Evangeline Lilly protests vaccine mandates: ‘I was pro-choice before Covid and I am still pro-choice today’

Evangeline Lilly has said she attended a rally supporting “bodily sovereignty” in Washington DC last weekend.

This was the same rally where leading anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr compared vaccine mandates to life under the Nazis.

The 42-year-old actor shared photographs from the rally on her Instagram profile on Thursday (27 January).

Lilly, in the caption of her Instagram post, wrote that she believed nobody should be “forced to inject their body with anything, against their will”.

She also listed a number of alleged consequences – without furnishing proof – that those who remained unvaccinated were “under the threat of” starvation and homelessness.

Getting vaccinated has been proven and corroborated by experts to be the safest way to avoid the risk of hospitalisation from Covid.

Several of those who are against vaccine mandates have, without basis, compared them to being tyrannical.

The Marvel star said she doesn’t “believe that answering fear with force will fix our problems,” while adding she was “pro-choice” before and after the pandemic, using the term usually associated by those who support abortions.

“The anti-vaxx, anti-mask community has been co-opting pro-choice language to, in many cases, great success. Phrases like ‘my body, my choice’ and ‘medical freedom’ are regurgitated ad nauseum because these people know it works. After all, they’re the same people fighting to end legal access to abortion care,” wrote journalist Danielle Campoamor for The Independent.

“I was pro choice before COVID and I am still pro choice today,” Lilly said in her post.

In 2020, Lilly had sparked outrage after announcing she had no intention of self-isolating during the pandemic, claiming she valued her “freedom”.

The actor’s comments were then condemned by stars including Sophie Turner and Lilly’s former Lost co-star Maggie Grace.

Soon after that, the Ant Man and the Wasp actor apologised for her “arrogant, dismissive and cryptic” comments, assuring fans that she is “doing her part”.

At the time, she said her initial comments came from a place of fear.

“Despite my intense trepidation over the socioeconomic and political repercussions of this course of action, please know i am doing my part to flatten the curve, practicing social distancing and staying home with my family,” Lilly wrote in all caps on social media.

She continued: “I want to offer my sincere and heartfelt apology for the insensitivity I showed in my previous post to the very real suffering and fear that has gripped the world through Covid-19.”

She added that she “never meant to hurt” those most affected by the pandemic, and that she thought her message was “infusing calm into the hysteria”.