As I’ve observed in the past, you can accurately identify the wicked by their inevitable inversions. Even more usefully, you can reliably identify the evil position that the wicked have taken, and thereby make better decisions with regards to related matters, in light of those inversions. Consider Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s two contradictory positions on bodily autonomy.
Vaccines are the best way to finish the fight against COVID-19. That’s why we will make vaccines mandatory for anyone boarding a plane or train, or any federally-regulated worker. This is how we will keep everyone, including our kids, safe and healthy.
- Justin Trudeau, 27 August 2021
No government, politician, or many should tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. I want women in Canada to know that we will always stand up for your right to choose.
- Justin Trudeau, 24 June 2022
The “My Body, My Choice” rhetoric in support of a nonexistent right to abortion has always been nonsensical. In most legal jurisdictions, a woman has no right to put certain substances inside her body, drive with certain quantities of legal substances inside her body, place her body in certain specified locations, or charge other individuals for hourly access to her body. This has been true for decades, if not centuries, and with the occasional exception of the latter example, no one seriously attempts to dispute these laws on the grounds of bodily autonomy.
But the obvious contrast with the vaccine mandates is simply too recent and too stark for the pro-choice advocates to get any traction at all with a resort to their historical rhetoric. I suspect that’s why we’re mostly hearing it from female entertainers and a few low-wattage politicians like Trudeau rather than the narrative-reinforcing propaganda corps, because the massive government invasion of bodily autonomy inherent in the vaccine mandates has had the unintended effect of auto-neutralizing the abortion rhetoric.
As Ian Miller notes on Outkick:
It’s nothing new for politicians and public health authorities to be hypocritical. But their ability to blatantly disregard the principles of bodily autonomy and personal control over health decisions just a few months ago means it’s impossible to take them seriously now.