The Culture War #62 Abortion Debate & The GOP Civil War Over A Federal Ban | The Culture War with Tim Pool w/Kristen Hawkins & Pastor Ryan Phipps
Host:
Tim Pool
Guests:
Kristen Hawkings | kristanhawkins.com
Pastor Ryan Phipps
Producers:
Lisa Elizabeth @LisaElizabeth (X)
Kellen Leeson @KellenPDL (X)
Connect with TENET Media:
https://www.tenetmedia.com/
https://twitter.com/watchTENETnow
https://www.facebook.com/watchTENET
https://rumble.com/c/c-5080150
https://www.instagram.com/watchtenet/
https://www.tiktok.com/@watchtenet
https://www.youtube.com/@watchTENET
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oh boy, it's the debate that no one ever tires of.
Abortion.
And so we're going to talk about that.
But there is a lot of news going on, especially with Arizona as a major swing state and their 1864 law that will maybe be repealed.
We'll see how this ends up playing out.
There's this internal civil war among people on the right where many pro-lifers are upset with Trump and GOP leadership because they've maintained the position of, let the states decide, whereas many pro-lifers say, no, no, we need a full-on federal ban.
So we're going to talk about that, and I'm sure we'll get into a lot more than just abortion because there's a lot of issues surrounding this, but we have two great guests.
Would you like to introduce yourself first, Kristen?
unidentified
Thanks for having me, Tim.
I'm Kristen Hawkins.
I'm president of the Pro-Life Generation Students for Life.
I'm a mom of four, so it's really exciting to be here with you today.
As a Fallout fan, I'm upset that there's a lot of context missing that my friends, particularly my girlfriend, I'm like trying to explain to her what's going on.
But if the show was a standalone, it would still be good.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
But, so for those that have just started playing Fallout 3, they all know where Bethesda is now.
So do you want to get started, explain what your views are, and then we'll just go nuts.
Yeah, I mean, so my views are less religious, even though I'm a pastor.
I think that I don't want to live in a country where the state or the federal government tells people what to do with their bodies.
I believe that one of the things we can celebrate in America is that we can choose the kind of life we want to lead, provided that it doesn't injure ourselves or others.
But to say that you weren't alive until you left your mother's womb and that degree of dependency changed is a, is a false statement to say, because you were obviously alive.
Well, it seems like there's a different definition of life.
You've got a social, Maybe a metaphysical definition?
Life is not one dot, it's a many-sided diamond, and that all has to be taken into account.
I think, scientifically, if we're talking about cellular life, life on Mars or whatever, babies are alive, life begins at conception, but you're making a more spiritual argument, I suppose?
I'm saying that bacteria is alive.
I'm saying that small cells are alive, I'm saying that human beings are alive, that animals are alive.
But there are degrees to where that life becomes something that thinks on its own, decides on its own, chooses what it believes.
Is that the threshold for when inalienable rights kick in?
When you can think and function for yourself or experience or feel?
I think that what it comes down to is that there should not be a legislative force that is making that decision for a woman.
unidentified
That should be her choice.
But the questions you have to answer, because I'm pro-choice of many things.
I'm speaking as the only female here.
You know, I believe women should have the right to choose if they marry, who they marry, education, their career, their health care.
But I don't think I, as a woman, get to choose whether or not a human being has value or gets gets to live because it's not, I think that's what has to get answered at this whole like debate level when you start saying, well, I don't think the state should legislate.
Well, why do we have laws, right?
There's a lot of debate about how many laws we have, you know, over use of laws.
And there's, I mean, that's a serious conversation that we can have.
But I think that at fundamentally the purpose of government is to create laws and have laws that at the very fundamental level ensure that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and to limit others from doing harm to us that prevents us from having life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
And so when we're discussing abortion laws and making laws about abortion, we have to be able to answer the question of what is inside of a woman.
Is what is inside of a woman just clumps of meaningless cells?
Because if there's just clumps of cells and it's not human life, there's no abortion debate.
There's no justification you need to go and have as many abortions as you want.
But if abortion is killing a unique human life, You've just brought religion into a secular debate, which just doesn't hold water.
treated in the image of God, if it's ending the life of a human being, you just brought religion into a secular debate, which just doesn't hold water.
Well, I can make a scientific argument that it's a human being, that it's alive and that it has value and shouldn't be killed.
Because if we start saying that there's different degrees of value of persons, that if you're a born person, you have more value than a pre-born person.
Or if you're, you know, taller than a shorter person, or if you're older, more intellectually developed than a younger person, that becomes a very dangerous slippery slope.
Well, no, I think the scientific argument would lead us to the complete and total banning of abortion nationwide, and the religious argument would actually... Oh!
There's a question over when does a human become ensouled and then become an entity.
And if there's a spiritual argument, then the argument is, well, babies aren't ensouled.
They're not functioning among themselves, so it doesn't matter.
The scientific argument is, however, The qualifications for inalienable rights under the Constitution would be that you are an individual with a unique human life.
Therefore, according to the Constitution, the 14th Amendment specifically, your life, liberty, and property cannot be deprived without due process.
So the secular scientific argument would ban abortion.
unidentified
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's a safer argument too, because then you go into the question of, well, when does installment happen?
And if you're not a religious person, um, you know, you could debate that.
You could say, we have no souls, right?
That we were just created from nothing and we have no purpose.
But the safest argument to take is, wait a minute, We all know, and science proves, that life begins at conception.
That's when your human life began, and you're certainly a member of our species.
You're not a koala bear when your mother's pregnant with you.
You are a human.
You are a member of Homo sapiens, and you're certainly alive.
And this is without regard, without reason, just... I do it all the time on campuses.
So the challenge I have with this, maybe you can help me out, Ryan.
Yeah.
If the baby can survive on its own at eight and a half months gestation, why kill it?
I think the question, I still think we need to get to before that and actually put this in a human context.
So maybe it will help to share a story.
I have a very close friend, mother of three amazing kids.
Between the third child and she was trying to have a fourth child, She got to the point where it was time to give birth and the doctor came in and said, it's likely that you won't survive this pregnancy.
And so a mother has to choose between parenting three children that are already living, that are well into life and having a baby.
This is an impossible situation and There is no solution from your side about what to do there.
unidentified
Well, there is actually.
So every single state that has a law that prevents abortions, whether in totality or when a heartbeat can be heard or when the child feels pain, there's always an exception to preserve the life of the mother.
Now, and when you look statistically at abortion cases, you know, about 1% of abortions are committed to preserve the life of the mother.
And then you look at rape and incest.
So here's trying to find some common ground with you.
Would you say that 97%, you know, cause it's like 2% for sexual assault or incest.
So that's like 97% of abortions are committed in our country.
Because of circumstances.
But the hard question... Are you in favor of joining me in saying those are wrong, and those should not be permitted, and then let's have a logical, philosophical conversation?
It's an interesting pivot, but the real question is for you.
Are you saying that you support abortion within certain boundaries?
unidentified
Well, the reason I'm saying it is because I'm asking... But it's just a yes or no question.
I'm asking you because when we have these debates about abortion, this comes up all the time when I'm on campuses, Tim, it's always, well, what about rape?
What about the mother's life?
I am more than happy to answer that.
And I will answer that.
But what I find very disingenuous is that when we're talking about abortion,
97% of abortions happen not for those reasons yet we're being told that we need to keep abortion legal for any reason and I think if you if you want to have common ground and kind of stop having part of this conversation maybe some of the debates I think a very way easy way to start that common ground conversation is to say those other 97% of abortions should not permit it and then let's have a conversation about the other 3% because I think it's
It's kind of disingenuous to always start the conversation going to the exception to then justify a hundred percent of abortions.
So that was like the greatest honor of the woman to die creating life and the man defending it or whatever.
No, I think in the United States, everyone's basically like, look, if the mom's going to die, we can't, we have to, we have to figure this out.
Seamus Coghlan, a friend of ours and the host, he's the creator of Freedom Tunes cartoon show.
He's a very devout Catholic and his view is he doesn't consider abortion an attempt to save the life of the mother that results in the death of the baby.
unidentified
Yes, that's what pro-life OBGYNs would say as well.
But I do think the broader term abortion and the legal definition is terminating a pregnancy that results in the baby's death.
There's a different way to phrase it that results in loss of life of the fetus or something.
That's like the legal definition.
So I think When you look at even the most strict, like Oklahoma, I think, is just basically like, no abortion, period.
Doctors can try and save the life of the mother if the baby dies and you get in trouble.
So, the issue that I then have for the pro-life side is, why is rape an incest?
There are many people who will probably argue right now, even in the chat, and who have argued to me, they don't believe abortion should be allowed even in the case of rape, because the baby is innocent, and it's the rapist who should be criminally punished, not the baby.
So why then have an exception in law for rape and incest?
There's an exception.
This is where it's tough for me to wrap my head around philosophically.
There's an exception that is made in certain cases, but also the statement that to terminate a pregnancy is universally wrong.
And so those two things cannot sit with one another in any type of system that can be legislated.
The thing that is very interesting to me Is that the things I believe do not require you to behave a certain way, but the things that you believe require me to behave a certain way to live in a civilized society.
There's something about that that is When I have to choose what you want me to choose in order to partake of the benefits of this system, that's not freedom.
unidentified
Well, I'm not telling you you have to eat chocolate ice cream because I love chocolate ice cream or a certain food.
I'm asking you not to kill a human being.
You, you, you live in this society where we all generally agree that murder, that the intentional killing of a human being is wrong.
And there are strict punishments for that.
That's one of the things we all kind of, that's a societal contract that we have.
But we aren't talking about the same thing.
Abortion is the intentional killing of a human being.
If we have a government overseeing this country that follows everything that you're saying, it is a government that continues to tell people how they ought to choose.
And if they don't choose, that is backed up by force.
I need to pause right there and correct what I just said because, you know, there is some nuance to this.
There is an agency requirement to be able to pursue life, liberty, and happiness as you see fit.
unidentified
Babies don't commit murder!
Well, then you get to disabled people, right?
You could say disabled people have less agency, but that doesn't make them less persons.
The issue is there are certain rights that you are guaranteed regardless of your agency, and there are certain things we don't let people do if they lack specific agency.
When there are oftentimes these horrifying stories in the press where a family had like a severely disabled child and then they kill the kid because they're like, the burden was too great on my family.
And there are some stories that are really horrifying where children with severe disabilities die and the parents get accused of wrongdoing when they were trying to help the kid.
It's horrifying.
But anyway, I digress.
Where were we?
unidentified
Well, I mean, I think the question is, do you think that we shouldn't have any laws against killing human persons?
Is that what you're saying?
Cause if, if I am, am I imposing my morality on you saying we should have a law that says you can't kill other persons who are innocent?
I don't think you're going to get Ryan to say murder is good.
My question is, is the point of birth or the cutting of the umbilical cord the point at which you can now no longer murder?
Or end the life of the human.
Is that the issue, I guess?
Cutting the umbilical cord.
You were saying earlier that the baby is dependent upon the mother, and so someone who is, you know, free of the body and has their own agency, that's a murder, but the baby attached to the mother is not the same thing.
So is that the differentiator?
What I am saying is that that ought to be the choice of the mother, and it should happen between her and the doctor discussing things, and the federal government shouldn't have anything to do with it.
unidentified
Why do you think I, as a mother, get to choose whether or not the human inside of me has the right to life?
It's all, you should be free to do what you want to do.
And I shouldn't be able to make you choose that.
unidentified
I think that what I'm saying, there's a, there's a reason we have laws and you can, there's a lot of questions about what is the role of government?
But fundamentally, we should all be able to agree that the main reason we have laws is to protect others from harming others, from limiting our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
I mean, think about the issue.
I mean, it's not lost on me that we're a few miles from Harper's Ferry, where John Brown's raid was, right?
Oh, yeah.
It's one of my favorite places to take my children.
Nobody in our society today says, yes, you can own another person, you can strip another person of their liberty in order to pursue your happiness, your profit.
We would all say that that is wrong.
And no one would say, well, it's my choice versus your choice.
I mean, that was the argument that helped keep slavery illegal.
If you don't want to own another person, then you don't have to.
I think that you're trying to marry slavery and abortion and let us not forget that for hundreds of years slavery was spoken of positively as a symbol of status and wealth and doing well in the world.
unidentified
That's what abortion is today.
Abortion is talked about as a symbol of wealth and status.
People took scripture and philosophy and even science and all of the crazy eugenics stuff to say that A person, because of their skin color, was three-quarters of whatever.
The slave owners wanted them to be one whole vote.
And the North arguing, you can't have a slave and then also claim they're a free vote.
Get out of here.
unidentified
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Christians, I mean, Christians were leading the force to end slavery because the Christians said, this is wrong.
You can't change the value of another human being based on their skin color or your science at the time that thinks that their brains, people whose skin is darker, their brains are different than white skin.
I think that might be a little bit misinformed because just as many Christians were opening the scriptures and saying that slavery is perfectly appropriate.
unidentified
So Well, I mean, all the abolitionists were Christians, right?
They weren't actually just even, you know, arguing for the end of slavery.
They were arguing for temperance.
They were arguing for women's rights to vote, right?
They might have been deists, but that was the primary...
you know, the preeminent religion of the day.
I mean, but if you think of all of their statements, if you go back and read the statements of William Wilberforce, or I was just at Thaddeus Stephen's tomb up in Lancaster, PA, you know, they often said that their Christian faith, their belief in a God and a creator, that all man is created equal, is what helped motivate them to fight this evil fight, you know, against slavery.
So I think It is a fair thing to start having that conversation because what we say in abortion is, well, it may be a human, but it's not a person yet.
It doesn't have full agency of their body or it's still connected, dependent on the mother or it hasn't had experiences yet or lots of personal relationships yet.
So is the point of birth the point at which we now say, okay, this is now a human with inalienable rights in the Constitution?
I think that the mother should choose that in a medical context by asking a medical professional everything as we do with any other... Are you saying that the woman could be pregnant and say, this is a life deserving of protected rights under the Constitution, or no?
And that the point at which the baby is either...
Let's say there's a woman driving in her car and a drunk driver slams into her.
She's seven months pregnant.
The baby dies.
She then says, I choose that this baby was murdered by him.
Then they charge him.
unidentified
Should he be charged with two murders or one, Pastor?
Well, my question is, I'm trying to understand at what point do we charge someone with murder for the termination of this life?
Is it murder only if the baby is born?
Charge the mother or the guy?
The drunk driver.
Right, so, this is my question, right?
You said early on in the show, Yeah, I understand.
the baby is attached to the mother, it has no agency or less agency, and it's dependent upon the mother, so it's the mother's choice.
My question is just, at what point does the law kick in?
Where, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I understand.
And I think it's, you have two people that want two different things, right?
Two people with different beliefs about the same thing and those beliefs cause them to formulate different opinions and make different choices about their life.
You have the federal government that has to make laws That will protect persons, both of these, all of the persons involved.
And so it seems to me That the most logical way to legislate such a thing is to let people make that choice on their own, provided that their choice doesn't cause injury to them or others.
unidentified
But the child is the other.
You keep saying others, but you're refusing to acknowledge the child is an other.
They're making a choice that may cause injury to themselves and will certainly cause injury to another human being, the child in the womb.
By that logic though, it means that in the future we will start... would a baby that is born in a test tube in a lab environment outside of the artificial womb, outside of the body of the mother, is that considered life to you?
unidentified
Absolutely.
I think that's going to be wrong when the artificial wombs come.
I think it actually will, And the entire argument for abortion, the whole my body, my choice won't be an argument anymore.
You know, the last article I read says like artificial wombs might be, they might have the first child in artificial womb by 2026, but that would, that will take away the whole my body, my choice.
And that is you, you haven't answered at what point does the law protect life?
I think that the mom and the doctor have to make that choice.
And then on a grander scale, The country has to come to some sort of a consensus about where that line is.
You're saying, you personally, and I'm just, genuine, honest question, you personally don't have a view of at what point a police officer would say, I'm arresting you for murder.
If a baby's in a basket, and someone walks up and kills it, it's a murder.
Yes.
If the baby is same amount of gestation time, eight and a half months, so there's two women, They're identical twins who get pregnant identically, and the babies gestate for eight and a half months.
One woman goes to the hospital, they both go to the hospital at the same time.
The doctor says, we're going to induce labor, the baby needs to come out.
She gives birth, they cut the umbilical cord.
The other baby is still within the womb of the woman, but they are both identically developed.
It would be murder for the baby that was prematurely birthed, but it would not be murder for the baby that is still within the womb.
That's my question.
And you're asking which one of those I would affirm?
Well, so I'm trying to understand your view of at what point does the law say a murder has been committed?
Right?
So if your argument is a woman and a doctor can choose to terminate the life of the baby, Because the baby is within the mother, my question is then, if the baby is identical in every way, but prematurely birthed, is it not protected under the law?
- Okay, so a woman in an identical circumstance is about to give birth through a premature inducement of labor and a guy runs in and batches her stomach, killing the baby.
Woman's fine, injured, baby's dead.
Is that a murder? - Did the woman intend to have the baby? - We don't know.
But how does the law handle a separate third party's view in this regard?
When we're dealing with murder in a criminal court case, we don't ask whether other third parties intended for someone to die or live.
We say, Person A ended life of Person B. So the question is, at what point does the court and the law say this was a murder?
But I think you've actually made it clear.
That if the mother is in the hospital and says, I don't want the baby, and a strange man runs in and bashes her stomach with a hammer and kills it, there's no murder committed.
unidentified
Well, that's actually not true.
So in California, they have the Lacey and Conner Peterson law, right?
So if she's on her way to the abortion facility, say she's standing outside of the abortion facility in San Francisco, And she was going to have that abortion at eight and a half months, Tim.
If she's murdered, someone comes up and puts a gun to her head and shoots her.
She and the child die in front of the abortion facility.
Whoever shot her, whether it's her husband or just a random stranger, will be tried in California with two homicides.
In California?
Yes, because do you remember the Lacey and Connor Pearson case in California?
The mother, she was in the third trimester, she disappeared.
Do you remember that case, Ryan?
It was national news in the late, I think it was late 90s, Scott Pearson.
It was like, where did Lacey Pearson go?
And then it finally ended up it was the husband.
So this is how our laws don't make sense.
In liberal California, that permits abortion uses taxpayer funds to fund abortions.
They say it's your right to choose to end the life of a human being, but if she's standing outside of the abortion facility, she's shot dead, and she and the child die, that murderer will be charged with two murders.
But if she walks in the doors of the Planned Parenthood or the abortion facility, lays on the table, it's considered a choice.
Even though she has already decided in her mind that she's going to kill it, the baby, the fetus, the clump of cells, whatever you're calling it, even though she's already deemed that she doesn't want this child and wants to end his or her life, That's an interesting question, right?
I got in a lot of trouble with the pro-choice crowd when I tweeted something to that effect, like, what if a woman is on the way to an abortion clinic and then she starts giving birth?
Like, what happens then?
And they got super mad at me for pointing that out.
I'm just, I'm trying to figure out where the line is.
And maybe there isn't one.
unidentified
Pastor needs to answer that because he keeps going, you keep going back, Pastor.
We're not talking about the eight and a half months.
We're talking about the one instance here.
This isn't, it's not that we live in a country where Pregnant women aren't meeting with a doctor regularly and understanding that they're pregnant.
unidentified
Do you know, I forgot my phone in the other room, I can go on my phone right now and order chemical abortion pills not having seen a doctor, not having proved that I'm not a rapist, not proving that I'm not experiencing life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, and I can order them to any P.O.
box address in the country.
There's no woman and a doctor equation.
You're using antiquated 1990s language.
Whoa, there's no woman in a doctor equation?
60% of abortions now are committed with chemical abortion pills.
Because of the Biden administration's FDA decision in December 2021, a woman now no longer actually has to see a doctor before she orders chemical abortion or even the parents or the rapist.
can order chemical abortion pills online and she doesn't actually even have to see a doctor.
That is the case right now in front of the Supreme Court that's being argued because when chemical abortion pills were first approved by the FDA under the Clinton FDA in 2000, the FDA put REMS, Risk Evaluation Mitigation Strategies on chemical abortion pills, and a black box warning.
They do about 70, 80 drugs because of the dangers to the people consuming the drugs.
And one of the dangers was they needed to make sure that a woman saw a doctor and at least had an ultrasound before she consumed these pills that end the life of her child, because if she's experiencing a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, she's not going to be treated for that.
Her fallopian tube will still burst, she'll still bleed internally, and she'll still die.
If she's Rh negative and she doesn't get treated with immunoglobulin before that abortion and after that abortion, her body will form antibodies where she may never be able to successfully carry another child to term ever again.
That is why the FDA put REMS on chemical abortion.
I just Google-searched abortion pills and this popped up.
This will send you... Yes.
unidentified
You don't have to see a doctor.
That's why when Ryan keeps saying it's about a woman or a doctor, that's antiquated pro-choice language from the 90s because more than 60% of abortions, I would probably say next time we get the estimate, it's going to be well over 70% of abortions.
So your solution would be for no one to have access to those or only through?
five different sites, by the way. - So your solution would be for no one to have access to those or only through? - I'm just saying, I think you don't fully understand how abortions are happening in this country, Pastor, because it's not now just about a woman and her daughter.
Heresy is colloquially defined as belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious, especially Christian doctrine.
Very interesting.
unidentified
Well, I think if we're going to look at heresy, we think about, and I was like looking at something you had written in 2022 when Roe was reversed, you said God is a pro-choice God, but yet when you look at scripture, and I didn't really want to get into religion on this debate, but when you look at scripture, there's lots of scriptures that say God's not pro-choice.
My opinions on abortion are based on the Constitution and secular science.
I'm not a Christian.
I think that the secular argument would force a permanent banning federally of abortion.
Does the Constitution speak to abortion specifically?
It sort of does.
The 14th Amendment... It sort of does.
Right, so this is a question that has to be answered by SCOTUS, but I'll read it for you.
It says, no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction of the equal protections of the law, which would mean the Supreme Court has to answer the question, are unborn persons?
unidentified
That's right.
So you notice in 14th Amendment, it starts out by saying citizens, but then intentionally changes it from citizens to persons.
This is important too, because illegal immigrants are protected under the Bill of Rights.
Now, a lot of people are upset over the Second Amendment on this one, the argument being they've broken the law, and thus there's a due process restriction on the right to keep and bear arms if you are illegally entering the country.
But we do know that people who are not citizens of this country, tourists, good example, they are allowed free speech, they are given the right to a speedy trial, and all of those things.
This is why the distinction is important that a state cannot deprive any person outside of citizens of life, liberty, or property.
Scientifically, secularly, and under the Constitution, I personally am demanding we get an answer from the Supreme Court as to whether the unborn are persons.
It's not been adjudicated.
When Roe got overturned initially, I was, along with many people, saying maybe it is better that we take a federalist approach to this because of the conflict and let states decide.
However, upon reading the Fourteenth Amendment and then having several debates over this, particularly with my friend Seamus, I said, no, I disagree now.
I think the Supreme Court has to answer this.
This is not a question for Congress.
The Supreme Court very well could come out and say they're not persons.
They very well could come out and say they are persons.
But this is not a religious issue.
This is a question of when are people granted their rights?
And so there is a similar, albeit very different, argument pertaining to slavery.
In that the argument made at the time, they were abolitionists, they were people who were pro-slavery, most people were neutral and said, I don't care, leave me alone.
But the issue was the argument of personhood.
This is before the 14th Amendment, mind you.
When is someone, a person, granted rights under the Constitution?
And, of course, the slave owner said, they have no rights.
They're slaves.
They're not protected.
The 14th Amendment is written specifically following, 13th and 14th, following the end of the Civil War, and now we have the question of, are the unborn persons?
Roe v. Wade was interesting in that there was an attempt to answer this.
It actually came up as At a certain point in a pregnancy, a baby is inviolable.
It can't survive outside of the mother.
And so, this being completely dependent upon the mother's body, there's a question of whether or not we can say yes or no to abortion.
However, there is a point that was made about when the baby becomes viable and capable of living on its own.
So then, where that brings me to in a When does a baby become able to, by living on its own, I'm assuming we're meaning breathing and thinking?
Not necessarily.
I have a friend whose family member is, I hate to be a little crass here, but functionally brain dead, but alive.
and capable of ingesting food, it would be illegal to kill that person.
So the issue, it's getting particularly interesting, especially with technology.
If there is a person who is, let's say, I don't know, they have syphilis, right?
And they're on the verge of dying from this disease somehow.
Well, we have simple antibiotics that can cure them, and a doctor that did not do it could be held criminally negligible for something so easily treatable.
But that's a technology we didn't have back in the day.
So if you go back a couple hundred years, somebody who died of syphilis would say, oh, wow, that sucks.
I mean, we tried to save them.
They drank mercury.
It didn't work.
And that's what they used to do.
That's insane.
But hey, what did they know?
So the issue then becomes, as technology advances, it becomes capable of preserving the life of the unborn at earlier and earlier dates.
Right, so this is a particularly difficult question that I think, ultimately, under the law and the Constitution, I feel, whether I care like it or not, the inevitable conclusion is a total ban on abortion, irrespective of people's religion or anything, for two reasons.
The constitutional question of the 14th Amendment and the expansion of technology.
I think we may find ourselves in a period where the moment a woman gets pregnant, the law will protect that even one day of pregnancy as a life, and then the argument becomes, there's no reason to kill it, we'll transfer it to an artificial womb.
unidentified
That's right.
And that's coming.
That day's actually coming.
They are, for better or for worse, they are quickly developing artificial wombs because of the issue of surrogacy and the ethical dilemmas that come with the issue of surrogacy, right?
Talking about telling a woman what to do.
Two men can hire and rent out a woman's womb, and then if the baby is the wrong gender or has a chromosomal abnormality, they can demand that she then kill the child in her womb, completely eliminating her rights.
The morality is that I don't think it is my right to tell the woman what to do.
So even say like black babies?
What about black babies?
Like, if a woman found out that she didn't realize, but she found out her baby was part black, because the guy she was with was light-skinned, and she goes, oh, heavens no, I'm gonna terminate that pregnancy, that's morally okay.
Like I'm saying she, a woman, uh, I have met women who have a black boyfriend and then she finds out that the person had a certain amount of a race she didn't like.
So she decides to terminate the baby based on its race.
I think that.
Like, there's no moral issue in regards, like, you would say, I'm asking, would you say that for any or no reason at all, a woman could choose to end the pregnancy?
Because the baby's black.
Just for any reason.
unidentified
Maybe she doesn't like it because it's a girl and she wants a boy.
That's my point is that we all agree with abortion in degrees.
unidentified
We wouldn't call that an abortion because when you're talking about a life-threatening circumstance for a woman, when you talk to OBGYNs who treat women, I actually speak on campuses with a former abortionist who's an OBGYN in Northern Virginia in the DMV area.
It's not considered an abortion, a direct intentional killing.
It's a fetal maternal separation and you may have to birth the child earlier than you want.
You keep the woman safe throughout the pregnancy.
You give the child every chance to grow, especially their lungs to develop.
You'll probably give the mother steroids to try to quickly develop the child's lungs.
You have the NICU there.
You birth the child and you hope, and if you're religious, you pray that the child has the medical technology to survive.
That is fundamentally different than intentionally saying, I'm going to choose to kill you.
If you can't answer that question correctly, I don't want to go for it.
But we're arguing the morality of specifically one particular issue, as it is under the law, without the Supreme Court not having answered the question of personhood as it pertains to this.
So yes, it is.
Why is the law what it is right now?
So, but I suppose then what you're saying is you abstain from that vote.
Is that what you're saying?
No, I'm saying that the reason we're having this discussion is because we live in a democracy and our choices, our votes, the things we are passionate about or opposed to, our country is a reflection of people who participate in the political process.
And the reason that this is, In this state right now is because people are continuing to voice what they believe in and one of these things will win out in the future if democracy functions as it should.
I'm gonna help everybody listening right now because I already know people are saying we're not a democracy.
And so hopefully our system, the way that it works is All of the opinions are heard, and then the majority that votes a certain way is the way that the whole ship ends up going.
That's why we are where we are.
Right, so my question is, when it comes to your vote, you are saying you have no opinion on whether women do or don't get abortions, or whether it is or isn't legal.
I'm saying that I doubt my own.
What I experience in my life as a male.
I have no intimate personal experience with what it feels like, what it is emotionally.
You're saying... I also want to clarify by saying that The reason that I come to that conclusion is because it's the only conclusion that allows everyone to choose.
If you go to the other side, it means that someone's choice is restricted.
Because of maybe even a religious opinion.
That doesn't sound very American to me.
Just for those that are listening, and for Kristen to explain why I'm asking.
Early on, you made your position very clear.
We want to preserve the life at any cost, all life, be it black, brown, Asian, Down syndrome.
I don't think, Ryan, you've given us a clear answer of your position.
I'm trying to understand where we are because it's hard for me to suss out what the debate is if I don't know what your moral position on abortion is.
I'm trying to say that I think a woman should be able to choose what she does with her body so that 200 years from now, our society hasn't devolved into the Handmaid's Tale.
There are specific, and there's narrow and there's broad.
Broadly speaking, forced medical, uh, mandated medical treatments would be, does a person, uh, this is meant to encompass, a woman gets pregnant.
Yeah.
She, should she be required under state law to maintain the pregnancy, Someone who is not vaccinated, should they be required under state law to get that vaccine?
This is what I mean by mandated medical practices.
No, I think that both of them should be allowed to choose.
Right, okay.
That's simple.
Every question that you have about any of these issues is, I think people should be able to make choices about their life, and they shouldn't be... provided, provided, that my choice about my life doesn't Infringe upon your own freedoms or your own ability to choose.
unidentified
Well, that's the whole point, Pastor, about abortion is women have freedom.
Women can choose, but when your freedom and your choice ends the life of another living human person, that's when there's limits.
You weren't there to help them get pregnant, right?
So I actually agree with the pastor on the question of choice.
My view on abortion is libertarian, secular, scientific, but it does preclude abortion as contraception, which is the overwhelming majority of abortion.
So in the issue of rape, and I've gotten to great arguments with pro-lifers about this who completely disagree, I believe that the rape and incest exception violate the moral tenets of the pro-life movement.
It makes no sense to say that a baby is alive and its life should not be taken, but because of the circumstances of their conception, they can be terminated.
However, from a secular, constitutional perspective, I do not believe the government has the authority to mandate a woman who never consented to giving her body to someone else be forced to carry that life.
Agreed.
Which creates a simple, Roe-ish kind of answer.
If I were on the Supreme Court, I'd say abortion as contraception is unconstitutional.
The idea that a woman would consent to allow life into her body and then seek to terminate it is... It's selfishness.
Well, it's unconstitutional.
If you agree to give your body to another person, or open the door for that, and then create a nine-month dependency, or slightly less, between six and nine months, and then decide to terminate that life after you're coming into this consensual agreement, well, that's now you violating the life rights of this other being.
Post-viability, the question is actually quite simple.
If it can be avoided, and a pregnancy can be terminated without ending the life of the child, then there's no reason to end the life of the child.
unidentified
But so you think that abortion, in cases of sexual assault, the one to one and a half percent of abortions are committed for sexual assault, can't be prevented?
That should be allowed to remain legal if Tim's on the Supreme Court, if you're Justice Tim?
If I were Justice, my ruling would be, if a woman is raped, Then she is allowed to get an abortion.
That is a non-consensual invasion of her body.
Even though it's still a person inside of her.
If a child is forcefully put in my home, the state has no right to mandate that child live in my house now.
I say, no, that's not how it works.
If I consent to adopting a child into my home, and then throw the kid outside and say, you're on your own, that's illegal.
It's a crime.
I know it's a difference because, you know, it's pregnancy.
My point is, if a woman consents to allow a pregnancy in, and then says, I tried to not let it happen, I did this, but I got pregnant anyway, I say, well, that's a choice you made.
And then they say, that's sexist because men don't experience that.
Doesn't matter.
It's not material to a consensual decision you made that results in life being dependent upon you for nine months.
So the bigger question beyond this is, I don't understand the left argument, and I don't think there is one, as to why, post-viability, you would kill the baby.
If a woman says, I don't want the pregnancy, I want to terminate it, you could say, we will terminate this pregnancy, Keep the baby alive and then give the baby up for adoption and find a good home for them.
But there are still people that, the pro-choice side, say no.
If she wants the baby dead, it's her choice.
And I can't wrap my mind around that.
unidentified
That's why I want the pastor to answer.
So in Maryland, where you live, in November, there's going to be a ballot referendum.
On the ballot in Maryland is a constitutional provision that would allow a woman, through any stage in pregnancy, for any reason, to choose to end the life of the child.
Are you going to vote yes to put that in the Maryland Constitution?
I'm going to vote yes to allow a mother to choose.
unidentified
To choose abortion.
So you keep using the word choose to choose abortion because the law is whether or not a woman should or anyone should have the choice to end the life of another human being.
But we don't know that because we're having this conversation, is my point.
unidentified
We do!
Scientists, biologists have confirmed this.
National Institute of Health Studies, the University of Chicago study where they interview biologists, 90-some percent of whom are pro-choice and democratic.
That is why when you make this argument of like, well, this is a democratic country... So you're going to tell me that There is no literature anywhere in the whole of human history that talks about people with different skin colors being a subspecies.
unidentified
The Nazis did it, right?
Joseph Mengele did it.
Who then later committed abortions after he fled Germany and ended up in Argentina.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was the southern slave owners believing that each slave should be allowed one vote.
And what comes before that, though?
larger population and they could dictate those votes.
The North said, "That's not fair.
You have dominion over these people, so they would just be voting for you.
So we won't give them any votes." - And what comes before that though?
How do people arrive at this idea? - My point is the three-fifths compromise was actually the slave owners were trying to claim that slaves were persons.
And the North said, you can't, the abolitionists said, you can't claim they're persons and deny them rights.
And that's how it gets sorted out in a democracy, but I'm talking about the people.
unidentified
Just because people vote for something, does that make it right, Pastor?
I'm talking about people that I don't know if sub-species, as a blanket of the problem of racism, I don't know so much that it's sub-species, but that the core element of racial first-order thinking is
Better than, regardless, or like a lot of the racism we see today is actually rooted in believing that there's collectivist elements of race that are causing problems to other races.
I couldn't agree with you more, but we're not talking about racism today.
We're talking about racism about this document that we all subscribe to.
We got there because of science.
unidentified
People believed that black people or people of color... I actually don't think science is what turned the tide in the fight, the moral fight against slavery.
It was a moral, it was a moral fight.
If you look at William Wilberforce and how Wilberforce in Great Britain became this champion for the abolishment of the slave trade, it wasn't science.
They didn't present him with scientific documents.
My point is, the view, the white colonialist view of the Chinese, for instance, was negative, despite the fact that the Chinese were a thousand years more advanced in technology and science than the white colonists.
So it's not so much that their view, it was more racial in-group extremism.
I agree with you when it comes to slavery, they believe certain races were lesser and weaker and, you know, things like that.
I'm trying to make the point that this is how societies come to a tense consensus on things, is that the very scientific system you're talking about that points toward, we ought to do this from a scientific level, it's not religious, That's the same science that supported slavery until people said this is just wrong.
unidentified
You think the biologists who claim and verify that human life begins at conception are the same scientists who would say that African Americans aren't full humans?
My, my drip, my views might drastically shift at that point, but.
unidentified
That's not where we are.
Now, this is interesting.
So you're saying, are you saying insultment, if we could prove when insultment happens, you might change your views on abortion, but you're not going to change your views on abortion, even though science proves that it's a human life.
You're telling me science proves that?
You look at the biological markers of what is alive.
I mean, Kristen, you don't even need to say science proves it.
The idea that conception happens has been functionally known since the Bronze Age.
I was reading the Quran the other day and it talks about the birth of... It's been known before there was any age.
Yeah, exactly.
The idea that conception creates life is just...
It's settled.
There's no science had to prove it, we know.
The issue is the point at which life is given its rights.
And so the pro-life argument is the point of conception, the pro-choice argument is it's different based on the individual, and that's the challenge in finding the moral position.
But typically Among the pro-choice side, there is no consensus at which point life rights come into play.
For example, Vosch, who's a prominent socialist leftist commentator on TimCastIRL said, I asked him, when does life begin?
He says, some point after birth.
So there's no consensus among the pro-choice side, at which point there are life rights.
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, Peter Sanger, I mean, he is, I would say, a very consistent pro-abortion philosopher.
Princeton has openly said there's no difference between the child moments before he or she is born and the child after he or she is born.
All is change is location.
The child is still wholly dependent.
Is there a relation?
Not to Margaret Singer, no.
It's ironic though, right?
Because she was also a eugenicist.
But originally he had argued that parents should have the right up to two years after birth in order to euthanize their child.
And now he's come down to say, well, maybe it's around three months.
That's a consistent pro-choice, I would say, opinion on that.
Right now, late-term abortions are allowed under Virginia law if three physicians certify the pregnancy substantially and irremediably threatens the woman's life and health.
Tran's bill would only require one physician to certify the abortion and removes the substantially and irremediably requirement.
Facing harsh backlash, Governor Northam went on a radio show.
With the baby breaching, for them to terminate the life of that baby and end that, and she said, there are no restrictions.
Northam's response was, the baby would be delivered, kept comfortable, and then a discussion would ensue.
Most people took that to imply, he's saying, they would then decide whether the baby lives or dies.
So the pro-life response was that is a... It's a genocide.
It is after birth abortion, I believe the term was.
unidentified
In fact, Democrats killed the bill.
We tried to amend the federal Infant Born Alive Protection Act in the U.S.
Senate saying if you are a physician that refuses to treat a child who is accidentally born alive during abortion, you should face criminal punishment because you've refused to resuscitate Or call EMS or do CPR.
Do you think that's... How would you want to fix that then?
My point is, when it comes to the question of who is a person and who is not, scientifically speaking, babies are humans.
Slaves, people who are enslaved, were humans.
Your argument is people have a right to choose.
I don't understand the moral difference.
A woman choosing at eight months to terminate the life of the baby versus a person choosing to claim dominion over another person is just denying personhood rights of a human being.
Because when we start eroding anyone's right to choose, we actually end up in the long term undermining our entire republic.
My point is, I don't understand how that's a different argument.
I don't see how that's not a pro-slavery argument.
Okay.
unidentified
Yeah, because what if I have the right to choose to own slaves?
Can I have the right to choose?
You don't have the right.
The Emancipation Proclamation... Well, how dare you take away my freedom and my rights to choose?
The Emancipation Proclamation declared that states that were in rebellion The slaves who were in those states would be emancipated, but slaves within Union states were still slaves.
So the issue I see is, I'm looking at this from a secular scientific perspective and under the Constitution.
Babies, born otherwise, are human life.
It's just, it's human DNA.
It's a unique set of DNA.
Agency is a question.
Do they have the agency?
Do they not?
Slaves were obviously human beings.
No one debates that, but that's a question that was answered through war.
Because at the time, the argument was made, people had a right to own other people, but that's how it was around the world.
In fact, to this day, there's more slaves than there's ever been.
So if the argument is, a woman has a right to choose whether a baby who can survive on its own lives or dies, I don't see a functional scientific difference in that argument from a person has a right to choose dominion over another person.
A baby who can survive on its own lives or dies.
Right.
So, whether it can survive or not on its own is... Viability.
Oh, that's why my position is not the traditional pro-life position.
It's more of the, like, 90s Democrat pro-choice position.
It would not be... Now, this isn't my personal opinion, but just to play devil's advocate here, Can a baby really survive on its own?
Like, even the best survivalists, you have to be pro-top-tier level, understanding, like, okay, do you know the process by which you find food in a fruitless forest, right?
Just as a baby?
And my point is this.
Certainly a baby is a dependent on someone to provide food for them, but so are you.
If you as an adult human male were placed in the woods, isolated from society, you would die.
You'd likely die of exposure in 48 hours.
Then why are humans here?
Because humans work together and are dependent upon each other.
There's varying degrees of dependency.
I don't think a question of dependency determines your life rights.
So you're saying that a baby that has just come out of the womb is experiencing the same... I just want to make sure we're on the same page here.
You're saying that an adult human in the woods for a week is the same thing as an infant that can't speak or see yet.
So a blind person who doesn't know English is... No, I'm saying that a baby is more dependent.
From a secular perspective, outside of any religious or spiritual arguments, You do not need to think, see, hear, or speak a language to have constitutional rights to be protected from people murdering you.
However, there are varying degrees of dependency and capability.
There are people who are expert survivalists, but the average person would die on their own.
Humans are social beings.
That's why we fear ostracization and being shunned so much.
So, the argument that a baby would die without support is, sure, maybe in two days on its own, then there's no chance the baby's gonna get up and go hunt.
An adult human, male or female, might last a couple days longer if they can find water and food, but on average, humans would not be able to do that.
So an adult would live longer, but then it really just comes down to a totally biological energy argument of humans can waste away and burn off the excess calories and eat their muscle mass more than a baby can.
Certainly, there's some humans who are smart enough to figure out how to find a water source, how to build shelter, avoid death from exposure.
The average person can't do that.
Babies obviously would just never overcome that.
But my point is dependency does not determine your right to live or die.
So the issue then becomes the argument that a woman can choose That a baby is denied personhood and the mother can just choose.
Even though the baby can survive on its own, she can choose to end its life.
I don't see a functional difference scientifically between that and arguing some people are not people and other people have a right to control them.
It's the same argument.
But that's not what it comes down to, is what I feel is right and what you feel is right.
And I'm saying... Yeah, the slave owners thought it was right to own slaves.
unidentified
Do you not believe that there is right and wrong for some issues?
And we had to fight one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the world to stop people who were wrong, because the idea that we would, through a political process, stop people from owning other people, it wasn't working.
And so, John Brown, and I do not like John Brown, but he was on the right side of ending slavery, though he was a disgusting person who went and shot a guy in the face for no reason, led terror campaigns against people.
But the reality was, the political process was not ending slavery.
Abraham Lincoln's position wasn't even anti-slavery.
He was trying to defend slavery in the Union, but stop its expansion to the new territories.
That resulted in war.
Or I should say, it resulted in secession, which then provoked the North to declaring war to maintain the Union.
I know the religious arguments, but I really feel like the religious arguments actually open the door for abortion, because it makes an argument about ensoulment and that question.
unidentified
Well, it opens our door for, does the human have value?
And so that's, you know, what we see on campuses now, increasingly in a secular Gen Z culture, which is actually very sad.
And it speaks to some of the challenges we're having in this culture is, I will ask students themselves, back up, let's stop talking about a baby that you don't know and you don't have a relationship to.
Do you as an adult, a 20 year old, have value?
Because I'm arguing that the child can have, does have value simply because of what it is, what member of our species, it's a member of our species.
And young people don't even know that they have value.
I think the question for you, Pastor, is, are you saying you don't believe that there are some things that are always morally wrong, and there are some things that are always, like, you believe that there is right and wrong for some things, right?
The way is that we have... The book of Leviticus teaches that if a man lies with another man as a man does with a woman, that he should be put to death.
This was at one time in the history of human beings Affirmed as a good law, and people confirm that in their consciences, as did people with slavery.
But we learn, we gather more information, we change our opinions.
That's the beauty of being a human being.
unidentified
History is a great example that subjective morality is a really bad idea.
So there certainly is something to humans that we share, but then there's cultural, like sub-moral issues where they begin to change.
unidentified
And this is why legality matters.
This is why voting on abortion and having that discussion in the political sphere matters.
Because for some people, legality determines their morality.
We saw immediately in the polling after Roe was handed down by seven men, that viewpoints on abortion immediately changed because suddenly seven men had deemed it to be legal.
Therefore, people who originally had thought it to be immoral started to shift their opinion on abortion.
Show me the system that you would set up that would work better than it is.
What would the government look like?
unidentified
This is great.
This is a vision statement.
So our movement as a pro-life movement seeks to make abortion unavailable, so illegal, but also unthinkable.
Because we understand that just because you pass a law making something unavailable or wrong, I mean, we have speeding laws that we all violate every day, right?
It doesn't stop us from always acting poorly.
So laws can stop and will stop people from choosing abortion, even a pro-choice.
No, they won't!
Actually, yeah, so there's stats.
So in November, this November, a pro-choice think tank put out a number saying that they believe at least 32,000 babies who have otherwise been aborted are alive.
The New York Times just had an article recently about how far women have to drive to obtain abortions and how the birth rate in Texas went up 5.1%.
I think in Mississippi it was like almost 3% because women were having, it was longer How did you get those stats?
No, but I'm saying what about all the people that might have done something you disagree with legally and didn't let anyone know?
unidentified
What I'm saying is this is why laws aren't the only way.
We can't end abortion simply by passing laws, but it's one way because it certainly certainly saves lives and we have the statistics to prove it.
But then we start into a question of how do we make abortion culturally irrelevant and an unthinkable option, an unthinkable thing, just like how we did with slavery.
You know, back in the day they thought it was right.
It's like we wanted to change that cultural perception and say, you can't do that.
We did.
And now I don't think there's like a single public speaking individual who would defend the idea of slavery, despite the fact more than half the country, you know, it resulted in a civil war.
The reality of the Civil War era was that most people just did not care at all.
You had slave owners, which was like 5% of the population, and abolitionists, which was equally small, fighting.
And most people were like, we don't care about anything.
unidentified
What did Martin Luther King Jr.
say?
He said, the laws can't make men respect me, but it can stop men from lynching me.
So the laws are important.
They're an important cultural tool that we have in making abortion unthinkable, but that's not the only option.
I love to have these conversations of what do we need to change?
in our culture to make abortion unthinkable option.
For example, we need to stop allowing our universities to discriminate against pregnant and parenting students, something that I fight for, something which the Biden administration has just made infinitely harder with reversing the rules on Title IX just a week or so ago.
We need to actually pass expanded child tax credits.
We need to ensure that there's paid family leave.
We need to ensure misogynist SEOs Don't prevent women from bringing their newborn children into the workplace or allow them to, God forbid, store their breast milk in a refrigerator in the workplace and breastfeed openly.
We need to reject that prejudice and we need to transform the culture.
You know what makes something unthinkable is The reason why people are scared of posting jokes and racy tweets or whatever is because they're like, I will get fired from my job.
That's the only thing they really care about.
And so if a social issue comes to the point where people won't work with you ever again, take a look at the Israel condemnation letter.
It was signed by a bunch of students at some Ivy Leagues.
And then Bill Ackman and a bunch of billionaires said, We have all banded together to say, none of you will ever get a job at any of our companies.
And what did they do?
They all issued apologies.
Because that's what they really feared.
The question, I'm not literally suggesting businesses do this.
I'm sure I'll get taken out of context.
What Ron Paul said was it should not be illegal.
It should be unthinkable.
There are many things that we used to do that we no longer do because it would be unthinkable.
Why?
There are a lot of people who want to do really weird, nasty things, and they don't because they know it would destroy their lives if they did.
But there are a lot of really awful things.
I mean, the really easy, obvious one is slavery.
And now no one in this country is on the pro-slavery side.
Although, I shouldn't say no one, there are probably some weirdos somewhere.
unidentified
I think you have to fight for both because we know morality does follow the law.
And so many people... I disagree with that.
I don't think that's true, but I think that's what people think, right?
So we have a lot of people in our culture today who they derive their morality from what the law says.
Well, I mean, I think when something is made legal, people then tend to think, well, maybe it's okay.
Maybe it's terrible.
And you can look at the statistics on people's views on abortion before 1973 and after 1973.
Whether or not something is legal doesn't make it immoral or moral.
No, absolutely.
I totally agree with you.
What I'm saying is- But that's not what you just said.
People believe that their morality follows the law, that they derive their morality from what's legal, and I would say that's wrong.
That's why the pro-life movement says we have to make abortion an illegal, an unobtainable thing, because one, not only will it save lives now, it will change minds, cause people to give pause to whether is that an actual good or moral decision if it becomes illegal.
That's why the left was enraged when Roe v. Wade was reversed.
Because when you even you ask their their own statisticians, they'll say, well, I mean, Planned Parenthood's annual report two weeks ago came out.
They're now committing more abortions than ever before.
They ended the lives of 392,000 little baby girls and baby boys with 700 million dollars in our taxpayer funds.
Their abortion business is booming.
in a post-Roe era because they prepared for post-Roe.
So a lot of people in the pro-choice side will say, well, Roe didn't end abortions.
Abortions are still happening in some places are happening more.
Why are they all pissed off that Roe versus Wade was reversed?
Because they understand culturally when you change the law, we will now have a generation of kids, which this hasn't been really studied by social scientists.
And I think it's going to be fascinating.
You're going to have kids like my own children who are going to grow up in a state where abortion is unavailable.
And that's going to shape these young kids, this whole generation's mind about abortion.
They're going to get to college.
Like my kids are going to get to college, be in a cafeteria or dorm room having a discussion with somebody from California.
And hopefully my children are aghast to learn that their roommate or their friend comes from a state where it's legal to kill children.
That is why the pro-choice side was upset about Roe versus Wade.
It wasn't that because Roe versus Wade was gone because abortions are still happening.
It's that this is the law and the law not being there is going to change people's minds because many people derive their morality from legality, but they shouldn't.
If someone points a gun at you and says they intend to kill you, do you have a right to use any force up to and including lethal to defend yourself?
unidentified
Yes, but I think you'd be very careful with that because, I mean, I would say, you know, if someone fades your home, shoot them in the leg, don't shoot them in the head.
Right, so if someone is threatening your life, you have a right to defend yourself.
Simple.
If you came upon a person who was threatening to kill another person, do you believe you have a right to use lethal force to stop that murder from occurring?
Self-defense is an affirmative defense when killing someone if that person was either going to kill or cause great bodily harm.
If the outcome of it is, yeah.
Serious great bodily harm or death of you or another.
So the question I have, but I think you've basically already answered it, but this question gets into the question of law, which is why I was asking these.
You're on a jury and there's a man who's being charged with murder.
And the case is that he was walking down the street and stumbled upon a doctor about to give a woman an abortion, and the woman was at nine months, and it was clearly definitive, and the doctor was laughing, saying, I'm now going to kill this baby.
The man goes, no!
And then shoots the doctor.
He's now charged with murder.
Would you, on that jury, acquit the man who shot that doctor?
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a, you would definitely, I would say that you wouldn't need to use lethal force in that case.
The reason why lethal force You don't really have a choice when it comes to, uh, you have a gun.
unidentified
You always have a choice.
If you stumble upon an abortionist in open air who's getting ready to an abort a child in nine months, I have a choice and I can choose to shoot the abortionist in the head or I can choose to shoot the abortionist in the hand or a leg.
So the question here is, and the reason I asked this, typically when I talk to pro-lifers, they are unwilling to say that they view the killing of a baby and the killing of a person as equal.
I hear a whole lot from pro-lifers that abortion is murder.
Then I ask basic questions.
There have been a lot of people who have chatted, who have super chatted, and said unequivocally, if a person shot a doctor to save the life of a baby, it's self-defense, no question asked.
But almost all of the personalities and public commentators, political commentators, who I've asked, they always refuse to say yes.
They always deflect and say, for some reason, It is not the same.
And I think it was Dennis Prager who pointed this out, who is pro-life, that clearly because of this... He's in most circumstances, not all.
unidentified
I had an interesting conversation with him on my podcast.
I think he said that the argument that you see then from the pro-life is that they clearly do differentiate between an abortion and a murder.
It's not the same thing.
unidentified
There are degrees.
Well, I think it also depends.
Like you think about the IVF experiment, right?
The IVF thought experiment that was rampant online, like, Ooh, we have found the thing to trip up pro-lifers.
And the thought experiment, I don't know if you've ever heard it, Pastor, is that you're at a IVF clinic and it's on fire.
And inside are a thousand humans in embryonic form and test tubes.
And there is a young child and who do you save?
And most people would say, I'm going to save the toddler.
Um, and so when, when people say that they go, aha, you then don't actually believe that the human and embryonic form is the same as a toddler.
And I don't actually think that is true because I think there's a lot of circumstances to that.
One, I would hope if I were in that situation, I would try to do everything I can to save both.
There's also different challenges there.
Is the toddler my toddler?
Or are those ten, you know, humans in embryonic form in a test tube, are those my children?
Because that could change something, right?
Because I could say, wait a minute, those are my children.
I don't want this toddler to die, but those humans in embryonic form are my children.
I want to save them.
So some things that will change will depending on the relationship.
There's also the thing of, uh, and the philosophers have talked about this of like, you recognize yourself, right?
In that toddler, you know that that toddler is going to experience pain and that the toddler is afraid that the toddler is crying.
It doesn't mean that the humans in embryonic form and the test tubes are less than human, but you also know that those humans aren't experiencing pain, uh, where the toddler is.
And you're trying to reduce human suffering as much as you can.
So I think it's, I think there's a lot, the reason it's hard to answer the question is because I think there's a lot of questions that then come up from your analogy.
No, I know, and you know, my response to that would be like, a single baby in the womb And a child in a room are more comparable to then a bunch of embryos in a freezer.
I don't like using, I've tried to really stop using the word like embryo because it's, we use it how we use the word fetus.
And we use these terms, which are stages that in your life, you didn't come from an embryo or fetus pastor.
You once were one, but yet we use these terms to kind of like mentally separate ourself from these other human beings because they're in a different stage.
But embryos, fetuses are human beings.
They're human beings in a different stage, just like how you have toddlers and adolescents.
Do you think, are you, you're in favor of a total abortion ban?
unidentified
Obviously there's like... I believe the Life Exception Act should be passed, which would recognize what the 14th Amendment says, that the pre-born human is a person and should have equal rights.
Rape, incest, and the health of the mother would require a judge.
unidentified
Well, you have to use the definition of life.
Health is very... I mean, the argument that the Biden administration literally just made the Supreme Court two weeks ago was they're trying to force the state of Idaho to do abortions in emergency rooms using an emergency law that says that you can't deny treatment to somebody who shows up to the emergency room depending on their ability to pay.
And they use the word health instead if she shows up and says, I'm going to kill myself or my mental health.
If a woman is facing death due to a pregnancy complication, and let's say it's actually fairly definitive, like, oh crap, the baby and the mother are about to die.
Under the 14th Amendment interpretation of personhood and due process rights, it would mean that before the abortion could be carried out, even in that A circumstance, a judge would have to sign off on it.
It would require a due process.
unidentified
I don't know if it would need a judge.
I mean, you would have state laws that then are created, and then you have state medical boards who then, and ethics boards at hospitals who make those determinations.
A due process requires, there would have to be an adversarial court, meaning you're gonna end up with liberal groups.
So, it would still get really weird, to be completely honest.
In fact, you'd probably get pro-life groups.
A woman is pregnant.
And it's a 77% chance, they don't know, science is, they can't say yes or no.
Let's just say there's a circumstance then, where they're like, if this carries out for another week, you're gonna die, the baby will then die, we unfortunately have no choice, I'm sorry ma'am, but we have to terminate this pregnancy and the baby will not survive.
If the Fourth Amendment stands, it would require a due process for the life of the baby.
There is no statutory law that says we can override a person's constitutional rights without due process.
It would then require someone saying... Emergency hearing.
unidentified
Emergency hearing, which would... A guardian ad litem would be appointed to the unborn child.
I mean, if you think about if a mother is going to die and unless the pregnancy is ended, that stage of her life is ended and the child is birthed, whether the child is living or dead, Keep forcing her to stay alive for her to then die will mean her child will die as well.
So, I mean, that's going to be an interesting conversation.
The reason why this question matters is because there's going to... No pro-life law would say that, but... Absolutely.
If the Supreme Court rules under the 14th Amendment that unborn are persons, Before any pregnancy is terminated, which ends the life of the baby, regardless of what a doctor thinks would require due process, because if it didn't, then you would just have pro-abortion groups being like, oh geez, that baby's gonna die.
And so the point is, you will find circumstances then where there will be a legitimate medical issue that will require an emergency hearing and an advocate for the unborn.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the laws are going to be like at that time.
At that point, you know, by the time we get a Human Life Amendment either passed or a Life at Conception Act passed, which recognizes the 14th Amendment rights of every person, I can pretty much say we're going to have artificial wombs at that moment, and we're not really at
Hopefully we'll be at that point where we're not going to have these discussions or need to have these discussions because we will be able to use this invention, which I don't really think was invented for good, but we'll be able to use this technological invention for good to save the life of the child as well as the life of the mother.
But I do believe that artificial wombs overwhelmingly will end the abortion question once and for all.
Women will go in and be like, I didn't want to get pregnant, and it's been four weeks, they'll be like, we'll transfer the baby to a womb bag.
unidentified
No, when I ask that question on campuses, though, to be honest with you, Tim, and I'll ask that of pro-choice advocates, well, what do you think about artificial wombs?
Would you join me in opposing abortion?
And they're like, no, because you're still forcing her to have a baby.
When Democrats tried passing this bill that would allow abortion up to the point of birth in the event of the health of a mother, which is what the bill said.
unidentified
And they're going to pass it if Joe Biden's re-elected and they get the majority in Senate.
I was talking to a friend of mine who is, we call him Normie, not really politically active, kind of a liberal New York guy.
And we were talking politics and I said, well, look, if you tell the truth on what the news is, they call you right wing.
For instance, I'm the traditional pro-choice.
It's a libertarian argument.
We don't really see that in common politics today.
The typical argument is like Michelle Wolf going on Netflix screaming, you get an abortion and you get... and I'm like, that's kind of weird.
I like Tulsi Gabbard, Safe Legal Rare, all that stuff.
But when I report on what the bill the Democrats are passing is, they say that me reading it, it was subsection 13 or something, they call me, you probably remember this one, they call me conservative pro-life right wing, and I'm like, it's the weirdest thing.
When I explained to him what the bill did, he told me I was wrong.
And he's a normie guy.
I said, the bill would allow, in the circumstances of the health of the mother being threatened, which is broadly interpretable, the termination of the baby up to the point of birth.
And it's federal.
And I said, my question is just simply this.
If the baby can survive on its own, why kill it?
And if that's the case, then the bill should simply read, a pregnancy may be terminated so long as every effort is made to preserve the life of the child.
The baby can be given adoption, etc, etc.
And he looked at me and was like, no, you're wrong.
That's not what the bill says.
And I was like, I'm not here to argue pro-abortion or choice or anything.
When I showed him the bill, pulled out my phone and was like, here, you read it.
unidentified
It's hard for the human person to understand abortion.
Most people don't want to think about abortion.
Like when we talk about abortion happening in the third trimester, people go, that doesn't happen, you're a liar.
okay, do you want to call an abortion facility in Maryland, Bethesda, Maryland, or Washington DC?
'Cause I can schedule one for you right now.
And we don't have a national abortion reporting law, but according to the inaccurate stats that we have in the CDC, about 11,000 babies die a year of these late term abortions.
But people don't want to think of it that way, Tim, because if you have to think about what their extrapolation of their pro-choice views are, it sounds really bad to everyone.
It's written on the human heart, I would argue, because there's moral right and wrong, not to prescribe death to an inconvenient other human person.
I believe the only reason why the pro-choice side argues that the unborn are not human life is political, because they can't accept within their hearts their guilt over killing a human.
unidentified
Or you can make choices, just different choices in your own life.
You have to think about that.
If you become pro-life, Tim, and you're on campuses, or if you're hooking up with a bunch of women, you then have to become a little bit more responsible in your decision making.
You might have to choose not to just use a woman's body for pleasure the way you see fit, because then you may be on the hook.
Well, I would say I'm absolutely disgusted by the guys who go to women and are like, get an abortion, I refuse, and the women are like, I don't want to.
No, that guy should, when the man chooses to engage in relations with a woman, pregnancy is his consent and he is responsible, and I don't like the, for 18 years, no, for life.
You have a kid, you have responsibility to that kid for the rest of your existence.
unidentified
And 68% of women say, according to the Guttmacher Institute, that they felt pressure to have an abortion.
What is the, what is the better world you envision for them?
unidentified
What's that look like?
I want a world and I'm fighting for an America where no woman feels ever again that she has to choose between the life of her child and her education or her career or what she's envisioned for her life.
That we live up to the second wave of feminist, the promises of second wave feminism.
That I am woman, hear me roar.
I can do whatever I want.
That I am an equal functioning part of this society.
And that I don't have to pay someone to conduct a special surgery on me to end the life of innocent other for me to be like the normative male body.
That actually isn't equality.
That I am equal to man simply because of who I am.
I want all women to know that they don't have to choose to end the life of another human being.
And that's not a choice that any of us should be able to make.
It'd be legal for us to make to end the life of an inconvenient Other human being.
That is why I've launched organizations like standingwithyou.org.
That's why we're changing policies on private Christian school campuses as well as four-year campuses that are discriminatory to pregnant parenting women.
That is why I introduced the Pregnant Parent Student Bill of Rights Act, which every single Democrat in the House of Representatives this January voted against.
All that bill said is Was that in student handbooks right beside where you can tell women to have an abortion and where to get her free condoms, you tell her where there's actual sources of support in the community if she chooses life.
And every single Democrat and the House of Representatives voted against that bill.
Do you think that was wrong, Pastor?
Do you think the Democrats should have at least joined us in saying- I gotta be honest, when you stopped answering the question and started plugging your work, I stopped paying attention.
Well, I don't, so I think elective abortion is wrong.
I don't, I don't hear any argument for it.
It's basically just, they have a right to choose, and I'm like, I don't, I don't understand how you can say, I hereby consent to allow life into my body.
Oops, now I'm going to end it.
I don't understand that.
There's no, there's no scientific or moral argument there.
Rape, however, the challenges in, and they are more rare, but it does happen.
What ultimately leads me to a general approach, like traditional pro-choice, not modern pro-choice, is it's a horrifying reality of women having to go to adjudication over rapes and non-consensual impregnation, and the government can't mandate that a person provide their body to another person.
It's a rather difficult and impossible moral position, because you have now I believe there was a genuine attempt, you know, several decades ago to figure this question out, of rape particularly, and the question ultimately fell upon, I don't think anyone's going to be happy with a situation where a woman gets raped and then has to justify to the court how she didn't consent to this because that was never her, the onus was never on her.
She said no, there's no consent, why should she have to prove there wasn't?
unidentified
I mean, we have a problem first in the legal system now.
Less than one percent of all sexual assaults are actually prosecuted.
Rapists are walking among us and there's no repercussions.
The courts ultimately said, so we will leave it upon the discretion of the woman then, and it was rape being the question as to how this gets brought up, ultimately results in millions of abortion as contraception, which is women choosing to invite life into their bodies and then Regretting it and saying, oops, I didn't think it would happen.
Look, you, I know it's not a one for one argument, but if I have a house and I tell someone you are free to come and stay here and then they do and then later I'm like, you know what?
I don't think it's going to work out.
It's like, well, there's a process, an eviction process for this.
You may not like it, but if you rent a property to someone by choice, the problem we have now is we have a tenant like in New York.
It's really it's funny because, again, they're not one for one.
But you have the squatters argument, which is like this.
It's funny that it's coming from the liberals.
Someone can break into your home without your consent and live in your house and you can't get rid of them.
Nope, they live there now.
That's the rule to protect their life.
And I'm like, that's kind of funny.
You know what I mean?
So my challenge, I suppose, and the big challenge is, it is amoral, it is wrong, and it is a lie to defend abortion as contraception.
I've had so many debates with pro-choice individuals There's nebulous answers, there's wide-ranging answers, there's no logical argument as to why a person could elect to invite life into their body and then also destroy it.
So, I think if abortion was only ever, and easily, morally adjudicated and legally adjudicated through, abortion only exists in the instance of the life of the mother.
I do think health is a question, but it's supposed to be a substantial threat of massive injury, like it leaves you permanently paralyzed and the baby can't survive or whatever.
unidentified
The problem now is abortion is just, oops, So you and I don't agree on the issue of abortion cases rape.
I don't think the circumstances of your conception changes your value.
And I have too many friends who were conceived in rape to be able to say, yeah, I think they should have been killed because their father is an evil bastard.
But I'm saying that's what we say, and I think that's what's missing in this conversation about abortion and cases of rape, especially when it's on, you know, nightly news and it's like the 30 seconds and the pro-choice advocate uses rape to justify 100% of abortions, which I think is completely disingenuous.
If a baby is at seven months, And it was a rape conception.
You can't kill that baby.
It's seven months.
The baby should be... At that point, it's a question of like... But if I wake up and there's a kid in my house, I have every right to open the door and say, get out of my house.
And the kid goes, but I'll die outside.
I'm like, wow, that sucks.
Who are you?
Get out of my house.
That's a threat to my family.
I don't know who this kid is.
This kid could be crazy or whatever.
I don't see a legal obligation for me to provide food, shelter, warmth, comfort, to start providing abilities.
unidentified
And that legal obligation is different from a moral obligation.
Well, that biological child is different than you.
In cases that a woman has been raped, she becomes pregnant, the child is half of her.
We tend to think that it's like this foreign invader.
And honestly, I think we need to have a real conversation about what happened.
So there's not very many studies about what happens in cases of rape.
There's about a couple of studies we know, the estimates are about 5% of women who are raped conceive.
The Elliott Institute studied 162 women who conceived after rape.
The shocking statistic that no one ever can believe is that 70% of those women chose life.
30% of them chose abortion.
Now the 70% half chose to place with adoptive family.
Half chose the parent.
80% of the women, the 30% who chose abortion regretted their decision.
0% of the women who chose life regretted their decision.
- This is a question I have for you, Pastor, 'cause I was reading. - So I agree with the morality. - I wanna know what the pastor thinks about this. - I agree with the morality, but the issue is the legal limits of the United States government to enforce things.
unidentified
- Yeah, I think, no, it's absolutely a person.
And if you look at the 14th Amendment, it's absolutely a person.
And if my father goes out and commits a rape today, or an act of terrorism, or something horrific, there's no argument that I should be killed, put to death for my father's crimes.
And we would say, oh, that's different, Kristen, because you're outside of your mother's womb.
The end result may be the death of the baby, but... Well, if there are official wombs, you just... Right, that ends that outright.
I think it's, for women who choose to protect the life, it's commendable, it's honorable, but I don't think the government can say, you as a sovereign individual with inalienable rights, Your body is forfeit because someone committed a crime against you.
That's true.
unidentified
I think she's noble enough to choose nine months so somebody else has nine years.
My point is, if I don't consent to something being done to my body for any reason, whether it's my cells or otherwise, and the state tells me, you have no agency, we hereby mandate, I say...
unidentified
I think this is a whole other pocket.
Tim and I agree that 97% of abortions should be unavailable.
Pastor, do you agree that 97% of abortions should be unavailable?
- Tim and I kind of agree that 97% of abortion should be unavailable.
- Pastor, do you agree that 97% of abortion should be unavailable? - I think that abortion should be legal if the woman chooses it. - When do you think the child of the womb bears?
'Cause I was looking at some of your past op-eds this week and you talked about image bears.
When do you think the child in the womb becomes an image bearer of the Creator?
I read a beautiful prayer about mothers who endured infertility and mothers who endured miscarriage, and you talked about the image of God.
This is what I'm trying to figure out, because if you're saying abortion should be legal in all nine months, yet you're a pastor and you've talked about the image of God, That's a really big question that needs to be answered.
You, over time, replace one part of the ship, and then you take all of the parts you removed and build another ship.
Now you have two.
Which one's the original ship of Theseus?
So, I'm genuinely wondering, is the image of God representing the whole of God and man is in that image, or are the subsequent parts also a subsequent image of God in some way?
I don't know, general question.
I'm not trying to... I don't know the ultimate point.
I mean, if you want an out there theological view, I mean, I think you could go a bunch of different ways.
You could say that God is a spiritual being and therefore man's spiritual parts belong to God and the material parts belong to the material creation.
I think... I agree with that, actually.
I lean more in that direction.
There are other people that think that And I don't know how they get there because God is not flesh and blood, but they choose to take the triune nature of man and say, look, God made us just like the Christian God, a triune being.
We're a spirit and a mind and a body, and God is a father and a son and the Holy Spirit.
Let me just get real personal with you for a second.
In the event that you think I'm a baby killer, I have two wonderful children.
We tried to have three between the two children, my wife miscarried on our toilet.
I was out of my mind.
I didn't know what to do.
The first thing that I did, and I don't even remember reasoning it.
It's just where my consciousness went.
I went into the kitchen and I got one of those soup spoons and there's a bloody mess in the toilet bowl and I'm trying to find the miscarried pieces.
I wasn't attached to a person that existed.
I had never known this person.
I hadn't had emotional connections with them, conversations, changing their diaper, etc.
For me personally, Ryan Phipps, there was not any of that God stuff going on.
This is God's image.
This is a, a human who is hurting right now.
The no, no one was hurting except for me.
And so that I am not able to look at what happened there as This is a human being that is dying in front of me.
unidentified
It had already died inside.
That's what happens in miscarriage.
What were you trying to collect?
Because you said miscarriage pieces, which is an inaccurate Uh, because I don't know what, I wasn't able to find anything.
Yeah, I mean, sometimes with miscarriage, depending on what stage the mother was in, how late the pregnancy, um, but women find the babies in toilet bowls, the chemical portion.
I am interested in the federal government not telling women what to do with their bodies.
Not because of this instance alone, but once the government starts down that road of telling me what I can do with my bodies, I no longer have any hope for the world that my children will grow up in.
unidentified
Don't you think a million abortions a year sort of necessitates we have this conversation?
I met this man last week, and I'm still pretty traumatized from it, Tommy, at Florida International University.
He drove four hours across the state of Florida.
And my bodyguard, immediately, hairs were raised because he came barreling towards me.
We didn't know this gentleman.
Tommy stopped in front of me and began bawling.
He pulled out a crumpled picture of an ultrasound out of his pocket.
His daughter, who he and his girlfriend had named, her name was Clementine.
They were broken up.
He had gone away for a week and his girlfriend was pressured to have an abortion.
She had an abortion at 20 weeks.
It was a free abortion at Cherry Hill in New Jersey because they told her they would do the abortion free if she donated her daughter's body to science for research.
And that was her choice.
And Tommy was distraught.
Tommy was bawling for hours.
And he said, I had no say in this.
This was my daughter.
I couldn't protect her.
I've called the abortion clinic every day, trying to retrieve her body because all I want is her body.
I'm buying a plot of land.
I want to bury her body.
This is my daughter.
I had no say.
My daughter was killed and I had no say.
Her mother now regrets it and I have no idea what to do.
Do you think there's anything, do you think Tommy should have had any say in whether or not his daughter, who he has the ultrasound of, who is 20 weeks, so like one and a half weeks away from viability.
Do you think there was anything wrong with that situation or do you think it was just choice?
I think that's the way that it's supposed to work.
I'll give you my final thoughts as we wrap up.
Oklahoma has a ban, I believe.
You know better, but it's like an effective ban, except in rare exceptions.
Colorado is unrestricted.
They share a border.
I fear a scenario where there's a man and a woman, they're together in a relationship, and they get pregnant.
The woman is, let's say, seven and a half months.
And then something happens where she decides, whatever it may be, I can't be with this guy.
And if I have this kid, I'm stuck with him forever.
So she gets in her car and starts driving full speed to Colorado.
The man wakes up and he's shocked.
I can't believe this.
What's going on?
Where is my significant other?
And then a friend says, she didn't tell you?
She's leaving you and she's going to Colorado to get an abortion.
And he says, but the baby can live.
The baby can live.
So he calls police.
What do I do?
She's going to kill my baby.
She doesn't need to kill it.
The baby can survive.
I don't care if she wants to be involved with me or not.
I will take care of my child.
And then they say, once she goes to Colorado, it's unrestricted.
She can do whatever she wants.
My fear is that scenario results in...
There's a viral video where a guy is following a woman into an abortion clinic, crying, and then he drops to his knees, screaming out of his lungs, please don't kill my child.
And then she just shoves him off and goes inside.
I personally met a guy recently who told me that he begged his girlfriend not to abort their child, but she said it's not his decision.
And then she got an abortion.
And he said this turned him from a Democrat into a full Republican across the board.
I was like, it's kind of wild.
Young Democrat guy.
Uh, and I, he, he mentioned he's like, you know, I had something happen to me last year and then he told me the story and I said, I was like, so you're voting straight Republican ticket.
He goes, yep.
And I was like, for real?
Like I was kind of kidding.
And he's like, I can't, I can't, I I'm Republican across all the way.
Wow.
This scenario, I fear, is the guy rounds up his buddies and says, I'll be damned if I let her murder my child.
And then you've got these two states on the opposite ends of the spectrum.
And then you've got law enforcement.
Which side do they take?
We've already heard some, uh, State officials, I think it was Alabama, I always forget the state, saying we will prosecute a woman who conspires to travel across state lines to commit, you know, a murder.
And then what happens?
A guy rounds up his buddies and they go and they say, you know, as you mentioned, some people view the law as What is moral.
But it's not so much that, it's about what is acceptable in their community.
And right now, it probably wouldn't happen because abortions happen all over the place, but with a state like Oklahoma, where the guy says, I know if she is here, they can't kill my baby.
I'm going to get her.
And then you get a posse going, then she calls the police, but maybe even it goes beyond that.
But what happens then if you get Oklahoma saying, we hereby say it is conspiracy to commit murder if you travel out of state for an abortion, and the law, the government of Oklahoma says to Colorado, we have an extradition for her arrest.
And Colorado says, we're not going to extradite her.
What she's doing is a right, and you can't do anything about it.
unidentified
Then you're getting into... This is why this abortion is not a state... I agree.
It's not a state's issue.
You know, I disagree deeply with Donald Trump when he said abortion.
Now, I can work with Donald Trump because if it's a state's rights issue, then stop funding Planned Parenthood with all of our tax dollars.
And there's a lot of things we can do.
Stop using our DOJ to put 80-year-old Holocaust survivors in prison for having the audacity for spraying it from an abortion facility.
True story happening today.
One of them had a stroke this weekend, by the way.
So if you want to shout anything out and give some final thoughts.
unidentified
Yeah, I would definitely say that it's very sad that we have young men who know the truth that life and the womb matters and they've been completely shut out of this conversation.
At the end of the day, your gender, your sex does not determine whether or not a human being is valuable.
And we have laws for, you know, we have lots of questions about why we have laws and what laws are, but fundamentally the laws are to help us ensure that we hold back the most horrific things human beings can do to other human beings.
Every abortion intentionally ends a life of a unique, whole, living human being.
You can follow me on Instagram, Twitter, podcast, Kristen Hawkins Show.
But Pastor, your comments today are shocking.
And quite honestly, those comments are the very ones that actually led me to start researching the Catholic Church and why I came home to Catholicism because that is heretical what you were saying.
You want to shout anything out and give us your final thoughts?
I just want to say that I think at the nexus of this entire discussion, Are people that either believe that law creates and dictates morality or that law stands on its own.
I do not want to live or participate in a country where law tells me what morality is.
I want the law to function as it should, not as a way to legislate morality, but how to hold people accountable when they act against all of the laws that we've agreed to.
Do you have a social media or anything you want to mention?
