During a segment on CNN last month, the former head of Planned Parenthood said that a “very narrow window” existed for the Biden administration “to tie reopening policy to vaccination status.” Despite being filmed a few weeks ago, the segment went viral on social media in recent days.
According to the Daily Wire, she also warned that as states were reopening that people may not get vaccinated because they would go out and start enjoying their freedoms.
“My main concern is that we’re not going to reach herd immunity because of vaccine hesitancy,” Dr. Leana Wen said. “And I know that’s hard for a lot of people to believe, who desperately want the vaccine right now. And they’re thinking, ‘Oh, well, it’s just a small percentage of people who are actually anti-vaxxers.’ And that’s true.”
“There is the anti-science, anti-vaxxer contingent,” Wen continued. “But I think that there are many more people, millions of people who, for whatever reason, have concerns about the vaccine, who just don’t know what’s in it for them. And we need to make it clear to them that the vaccine is the ticket back to pre-pandemic life. And the window to do that is really narrowing. I mean, you were mentioning, Chris, about how all these states are reopening. They are reopening at 100 percent.”
“And we have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status,” Wen added. “Because otherwise, if everything is reopened, then what’s the carrot going to be? How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine? So that’s why I think the CDC and the Biden administration needs to come out a lot bolder and say, ‘If you’re vaccinated, you can do all these things. Here are all these freedoms that you have,’ because otherwise, people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms anyway. And I fear a situation of coming into the fall, where we never reach herd immunity, and then we get hit by the next surge of COVID-19, in the fall, something that we could have prevented, if we just got people vaccinated now.”
Setting aside the obvious and brutal irony of the former head of Planned Parenthood lecturing others on being “anti-science” when her former organization exists primarily to murder babies in the womb while calling such actions a “human right,” we need to notice another dangerous ideology demonstrated by her comments.
Dr. Wen is part of a “liberal” elite who view themselves as uniquely and intellectually qualified to determine what is best for “the rest of us.” Her comments were replete with examples of arrogant presumption, such as saying “the vaccine is the ticket back to pre-pandemic life” in the context of asking “what’s the carrot going to be?” Most worryingly, there is one sentence which stands aloft in terms of its shameless authoritarian nature.
“So that’s why I think the CDC and the Biden administration needs to come out a lot bolder and say, ‘If you’re vaccinated, you can do all these things. Here are all these freedoms that you have,’ because otherwise, people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms anyway.”
These words are an intentional bastardization of the meaning of freedom, particularly in the “American” sense. Freedoms are not provided by the government, Joe Biden, or the CDC. These figures and organizations are not the “gatekeepers” to these freedoms. In fact, they exist entirely to protect these freedoms.
The phrase “people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms anyway” is perhaps the worst part of all. You enjoy privileges. You don’t “enjoy” freedoms.
Freedom is a God-given right. If we allow the notion of freedom to be diluted into nothing but a privilege sporadically offered by our “intellectual betters,” then we will no longer be truly free.
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.