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Dec. 8, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:02:54
Lila Rose | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 80
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Time Text
The head nurse at UCLA sits me down and she says point blank, UCLA doesn't support women who are pregnant or help them.
So it was very crystal clear immediately why there's no pregnant girls on campus, because we were being told point blank, you should have an abortion.
Hey, hey, and welcome to the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special.
This week, I'm excited to welcome Lila Rose.
Lila is founder and president of Live Action, one of the leading pro-life and human rights organizations in the country.
She's also the host of the Lila Rose Show.
We'll get to our questions for Lila Rose in just one moment.
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Lila, thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me, Ben.
So why don't we start off by explaining what live action is for folks who are not familiar with the group.
Sure, so Live Action is the digital leader right now for the pro-life movement.
We reach millions of people every day with pro-life content to educate hearts and minds, both about what abortion is, the violence it does to a baby, and then the beauty of life, motherhood, fatherhood, how good and important it is to fight for life.
And we do a lot of investigative reporting of the Planned Parenthood, the abortion industry, and we reach especially young people, so lots of teens, 20s, 30s.
So in a second I want to ask you about some of the specifics that you've done with live action.
But first, how did you get into this issue in the first place?
Because you and I first met when you were maybe 17 and you were working at UCLA and you were working on exposing the abortion industry.
But what made you want to get into exposing the abortion industry in the first place?
Sure, so it wasn't like just a hobby that I got into.
It felt like a calling when I was a teenager because I learned about abortion as a young girl.
I'm from the Bay Area, California, one of eight kids, and oldest of five of them, so the third oldest.
And just growing up in that kind of a household, life was very precious, you know, it's a gift.
And then when I found out about abortion, my parents weren't activists, but they were more conservative politically.
And I found out about abortion by reading this book that they had in their living room called A Handbook on Abortion by Dr. and Mrs. Wilkie, this old kind of 1980s-looking book.
And they didn't, like, give it to me.
I just found it because I was reading every book in the house at the time.
I was very into books.
And I just came across facts about what abortion—what was happening with abortion in America, and I saw photos of a child in the first trimester.
So it's amazing how quickly this—a baby grows.
I mean, I'm third trimester right now.
But first trimester, tiny, but still, by 10 weeks, you have newly formed arms, legs, and tiny, newly formed little face.
The heart's beating after three weeks.
Brainwaves after six weeks.
But I saw this image of a child in the first trimester who'd been killed by abortion.
And I remember looking at this as a young girl and thinking, what is this?
Is this real?
Is this happening?
I started to do research.
I started to ask questions.
And I find out that there's 3,000 abortions every day in our country.
I start to read up on it.
I come across Mother Teresa writing and speaking about it, who becomes a hero to me.
And she calls abortion the greatest destroyer of peace.
Because she says, in a nation Where a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for you or for I to kill one another?
And just absorbing all of this, Ben, I was deeply moved and I thought, this is the human rights issue of our day.
Not a lot of people are talking about it, not a lot of people are doing stuff about it, but this is a human rights issue and I have to do something about it.
So as a teenager, my resolution was, I'm going to try to save some lives by educating other people, because by education, I became aware of the problem.
And so that led me to, when I got to UCLA, doing investigative reporting, because I thought, again, I have to educate my fellow students here.
There's so much misinformation about abortion.
It's not even talked about.
And when it is talked about, lies are told about the humanity of the child, the risks of abortion.
So the rest was history from there.
So why don't we talk about some of your early research over at UCLA, the kind of undercover stuff that you were doing, because you really did pioneer this space.
I mean, you were doing some of this stuff at the same time that James O'Keefe was doing stuff uncovering ACORN, so sort of the early days of undercover conservative citizen journalism.
So what exactly was it that you were doing?
Sure.
So when I got to UCLA, I started a newspaper magazine on campus, which was meant to compete with the Daily Brew, in which I wrote a couple op-eds for.
I don't know if you ever wrote for them.
I did, for a year and a half.
They throw away a few.
I kept submitting pro-life articles, and they only had so much appetite for so many.
And maybe they published two.
But the point was, it was very pro-abortion.
The faculty, the administration, as you may remember, it's all very pro-abortion.
I mean, you can't find a pro-life professor on campus.
They're going to be pushing their politics in the classroom.
And a lot of the students I thought were actually more open-minded.
They just weren't getting any other information.
And this was right when social media was just starting.
So YouTube had just launched Facebook.
We just had our new UCLA Facebook accounts.
And so there was finally a way to get other information out that's not the typical traditional media or the typical, you know, what you're learning in the classroom.
And so starting this magazine, I realized I'm going to do independent reporting because no one's talking about what's happening to pregnant students at UCLA because girls were getting pregnant.
At our health center, there were over a thousand pregnancy tests that were done in one year, in the last reported year.
But I never saw a pregnant girl on campus.
Why?
What's happening to them?
And then what's happening with the abortion clinics in Los Angeles?
So that opened my mind and my curiosity to say, okay, what can I discover?
What can I expose?
Maybe just doing my own investigative work.
And so my first investigation was actually of our campus health center, the Arthur Ashe Health and Wellness Center, right in the middle of Bruin Walk.
And I just went in posing as Lila, saying I was, you know, 18, a freshman, which I was, but saying, I think I might be pregnant.
And the head nurse at UCLA sits me down, and this is the woman that she saw all the students who might be pregnant who were taking pregnancy tests.
And she looks me in the eyes and she says, point blank, UCLA doesn't support women who are pregnant or help them.
And she said, but we have two doctors you can see.
You can pick which one for two different kinds of abortion procedures.
And when I asked her about other options, I said, well, what about, you know, are there other options for me besides abortion?
She said that adoption would be like giving away a present.
She said that being pregnant in class would be embarrassing for me and my fellow classmates because I'd have to use the bathroom, and it was just not worth it, and so I should go the route and get a UCLA doctor to do an abortion on me.
So it was very crystal clear immediately why there's no pregnant girls on campus, because despite UCLA being all about your choices and empowerment and women can accomplish anything, we were being told point blank, you should have an abortion.
I mean, that is obviously very stunning stuff.
And then you proceeded to go undercover at Planned Parenthood.
Exactly.
So why don't you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, so after the health center and reporting on that in my magazine that we launched called Advocate on campus, we also realized, okay, it's time to look at the abortion clinic clinics in Los Angeles, because this is where girls are often being sent.
This is where they're going.
Students are going.
And I had done a lot of research and discovered in the practice of abortion, there's a lot of other human rights abuses.
So abortion is this ultimate abuse against a child.
It's killing a human being in the womb.
But it is harmful to the mother.
It's harmful to the father.
It's harmful to all of our familial bonds, our society.
And it's harmful to the And when abortion clinics are committing these horrific acts against children, they're often not really concerned about the woman either.
She becomes a second victim.
And I had done research showing how, I had seen research showing how sex abuse victims are often taken, or traffic victims, are taken to abortion clinics where the crime that they endured, the assault, the abuse if they're an underage girl, Often it can result in a pregnancy, and then they're taken to this abortion clinic, it's covered up by the clinic.
Instead of the abortion facility reporting it to authorities the way they're required to do by law.
And so I came across a study done by Mark Crutcher, this group called Life Dynamics out of Texas, this kind of older guard pro-life group, but they called over 800 Planned Parenthood facilities and found that in over 90% of them, And they had a girl posing as an underage girl on the phone, 13 years old, in over 90% of 800 Planned Parenthood clinics at the time.
They told who they thought was a 13-year-old girl that they had a don't ask, don't tell policy on sex abuse.
Meaning she could come in, if she was pregnant, the abuser could even take her and the older boyfriend, and they wouldn't do anything about the abuse.
And they weren't reported, which they're required by law to do in virtually every state.
So reading this, reading the stories of actual girls who had been through this and then they later on sued Planned Parenthood or there were criminal cases, I was very moved by that.
I thought, wow, women—children are being killed and women are being harmed.
So is that happening in L.A.?
And so that led me to go undercover, posing as an underage girl, saying that I was a victim of abuse, had a much older boyfriend, statutory rape.
And instead of reporting it, in the first two Los Angeles Planned Parenthood clinics I went into, both of them told me that I could lie about my age in the paperwork, they wouldn't report it, and they offered to give me a secret abortion.
That, immediately, two for two, I realized this is not just Los Angeles, this is not just bad stuff at UCLA, this is stuff happening all over the country that no one is talking about.
And so that inspired that first investigative reporting and then taking it across the country.
I mean, it is pretty astounding how you have uncovered all of this stuff, and sort of like the David Daleiden case, there have been so many cases where Planned Parenthood has been exposed, and the media have a vested interest in ensuring that people do not hear about the abuses that take place at places like Planned Parenthood.
How do you think the media are able to get away with what really does amount to a fairly large-scale cover-up?
Well, I mean, it's no surprise that the trust in the media is on an all-time low.
People don't think the media is trustworthy anymore because they're not reporting stories that matter.
Or they're actually covering for abusers or for people that or companies or organizations that align with their political ideology, like Planned Parenthood, like an abortion industry, but are actually doing horrific things on the daily and breaking the law.
I mean, not just killing children and killing thousands of children a day, but lying to women, manipulating, breaking state laws, covering up sexual abuse.
I mean, so many horrific abuses alongside that abuse of abortion.
So, you know, and it's not just media.
I mean, as we know, it's tech, big tech.
I mean, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, just donated her second million dollars to Planned Parenthood.
And you have live action has over 4 million followers online on social media.
But we are dealing daily with all kinds of tech bias.
So media bias is bad, but I think people at this point are like, hey, yeah, the media is biased.
You know, CNN, MSNBC, whatever, they're biased.
But it's even more devious when you have Google making the search results, if you type in abortion risks, there are all these Planned Parenthood articles saying there's no risks to abortion.
Right?
Or you're looking at your social media feed on Facebook or your social media feed on Twitter and you're not seeing necessarily the facts about what abortion actually is coming from alternate voices.
Instead, you're seeing stuff that corroborates or fulfills that idea of pro-abortion ideology.
Well, where do you think that we stand on abortion in the country right now?
tech support.
So it's a big problem.
And it's something that, I mean, that's why Daily Wire is so great.
Fight back.
Spread a different narrative because that other pro-abortion narrative is so strong right now.
Where do you think that we stand on abortion in the country right now?
Because there are some conflicting polls.
Some show that Americans are largely in favor of some restrictions on abortion.
Others are not.
Others, when taken just in terms of are you pro Roe vs. Wade or anti-Roe vs. Wade, show majority in favor of Roe vs. Wade.
Where do you think the American people are on this issue?
Well, I'm very encouraged.
So there have been some of the latest Gallup polls show that more people identify as pro-life than pro-choice.
So that's a label and that can mean a lot of different things to different people.
So that's one indicator.
I think the thing that's the most interesting is when you look at people's position on the legality of abortion.
And the reality is, according to most of the recent polls, whether it's Pew or Gallup or others, the vast majority of Americans want significant abortion restrictions.
So they want abortion restricted to the first trimester or banned altogether.
And I think that's really telling.
I think most people realize that this is a moral issue.
They're not comfortable with it.
They don't support it.
And they don't like that we have it.
But they think, oh, we need to compromise, right?
Because they don't want to be seen as extreme.
Because the moment you come out and say, I'm pro-life for all children, no matter what, Then the media says, you're crazy, you're an extremist, you're a zealot.
And so most people are like, okay, well, I at least want some restrictions.
But what we see every day at Live Action is when we actually educate people, when they actually know facts about fetal development, about life in the womb, the heart beating at just a little over three weeks.
I mean, it's crazy.
Brainwaves at just a little over six weeks.
When they learn about how quickly that child grows, when they learn about the science, which proves conclusively this is a unique individual human life at the moment of fertilization, people become pro-life.
A lot more people than you would realize it.
And when they see what abortion does to that baby, when you actually learn what these abortion procedures do to starve that baby to death, whether it's through a pill in the first trimester or to tear that, suction that baby apart in the second trimester or the late first, people are shocked.
And they say, wow, I can't support that.
So we're seeing those minds change on the daily when we do our work at Live Action.
It's not being reported.
It's like, you're not going to see a feature story on CNN about this girl who changed her mind on abortion.
But little by little, I think that the tide is absolutely turning.
So in a second, I want to ask you about the scientific questions surrounding abortion.
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Okay, so let's talk about the science surrounding abortion.
One of the things that drives me absolutely up a wall is we've now been through probably 15 or 20 minutes of this interview.
You've not mentioned your religious stance once, and yet when you talk with people who are pro-choice or when you read the columns written by people who are pro-choice, Their fundamental assumption, their baseline assumption, seems to be that if you're pro-life, the reason that you're pro-life is because you're religious.
So, this really leads to two questions.
One, why is that assumption made?
And two, why is it that there is such heavy crossover between people who are pro-life and people who are religious, when the science, again, should tend toward making people pro-life?
Why aren't there more secular pro-lifers, in other words?
Right, I think it's because of actual, literal science denial that's happening on the left, largely, even among those who say that they are We're pro-science, you know, look at climate change, look at all these things.
They won't actually look and acknowledge the biological realities of what's happening with life in the womb.
I mean, we deal with this all the time.
We're educating young people.
I was just talking with a young girl just in the last few days who was saying, I'm an atheist, so I'm pro-choice.
And I said, well, let's talk about that.
When does life begin?
And she said, well, I think it's just an egg early on in the first trimester.
I said, well, that's actually scientifically incorrect.
An egg, a sperm fertilizes an egg, then you have a single-cell embryo, and that's a unique individual human life.
That's what the science shows.
And it was, like, mind-blowing for this young girl.
And I said, where are you getting your information?
And she said, oh, I'm just getting it from, you know, a friend that is more liberal or something like that.
And I said, if you actually pick up any human biology textbook, any human biology textbook, it will tell you when life begins.
It begins at the moment of fertilization.
When that egg completely is transformed because of the sperm and becomes a complete DNA code for an individual human life, and all that life needs is time and nourishment to grow.
So I think it's really just this crazy environment that we're in today where this basic science about the origin of human life is being hidden from people.
Or because of our obsession with keeping abortion legal and defending it to the death, we are refusing to acknowledge basic scientific realities about human life.
And to your second question about people who are religious who tend to be a lot more pro-life, I mean, I think that's because when you start to have any kind of a moral view of the universe—and everybody is religious in some way, even an atheist.
Their religion is, I believe there's no God, absolutely, right?
Or agnostic.
Their religion is, I don't know, and so I'm going to live my life this certain way.
Everybody has a worldview.
We'll call it religion, call it worldview.
It's the way they live their lives.
It's the code by which they live.
And what is the code by which we will live in our society?
If people of most major faiths today are pro-life because they acknowledge human life has to be precious, human life has to be valuable.
If we don't see the value of every single human life, then all of a sudden we enter into all kinds of injustices, And that's where human rights abuses, how they happen, because we start to dehumanize one group of the population, whether because of their sex or because of their race or because of their political background or their faith or their size, their level of development, because they're so small, they're in the womb.
So, I think it makes sense, if you're religious, to be pro-life.
If you're not religious, or your worldview is whatever you want it to be, if you think that human beings have human rights, you should be pro-life.
Period.
One of the things that you mention when you talk about science denial, and that is completely obvious, is how the left wishes to deny the ability of people to even see ultrasound photos.
It's absolutely astonishing.
My listeners know my wife is now six months, a little bit over six months pregnant, and she's due at the beginning of March.
You're obviously pregnant.
The quality of the ultrasounds now is so unbelievably high.
When we had the first ultrasound of the newest kid at, I think, eight or nine weeks, the quality of the ultrasound is so unbelievable.
I mean, it doesn't look like static like your parents' ultrasound.
It looks like a full Child.
I mean, it looks like a child.
And while that's not a great argument for what constitutes a human life because the look of something doesn't necessarily mean what it is, it is so perfectly obvious on its face what exactly you are looking at that it's no wonder that groups like Planned Parenthood wish to forcibly discourage people from taking a look at ultrasounds.
And it's even like when you look at miscarriage.
I mean, Planned Parenthood's now ex-president, Dr. Leanna Nguyen, she wrote publicly about a miscarriage that she had, and this was right before she was fired by Planned Parenthood.
So this happened over the summer.
It was this big hullabaloo, and she's the first doctor in dozens of years that Planned Parenthood allowed to be their head, and then she wasn't pro-abortion enough for them.
But she wrote this article talking about the grief she felt after her miscarriage.
That same baby, that same age, can be killed legally at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.
And why is the child—you know, you have a baby shower, you're pregnant with a baby, you're expecting a baby—why, all of a sudden, it's completely illogical, is it no longer a baby, no longer a life, no longer someone to be grieved, just because you don't confer value on it as the parent or the The person making the decision.
It's not logical.
And I think the more people learn about facts about life in the womb, what abortion is, they realize it's not logical.
And so to be logical, to be pro-science, to be reasonable, this is a life that deserves protection like you or like I do.
So why do you think it is that the left has moved away from what seemed to be a lot safer political ground even 25 years ago, the safe, legal, and rare formulation, the idea that, sure, this is uncomfortable, sure, we're not saying that it's totally morally fine, but at the same time, there are certain people who are in need, and we wouldn't want to make it illegal, we want to make it safe for them to get an abortion.
Why do you think the left has Forcibly disabused themselves of this notion.
I mean now you're seeing the full-on celebrate abortion, shout your abortion, light up towers in New York pink if you're gonna legalize abortion up to a point of birth.
Why do you think the left has made that radical shift?
Because it is a politically bewildering shift.
One of those formulations is a lot more popular than the other.
Yeah, no, I think you're right.
And all the Democratic candidates right now, unfortunately, are all pro-abortion.
I mean, pretty much through all nine months.
Tulsi Gabbard is like, maybe in the third trimester there's some babies that we should protect.
And then they yell at her.
And then they yell at her, exactly.
I think it's two things.
First of all, the abortion lobby is extremely powerful.
Planned Parenthood has been receiving over half of a billion dollars in taxpayer money for years and years and years.
So they've been receiving multi-billions from the federal government and from state governments.
And their political power is huge.
They invested $30 million to try to defeat Trump last round.
They're going to invest another $50 million this coming round.
So the abortion lobby is a real thing, and they have a lot of power with these politicians, and they are only content with abortion through all nine months for any reason.
They have no—there's no moderation when it comes to the abortion industry.
I mean, of course not.
They want to kill, and they want license to kill.
At any age for any reason.
So there's that.
I think the second thing, though, is they're actually being logically consistent now, Ben.
I mean, before they weren't, right?
And I think they're kind of realizing, wow, if we compromise, it's not too long until we might find ourself out of a job as being pro-abortion or, you know, supporting the abortion industry.
Because once you say you can protect some lives, then the argument to why don't we just protect them all if they're human lives to begin with is a very strong one.
So I think now they're actually being logically consistent by saying, nope, If they're in the womb, doesn't matter how old, doesn't matter for what reason, you should have license to kill.
So over live action, obviously you do an enormous amount of outreach, that's what you do.
And I want to ask you in just a second about what are the most effective types of outreach and what are the least effective types of outreach on this particular issue.
But first...
Let's talk about a great new movie.
It's called No Safe Spaces.
Okay, it's made by my friends Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager.
Adam, of course, is the godfather of the podcasting industry, and Dennis Prager, who is sort of a moral voice in the conservative universe, has been for decades.
They made a great new film.
It's called No Safe Spaces.
It's in theaters nationwide Friday, December 6th.
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So let's talk for a second about the effective approaches on the pro-life side versus the ineffective approaches on the pro-life side.
So you've spent an awful lot of time and an awful lot of money trying to reach out to people with pro-life messages, so you probably have some good information about what is effective and what is ineffective.
Why don't we start with the ineffective?
What's been the least effective approach that you think people use when it comes to moving people toward a pro-life position?
That's a good question.
I mean, first of all, there's a lot of diversity.
So I would say there are some really, not silver bullets, but there are some really strong arguments and approaches that work for a lot of people.
But some people, it's interesting that even some of the lesser effective approaches in the pro-life movement still make a difference for some people.
So I would never say stop doing what you're doing out there.
Anybody doing anything for life, Lovingly, with compassion, I think is good.
Whether it's very effective in my book or not, I mean, I'll choose my own strategies.
So I know that's kind of like going around your question, but I would say anything that's angry or cruel I don't think is effective because you're dealing with people and a lot of wounded people.
I mean, there are so many people who have been hurt by abortion.
Women, men, Abortions in their history and they still are not even sure how to wrestle with it.
They're not healed from it.
Part of that is they haven't been able to acknowledge it was a life.
It was their child that was killed.
And so there's a lot of woundedness.
So anytime that we get on our high horse, if we act with a judgmentalism or we're cruel or unkind in our approach, I think that can be very harmful and ineffective.
So that's probably one of the least effective things I've seen.
in the movement.
Thankfully, it's a fringe.
Most people in the public movement are very compassionate and many of them are there because they actually have abortion in their families or they were involved with an abortion themselves.
So, and then as far as effective is concerned, when people actually learn about fetal development, development of life I mean, from the early stages.
And then they actually get to see that child, see that embryo.
And then they get to understand what abortion actually does to that child.
We launched a series at Live Action called Abortion Procedures, which are medical animations.
I mean, it's amazing.
by a former abortionist, and he explains, he committed 1,200 abortions himself.
He explains what happens during each procedure.
These are the most common abortion procedures.
And when people actually watch these videos, they're medical animations, so they're not gory, but they're correct.
They're precise.
This is what happens through an animation.
People are just floored.
I mean, it's amazing we see people go from, I was pro-choice to, I guess I'm pro-life because I can't support that.
So just something as simple as showing the child, showing the child and how they're victimized by abortion.
And then also storytelling.
Telling stories.
Women who choose life.
Women who walk out of that abortion clinic.
They have the courage in the last moment.
Women who had the abortion and then regret it.
And they share why.
Stories of abortion survivors.
They actually survived the abortion attempt on their life.
stories of women who chose life in really difficult circumstances.
I mean, these stories are inspiring and encouraging to people.
So that's a lot of the work that we do at Live Action is to tell those stories as well as show the victim and show what abortion does.
So one of the issues that constantly comes up when I talk about abortion that I assume doesn't come up as much when you talk about it is I'm a man, obviously.
You're a woman.
I feel safe assuming your gender since you're currently having a baby.
Well, you know, that doesn't do a lot today, actually.
That's fair.
But with that said, one of the chief arguments that's used by the pro-choice left is the idea that if you're not a woman, you don't get to speak out on this.
Of course, if you're a pro-life woman, you also don't get to speak out.
But why do you think this has become such a feminist nostrum, that the movement in favor of abortion is a pro-women movement, as opposed to a movement that is dedicated to the destruction of a child?
Why has it become that there is such a supposed gender gap in this area?
It's crazy.
I mean, you have the sexual revolution that happened mid-century, this last century, and then you have the so-called women's rights advocates who were doing important work in the first part of the 20th century.
I mean, they were making sure that we were treated equally under the law.
They were making sure before that we had the right to vote.
But then all of a sudden it got hijacked by this new sexual libertinism where it's now all about Not just my body, my choice, it would come later, but this idea that sex has nothing to do with children, it shouldn't have to do with commitment.
And then the feminist movement then became a movement of basically playboy types, you know, saying we should be free, burn your bra, you know, sexual promiscuity.
And then the result of that, too, is if we get pregnant, we have the right now, we should have the right to not have to be pregnant.
And so we should have the right to end the pregnancy.
End the pregnancy.
Choose, you know, my body, my choice.
So using these euphemisms, I mean, basically the right to kill.
So this crazy thing happened where instead of feminism being what it was designed to be, which is make sure that we have equal treatment under the law with men and we're seen as equal partners, which we are, It became this new thing of a complete deconstruction of what it really is to be a woman, and an attack on our own dignity and our children.
All of a sudden we became at war with our children.
So it's absolutely crazy to me that the so-called women's rights groups today are the ones that are fighting for killing our own children, which is antithetical to every protective instinct in a woman.
And the most noble instincts in a woman or a man, which is to care for those that are more dependent and care for those who are weaker.
So it's really horrific what has happened.
I think, deep down, it doesn't resonate with people.
I mean, deep down, I think we're made to love.
We're made to see life as precious.
We're made to value children, to value sex as something more than just this thing you do whenever you want with whoever, but that it's meant for something beautiful and a lifelong bond.
The anti-messages of the sexual revolution and today's crazy, off-the-reservation feminism, which isn't the authentic, original feminism, I think people are not really comfortable with it deep down.
It doesn't resonate.
And the more you educate about what true feminism was designed to be, and the beauty of motherhood, and the dignity of women, you talk about these things, I think it changes it for a lot of people.
I mean, that's the part that's astonishing to me.
So as I mentioned before when I was pregnant, again, this is baby number three.
And she's also, as everyone who listens to the show knows, a doctor.
So she's a career person.
And if you asked her what made her most fulfilled, there is no question which one of those is more important to her.
And this is somebody who has spent a decade becoming a doctor so that she can serve other people and have what I think is a pretty important career.
And if you ask her which one of the Being a mother and carrying a child, does that make her feel more fulfilled?
Or going to a doctor's office and taking care of patients?
She will say, the former, as a woman.
Now, as a human being, maybe being a doctor is very fulfilling for her, but I think that for pretty much anybody, being a parent is the most fulfilling thing that you're going to do.
It's the most difficult.
It's going to be the most fulfilling thing that you do in your life.
But beyond that, the reduction of womanhood down to quote-unquote personhood is really astonishing because, as I've said before, It's amazing to me why women who have a superpower, right?
They have a superpower to create another human being that comes directly from their body and nourish that human being.
And to say that that is the least part of what I do, that part doesn't matter at all.
The part that I do that matters is working 2,200 billable hours at a law firm or going to medical school, just like the dudes do.
Like, oh, that's fine.
Do it.
Enjoy.
But to take the part of you that is the most unique to your sex and then discard that or treat that as though that is a downside to who you are, it's antithetical to what womanhood is.
It's very puzzling.
Right.
And so much of today's society is saying a woman's value is in what she can achieve, how she can succeed, how she can compete, and the kind of wealth she can generate or the success that she can achieve, or in the way she appears, how attractive she is, when it's really about our relationships.
I mean, At the end of life, when you're on your deathbed, it's about who did you love?
Who is by your side?
How did you serve?
How did you give with your life?
And that's what people we're wired for as human beings.
So a lot of the toxic feminism today is pointing us towards Basically, to choose between, say, no, you can't have family, you can't have kids, you should choose your work first, you should choose your career first, you should choose other things first.
The reality is, though, if you prioritize, and for me, I put God first, husband second, my child will be second, third, will be part of, my family will be second, and my work is still incredibly important to me.
I'm still gonna be writing, podcasting, doing live action, speaking, doing these things, My family will always come first.
And if we can prioritize that way, both as men and women, we will be much happier.
And our society will be much healthier.
And there will be less of an abortion problem in the first place.
Because children won't be seen then as this threat to our futures.
Instead, they're seen as a beautiful part of our futures.
But we have to then live a certain way.
We can't just treat sex any way we want.
I mean, this goes back to the way our culture sees sex.
I mean, that is the root of the abortion problem, is how we see sex as a culture.
And how we approach sex.
If sex is just something we do whenever we want with whomever, then yes, there will be unwanted babies.
There will be unexpected pregnancy.
Children naturally result from sex.
That's a good thing.
It's not a bad thing.
And sex is meant to bond two people together and create a lifelong bond.
So if we can restore sex to its proper context in our society, To see it as a lifelong bond between two people who choose each other, who sacrifice for each other, i.e.
a marriage, who commit to each other, and who are open to children, because that is the natural outcome, a beautiful outcome of sex.
So I think that's part of the solution to the crazy off-the-road we've gone with feminism and so many of the other excesses today.
I mean, at the same time, it feels like that is the area of pushback where you get it the strongest from the left.
I mean, on the biology point, it's very difficult for the left to push back on that because the biology is what the biology is.
But when it comes to the perspective on sex, that's where the left kind of holds up his hand and they say, OK, so basically you're saying either I have to be a pro-life prude or I have to be a pro-choice person who has a good time and lives my life.
And who are you to tell me?
They're not even having a good time, though.
I mean, The Atlantic just did this whole series of pieces last year about how people are not having a good time sexually.
They're having less sex, their sex is less happy, and there's all these studies being done about how people who are married and are in lifelong, committed relationships, and they go to a religious service once a week, those women actually are the happiest and have the most fulfilled sex lives.
So there's a lot of research, and the research has been around for decades, actually.
That shows if you want to be happy, if you want to feel fulfilled sexually and in the rest of your life, then you should marry the love of your life, date them, you know, take time to get to know them before having sex with them, commit to them for life, and have a family with them.
I mean, it sounds pretty—it's not rocket science, but it's seen as so crazy today because there are real forces that are dark forces, I think, in our society, which are ultimately not leading people to happiness.
They're leading people to a lot of grief.
Well, this is one of the areas where my own prudishness tends to bite me, simply because... It's not prudish!
Listen, I don't think it's prudish either.
I have a very fulfilling, wonderful life with my wife, but the fact is that if you promote the idea of monogamy, and that the ideal, and not everyone's going to meet it, but the ideal is virginity until marriage, and if you don't meet that, you know, so be it.
People sin, that's what life is about.
You can start over.
I think that's the thing.
You don't have to—just because you've lived a certain way in the past, you've had, let's say, 100 sexual partners, whatever, you don't have to keep doing that.
You can change your life.
I know people who have dramatically changed their lives.
So just because you did something in the past doesn't mean you have to keep doing it in the future.
The part that really puzzles me on this is again the perspective that feminist women seem to take on this.
I fully understand why men would like to be promiscuous.
I'm a man.
I get it.
Men and women are built differently biologically in the mammalian species.
Men are built to procreate with as many females of the species as humanly possible.
That is not true with human females.
They are built biologically and by evolutionary biology to choose the fittest mate in order to create the best possible offspring.
And so the idea that's been promoted by feminism that sex is the same for men and women, and that men and women experience sex the same.
And so therefore, if women act like men would like to act, that somehow they're going to be happier.
I've seen no evidence that this is borne out by reality.
Yeah, it's basically, I mean, a lot of modern feminism is women should be like the worst possible man.
And it's not working for us.
It's not working for men either.
And look, yes, we're animals.
We're mammals, right?
But we also have free will.
We can choose.
We can choose to love.
We can choose to sacrifice.
And even that man who's having multiple sexual partners and he's like, oh, it's so great.
At the end of the day, he's going home and he's lonely as heck because he's like, okay, I don't have an intact family.
I don't have a woman who loves me and wants to stand by me because here I am with all these other women.
It's not actually making men happy, is what I'm saying.
Just like it's not making women happy, either.
So it's not like men are wired to just go have sex with anyone, because men also have free will.
And they also experience the consequences of bad decisions, too.
And it hurts them, too.
It's hurting men and women.
I mean, you look around our culture.
Look, anxiety, depression, suicide, mental health.
Crisis is at an all-time high.
It spikes every year, all the mental health issues.
Relationships, people are reporting how unhappy they are, how isolated they are.
It's not like we're all happy with the way things are.
And then you have Me Too.
You have the Me Too movement where women are saying, oh my gosh, this whole objectification Sex, have it at your pleasure, however you want it, that's not making people happy either, because then the excess of that is men mistreating women, and then women saying, wait a minute, it's a hard stop, this is not serving us, and we have the whole Me Too movement.
So, I think everyone knows deep down this is not working, this whole sexual libertinism is not working, and they are deep down longing for commitment and for belonging.
I do wonder whether the movement toward libertinism, despite the fact that, as you say, the polls are showing deep unhappiness in American society, is really rooted as a backlash against religion.
That the idea of monogamy and the idea of sexual commitment, because these were so deeply tied into Judeo-Christian values historically, that the backlash to that Has led people to embrace positions that are untenable and to stick to those positions even if those positions make people unhappy because better that we should stick with the point that Judeo-Christian religion is wrong and fundamentally flawed than to acknowledge that even if I don't believe in the religious aspects of this, maybe they were right on this particular point.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
I think there's absolutely spiritual forces at play.
I mean, speaking as a person of faith, I think evil is real.
I think Satan is real.
I think that evil wants to just destroy.
Destroy good, destroy love, destroy human beings.
And so a lot of the ideologies today that are very destructive in practice, whether it's the pro-abortion ideology or it's this new form of feminism, which is men are, you know, women don't, our motherhood is not, doesn't matter.
We can just discard it at will and we shouldn't value life or value our femininity.
I mean, these things I think are Extremely.
They're evil.
There's evil to them.
So that language people, I think, are very scared of in our society because we like to think that evil doesn't exist.
I mean, it's almost like it's better to pretend that it doesn't exist.
It's easier to live life.
But until we acknowledge what is right and what is wrong, until we try to live our lives in a way that sees people for the dignity that they have, As long as we're on religion, let's talk a little bit about your religious background.
to fall over ourselves and hurt each other as well as ourselves.
As long as we're on religion, let's talk a little about your religious background.
So what is your religious background?
Sure.
So I was raised in an evangelical home, Christian, you could say, born again type home.
And when I was a teenager, I was not really sure if I identified with that, what my beliefs were.
I went on this journey to study world religions and try to understand, okay, is it true that there is a God?
Who is God?
How should I live my life?
What is the meaning of all this?
So I actually took some time to study Judaism.
I studied it a little bit, studied different world religions, different worldviews.
Because again, I think everybody has a religion, whether they realize it or not.
It's the code by which they live.
It's the operating beliefs that inform all their decisions.
And I ended up at UCLA, actually, interestingly.
I found myself just believing, okay, Christianity I think is true.
I think Christ, when he said he was the way, the truth, and the life, he was correct.
And his sacrifice was necessary because of evil, because of our sin and our woundedness.
What do we do to reconcile the fact that God is good and he made creation for good, but there's so much evil?
Well, he sent his only son to die for us, so I came to believe that.
And then my next question was, okay, how do I live the Christian life?
What does it mean to actually be a Christian today?
Yes, you can say I believe in Jesus, I believe the Bible is an incredibly important source of wisdom and it's God's word, but how do I actually live a Christian life?
And that brought me into the Catholic Church, because after doing a lot of research and study, I saw 2,000 years of church history and apostolic succession, so the practices and the teachings of Christ.
When he came, which are recorded in the Bible, and then the traditions of the early church, the way they lived, the way they did Eucharist, communion, receiving Jesus' body, blood, soul, and divinity in communion, the way that they did baptism.
There's an unbroken line of tradition from the beginning and unbroken line of the priesthood from the beginning from Christ when he established it to today, which has been kept by the Catholic Church.
So, as a student at UCLA, I came into the Catholic Church and it's been an incredibly, incredible gift and blessing to get to receive Jesus in the Eucharist and to get to be a part of His Church.
So, to shift rather radically, I want to ask you about the legislative strategy that you think that people ought to be pursuing with regard to the pro-life movement.
So, we've seen a couple of different strategies that have been pursued.
One is a sort of gradualist strategy, which is you gradually Push back the time that abortion is legal further and further back, so now it's, you know, heartbeat or earlier.
And then you've seen these sort of go for broke, let's just ban this thing outright, as you've seen in Georgia, the notion that from point of fertilization that abortion ought to be illegal.
Where do you stand on that strategic conflict, or do you think that it even matters?
Well, first of all, the pro-life movement has been doing the kind of secondary steps or the intermediate steps for like 40 plus years, and it hasn't worked.
What do we get?
We get some of the most extreme abortion extremism that we've seen in decades, like what just happened in New York, them celebrating nine months abortion through all nine months.
And you still have eight, nine states which are pro-abortion through all nine months, allowing legal abortion through all nine months.
So that intermediate kind of going halfway has not been working strategically.
And I think it's pretty clear why.
I mean, in the game of politics, you have the pro-abortion side, which unfortunately is the Democratic Party right now, which is abortion through all nine months.
They're not going to compromise.
You don't see Democrats saying, oh, I'll compromise.
I'll ban abortion at this stage.
That's not happening.
And then you have the Republicans, or at least the non-Democrats over here, who are saying, actually, we want legal protection.
But they're the ones who are starting off with a compromise.
So they're starting off by saying, OK, let's just ban it in the third trimester.
Well, they won't even accept the third trimester ban.
So why are you bothering moving the goalposts so close to the pro-abortion side?
My position is twofold.
First of all, stop the taxpayer funding of abortion, the abortion industry.
I mean, that's a pretty clear no-brainer.
We're still funding Planned Parenthood, hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Stop funding any abortion facility or any group that's committing abortions, period.
And then number two, complete legal protection.
If we're going to be logically consistent, if we're going to be just, To our fellow human beings, we need to ensure complete legal protection for every single child.
And we need to stop playing this game that some abortions are good, some abortions are okay, women are benefited by abortions, this game that we keep playing as a society because the reality is abortion is always wrong.
It's always the intentional taking of an innocent human life and that's never justified.
So, I think the right strategy is saying we want complete legal protection.
Live Action certainly celebrates any time any pro-life thing happens or is passed, but if we're designing the political strategy, it's complete defunding of the abortion industry from taxpayers.
Taxpayers having no part in it.
And number two, complete legal protection.
Okay, so now I want to ask you some of the pro-choice arguments that I'm sure that you get the most, so that folks can understand what the counter-argument is.
So, pro-choice argument that I've been hearing a lot lately is, you on the pro-life side, you suggest that abortion is the killing of a human being, and yet when it comes to punishment, you're only interested in punishing abortion doctors.
So why not punish mothers?
Why not take the position that President Trump briefly took, which is that women who abort their children should go to jail?
Where is the sort of intellectual consistency there?
Sure.
Well, I think it's a—first of all, I think it's a no-brainer to punish the doctors.
I mean, they're the ones who are actually killing the child, killing that human life and profiting from it.
So absolutely criminalizing the practice, the committing of abortions.
I think when it comes into the question of should there be penalties for the mother, again, there's a couple things that have to go into play.
First of all, being logically consistent, if you're going to kill, commit infanticide of your one-year-old or your six-month-old, Should there be penalties then if you're committing infanticide of your baby just weeks before he or she is going to be born?
And I think that each state and each community needs to look at, okay, what penalties make sense and take into account all of the mitigating factors, like you do with any case where you're dealing with the intentional killing of a human life.
Mitigating factors that include pressure and coercion.
Women that are facing abortion, or wanting to have an abortion, maybe because they're being pressured, or they're being forced into it, or they're not in their right mind because they're feeling so much stress or so much anxiety.
So I think those factors need to be considered, and then the primary penalty should be on the abortionist.
So, pro-choice question number two, and that is, why do you pro-lifers conflate all of the forms of human life?
Why is it important to protect from point of fertilization when you have a single-cell embryo as opposed to point of consciousness or as opposed to point at which the baby can live viably outside the womb?
Why do you use language like you're killing human babies when what you're actually killing is a single-celled embryo?
Well, you're killing human beings.
And you can say, OK, I'm only going to call a baby a baby once they're born.
You can put the word baby where you want to put it.
But the fact is, it's a unique individual human life.
And if you start to say, like, consciousness, or your ability to breathe, or your ability to—I mean, there's some ethicists like Peter Singer who say, actually, The infant is not considered a full human being because their brain isn't as developed as they will be in six months or a year.
So you can play that game where basically your abilities as a human or how developed you are as a human should equal your humanity and your legal protection.
But I'm not interested in playing games like that because I think all human beings should have human rights, regardless of how developed they are.
A toddler is far less developed than an adult.
A newborn is far less developed than a toddler, and an embryo is far less developed than a newborn.
But they're all human beings.
And so I think it comes down to, do you want to live in a society where your abilities or your level of development is really whether or not you get legal protection?
You're opening the door to a lot of human rights abuses if you want to live in that society.
Okay, the next pro-choice argument that I've heard a lot, I'm sure you've heard it too, is the argument that when a woman consents to sex and it produces a child that is different than when a woman does not consent to sex and that produces a child.
Incest and rape would be the example here.
So, in that particular case, then you'd spoken earlier about how the predictable effect of sex is that it's going to create a baby, that's just one of the things that comes along with sex.
Well, if the woman didn't consent to the sex and now she is forced to And it's a great question, because how horrific is rape?
And that's one of the reasons, I mean, not just violating that woman's body, but that you are going against her will and against her consent, and that could potentially create a life.
So it's a complete violation of everything that is good.
And women who are victims of rape, or girls who are victims of rape, they deserve our support, our care, and our advocacy.
If a new human life—and that abuser needs to be completely punished to the fullest extent of the law possible—but if a new human life is created from an act of violence, you're now dealing with an innocent third party.
You're dealing with a child who didn't get to decide how she or she was conceived, and now it's up to us in our society to come alongside and support and help that woman because Ending that child's life, killing that child, would be unjust for that child.
That child is innocent.
We don't even give the death penalty to rapists in our country.
It's against federal law.
You can't kill them for being rapists.
Why would we give the death penalty to an innocent child?
Another pro-choice argument that you hear frequently is what I think is sort of a misdirect, which is, OK, so you guys care a lot about babies before they're born, but as soon as the babies are born, you guys don't care at all.
You're not talking about resources for babies after they're born.
So why are you so concerned about babies before they're born, other than you just want to put a burden on a woman?
Yeah, I mean, we hear this a lot and it makes me laugh because basically most of the pro-life movement is involved with taking care of babies before and after they're born.
I mean, you actually get to know the pro-life movement and there's thousands of these pregnancy resource centers that are, yes, helping women who are pregnant and then they're helping women with their infants and their babies and their parenting classes and relationship classes.
They're trying to create healthy families.
So most of the product movement's focus is families and those bonds of love between parents and children, both when they're in the womb and they're outside of the womb.
And I know I speak at a lot of pregnancy resource centers, events.
My husband and I support them.
We've volunteered at them over the years.
And they're doing that daily quiet work of caring for mom and baby and family and baby, both when the baby's in the womb and when the baby's newborn.
So there's a lot of work being done in that space.
Some of the most prolific adopters and foster families are pro-life families.
I know so many of them, and it's something that is just a beautiful part of the pro-life movement that's underreported.
So I have trouble finding that pro-life person who just cares about the baby before they're born.
The final pro-choice argument that you hear a lot is, aren't you putting an insuperable burden on women who are poor, particularly women of color?
The upper class white women will always be able to go get their abortion, they'll always be able to lead the economic life that they want, but poor black women living in inner cities are not going to be able to do that unless they are able to dispose of an early pregnancy that they didn't want in the first place.
I mean, I think that's a big fallacy, because an abortion—having a dead baby now in your history—doesn't make you rich, doesn't make you successful, doesn't make you well-educated.
If you were the victim of a horrific rape, it doesn't take away the trauma of that rape.
So to say that poor women or lower-income women or women of a certain ethnic background are served by abortion—no, abortion just ends the life of your child, and then it leaves you in the exact same situation you were in before.
I think the solution is to say, okay, let's love them both.
Let's focus on, in our communities, through our churches, through our whatever system of governance we may have locally, do our best to elevate people.
Mothers and their children, care for both of them.
And that's a lot of the work that I see day in, day out in the pro-life movement.
So, number one, I'll ask you relationship advice, even though you don't have a kid yet, and once you have a kid, it's completely going to be... You should be giving me the relationship advice.
Yeah, get ready.
I'm just telling you right now, everything that is good in your life is about to end.
A lot of new good things are going to begin, but... It's very pro-life.
Listen...
I love my kids.
They're wonderful.
What I always tell people is that the boundaries of happiness and sadness expand based on where you are in your life.
So when you are single, basically your happiness, you get up to like a seven, and your sadness, you get down to like a zero, and then you get married, and your happiness goes up to like a ten, and your sadness goes down to a negative ten because if something bad happens to your spouse, then you feel that also, so you've doubled your opportunity for risk.
And then once you have children, all limits are removed on both ends.
The happiest things that will ever happen to you are things that happen with your kids.
The worst things that will ever happen to you are things that happen with your children.
So I'm sort of asking you for relationship advice before you've experienced the full gamut of the relationship.
But with that said, how long have you been married at this point?
A little over a year.
We just celebrated a year two months ago.
Okay, and how long were you dating before that?
We knew each other two years.
Okay, so why don't we start dating?
I feel like I've been through a lot of different iterations of dating culture and what's going on with dating and I think the key thing, a couple key principles that I feel very passionate about when it comes to dating is first of all, What's the purpose?
I think a lot of people today, they don't have a clear end in sight with dating.
It's kind of a cultural thing that they do and then it becomes maybe hooking up or it just kind of becomes this almost side part of their life that's not really focused.
Are you dating because you actually want to prepare to be in a family, to have a spouse?
Are you looking for someone that you would actually want to raise a family with and be a lifelong partner to?
I think that's a key question.
What is the purpose?
What's the purpose behind your whole dating And then the second thing is, are you trying to become the kind of person that you would want to be with lifelong?
You know, are you of the caliber of person yourself?
And the kind of person that you're looking for, are they the kind of caliber that you would want to be with lifelong and raise a family with?
So it's really a, I think it's really, I mean it sounds maybe heavy, but it's like a mature approach to dating.
And yeah, dating can be fun and interesting and all these things, but it really needs to be The clarity needs to, the question needs to be clarified.
What is the point?
And then focus on how do we become the best person that we can be so we can be with the best person that we hope to be with.
So first of all, totally agree with all of that except for dating can be fun.
Fact check, false.
Dating is not fun.
Dating is terrible.
Marriage is wonderful.
It can be terrible.
Marriage is way more fun than dating.
I will completely agree with that.
And you can keep dating your spouse, and now it's your spouse that you know inside and out and you love to the death.
And by the way, my first year of marriage, people said a lot of things about how hard marriage was.
I'm sure you've heard this.
No, marriage is the best.
It is the best.
It's so much continuing.
But here's the thing.
You've got to put in the work.
I understand that.
People say, well, you just haven't had hard times yet.
Well, we worked when we were dating.
We really got to know each other.
We really learned about what is our purpose in life.
How do we work together?
How do we communicate?
And I know that we're going to have to keep working at it the rest of our life, but if you're willing to do the work, it is incredibly beautiful.
And if you're careful about who you choose, it can be incredibly beautiful.
Well, that of course I totally agree with.
I always urge people, the first thing you look for in somebody is values because 50 years from now you're both going to be ugly.
She'll be beautiful, Ben.
Come on.
Yeah, except we'll both be at that point 80.
Yes, she'll be a gorgeous 80-year-old.
But realistically speaking, it's the values that are going to last for quite a while.
And yes, I'm going to reiterate, dating is awful.
I remember when I was dating my wife.
So we only dated for three months before we got engaged.
We met on September 5th.
And we were engaged on December 22nd.
Did you know the moment you saw her?
What was that like?
I mean, I knew, like, right away that she is somebody who I definitely thought was a serious option for marriage.
And within two dates, I was like, I'm marrying this person.
And then she, like most women, was like, ah, I'm not so sure.
Give me a couple more weeks.
Yeah, I remember we specifically went on one date.
And at the very end of the date, I turned to her and I said, you know, I really like you.
And she said, I like things about you.
And every so often I turn to her and I'm like, yeah, what things do you like about me now?
Now that you've married my third child, how do you like that?
But in any case, when we got engaged, she said, I love you December 15th.
And I said to her immediately, as soon as she said, I love you, the next words out of my mouth were, OK, time to get married.
And she said, why can't we just enjoy this time together?
Why can't we just enjoy dating?
I said, because I'm not enjoying the dating.
Because I'm not enjoying any of it.
I'm going to lock this down.
We're going to get married.
Also, you were planning to not have sex before marriage.
Well, yes, this is definitely a factor.
There's no question.
And neither was she, thank God.
But yes, her determination not to get married lasted for one week, from December 15th to December 22nd.
Very persuasive then.
I'm good at what I do.
What can I say?
Okay, so looking forward to motherhood, what are the things that you are looking forward to and the things that you are not looking forward to?
Well, I'm looking forward to actually having this baby outside of me because I'm nine months pregnant and so we're almost done.
We made it, we made it, we made it there.
And I'm looking, I don't know, I mean, it's already been a beautiful experience to even be pregnant and have this new little boy in my life.
And yeah, I'm just looking forward to it.
I know the boy, congratulations.
Thank you, yes.
Awesome.
Little boys are fantastic.
Little girls are awesome, but little boys are fun.
I hear both.
So we were going to be happy with either.
Yeah.
Except either.
But I don't know.
I mean, I think being a mom, I'm excited to have the opportunity to get to, first of all, just be with a baby and have my own baby to hold and kiss and cuddle because I love babies.
Whenever I see someone's baby, I'm like, your baby's so cute.
And just the opportunity to get to form another human being, I mean, that's such an incredible responsibility and privilege.
And it makes me want to be a better person.
I already wanted to be a better person when I was trying to find my future spouse.
When we got married, I'm like, I want to be a good person for you.
Now it's like, okay, I want to be the best person I can be for this child.
So it's an incredible motivator.
And yeah, I'm grateful for that because you can't get enough motivation.
Try to be your best.
How's your husband doing with everything?
He's thrilled.
He's super thrilled.
And I'm more grateful every day that I married him because I'm like, I got such an excellent man who's very focused on, I want to be a good father, be a good husband.
I want to fight for my family.
And again, it goes back to like the dating stuff, really being intentional about dating.
I mean, there are good people out there.
I know it can seem like a wasteland.
There's probably people listening who are like, oh, I hate the dating market.
And yes, there's a lot of crazy bad stuff out there.
I had my share of bad dates.
But there are good people out there, and the more you try to be that good person, too, to try to be your best, you will attract people who share those values and who are those good people, too.
So he's very excited, and we're excited to have one, and then hopefully have several more.
Yeah, you have eight kids in your family?
I'm one of eight, and he's one of eight.
So we've got a lot of siblings, 14 siblings between the two of us.
So how many are you looking to have?
Well, I mean, I'm 31, so we'll see.
I mean, we were estimating, we were like, maybe we can go for eight.
We'll probably end up with four or five.
I mean, God willing, obviously.
But I would love to have a lot of kids.
It would be a privilege.
One of the things that's fun about live action is that apparently every single person who works there is a pregnant mother.
Basically, yeah.
I mean, we're like, basically one-third of the staff is pregnant themselves right now.
And then we've got several other staff who are expecting fathers.
So yeah, I mean, it's very pro-life.
But what I love about that is here we are, we're trying to change the world.
We're trying to educate millions of people.
And we're very serious about our work professionally.
But at the same time, we all know family comes first and we want to be mothers first, wives, husbands, fathers first.
And then our work, we're going to fight and do our best job in our work.
And I love that mentality because it says, yes, our creative contributions to the world matter.
You know, We can be successful.
We can work hard.
But that family comes first.
So that means making time for the family.
And I'm excited to navigate that.
I'm sure it will be difficult.
I know it's not easy.
But why live an easy life?
Why not live a meaningful life?
So, getting back to live action for just one second.
So, what do you think is the trajectory for live action?
So, when I first met you, it was just in its nascent stage.
Now it's become a fairly large organization.
So, what do you think is the trajectory over the next few years?
Sure.
So the trajectory of Live Action is to continue to lead an increasingly global movement to get people of every background, every country to be pro-life and to live that pro-life ethic in their lives personally as well as politically.
If they can vote, take it to the voting booth, that they can change public policy, make their countries pro-life too.
So the way we do that is through mostly digital outreach and then activism.
And we're just getting started in many ways because, yeah, we have 4 million people following us online, but we need 40 million people.
The United States is a big country, and then there's beyond the United States.
So we've got tremendous work cut out for us.
We want to completely change culture on abortion, the way people see children, the way people see abortion, and then, of course, as well, impact public policy.
Alongside that, I feel very strongly that a lot of work needs to be done, Ben, on educating about these other things, some of the stuff we've been talking about—sex, relationships, marriage, family.
Faith, what our beliefs are as human beings, what our purpose is, because the problem of abortion is the consequence of a lot of other things that have gone wrong.
We don't have almost a million abortions in this country because of some random happenstance.
It's because a lot of other things have broken down in our relationships with each other, in our families, in the way we see even ourselves and our own value.
And so I'm very passionate about, alongside live action, doing creative projects, whether it's writing books or doing podcasts or things like that, to educate about relationships and about what life is all about and how to be healthier, happier people.
Because those things, if we can get people to see themselves as having value, live strong, loving, lifelong bonds in marriages, see children as gifts and not threats, see their own God-given purpose and identity, I think that is the best antidote to abortion.
So in one second, I want to ask you the final question, which is going to be to tell us the story that is most memorable to you about convincing somebody to be pro-life.
But if you want to hear Lila Rose's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber to Subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com, click the subscribe button and you can hear the end of our conversation over there.
Lila, thank you so much for coming by.
Really appreciate the work that you're doing.
Keep at it.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thanks, Mike.
Thank you.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Associate producer, Colton Haas.
Our guests are booked by Caitlin Maynard.
Post-production is supervised by Alex Zingara.
Editing by Donovan Fowler.
Audio is mixed by Mike Caromino.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.
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