talking points. And as a transgender woman who has fought to align her body with her truth, I know in my bones what the words “sovereignty and autonomy” truly mean.

So when I hear Florida’s Surgeon General, Dr. Ladapo, talk about a parent’s right to prevail over the “sovereignty and the autonomy of their bodies and their children’s bodies,” a part of me nods in fierce agreement. I believe in that principle. I have lived it.

But that is where our agreement ends. Because to see that noble principle twisted to justify a public health retreat on vaccines, while his government simultaneously wages war on that same autonomy for others, is a betrayal of everything I’ve fought for.

When it comes to a woman’s right to choose, his government asserts its power to stand between her and her doctor. When it comes to a transgender child, his government empowers itself to veto the decisions of loving parents and trusted medical providers. In those moments, where is the fiery defense of “sovereignty and autonomy”? It vanishes.

I did not serve my country so that politicians could treat freedom like a buffet—offering it to some while denying it to others based on their own agenda. Medical freedom is not a selective privilege. It is a fundamental right. It applies to the family weighing a vaccine, to the woman facing a difficult pregnancy, and to the transgender person seeking to live an authentic life.

So, Dr. Ladapo, I will take you at your word. Let’s have the debate about bodily autonomy. But it must be a consistent one, an honest one, for all of us. My body, my children’s bodies, and my grandchildren’s bodies are not pawns in a political game. Our sovereignty is not a convenience. It is our inalienable right.