We need to use the word “choice” for the true range of actions a person physically can take, and “constructive alternative” for choices that accord to status-quo preserving or potential improvements within the rough framework of the current situation.
There are people who truly do not have choices; normally we call them e.g. prisoners under restraint. We need to be careful not to say that e.g. a “landlord” or so-called property owner, has a choice of to whom ultimately to rent under antidiscrimination laws; the person can choose to kill or abuse their tenant (and therefore rent to no one), sell the house, burn it down, or take other actions; but they cannot choose their tenants. Although that person has choices (alternatives) that avoid renting to people, the person does not choose the tenants. Therefore we should consider such a person a “housing operator” or “proprietor” and not an owner, as they cannot exercise the liberties and discretion associated with ownership.
People, with the exception of the most severely restrained prisoners, always have some small number of choices available to them at the time, even if they are homicide or suicide. They can choose to break your windows and urinate on the sidewalk, until the police come to get them. They can choose to whore and abuse drugs, or to withdraw from society, or whatever abnormal or deviant consequence/action they may have in mind. When you take their money – for example, by taxation through which you provide services – you probably have not taken all of their choices away. While they may not be able to pay for private school, they might choose to quit their job and homeschool, move to a different jurisdiction, abandon their children/put them up for adoption/orphanage, prostitute themselves or their children, kill their children, kill the government employees assessing taxation, kill people generally, or some other negative choice that you don’t like. People have many choices, and fully effective restraint probably is not what you are doing or proposing.
We need to make much better use of terms like “beneficial choices” or (my preferred) “constructive alternatives”, instead of phrases like “no choice” applied in the wrong ways. I have a constructive alternative if I can leave my husband and find another man who will treat me better. I have a constructive alternative if I don’t like the small government and insular social culture in my town, if I can get a job in the big city. Speaking from the perspective of government, if you ban people from practicing a profession, or of e.g. polluting the environment, you can give them a constructive alternative in the form of different professions that pay the same or better than what people had. By contrast, I do not have a constructive alternative if I’m poor, uneducated, and have no library or Internet to help me skill up to get off the farm. I certainly do not have a constructive alternative if the city is full of dirty, dangerous jobs that will maim me without any remotely corresponding compensation, so I may as well remain a dirt-poor farmer. I do not have a constructive alternative if I’m stuck in a bad (but not outright abusive) marriage, and if I leave I’m not going to be able to get a job good enough to support my kids, while I would have only partial custody.