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Dec. 3, 2022 - The Michael Knowles Show

02:20:48

Michael Knowles DEBATES Viral Pro-Choice Activist | Bronte Remsik

Michael Knowles was joined by Bronte Remsik, a third-year medical school student and social media influencer, to debate abortion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	If you want to look at that, then you would like to look at that.
	This isn't an ultrasound.
	No, this is a nine-week fetus in a petri dish.
	In a petri dish?
	It's just really ghastly to show a picture of a person who's been killed.
	People, such as yourself, like to share propaganda about this issue.
	And I am here to try to present a medically accurate representation of this issue.
	Of what a murder victim looks like.
	of what this issue is. - One of the great sorrows of my life is that liberals never want to talk to me.
	Me, little old me, whom everybody loves so.
	Very few want to talk to me.
	I invite liberals on this show.
	They say no, with some exceptions.
	One of the most successful popular videos that we've put out was a debate that I had with a popular social media influencer on the left on the topic of abortion who did have the guts to come on this show.
	And not only that, she did so well.
	That we decided we had to invite her out here, and that person would be Bronte Remzik.
	Bronte, thank you for coming out all the way to Tennessee, and welcome to the Daily Wire Studios.
	Thank you.
	Good to be here.
	I hope that I can kind of introduce your viewers to a new perspective.
	I suspect they have been introduced, but perhaps you will change some people's minds.
	For the occasion, I'm having a very pink drink of some sort.
	This is my most feminist quality.
	You are, Bronte, a third-year medical student.
	People can find you on TikTok and throughout social media.
	And you have a website as well where you've got all of your ideas and merchandise.
	Yes.
	That would be Be Kind and Curious.
	Yes, BeKindandCurious.com.
	Okay.
	I consider myself kind.
	I am extremely curious.
	You have done us the great honor of coming out here and gone through all the hassle that it takes to get to Tennessee.
	So you are staunchly in favor of abortion.
	I am your captive audience.
	If you had to give me the elevator pitch, what would it be?
	Absolutely.
	So what I would really like to start this conversation off with and make very clear from the start for both you and your viewers I am not saying that you are wrong for being uncomfortable with abortion.
	I'm not saying that you are wrong for not agreeing with it.
	But your opinion applies to your body and your life alone.
	We are not sitting here having a discussion about our personal disagreements.
	I am here to educate you and your viewers on the guidelines of proper medical practice that have been established by our country's leading medical experts, and they have stated publicly and unequivocally that abortion access is essential to comprehensive, evidence-based healthcare.
	And we both want to protect life, and what remains true is protecting innocent life never involves restricting access to healthcare.
	Two questions I have from that.
	You mentioned that all of the genius medical people agree in our country that we need to have abortion.
	Now surely all of the genius medical people have agreed on all sorts of practices throughout history, even in the not-so-distant past, that are quite terrible for people.
	One good example would be lobotomies.
	There was a scientific consensus in the country that when women are behaving a little eccentric, we should go in and scramble up their brains.
	And they used these kinds of procedures throughout the 20th century.
	Now we look at that as ghastly and a violation of basic rights.
	But this was a medical consensus.
	So surely you're not telling me that just because a bunch of fancy people in lab coats think something about a matter of bioethics, that therefore it's the gospel truth.
	Well, a big part of the prior travesties of medicine is there was not consent from patients, and there wasn't proper informed consent from patients.
	Where when it comes to abortion, you continuously say that I am pro-abortion, when really I am pro-abortion access.
	And abortion access and the discussion of having an abortion should be between the patient and the medical provider.
	And that is it.
	And the entire concept and the entire point is that the pregnant person gets to consent to continue with their pregnancy and must consent to the use of their body because they are the one that understands their body and their life and their finances and everything that makes up the complexities of human life.
	They are the only ones who are able to decide and understand what is best for them with the guidance of You know, proper, modern medical practices.
	And it is true that our world and our country's leading medical minds have, like I said, unequivocally stated that abortion access Well,
	so on the matter of consent, obviously the clear rebuttal to that would be that abortion involves not two people, but three people, one of whom is the unborn baby.
	Now, I imagine you would I have issues with that description, so we can get to that in a moment.
	The first thing you said, though, is that I'm entitled to my opinion, but I'm only entitled to my opinion as it pertains to my own body, and I'm not entitled to an opinion about what you do with your own body.
	But do you really believe that?
	Do you really believe that people can only have opinions about things that pertain to their physical selves?
	I can't have an opinion about...
	I don't know a sunset, or I don't know how automobiles are made, or I don't know drug use or anything like that.
	I can't have an opinion about politics, how our government should be run, or how our political community ought to behave.
	I can only have opinions about myself.
	No, I think you misunderstand me.
	You can have your opinion about anything and anyone that you'd like, but that opinion cannot restrict someone's access to health care.
	You can disagree with someone's choice to get an abortion, but just because you disagree with it doesn't mean that your opinion should override the opinion of their medical experts.
	Can my opinion be put into effect to restrict someone's access to drugs like heroin?
	Well, in what way?
	Well, we have self-government in the United States, at least nominally.
	And so if I think that heroin is really bad, and I think we ought to have laws against its use, then I can lobby my elected representatives and they can pass a law, as they have, against heroin.
	And then you are not allowed to use heroin, even though that affects only your own body.
	I have now expressed my opinion about heroin in such a way that it restricts what you can do with your own body.
	Are you saying that that is not acceptable?
	So, actually, with laws regarding drugs, it is illegal to buy and sell drugs, but it's not actually illegal to do drugs, because you can't tell me...
	It depends on the jurisdiction.
	True.
	But you cannot tell me what I can or cannot do with my body.
	Again, you can totally and rightfully so disagree with someone's choice to do drugs, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't, as health care providers, ensure that that, say, drug user is able to make informed choices about their body.
	Are you familiar with, like, clean needle programs?
	I am, yeah.
	Correct.
	And so clean needle programs, they reduce disease transmission.
	And so even though someone is going to choose to do drugs, it is the responsibility of medical experts and health care providers to ensure that we cannot, you know, we cannot change someone's choices and behavioral patterns, but we can ensure that we provide them resources and able to ensure that their but we can ensure that we provide them resources and able to ensure that their decisions and the impact of their decisions is minimized in
	Bronte, putting aside for a moment the efficacy of clean needle programs, which I think is dubious, but that might be a discussion for another day, I think you're evading the question a little bit here, because you're suggesting that drug use is not criminal, In all cases, which is not the case.
	There are places where the use of the drugs itself is criminal.
	But even so, let's accept your premise.
	Nevertheless, purchasing the drugs would be illegal.
	Now, this is something you do with your own body, with your own money.
	It's the very same issue, just removed one step.
	So is it all right for me to express my opinion about illicit drug use, to restrict you from doing something that you want to do?
	Be that shooting the heroin, purchasing the heroin, putting the heroin in a syringe, whatever you want to say.
	Clearly I am restricting your bodily autonomy here.
	That has been done throughout civilization.
	That remains on the books in the United States.
	Are you saying that drug laws are basically some sort of travesty?
	No, of course not, because it's a matter of public health.
	Now when we talk about pregnancy and abortion, essentially what causes pregnancy is sex, correct?
	And we cannot outlaw sex unless that's something that you are trying to bring forth.
	And so when it comes to laws limiting someone's ability to have bodily autonomy or limit someone's ability to To behave in a certain way.
	Sex and pregnancy and abortion is a very unique circumstance.
	And sure, we can talk all day about some convoluted drug analogy, but at the end of the day...
	I don't think it's convoluted.
	That's your opinion.
	But we cannot outlaw sex.
	And sex happens for numerous reasons, and pregnancy can be accidental and unwanted.
	And so trying to compare it to illegalizing drug use, it's not completely analogous to illegalizing and banning abortion.
	Because sex and drug use are two very different things, and they happen for two very different reasons.
	Right.
	I suppose I'm just discussing the principle that you described earlier, which is that I don't have the right to an opinion that affects what you do with your own body.
	But even leaving that aside, you say that we can't make sex illegal.
	I don't think anybody wants to make sex illegal.
	But historically, all sorts of sex has been illegal, and all sorts of sex remains illegal today.
	There are certain sexual behaviors, even in our...
	I think we're good to go.
	All of that, though, I wonder—so historically, you know, those are the facts.
	And doesn't that seem to be a little bit beside the point when it comes to abortion?
	Because now we're saying, you know, consenting adults above the age of 18, they can have all the sex they want.
	But if you do have sex and you do get pregnant, well, you don't have the right to kill the baby.
	Well, when you talk about things like having sex with children or animals being illegal, that's because they can't properly consent to have sex.
	When we're talking about consent or consensual sex between adults, that happens for multiple reasons.
	People have sex for social reasons, social connections, psychological reasons.
	Not just for the reason of procreation.
	And so, sure, pregnancy can happen accidentally and unwanted, but consent must be enthusiastic and ongoing.
	And so when we talk...
	What if it's only timid, tepid consent?
	Sort of, well, I'll do it, but I'm not...
	Yeah, I mean, that's a really big problem in our society right now.
	And, you know, that's something that people will take, you know, the small, you know, people will push people to say yes.
	And that's why we say sex should be enthusiastic and ongoing.
	Because if you are trying to have sex with someone who's not enthusiastic about it, then maybe you should second guess your choices.
	But isn't that a bit, I agree with you entirely, but isn't that a bit sex negative of you to say that?
	That there is a certain way that one should engage in consensual sex?
	I mean, you don't think so.
	No, because enthusiasm is expressed differently between people.
	It doesn't mean that you have to be jumping up and down.
	I just mean that the person who's consenting is consenting very clearly and enthusiastically in their own way and not being pressured into saying yes, not being timid about saying yes.
	You are ensuring that they are saying yes out of their own validity.
	I want to compare sex with pregnancy because we're talking about consent.
	So you understand that sex can be a fun and beautiful thing.
	People do for lots of different reasons.
	But it's only fun and beautiful when it's consensual.
	And when sex is not consensual, it can be traumatic and devastating for people.
	The same thing for pregnancy.
	When pregnancy is consensual and pregnancy is wanted, it can be a beautiful thing.
	But when pregnancy is unwanted and non-consensual, then it can be a very traumatic and devastating thing.
	Well, you know, I suspect it can be both in either case.
	I mean, I think not only of the experience of my wife, but of many of my friends who have had kids.
	And they want kids, and they intentionally get pregnant, or at least they are happy when they find out that they accidentally become pregnant.
	But there's still a lot of trauma involved in that.
	I mean, there's a lot of suffering that comes along with that.
	That's part of pregnancy and childbirth, and life generally.
	You know, life involves some degree of suffering.
	It just seems what you're saying is, when the pregnancy is desired, that is beautiful, and we should celebrate it, and when the pregnancy is not desired, then you ought to be able to end it, meaning end the little baby.
	And it reminds me of what the—you see this with the royal family.
	The royal family, you know, the princess gets pregnant and they say, we have the royal baby.
	The baby's only 10 weeks in gestation.
	But they say, this is a royal baby.
	But then some left-wing woman goes on television and says, you know, I just had an abortion.
	Well, that's never a baby.
	That's just a clump of cells.
	But we're talking about the exact same thing, right?
	We're talking about a child at, who knows, 15 weeks gestation, 20 weeks gestation, let's say.
	So...
	Yes, I understand that the experience of sex in pregnancy can be felt differently in different circumstances, but the baby himself would be the same in both circumstances.
	It's just in one, we celebrate his beautiful baby life, and in the other, we kill him as a clump of cells.
	So when it comes to medical terminology, it's actually an embryo or a fetus.
	And when you call it a clump of cells, I agree that that can feel dehumanizing.
	But on the same side, when you call it a baby, that's also anthropomorphizing.
	So I think that...
	Right.
	And so neither side is correct in its entirety, and that doesn't remove...
	Well, I guess you're entirely right that the...
	I mean, you mentioned the word fetus, which...
	Which, ironically, is dehumanizing, although the Latin word fetus just means offspring, and we're referring to human beings here.
	But doesn't the question hinge on?
	Which language should we use?
	So one is dehumanizing, one is anthropomorphizing, in other words, humanizing.
	So then isn't the question that we have to answer, is this thing that we're talking about a human or not?
	And if it is a human, then we should only use the anthropomorphizing language, and if it is not a human, then we should only call them a clump of cells.
	Well, when it comes to medicine and medical practice, you call it a fetus.
	But I don't call it a fetus.
	Well, but you're also not a medical professional, are you?
	But I'm a human being with rational faculty who describes the world around him, right?
	True, but you aren't having discussions with pregnant people.
	I often am, yeah.
	As a medical professional.
	So there are articles written for medical professionals about how to have these conversations.
	And it is appropriate to call it a fetus.
	And when the pregnancy is wanted, it is also appropriate to call it a baby when that pregnancy is wanted and desired and you are trying to create a comforting and accepting environment For that pregnant person.
	But from a medical standpoint, it is completely appropriate to call it a fetus until you understand where your patient is at in their mentality regarding their pregnancy.
	Is that guidance that doctors get?
	If the mother wants to be pregnant, then you can call it a baby.
	But if the mother doesn't want to be pregnant, you don't call it a baby.
	It depends.
	That's amazing that that's the medical guidance.
	Yeah, well, it's all about creating a comfortable and appropriate environment for the patient because we care about the mentality of the patient.
	And you want the patient to be able to make an informed choice.
	You want the patient to feel comfortable in your exam room.
	And calling it a fetus when it is a wanted pregnancy can make them feel detached from that pregnancy.
	But also calling it a baby when it is an unwanted pregnancy can put unnecessary pressure and fear onto that pregnant person.
	You don't believe that whether or not the baby is human hinges on whether or not the mother desires the baby or fetus.
	You don't think that the desire is the determining factor for the ontology of the embryo?
	The embryo is human.
	That's not within question.
	It is a human embryo.
	So then why wouldn't you use anthropomorphizing language?
	Why wouldn't you refer to it in human language?
	Because language is often emotional, and pregnancy is an emotional state for someone to be in.
	And as a medical professional, you have to be conscious of the way that your words affect the patient.
	And so you would lie to the patient?
	It's not lying.
	Well, you said it is lying, because you said the baby, or fetus, or whatever you want to say, is a human.
	And you said the word baby is humanizing language, so you're describing the human being with humanizing language, unless you say that the emotions of the pregnant mother are such that you don't want to describe the human being in humanizing language, and so you describe the human being in dehumanizing language.
	And you're doing it knowingly.
	You've just admitted the baby's human.
	How would you describe that other than telling a lie?
	I didn't say that anthropomorphizing was necessarily a negative thing.
	And as I said, saying fetus is medical terminology, and it is appropriate description.
	But it's dehumanizing, you said.
	No.
	Calling it a clump of cells is dehumanizing.
	Calling it a fetus is not dehumanizing.
	It's medically appropriate and it's medically consistent with how you should define...
	Then why the distinction?
	Why are you given the guidance to call it a fetus to the woman who doesn't want the baby and a baby to the woman who does want the baby?
	I've explained this to you but I can explain it again.
	Maybe I'm just a little slow.
	That's okay.
	I'll slow it down for you then.
	It depends on the mentality of the pregnant person and how they feel towards that pregnancy because as a medical professional in that exam room you are trying to create a comfortable environment where that patient understands What their options are and what their situation is.
	And so when you are trying to identify how they feel about their current medical state, you want to use language that creates a comfortable environment for them.
	So how do those two words affect their emotional state?
	What is the reason for the distinction?
	When a pregnant mother who doesn't want the baby hears you describe the baby as a fetus, Versus as a baby, how are they perceiving and conceiving of that?
	So I can probably ask you the same question, Michael.
	Why on your show and in these interviews do you insist on calling it a baby?
	Is it because you understand the emotional pull that that has on your viewers?
	So you insist on using that language because you understand it's emotional?
	No, it's because I think it's ontologically precise in exactly the way you just described.
	Because you say that the word baby is anthropomorphizing, and you said that the human being inside you is a human being.
	And so it's appropriate to use humanizing language for human beings.
	Depending on the conversation that you are having, because you have to be aware and compassionate towards the person that you are having that discussion.
	Right, but I don't think it's compassionate to deceive people or to pretend that the human isn't a human.
	I think that it's always disrespectful to lie to people.
	Calling it a fetus isn't lying.
	Calling it a fetus is medical criminality.
	But it's less anthropomorphizing than baby, you would admit.
	It's medically appropriate.
	But would you admit that it's less humanizing than the word baby?
	Less humanizing?
	Yes.
	It's a human fetus.
	It is.
	So if the two words are synonymous, why is there guidance for one and then the other?
	You keep saying it's because of the emotional state of the mother.
	But okay, how is that perceived?
	How do the emotions change hearing one word or the other?
	Again, I think you understand this because you choose to say baby.
	Why do you choose to say baby instead of fetus?
	Because there's an emotional baggage.
	Because there's an emotional baggage that comes with baby.
	No, because it's plain language.
	I generally try not to use Latin or jargony terms for things that are plainly understood.
	That's why I prefer good Saxon words and good plain words, and I don't use a 25-cent word when I can use a nickel word.
	And as you just said, the guidance to use one word or the other based on whether the mother wants to have an abortion or wants to give birth to her child, clearly, though you don't seem...
	Willing to admit it, but clearly is because the word fetus allows this pregnant mother in distress to abstract away the humanity of her child and makes it easier for that woman to justify having an abortion.
	Whereas if she were to call it a baby, it would be much, much harder for her to justify killing the baby in the womb through abortion.
	I think you would acknowledge that.
	Yeah, I can acknowledge that calling it a baby minimizes the options that the pregnant person feels like they have, and it can put unwanted pressure onto them.
	And if they are not in a financial, mental, or physical state to carry through with that pregnancy appropriately, calling it a baby makes them feel as if they have less options than they truly do and should have.
	So you mentioned those three states that you might be in where you want to kill your child.
	A financial state, psychological state, and what was the other one?
	Physical state.
	So I understand the psychological state.
	So let's put that to the side for a second.
	We can get to it later.
	What is the financial and physical state that would require one or greatly impel one to end their baby's life in the womb through abortion?
	Do you know how much it costs to carry through with pregnancy?
	All too well.
	It's actually not that expensive.
	It's not cheap, but it's not that expensive.
	To you, it's not that expensive.
	How expensive is it?
	You just went through it with your wife, right?
	You need to buy some prenatal vitamins.
	You've got to go to some doctor visits, so it's good to have health care.
	We're very lucky in this country that The very poor have health care through Medicaid, and the elderly, well, I guess they don't get pregnant all that much, but they could have Medicare, and people have health insurance through their employers, and there is a public option in recent years, and people can stay on their parents' health care until the age of 26.
	And you can go to an emergency room whenever you want.
	So there are all sorts of healthcare options in the United States, some of which could be improved, and we could maybe get to that later.
	But there are lots of healthcare options in the United States.
	And then when one delivers in the hospital, there is a very large sticker price.
	I mean, it'll say $30,000, $50,000.
	But people don't really pay that price because insurance covers that.
	And it's basically just a scam to enrich the insurance companies.
	That's, again, another problem with the U.S. health care system.
	People aren't actually writing $50,000 checks to give birth to their children.
	So, yeah, I'm not saying it's cheap to eat well and be able to stay home on bed rest, perhaps, if the doctor requires that, or to get prenatal vitamins, or to raise a kid is very, very expensive.
	I'm not doubting any of that.
	But to just get to the point of delivering the baby and then perhaps giving the baby up for adoption is not very expensive.
	Actually, I'll correct you there.
	It costs about $18,000 on average to carry through with a pregnancy and labor.
	I must have gotten a good deal then.
	Yeah, you must have.
	If you have insurance, the out-of-pocket cost is around $2,000 to $3,000.
	But what you might not understand either, which I, you know, work in the medical field in rural North Carolina, so I'm very much familiar with people who they do not have insurance or cannot afford insurance, whether through their employer or if they're contract workers.
	It just depends.
	And then the limit for someone to be qualified for Medicaid, there is a good amount of people that fall in between there.
	And I worked at a clinic that offered free care and To people who are uninsured but don't qualify for Medicaid.
	And our clinic was busy all the time because there is a massive amount of people who fall in that area.
	There's a great organization called Good Counsel Homes, which I really love.
	It's a pregnancy center up in Connecticut.
	And they do fabulous work for people who, again, might fall through the cracks or might be very distressed.
	And for whom abortion might seem attractive because of that financial reason.
	But there are lots and lots of these organizations.
	You mentioned the one that you work with.
	I mentioned the one that I've done some work with.
	And there are many, many others around the country, which is good.
	That's a fact to be celebrated.
	But it seems to undermine the argument that...
	Financial reasons impel people to get abortions.
	No, because as we discussed in the beginning, there's multiple reasons that someone might not be able to carry through with a pregnancy, physically, psychologically, and financially.
	And financially, the financial aspect of it cannot be belittled.
	Let's be serious.
	I think you're overstating it.
	Right.
	That's your opinion.
	Well, that's my opinion with experience.
	I've got two kids under my belt hoping for more, you know.
	So they've actually found that about 40% of Americans cannot afford an unexpected $400 cost, whether that be for their home, for their health, for whatever.
	And so saying that it's not a big deal to inquire about, if you have insurance, about a $2,000 to $3,000 cost.
	And if you don't have insurance, it can be about $18,000 on average.
	When 40% of Americans can't afford an unexpected $400 cost, you are basically discounting the experience of $400.
	The thing about those statistics, though, is they're not quite right because it's true that many Americans don't have a lot of money, like cash, available, but Americans tend to have a lot of stuff because Americans carry a lot of debt.
	So those numbers are also somewhat misleading because what people do is go into debt.
	Or if we're talking about something like an adoption, which is what we're really discussing here, there are all sorts of wonderful adoption agencies and all sorts of wonderful programs provided by the state and provided by private charity that cover these costs for all sorts of people who are financially strapped but don't want to kill their children.
	And so I just think it's...
	An argument to evade the basic question.
	I promise you, and I'll say it to the camera right now, if you are pregnant and you feel that you can't afford to carry your child through pregnancy and you can't afford the $500 and you can't find an organization that will cover it, write to me.
	I will write that check happily.
	And it's not just me.
	Plenty of pro-life people around the country would do it.
	That's why they do it.
	That's why they give to these organizations.
	Do you really believe?
	$500 to $2,000 is that delta that people may or may not be able to afford is a strong justification for killing 850,000 human beings every year.
	So again, saying the term killing 800,000 human beings...
	That's what you described.
	No, that is using manipulative and emotional language intentionally, Michael.
	You said that the fetus is a human being.
	That wasn't my language, that's your language.
	But killing a human being is not the same as aborting a fetus.
	But you can use the manipulative and emotional language if you'd like, but...
	I'm only using your language, because you said that it's alive and it's a human being.
	And so what do you call it when you end a life?
	It's just killing.
	That's just the precise way to describe it.
	And what do you call a human being is a human being.
	So I said, you're killing a human being.
	That's your language.
	If that's how you'd like to describe it, that's fine.
	That's how you describe it.
	Well, since we've talked about the financial aspects of abortion and pregnancy, why don't we talk about the physical and mental aspects of it?
	Because that is really the heart of the bodily autonomy argument.
	Sure.
	Sure.
	So the physical issue.
	Mm-hmm.
	I don't need to recite these statistics for you.
	The percentage of women who get abortions because the baby poses a direct threat to their lives, a very small number, far less than 1%.
	By direct threat to their lives, you mean they're going to lose their life?
	Yeah.
	Okay, well, Michael, do you know what the leading cause of death for pregnant people is?
	Pregnant people?
	Mothers?
	Women?
	If you'd like to call them mothers.
	Not all of them are mothers, but if you'd like to call them that.
	What are they if they're not mothers?
	They're pregnant people.
	What people other than mothers are pregnant?
	Does it bother you to use inclusive language?
	I prefer to use precise language.
	It's interesting because you come into this conversation trying to hold this moral superiority.
	I try to be moral when I can.
	Right, but when I use inclusive language, which it only takes a couple extra syllables to use inclusive language.
	To include who?
	To include people who don't identify as women but can become pregnant.
	So, like a person who's born a woman and then identifies as a man and is pregnant.
	Yeah.
	So you're telling me that in order to be a moral person, I need to accept the idea that a man, someone who is born a man and looks like a man, can really become a woman.
	That's a prerequisite of my being a moral person.
	I mean, yes.
	To me it is, because if you are trying to deny someone of their identity and deny what their life experience is, then that doesn't seem like a moral stance to me.
	I want to be accepting and I want to respect people's life experiences and respect the way that they want to identify and respect the way that they want to present themselves to the world.
	Bronte, I would like to identify, I do identify actually, as the correct person on this issue of abortion.
	I identify as being correct and more correct than you on this issue.
	And I would just ask that you accept and affirm my identity.
	Do you?
	Well, you are not a medical professional, and abortion and pregnancy is a medical concern.
	That's not your identity.
	That is my identity.
	I promise you that's my identity.
	I promise you that's my identity.
	That's very different from your sexual and gender identity.
	How so?
	What I'm talking here involves the mind.
	I mean, don't you think...
	I'm not just talking about my gonads or something like that.
	I'm not just talking about my sexual appetites or desires.
	I'm talking about my mind, my capacity for reason, my judgment here.
	And so you're saying you don't respect that identity, but you do respect the identity of a man who believes himself to be a woman.
	I'm saying that you are someone without medical training.
	And pregnancy is a medical condition and abortion is a medical procedure.
	And so we need to abide by the informed and knowledgeable opinions of medical experts.
	Again, you are entitled to your opinion, but you are not an informed and knowledgeable medical expert.
	So your opinion is not equal and should not override the opinions of medical experts on this issue.
	And they have stated unequivocally that That abortion access is essential to comprehensive, evidence-based health care.
	Bronte, are you a trained epistemologist?
	No.
	You haven't studied epistemology?
	No.
	And yet, you are making claims about knowledge and how knowledge can be ascertained and expressed.
	But you're not trained in that.
	So it seems to me, if I'm not allowed to have opinions about abortion because I'm not a trained medical professional, you surely shouldn't be permitted to have opinions about how people hold opinions if you're not trained in the very study of knowledge, epistemology.
	I'm sorry.
	If you have a heart condition, who do you go to?
	Do you go to your deli worker or do you go to a cardiologist?
	If you have a philosophical question, who do you go to?
	This isn't a philosophical question.
	It's a question about medical access.
	Ultimately, what we're talking about is human life.
	That's the reason it's a controversial issue.
	Well, yes, but also pregnant people are living human lives.
	So we are talking about their life, and their life takes precedent when it comes to medical care.
	Now you've moved out of the realm of the natural sciences.
	Now you're into the realm of the philosophical science.
	No, no.
	This is a fundamental principle of medical ethics.
	This is a fundamental principle.
	Of ethics, right.
	Of medical ethics.
	Right, which is a species of ethics broadly.
	But you just said you're not a trained ethicist.
	Well, you said you're not a trained epistemologist.
	Maybe you're a trained ethicist, are you?
	I'm trained in medicine, and we've had to take multiple courses in medical ethics.
	I have my master's in medical science.
	I'm a third-year medical student.
	Medical science, but not ethics or philosophy.
	We have to take—I don't know if you know this, but when you are going through medical training, you are trained in ethics because otherwise— No, I should hope that anybody who has any education at all would have some training in ethics.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Exactly.
	But would you call yourself an expert in ethics and...
	I would call myself knowledgeable.
	I would call myself knowledgeable.
	Right, but to be clear, as I said at the beginning of this discussion, we're not sitting here just having a discussion about our differences in opinion.
	I am here to educate you and your viewers on the guidelines and the published statements of our country's leading medical experts, specifically the...
	Not even just the unpublished ones, but the published ones.
	But the published ones, the public published opinions of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who is our country's leading experts when it comes to the health and well-being of pregnant people.
	And they say unequivocally, and you can look, there's also publications from Harvard, from Colorado University, from Yale, name it.
	Our country's leading minds.
	Our country's leading minds state that abortion access is essential.
	So you are entitled to your opinion, but it is not equal to the opinion of people who train their entire lives to understand this subject deeply.
	Well, if we're citing experts and the leading authorities, I would be remiss if I didn't cite the President's Council on Bioethical Inquiry, which in the middle of the 2000s assembled the nation's leading experts on bioethical questions from all of the top schools with all of the fanciest degrees.
	And they concluded that abortion is bioethically unacceptable.
	It's immoral.
	It's wrong.
	You can't do it.
	So I'm not quite sure why I'm supposed to trust the trade organization of American obstetricians over the bioethicists who certainly have far more expertise in this realm of knowledge than the obstetricians who might be very good at delivering babies but might not be quite as good at understanding matters of ethics and morality.
	So, obstetricians and gynecologists specialize in the health and well-being of pregnant people, and pregnancy affects the health and well-being of pregnant people.
	But it also affects the babies.
	Correct.
	But when it comes to looking at a pregnant person, their health, when it comes to a medical condition that it is between the life of the pregnant person and ending the pregnancy, the life of the pregnant person takes precedent unless otherwise specified by the pregnant person, because consent is It's everything.
	Oh, so you're saying that the life of the mother takes precedent, unless the mother says, no, I don't.
	Okay.
	Now, again, the only reason I keep bringing up this matter of bioethics is that statement that you're making is not a statement that pertains to natural science.
	It's in the way that I would say, you know, if you want to get a baby out, you use this clamp.
	Or, you know, if you want to make an incision into an abdomen, you use this sort of knife or this instrument.
	When you say, so-and-so's life takes precedence over someone else's life, that is a philosophical statement and an ethical statement, which is different than a statement about natural science.
	This glass is made up of certain chemicals or whatever.
	That's why I think you're conflating those two realms here, and you're trying to trade expertise from one realm in the natural sciences into expertise in another realm, which would be philosophy and ethics.
	And I'm all for trying to bring these things together in a university-style way.
	You bring knowledge together because everything affects everything else.
	But I think it's just disingenuous to claim then that obstetricians are the be-all and end-all authorities on every single matter.
	It's also worth pointing out These threats to her actual life are exceptionally rare.
	Far less than 1% of people who have abortions do so be a threat to the life of the mother.
	There's no medical condition for which the treatment is abortion.
	That's actually incorrect.
	But also, as I asked you before, do you know the leading cause of death for pregnant people?
	I assume it's some comorbidity of, you know, I don't know, obesity or heart disease or something involving preeclampsia.
	I don't know.
	It's actually homicide.
	Homicide is the number one cause of death for pregnant people.
	Number one cause of death for babies and abortion, too.
	It is.
	But we are talking about living, breathing people who are people's daughters, sisters, mothers.
	You know, 59% of people who get abortions already have children.
	And so we're talking about them prioritizing their needs and their life.
	And you trying to limit their ability to care for their already existing children.
	And the number one cause of death for pregnant people...
	You do.
	Because, you know, being able to afford medical care...
	For pregnancy and labor, takes away from their ability to care for their already existing children.
	In a very small way.
	It costs a lot of money to raise children.
	So if we're talking about $500 here or there, which, again, I think we already pointed out, can be taken care of through any number of organizations, through the state and through private charity.
	But if we're talking about the difference of $500 here, the cost of raising a child to the age of 18 is enormous.
	It's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
	Correct.
	If you won't be able to raise your children because of a $500 cost, then you're not going to raise your children anyway, right?
	You can't afford to raise them anyway, because the total cost is just...
	A $500 cost is the average cost of an abortion.
	The average cost of pregnancy and labor is $18,000 without insurance, about $3,000 with insurance.
	And so, I don't, you know, again, I see that you see yourself as a compassionate and moral person, but in order...
	I strive to be.
	I don't know that I see myself that way, but I certainly strive to be.
	It doesn't seem so when you try to consistently minimize these hardships that people are encountering, and you say it's not that much, it's not that big of a deal.
	No, I just think that it is better for a mother to endure the discomfort and cost of pregnancy than it is for her to murder her child, is really what I think.
	That's your opinion, but it's also not your right to decide what the amount of risk someone should take, what amount of harm they should endure without their consent.
	Why is that not my right?
	Why is it not your right to decide what sort of risk that I should take over my body?
	Yeah.
	Why is that not my right?
	Because it is my body and I get to decide what kind of health risks that I accept.
	But we've already established that, especially in a self-governing republic, we pass all sorts of laws that restrict people's bodily autonomy, like drug laws.
	So why is it my right to pass a law about you using heroin But not my right to pass a law that prevents you from murdering your child.
	For that matter, we live in a self-governing republic.
	We have laws against murder that limits what people can do with their own bodies to somebody else in exactly the same way that a law against abortion would limit what you can do with your own body to another human being.
	Can you tell me a scenario where you can force someone to use their body to save the life of another individual?
	Of a situation other than motherhood?
	No.
	I think motherhood is unique.
	Okay.
	So you can't describe any other scenario where one human can be forced against their will to use their body to save the life of another person.
	Well, I don't know.
	I mean, I wouldn't be opposed to a law that says, you know, if you see a little kid drowning in a pool, you have an obligation to jump in the pool and pull the kid out.
	I mean, I think that would be perfectly reasonable.
	That's not the same thing as using your internal organs and bodily resources.
	Oh, well, that's different.
	Yeah, your internal organs, that would be unique to motherhood, yeah.
	Right.
	And so the fact that there is no other scenario where you can force a living person to use their body to save the life of another person means that you are trying to grant fetuses' rights that no other person on this path has.
	I think you're right to describe motherhood as a singular phenomenon.
	Yeah, it is unique.
	And motherhood is something that half of the population can possibly experience.
	And the fact that there is half the population that will never have the possibility of experiencing that...
	It's a great pity for us.
	Makes it so that when you are pushing for abortion bans, it is essentially a sexist issue and you are creating a...
	You know that the pro-life movement is mostly women.
	And you know that women are split 50-50 on the issue.
	Also, it's not pro-life.
	It is anti-choice.
	Whatever language you want to use.
	The movement against abortion is mostly women, and women are split basically 50-50 in America on the issue.
	So to call it sexist or misogynist or whatever seems a little bit silly.
	It would seem to me that you are describing this as the men forcing this on the women, but if you look at the makeup of the movement against abortion, I call it the pro-life movement, And you look at the public opinion on abortion among women is mostly women.
	So the Pew Research Center actually did surveys and found that 61% of Americans feel that abortion should be accessible in all or most cases.
	29% of Americans found that it should be Well, hold on.
	Those numbers don't seem to—you're saying 61% of Americans say it should be available in all cases, and 29% say it should be available for victims of rape.
	Mm-hmm.
	Rape, incest, or for the life of a mother.
	Why is that number small?
	I would imagine that the number would say, well, certainly women who face an existential risk from pregnancy, they should be able to have abortion.
	Wouldn't you expect that number to be higher?
	You would expect it, but I think shows like yours...
	I just wonder if you were misreading the statistics, because that doesn't seem credible to me.
	No, you can look it up.
	It's by the Pew Research Center.
	It's strange.
	Why would the number go down for a more dire situation?
	No, 29% of Americans think that it should only be accessible.
	Oh, understood.
	Only be accessible in those scenarios.
	Got it.
	And so I just want to make it clear that 29% of Americans think that it should only be accessible in cases of rape, incest, or discrimination.
	The risk of life of the mother.
	And so you are, and I understand that that might not even be the category that you find yourself in, and only 9% of Americans believe that it should never be legal.
	And so I just want to make it clear that you are in the minority on this issue, and your viewers might be as well.
	The problem with the statistics, though, Bronte, is that, I mean, I'll just take your word for it on the Pew numbers, but you can look at any number of polls on this issue, from Pew to Gallup to Harvard-Harris to all of these other people.
	And so I can find one poll, I think it was Gallup, but I forget which one it was, that shows that only 6% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all circumstances.
	94% of Americans believe that there should be some restrictions on abortion.
	And when you get even more granular on it, You look at the way that the questions are phrased, the numbers become even more malleable.
	So, you know, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
	I think just if you look at the way that people vote, you look at the way that people express their views through their elected representatives on questions of abortion, it is roughly split.
	That's why it's been a contentious issue for a very long time.
	And so, you know, I suppose you can have your statistics from your credible research institute, and I guess I'll have mine.
	Yeah, you know, it's really easy to just discount statistics when you disagree with that.
	No, but you're discounting my statistics.
	Well, you didn't give me a source.
	You didn't give me anything like that.
	I did.
	I think it's Gallup, but I could be wrong on that.
	My resources are actually, they're also from Gallup.
	Pew and Gallup, they published very similar numbers.
	Oh, interesting.
	Well, I suppose I'll just have to go look it up.
	Yeah, please do.
	I encourage your viewers to as well, because I really just want to reiterate that you feel like this is a 50-50.
	America is really split, when really we are not.
	61% of Americans feel that abortion should be accessible in all or most cases.
	That is the majority of Americans.
	But Bronte, the thing is, and again...
	By my statistics, you know that those numbers are very different.
	And by the statistics at the pro-lifers site.
	But even if that were the case, let's say it's 61%.
	Okay, 61% are pro-abortion.
	60% are pro-abortion, 40% are anti-abortion.
	So what?
	It's still roughly split, though by your numbers, that's obviously much more favorable to the pro-abortion side.
	But so what?
	I mean, that doesn't...
	You know, the mob of people killed Socrates.
	The mob of people chose Barabbas.
	Are we really saying that the measure of right and wrong is some conveniently selected public opinion poll?
	Well, if you would like another statistic.
	I don't want to.
	Well, I'll give it to you anyways.
	You're more than welcome to give it to me.
	You're welcome.
	95% of OBGYNs say that they would assist a patient in receiving an abortion regardless of their personal feelings about it.
	That's crazy.
	So an OBGYN could think that what he or she is doing is actually murdering a baby and then that person would do it anyway?
	Right.
	Wow, I certainly don't trust that person's judgment.
	Goodness gracious, what a crazy idea.
	And that's why I bring it up.
	Because when we look at the people in our society who are trained to care for the health and well-being of pregnant people, even they understand, 95% of them understand that their personal feelings about this matter cannot override and should not override a patient's ability to access comprehensive medical care.
	So why do they have those personal feelings at all?
	Because your opinion is about your body and your life alone.
	We've established we can have opinions about all sorts of things that aren't our own body.
	Right, exactly.
	But, as I said before, the leading cause of death for pregnant people is homicide.
	And I bring that up because you cannot pretend like you understand the situations that people find themselves in.
	So what you're telling me is that if a woman is threatened with murder by her boyfriend, Because the boyfriend doesn't want her to be pregnant or something like that.
	That is why we need to basically give those women the option to kill their baby because their psychopath boyfriends might murder them if they don't murder their own child.
	That's what you're telling me the solution is to these murderous boyfriends that you're describing?
	Are you minimizing the threat to someone's life?
	No, I don't think the solution to a boyfriend threatening to kill a girlfriend if she doesn't kill her own child is to encourage the girlfriend to kill her own child.
	We're not encouraging her.
	We are giving her the access to that option.
	Wouldn't it be better to send in the civil authority to arrest the murderous boyfriend and protect the mother and the child?
	In a perfect world, yes, but we don't live in that world, Michael.
	What if the mother who's afraid of being murdered by her boyfriend wants to keep her child, but she's afraid that she's going to get murdered, so she feels that it'll just be sort of safer for her to go kill the child, even if this...
	There was a video of this that just went viral recently, of a clearly abusive boyfriend who was trying to throw his pregnant girlfriend into a car to go get an abortion.
	It went viral, I think, about six months or so ago.
	And the woman clearly doesn't want to get the abortion, And the boyfriend really wants her to.
	It's the exact situation that you're describing.
	You think that the solution to that is to make it easier for the woman to get the abortion?
	To make it easier to give the murderous boyfriend what he wants?
	What I am saying...
	Well, no, because this entire thing is about consent.
	It's about the...
	I don't think it's about consent.
	You don't seem to respect consent, which seems to be the heart of the issue.
	Well, you think it's the heart of the issue.
	I think the baby's heart is the heart of the issue.
	I think the baby's life is the heart of the issue.
	Consent plays a role in moral judgments, but it's not the only criterion that we consider when we come to moral decisions.
	So, can I ask you, why do you find it so easy to have compassion for a fetus or a baby that is non-autonomous and has absolutely no awareness of its own existence, but you find it so difficult to expand that compassion towards pregnant people?
	Well, no.
	I don't think it's good for pregnant people, also known as mothers, to kill their children.
	I don't think it's good for them.
	I don't think it's good for the children.
	I also would have to push back on your argument that babies in the womb do not have any awareness.
	They do have some awareness, and they do react to their...
	There are environments.
	They can kick and they can move.
	When the mother eats something that's maybe a little spicy, the baby will actually get hiccups and things like that.
	When you describe self-awareness, it's true the baby in the womb does not have consciousness.
	It's not going to discourse on Aristotle or something.
	But a six-month-old baby isn't really conscious either.
	Certainly a newborn baby has no more consciousness than the baby in the womb does.
	They're conscious, just not aware.
	But also...
	I mean, what do you mean by consciousness?
	First of all, are you aware when, we can talk about different numbers, but are you aware of the time in which 80% of abortions take place?
	Like the state of gestation?
	Yeah, that's relatively early, first trimester.
	Okay, do you know the week, perhaps?
	I don't know.
	Okay, so 80% of abortions occur before week nine, and, you know, you say that their babies are kicking and reacting.
	Are you aware of what a nine-week-old fetus looks like?
	Oh, yes, very well.
	Yes?
	Can you describe it to me?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, by, really, I suppose by the tenth week.
	That's, you know, Especially when you go in and you have your babies, you go in for an eight-week appointment.
	By the eight-week appointment, they can tell you the sex of your baby, which is amazing.
	That's how well-formed they are already.
	By the ten-week appointment, they've got basically all of their features formed in a very rudimentary way, but they're already quite formed, and you can look, and they no longer look like a little tadpole entirely.
	They look much more like a human being.
	They've got their little fingers already and their little toes.
	I actually have pictures for you.
	This is nine weeks.
	This is what a nine-week fetus looks like.
	Well, let me see.
	I would like to, if you want to look at that, and you would like to look at that, you can look at this.
	Oh, great.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I know that you...
	It's not like any ultrasound I've ever looked at, though.
	Yeah, I know.
	That's why I brought them, because when it comes...
	This isn't an ultrasound.
	No, this is a nine-week fetus in a Petri dish.
	In a Petri dish?
	Mm-hmm.
	Why do you have the thing in the Petri dish?
	To discount misinformation that is spread about this issue, just like you do.
	How did the baby get into the petri dish?
	I believe these are aborted.
	So you're saying that a baby that has been sucked out and dismembered looks a little bit different?
	No, they aren't dismembered because there isn't enough of them.
	How are they aborted?
	The fetus is barely recognizable to the naked eye at nightly.
	How is that baby aborted?
	So at nine weeks, it's usually just a pill that expels the fetus.
	What does the pill, all the pill does is expel the baby?
	Yeah, it basically makes the uterine lining not able to, or the fetus not able to adhere to the uterine lining, and it shuts it.
	There's various mechanisms.
	So what are some of the other mechanisms?
	Well, it depends on the week of gestation.
	Let's say around 10 weeks we're talking about.
	So I think after 10 weeks, what they will do is it's no longer going to be a pill.
	They essentially inject like saline solution and they inject and it removes it from the uterine lining.
	So it's basically a poison.
	No.
	No, it's flushing.
	It's cleaning out the uterus.
	I'm not saying it's cyanide or something like that, but you're injecting a chemical into the uterus.
	Usually like saline solution.
	Right, but if I put saline solution on a slug, it'll shrivel up and die.
	Yeah, are you a slug?
	Do humans react the same way saline solution as slugs do?
	Yes, little babies do.
	That's why you're using it to kill rats.
	To dissolve the connection between the baby and the placenta and the mother, and to flush out the poor little baby.
	So this is why I think it's really ghastly and disingenuous of you to...
	No, I'm bringing this because you consistently want to anthropomorphize this issue.
	You described the baby as anthropomorphic.
	You described the baby as a human.
	You did.
	You said it's a human being.
	It is a human being.
	But, you know, you're accusing me of anthropomorphizing a human being.
	This is a nine-week-old fetus.
	This is a nine-week-old fetus.
	And I bring this to try to address misinformation about...
	Can I... If you would please allow me...
	Sure.
	It's just really ghastly to show a picture of a person who's been killed.
	And I apologize for that.
	Apology implies that you'll correct your behavior.
	No, because people such as yourself, and there are multiple different websites that like to share propaganda about this issue, and I am here to try to present a medically Accurate representation of what a murder victim looks like.
	Of what this issue is.
	And when you try to act as though it is murder, I want your audience to truly, truly understand what we are talking about.
	Because I am not saying that a woman with a desired pregnancy shouldn't feel connected to her fetus.
	That's not what I'm saying.
	I am saying when we have a person with an unwanted pregnancy, You cannot act as though their choice to decide what is best for their life and their body is murder, when in reality it is a living person standing in front of you who is a living, breathing person with dreams and aspirations, who is a mother, sister, daughter.
	Yeah.
	No, 59% of people who get abortions are mothers with existing children.
	All of them have existing children.
	They all do.
	Bronte, what's so confusing about this to me, and what's very silly, I think, about showing pictures of aborted babies, is it would be as though if you were to ask me to show you a picture of, you know, what does an Italian guy in New York look like?
	And I showed you a picture of a young 25-year-old Italian guy, splayed out on the street, chopped up, bleeding dead, versus an Italian boy eating a bowl of spaghetti or something like that.
	Those two pictures would look very, very different.
	And so the trick, the deception that you've engaged in, is you've taken a baby who has been killed for abortion, And what you're pretending is that that cadaver is what a baby who has not been killed by his mother, who is still in the womb and who is growing and who is exhibiting all the signs of life and who is moving and who has little fingernails.
	Do you see?
	No.
	This was expelled.
	It was not dismembered.
	If you look at this, primarily most of the tissue here is the gestational sac because the beginnings of pregnancy, the gestational sac and the placenta are some of the first things created because that is what attaches to the uterine lining and provides the fetus with resources and expels its waste.
	That is primarily in the first few weeks of pregnancy.
	Those are the tissue contents that are created before the fetus is really developed.
	In a nine-week-old The fetus, like I have here, the fetus itself is hardly distinguishable to the human eye.
	Because it's so small.
	Because it's so small.
	And so that is why I bring it up.
	Because when you present this, you say, well, actually, this mostly isn't the fetus.
	This mostly is all this other stuff.
	Okay.
	But then you're not showing me what a fetus looks like.
	The fetus is in this picture.
	Right, but just very, very small.
	So how much of that picture is the fetus?
	It is indistinguishable to the human eye.
	Oh, so now all you're saying is the fetus at that stage, it's not that the fetus looks like...
	This tissue actually isn't really the fetus.
	It's in there.
	It's in there, but you can't really see it.
	So now what you're admitting is you're not showing people a picture of a fetus.
	You're showing people a picture of a gestational sac that's been expelled with a tiny fetus.
	If you wanted to show people what a fetus looks like at the age of 10 weeks in gestation...
	You would show them the fetus itself.
	And you would have to zoom in because it's a very tiny little guy.
	You would have to use a microscope in order to see it.
	This is the year of our Lord, 2022.
	We have plenty of medical technologies which are being put to great evil.
	But we can also put them to good use and show what the baby looks like.
	And it is simply a fact.
	At 10 weeks, the baby looks like a baby and has little fingernails and little toes.
	Do you see it?
	Do you see the baby in this photo?
	I don't have a microscope.
	Exactly.
	And that's what I'm telling you.
	And that's what I'm telling you.
	That I need a microscope?
	So bring me a microscope.
	Yes.
	So when we talk about abortion, 80% of abortions, this is the content.
	And so when we talk about...
	Can I please finish?
	Michael, I allowed you to finish and I would...
	Well, I appreciate you allowing me that, but I guess I just don't want to move past this point.
	Your argument now is not that the baby looks in a way that you wouldn't expect the baby to look.
	Your argument is simply that abortion is permissible at this stage because the baby is very, very small and you can't see him in my photograph.
	No, I am saying that abortion is permissible because it is about the use of the person's body who is pregnant.
	And I bring these photos because there is so much misinformation put out about this issue.
	What is misinformation?
	Well, like you like to say, oh, they react when you eat something spicy.
	They have little fingers and toes.
	When in reality, the fetus at nine weeks, where 80% of abortions occur, is hardly distinguishable to the human eye.
	So to say that a living person...
	Sitting in front of you with dreams and aspirations and health situations and financial situations, mental situations that you cannot possibly understand.
	When they're sitting in front of you telling you that they do not consent, whether it be because they cannot or will not, You know, endure a pregnancy.
	You are saying that the tissue within their uterus, which is primarily just a gestational sac and a microscopic fetus, that is worth more than their desires about their own body.
	And, you know, when misinformation is spread about this issue, it is as if these babies are dismembered and is this very emotional and manipulative language used, when in reality, that is not what happens.
	They've only been poisoned with a pill and flushed out.
	They haven't been poisoned.
	They've made the uterus uninhabitable, so then it is expelled.
	Yeah, that sounds like poison to me.
	But the point you're making here, Bronte, is you're saying it's misinformation when I say that a baby at 10 weeks in gestation has little fingers and toes.
	You're saying that's misinformation?
	I'm saying that it's not distinguishable, and you can't even see it with the human eye.
	I can't see your toes with my human eye.
	Do you have them?
	Do you have them?
	I do have toes, yes.
	You do, but I can't see them with the human eye.
	Because I have shoes on, Michael.
	But if I took my shoes off, they are distinguishable to the human eye.
	Now, what if you were five miles away, and I couldn't see your toes Five miles away with my human eyes.
	Is this picture five miles away from you, Michael?
	No, it is not.
	What I am saying is you can't see my toes because they're within my shoe.
	You can't see a fetus because it is inside of a person.
	When it is removed from that person, you still cannot see the fetus, whether you are five miles away or five inches away.
	And you trying to use emotionally manipulative language to reach your audience and try to get them to vote to ban abortion against the opinion of medical experts.
	That is why I bring these photos, because there are hardly any medically accurate photos representing this issue.
	And instead, it is primarily illustrations and propaganda that is pushed to manipulate people into removing the bodily autonomy from their fellow citizens.
	When in reality, these fetuses are hardly distinguishable to the human eye.
	And we should instead look at the person that I can see in front of me and respect their right to decide what is best for their...
	She is a living, breathing person with desires.
	You already said that the baby is living.
	It's not breathing.
	It is not autonomous.
	So if the pregnant mother is intubated...
	Then we can kill her?
	Because she's not breathing.
	So that's actually a good question.
	So if we have someone who's on life support, what are they connected to?
	Tubes and breathing machines?
	To a machine, right.
	And a fetus is connected to a human.
	So when you use this analogy, there's two options.
	Either you didn't think your analogy through very well, or you think that...
	Living people are equivalent to inanimate objects and machines.
	And so if that pregnant person who is intubated and connected to a machine, if instead they needed to be connected to a living person in order to survive, our current laws and medical ethics would never allow you to force someone to connect themselves to that person to keep them alive.
	Unless we're talking about the unique case of motherhood.
	I mention it because you said that in order for a person to have a right to life, he needs to be breathing.
	But that's obviously ridiculous.
	And then the other point here you've mentioned is that because I can't see a fetus at nine weeks gestation with the naked eye, that he isn't real or doesn't exist or doesn't have a right to life or something like that.
	But I wonder how you apply this principle.
	Are you saying that The existence or inexistence of a thing is dependent upon whether or not you can see it with your naked eye, I am saying that even if you give a fetus all of the rights of a born, living, breathing person, they still cannot use someone's body to survive without their consent.
	That's a good thing to discuss, and I want to get to that.
	But I don't think we can move past this naked eye thing, which just seems to me so preposterous.
	You're saying because I can't see someone with a naked eye that that person doesn't exist?
	I'm saying that someone that I can see and speak to standing in front of me cannot use my body against my will, and neither can someone that I cannot even distinguish without a microscope.
	They cannot use my body against my will.
	Why not?
	I mean, they can.
	Obviously they can.
	That's what children do.
	I mean, usually it's with your will because people generally consent to have sex in children.
	But even if that were not the case, you just accidentally become pregnant or something like that, it is simply a fact that your child can and does use your body even if it is against your will.
	So of course that can happen because we're talking about the unique case of motherhood.
	Right.
	And so you are arguing that in no other case can someone use someone else's body against their will unless we're talking about motherhood.
	So you only think that we should remove bodily autonomy from people with uteruses.
	Well, I don't know what you mean by bodily autonomy.
	We've already accepted at the beginning of our conversation that we don't have...
	And a total inalienable right to do whatever we want with our own bodies.
	It's interesting that you say that when you can't describe one scenario for me in which someone can use someone else's body legally.
	No, I'm telling you, that would be a unique fact of motherhood.
	Right.
	And when I say bodily autonomy, that is what I mean.
	I mean the use of your body and decisions about what happens to your body.
	Well, no, no.
	Decisions about what happens to your body, that's different.
	Because of the drug laws and the laws against suicide.
	The decisions when it comes to how your body is used.
	If your body is being used by another person.
	Yeah.
	Or how you use your own body.
	That would be the case of laws against suicide and drug use.
	Sure.
	So then it's not unique.
	But if we're talking about a baby growing inside you, yeah, of course, that's unique to motherhood.
	That's the definition of pregnancy.
	So that's unique.
	Yeah, I agree with that.
	Right, exactly.
	And so you cannot describe one scenario where someone can use someone else's body.
	Exactly, and that's what I'm trying to describe.
	The only people in our society that you think don't deserve full bodily autonomy are people with uttersists.
	If by bodily autonomy you mean the only people who can have babies grow inside them are mothers.
	That is true.
	I agree with that.
	That's a fact of life.
	That's true.
	And those are the only people in our society that you are arguing should have their rights to their own body removed.
	Well, I don't think they have rights to kill babies.
	Right, because you don't think that they have rights to their own body.
	Well, yeah, I don't think people have a total right to do whatever they want with their own bodies anyway, as we've already established.
	Right, but you don't believe that they have the right to remove consent.
	What do you mean to remove consent?
	If they don't consent to their body being used, you don't believe that they have the right to remove that consent.
	No, I think if you create a child, you don't have the right to kill them.
	Yeah, I agree.
	I agree with that.
	You don't think that if your body is being used against your will that you have the right to decide that you don't want that to happen.
	Yeah, in the case of a little baby, no, I don't think you have the right.
	If you've changed your mind and you say, I don't like this baby anymore and I want to kill him, I don't think you have a right to kill him just because you no longer consent.
	Right, even though your opinion does not coincide with the opinions of medical experts.
	Yeah, well, it certainly coincides with the opinions of bioethical experts, and certainly with some medical experts, but yeah, I don't really care what some maniac obstetricians say.
	Except for 95% of OBGYNs, who are the country and the world's leading experts on pregnant people, 95% of them would You know, help their patient access abortion, regardless of their own personal feelings.
	You just told me a number of them would commit murder even though they think it's murder, so I don't really trust that.
	No, I'm telling you that people who spend their lives training to care for pregnant people and understand the complexities of pregnancy and the lives of pregnant people understand that regardless of their own feelings, That they cannot impede someone's access to medical care.
	And so I understand that you might not feel like that's appropriate, but for me, I would want my doctors who train their entire lives to be specialists in their field, I believe that we should abide by their expertise and that someone who's not trained in the complexities of medicine, their opinion should not override someone's opinion who does train for them.
	I think we're talking a little bit in circles now.
	And I don't think that the obstetricians necessarily have the greatest training in ethics or philosophy or morality or anything like that.
	So I don't trust them on those issues.
	I don't really trust the medical establishment on a whole host of issues because they tend to get things wrong so frequently, sometimes egregiously wrong.
	But regardless, I then have to ask...
	Why has this become such a cause for you?
	You're a very prominent voice on this issue.
	What is it about abortion where you say, this is my issue?
	So it was actually an accident.
	Essentially, I'm in medical school.
	I am a woman in medicine.
	And seeing the rights to our bodies be removed against the expertise of medical experts, that is a passionate issue for me because I am trained and passionate in defending the opinions of medical experts.
	So it was medical school that started this?
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, I've always been pro-choice my entire life.
	Ironically, I grew up in Texas, and I grew up Republican, but I was always...
	No.
	You grew up Republican?
	I did.
	I grew up Republican.
	What happened, Bronte?
	What happened?
	I became educated, Michael.
	Oh, did you?
	Oh.
	I did, yeah.
	I became educated and informed, and I realized that my opinions on certain things were completely removed from the reality of the issue.
	And then the deeper and deeper that I got into my education, like I said, I got my master's.
	I'm almost done with my doctorate.
	And I realized that...
	People who train their entire lives to analyze this issue are putting up a very solid front, and there's 95% of them that agree that we should have access to this.
	If the American Academy of Obstetricians, or whatever the group is, if they told you to walk off a bridge, would you do it?
	That's not pertaining to my medical care.
	Well, it would be, depending on how well you swim.
	That's not pertaining to my medical care.
	That's not a medical condition.
	That is not a medical treatment.
	So it is an irrelevant question.
	If they told you that the best treatment for cancer is to eat a lollipop jumping on a pogo stick, would you trust them?
	If they showed me the science behind it, then sure.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, that's a little bit different.
	Because then you're not just deferring to the experts.
	You're using your own faculties of reason.
	Well, the experts use evidence-based medicine.
	And so if they are able to show me the evidence behind their opinion, which all medical experts should be able to do, then I trust them.
	Which on this issue of abortion and abortion access, they're able to show multitudes of studies how...
	Of why it's okay to kill a human.
	No, why banning abortion access actually harms more people.
	So Colorado University actually did a study showing that abortion bans are likely going to increase maternal mortality by 24% and that abortion bans do not minimize or decrease the amount of abortions that occur.
	They don't.
	No, they do not.
	So what happened to abortion after Roe v.
	Wade was decided?
	What do you mean?
	The number of abortions.
	We have the statistics.
	What happened?
	Did it go up or down?
	I mean, it depends because a lot of...
	It doesn't depend.
	But a lot of people, because abortions become illegal and they are difficult to quantify.
	No, but Roe v.
	Wade made abortion legal nationally.
	What happened to the total number of...
	The total number of abortions that are accessed through proper medical channels decreased.
	Not the amount of abortions that happen at people's homes unsafely and illegally.
	No, no.
	Maybe you misheard.
	Roe v.
	Wade, 1973, legalizes abortion.
	Mm-hmm.
	So the total number of abortions that happened after abortion became legal, you just said that the number of problems...
	Sorry, I thought you were referring to the overturning...
	Referring to Dobbs.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So 1973.
	Because you were just saying that abortion bans actually don't reduce the number of abortions.
	Legalizing it doesn't necessarily increase it.
	But what happened...
	No, it doesn't go the other way.
	Because people who desire an abortion and need an abortion are going to access it regardless if it's illegal or legal, safe or unsafe.
	But it has to go the other way because the question is...
	Is the regulation of the abortion.
	So it necessarily has to go.
	If you legalize abortion, it increases the safe and legal abortions.
	If you ban abortion, it's going to increase the amount of illegal and unsafe abortion.
	What about the total number of abortions, though?
	That's what I'm asking about.
	The illegal ones and the legal ones and the bad ones you don't like and the good ones you do like.
	What happened after Roe v.
	Wade?
	Well, the safe and legal ones when Roe v.
	Wade in the 70s...
	I'm talking about total abortions.
	It stays relatively the same.
	It's going to increase in the statistics because we can quantify the amount of people who receive abortion access through medical care.
	But we can also quantify the illegal ones, too.
	So why don't you tell me, Michael?
	Well, the abortions went way, way up and they actually doubled.
	But even to your point on quantifying illegal abortions and legal abortions, you know, we can quantify the illegal abortions.
	And there was this canard that went around that...
	Before Roe v.
	Wade, thousands of women died every year from illegal abortions.
	And you're referring to maternal mortality rates are being predicted by all the doom and gloom people.
	They're going to skyrocket.
	You probably know this statistic.
	How many women actually died the year before Roe v.
	Wade was decided from illegal abortions in the United States?
	I know that about 700 to 800 women die every year from pregnancy complications, and I know that unsafe abortions are in the top four leading causes of maternal mortality, but I don't know the amount of people who died prior to Roe v.
	Wade from illegal abortions.
	39 in the year before Roe v.
	Wade was decided.
	39 women.
	And those 39 women, that's not a big enough number for you to care.
	No, but do you know how many women died from legal abortions that year?
	Legal, wonderful, safe, beautiful...
	How many?
	24.
	Now, if you look at the percentage of states where abortion was legal and illegal, the craziest thing is that your likelihood of dying from a legal abortion or an illegal abortion was virtually the same.
	See, and I've seen different numbers.
	I've seen that only in the past, I believe it was 2018, only two people died from complications from legal abortion.
	Oh, well, of course, because the numbers declined dramatically.
	The way that they got away with pretending that 5,000 women died a year from abortion, other than Dr.
	Bernard Nathanson admitted that he just made it up when he was running NARAL. But the reason is because decades prior, many more women died from abortions because medical care just had not progressed to that point.
	So obviously, since 1973, medical care has progressed even more, so you would expect that number to go down for legal and illegal.
	The reason I bring it up is because those scare numbers are...
	I think they're just used as a kind of propaganda.
	They deceive in that the numbers usually aren't right and they're dramatically wrong, and because the number for the illegal and the legal were basically the same.
	So my question for you is, it seems like you consistently want to find ways to minimize the harm that is experienced by pregnant people.
	And you really want to hone in on mortality, right?
	Because you think that death is the only negative outcome of pregnancy.
	No, no, I never said that.
	There's a lot of suffering that goes along with pregnancy.
	Exactly, and you think that you get to decide that people who become pregnant should just be obligated to endure that suffering.
	Yes, if the alternative is killing the baby, then yes.
	So even though the fetus that is completely unaware of its own existence and is not even...
	A three-month-old baby is unaware of its own existence.
	Right, but people aren't getting abortions at three months, and people who do get abortions at three months, it is largely because of medical concerns or because they do not have timely access to medical care.
	No, I mean three months out of the womb.
	I mean a three-month-old after birth.
	They're not aware of themselves.
	But they can feel.
	They can feel pain.
	They can feel fear.
	They can feel hope.
	Not at nine weeks.
	They cannot.
	At nine weeks, it's questionable.
	No, it's really not.
	Not from science.
	Because we understand the neural networks that are required in order for you to perceive pain and feel emotion.
	And those neural networks are not present at nine weeks.
	Yeah, well, it's questionable because people keep moving the definition.
	So you could say that a baby at 10 weeks has a beating heart.
	Well, it doesn't actually have...
	But usually it doesn't actually have a beating heart because it doesn't look totally like a heart.
	No, because it doesn't have all of the chambers of your heart.
	It is not an anatomical heart.
	It is the electrical cells that are able to have an electrical impulse.
	And so, again, when you use this language, like the heart is beating and it has a beating heart...
	You can hear it, actually, on the ultrasound.
	Actually, that's a simulated heart sound because it is an electrical impulse.
	Based on what?
	Because your heart sounds, say we listen with a stethoscope, the heart sounds are made from the valves of your heart opening and closing.
	That is what creates that heart sound.
	And when you don't have the proper chambers of your heart at that week of gestation, many times the sound on the ultrasound machine is a simulated sound.
	It can pick up the electrical impulses, but it's a simulated sound.
	Exactly.
	It's translating.
	A represented into a representation.
	So it is true that a baby at 10 weeks gestation is different, in a way, from a 10-year-old kid.
	Undeveloped.
	Yeah, right.
	Different meaning undeveloped, non-sentative, non-autonomous.
	It's not undeveloped.
	It's just less developed.
	No, it's undeveloped.
	But it's more developed than it was at 9 weeks.
	It's developing.
	Sure.
	So, yes, it's true that it translates that heart impulse into a sound in some cases.
	But where does the sound come from?
	The sound is a representation of what is and will further become the baby's heart.
	But is not yet an existing anatomical heart.
	No, it's anatomical.
	But it is not existing in the way that you want.
	It does.
	It's both of those things.
	It is electrical cells.
	It is cells that carry an electrical...
	Yeah, it's cells proper to a 10-week-old baby that are different.
	In some way from cells that a 15-week-old baby and a 10-year-old baby and a 25-year-old...
	And again, I'm going to continue to repeat.
	Even if you want to apply all of the same rights that a living, breathing person has, you want to give the fetus those same rights, nobody has the right to use your body against your will.
	Not a 9-week-old fetus, not a 40-year-old man.
	It doesn't matter.
	And so when you want to remove the right for someone to decide what happens to their body, you're arguing that the only people who should have those rights to their body removed are people with uteruses who become purposefully or accidentally pregnant.
	They are not deserving of basic human rights, and that is what you were trying to say.
	I really like people with uteruses, so I have no problem with them.
	Right, when you get to decide what happens to their body when they are trying to say that.
	Well, we live in self-governance, so yeah, we make all sorts of decisions about how we should live.
	But you keep going back to rights, which is interesting to me, because I don't think of politics primarily through a lens of rights, but you do.
	You keep going back to rights.
	Fundamental rights to do whatever I want with my body in these circumstances or whatever.
	So, okay, if we're talking about rights, are all rights equal?
	Are all rights on this, you know, my right to have this pink fruity drink here, is that the same as your right to, I don't know, drive a car or something?
	No.
	I don't believe they're all equal, no.
	Okay, so then there are gradations of rights.
	Some are more important than others.
	Is there one most important right that you would call a fundamental right, the fundamental right?
	The right to your body and the right to decide what happens to your body.
	There's no right that precedes it?
	I mean, it depends.
	What rights do you think precede that?
	Well, it seemed to me that the right to your body The right to do certain things to your body must necessarily be preceded by the right to life without which you do not have your body or the ability to do anything at all.
	Well, and as I've described, your right to life does not get to supersede or override someone else's right to bodily autonomy.
	But I thought we just admitted that it did.
	You said that.
	Oh, you didn't agree with me.
	Because it seems to me if we're going to have any rights at all, the right to drink my fruity drink, The right to have a lovely conversation in this kind of black room here.
	Any of these other rights.
	That all of those rights depend upon the right to life, which is not just one right among many, but it is the fundamental right.
	And so therefore, if rights are to have any meaning at all, the right to life must supersede all of the other ones.
	And I disagree.
	I think you have a right to life, but your right to life does not override someone's right to bodily autonomy.
	You're saying that, but why is that true?
	Because I've asked you quite a few times now, you cannot describe to me one instance of Accept motherhood where it is acceptable for you to use someone's...
	Motherhood's unique.
	You are saying that the right to do whatever you want with your body supersedes the right to life.
	It's more fundamental than the right to life.
	I explained to you why I think that the right to life is fundamental and more important than all those other rights.
	Maybe you don't like my argument or something, but I think I at least spelled it out in a way that's fairly clear and logical.
	What is your argument as to why the right to control your own body is more fundamental than the right to life.
	Because I think that if you allow the government to decide that someone else's right to life can override your right to bodily autonomy, that is opening the door for a lot of terrifying things to happen.
	This is why you have to volunteer to be an organ donor.
	This is why you have to volunteer to be a blood donor.
	Things like that.
	If we allowed the government to say that someone else's right to life can supersede your right to your body, that is a pretty terrifying amount of power to give to the government.
	No, but we're speaking about, I mean, you're talking about organ donations, but we're speaking about this unique case, right?
	No, we're talking about the use of your body.
	Right.
	But for instance, Bronte, I have kidneys.
	Good for you.
	I don't need both of my kidneys.
	Maybe I do to filter all these terrible things I put into my body.
	But I don't really need both of them.
	I could give them to someone else.
	But it would be wrong if the government came in and said, Michael, we're taking your kidney now because Bronte needs it.
	I might give it to you voluntarily, but I certainly wouldn't want someone coming in, gunpoint, taking my kidney away.
	That would be wrong.
	Even if you were in dire straits, I still might give it to you, but I don't want someone taking it from me.
	And I don't think that I have an obligation to give you my kidney.
	Because my kidney is for filtering my blood.
	That's what it's for.
	In the same way...
	A woman's womb is for nurturing a child.
	That is the telos.
	That is the purpose of the womb.
	It serves no other purpose.
	So I don't think that the analogy that you're making here is apt.
	I think, once again, it gets back to the unique status of motherhood.
	So the same thing can be said for your liver, right?
	Your liver...
	No one wants my liver.
	Well, but your liver, the purpose of your liver is to detoxify your blood.
	It can process alcohol.
	It can process all kinds of toxins.
	But if I don't ingest those toxins, then my liver doesn't have to do that job.
	If I don't choose to harbor a fetus, my uterus doesn't have to harbor that fetus.
	Just because your body can do something doesn't mean that you should be compelled for it to do something.
	Then your liver is not going to process alcohol.
	There's no way the alcohol got in there.
	But if you decide after, I don't know, you had a crazy weekend, you went out here to Nashville, met a nice guy.
	You would never do this, but I'm saying women of ill repute would go out and they meet a guy.
	He's not so nice.
	Anyway, the next morning she finds out she's pregnant.
	Really, four weeks later she would find out.
	But mothers know.
	Anyway, she finds out she's pregnant.
	She says, darn, I don't want to be pregnant.
	That baby has no right to be in my womb.
	She is engaged in behavior that would introduce the baby into her womb in a way that if you put the drink down, you will not be introducing alcohol to your liver.
	So should we then deny health care to alcoholics because they partook in behaviors that caused them to have liver failure?
	No.
	Should we deny smokers access to medical care because they partook in behaviors that damaged their lungs?
	No, no.
	No, but you believe that...
	We shouldn't kill them, though.
	I don't think we should kill them or steal their livers or anything like that.
	It's not equivalent.
	I don't think we should go in and kill the baby.
	But you are saying that you get to judge someone based off of their behaviors.
	And because of those behaviors, you believe that they should be denied access to health care in order to address the effects of those behaviors.
	And not if it's a drinker, not if it's a smoker.
	But if it's a woman, then sure, now we get to remove the right to her body and the effects of her behavior.
	No, and I guess we're again missing the point.
	I don't think a mother ever has the right to kill her child in any circumstances.
	So I'm not suggesting that we single mothers out here or that it be very judgmental or anything like that or deny anybody health care.
	I just don't think that killing a baby is ever health care.
	I think that's a euphemism.
	And that's where you're wrong.
	As you kind of admitted at the top.
	No, that's where you're wrong.
	When we talk about the distinction between babies and fetuses.
	See, and that's where you're wrong, though.
	Because when we've talked about maternal mortality rates, we've talked about the number one cause of death for pregnant people is homicide.
	Maternal mortality is still very low, by the way.
	Right.
	Do you know the amount of people who have...
	Do you know the difference between maternal mortality and maternal morbidity?
	No.
	Enlighten me.
	So morbidity is essentially unforeseen or serious health effects of a medical condition.
	So maternal morbidity is when someone experiences severe complications of pregnancy and labor.
	And I know that you think that 700 to 800 women dying annually from pregnancy is too low for you to care.
	No, no.
	We should bring the number down, but we shouldn't kill 850,000 babies to pretend to resolve that.
	So 60,000 people every year have serious maternal morbidity, which means there's certain codes that they use, like insurance codes that they use, to determine whether or not you experienced a severe side effect.
	And some of those codes are having an ICU admission or needing multiple blood transfusions, things like that.
	And 60,000 women every year are admitted into the ICU or need blood transfusions, what have you, That's the whole definition of a severe comorbidity?
	Are we talking about ICU or are we talking about certain things that are less severe?
	It's severe.
	What would be some of the other examples?
	So it depends because it can be sepsis, hemorrhage, I think pulmonary embolism.
	There's multitudes of different complications that can be classified.
	We're not talking about something like tearing or something like that.
	No, that's minor, and that's not included in 60,000.
	So that's my point, is 60,000 women every year experience severe morbidity, and that's not including the women who just develop things like diabetes or have a perineal tear.
	Well, that's actually a very important point that you bring up of some of these problems that go along with pregnancy, because Something that the abortion advocates mention that often is not addressed by the pro-life movement, not that I think it needs to be, but it's interesting nonetheless, is that the United States is not the best when it comes to maternal mortality.
	We're not the worst, but we're not the best, and there are lots of problems with it.
	But the reason for that, of course, is not because of any conspiracy among the doctors or misogyny or anything like that, I don't think.
	I think it probably has more to do with America's disproportionate rates of Obesity and heart disease and diabetes, you look especially, it's not as though complications of pregnancy are the same across all demographics.
	It's largely concentrated in black women.
	And the reason for that, it would seem to me, is that black women are much more likely to be obese and have heart problems and have diabetes and all those things that do factor into pregnancy problems.
	But that's not a...
	Again, I don't think any of that is a good argument to kill a bunch of babies every single year.
	But that seems like a health issue that should be addressed elsewhere, right?
	Getting people to exercise, put down the cupcake, not be so obese and have Many pregnancy complications are unavoidable and unforeseen.
	And so, sure, there are comorbidities that make you more likely.
	A lot of them are.
	But some are not.
	Right.
	But when we live in a country where health care is inaccessible and unaffordable to a large majority of Americans or a large percentage of Americans.
	Yeah, that seems like overstating.
	Well, yeah, it depends on the statistics and it depends on what you classify as unaffordable and unaccessible.
	Because, you know, someone can be, you know, living in a rural area and it'd be less accessible.
	Someone, you know, can be in financial situations, you know, affordable.
	It just depends on your classification.
	But I don't, the thing is, this entire conversation, you are very fetus-centered.
	Is that what I am?
	Yes, where I am very woman-centered.
	When we are going through these scenarios, you consistently center the fetus.
	Where I consistently center the woman, I want to consider her health, Her finances, her mentality, and her body.
	Do you think that I'm neglecting that?
	Yes.
	Yes, because you believe that the only people in our society who shouldn't get to decide what happens to their body are people with uteruses.
	I don't think that people have an absolute right over their own body.
	Exactly.
	I don't think anybody does.
	That's where we disagree.
	But I know, but you're putting an opinion into my head that I'm holding.
	No, you've said it multiple times.
	I haven't.
	What you've said is you cannot tell me one scenario in society where someone can use someone's body against their will, but unless that is a...
	Hard labor in a prison.
	That would be one scenario.
	Yeah, well, that's a completely different topic because that is essentially...
	When you described it and you said, you know, name me a scenario where someone other than a mother, or I'm sorry, a pregnant person has someone growing inside of them using their organs.
	I say, okay, I can't name any other scenario.
	You're right.
	That's unique to motherhood.
	You're right.
	You're right.
	It is unique.
	No, I didn't say growing inside of them.
	I said, tell me a scenario where someone can use someone else's body without their consent.
	And you can't name me a time.
	Well, I just told you, hard labor in a prison.
	Well, I mean, again, that is an issue in and of itself.
	That's not rehabbing someone.
	That is definitely taking advantage of a broken system.
	Well, yeah, but there are three purposes to criminal justice.
	I guess this is a little bit of a pivot here, but it's not just rehabilitation.
	We could all use a little rehabilitation.
	People go to prison to get punished.
	Yeah, well, it should be rehabilitation, should it not?
	I mean, this is a pivot, and I just think it's funny that the only other scenario you can bring up is definitely a symptom of a broken system.
	No, I don't think that's definitely...
	I think it's good to punish criminals.
	I think that's good.
	Why is that bad?
	It depends on the crime.
	It's not like a bad crime.
	Again, this is going off into the weeds, but I'm naturally a compassionate person and I see the best in people.
	I believe especially a lot of crime is committed because of circumstances that people find themselves in.
	I don't mean to be this blunt, but I guess I have to be.
	You have been sitting here Describing how it is good and moral to permit a system to exist that kills 850,000 people who you admit are human beings every single year because of the desires of another person.
	That has been your position.
	And I'm not calling you evil because of that.
	I think you're just extraordinarily confused and misguided.
	But to say, you know, I'm such a compassionate person as I make it my jihad to permit the killing of 850,000 babies, who I admit are babies every single year, seems to me absurd.
	See, and this is why I bring up that you are entirely fetus-centered in this conversation, and you completely disregard the trauma experienced by pregnant people.
	I'm not acknowledging it entirely.
	I've said so many times that women suffer in pregnancy.
	But you don't feel like it's worth protecting them from.
	No, I think it's definitely worth protecting them and giving them the best medical care you can.
	I just don't think it's worth sanctioning the killing of 850,000 babies a year.
	Giving people medical care does not, you know, minimize or does not get rid of the trauma and suffering of pregnancy.
	You can have all the medical care in the world available to you, and you still will experience some trauma, some pain, and some suffering throughout your pregnancy.
	Yeah, you want to mitigate that.
	Right, but if you do not consent to that suffering...
	You're just talking about rape, which is a very, very small percentage of abortions.
	Oh, yeah.
	So it doesn't matter, right?
	It doesn't matter.
	It's worth discussing, but that is clearly the exception of the exception, not the rule.
	Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy.
	Oh, yes it is.
	No, it is not.
	It's consent to the possibility of pregnancy.
	It's not consent to enduring pregnancy.
	But if it's consent to the possibility of pregnancy, then it is consent to pregnancy.
	It is not.
	It is not consent to enduring pregnancy.
	I don't even know how to respond to that.
	How is it not?
	You've just said that when you consent to sex, you are acknowledging the possibility of becoming pregnant and consenting to that.
	So you are consenting to that.
	If I consent to go to the bar, and I know that if I go to the bar, there is a possibility that I... Get drunk.
	And then I know if I get drunk, there's a possibility that I have a hangover the next morning.
	Then when I go out there to that bar with the boys for a rowdy Saturday night, I am consenting to that hangover that I am going to have, that will involve some suffering and maybe teach me some lessons in the morning.
	Right.
	So I don't say, how is that different with pregnancy?
	Right.
	I'll explain it to you.
	Because it's not that different.
	So say that you just didn't have a hangover, because a hangover doesn't necessarily require medical care.
	Say that you had alcohol poisoning.
	Should you go to the ER and then be turned away because they're like, well, you drank, so you consented to the possibility of alcohol poisoning, and we have restricted your access to medical care because you consented to the possibility of this happening?
	No, no, of course, but again, as we've pointed out, the issue of abortion is not...
	The issue of abortion does not merely concern the mother.
	It concerns this other person, who you've admitted is a human being.
	So I think a more apt analogy would be, if I go out to the bar, and I wake up, and I've got this headache, And my kid just won't stop crying.
	You know, this kid, and he cries.
	He cries and he cries.
	But I got this throbbing headache.
	And so I say, you know, I've got to kill my kid.
	I've got to kill my kid to shut him up because he's crying too much.
	And it's really, ah, my body and my head is just throbbing and I'm suffering.
	And it's just going to make me feel a lot better if I kill my little baby.
	Who, by the way, is exactly as sentient, well, exactly as Sentient.
	I'll even go further.
	Conscious, self-aware as the little baby in the womb.
	Okay?
	It's not.
	It is.
	Of course it is.
	No, it's not.
	Of course it is.
	You haven't asked me how old my kid is.
	It doesn't matter.
	If they are a born child who is autonomous, they are not equal to a fetus.
	Bronte, oh my goodness.
	What do you think little babies are like if you think they're autonomous?
	So you're confusing biological autonomy with functional autonomy.
	Would you like me to define those for you?
	Please do, yes.
	So biological autonomy is when your bodily system can support itself, your organs can support itself, and you do not need to be connected to another person biologically for your body systems to function.
	So maybe like a baby in the womb at 25 weeks.
	Sure.
	Abortions that do happen then are largely because of medical conditions.
	And so that is not what we're referring to.
	They don't happen then or they do happen then?
	They do not happen often then.
	Less than 1% of abortions happen.
	And yet for some reason, states in America, like New York, are changing their laws in a hurry to permit abortion up until the moment of birth.
	Abortion does not happen up until the moment of birth.
	That would be an induction of labor.
	But Bronte, they did change the law in New York such that, and they actually changed the penal code such that abortion is permitted in the state of New York up until the moment of birth.
	That happened.
	That is a misrepresentation of the law.
	It changed the penal code such that if you kill a pregnant woman, it's no longer a double homicide.
	They could not more clearly point out, they could not more clearly highlight through the statute that abortion is permissible at any point in pregnancy up until the moment of birth.
	See, it seems that you consistently want to demonize women and you want to feel as though pregnant— I'm just describing the law in New York.
	No, but when you describe abortions happening right up until the moment of birth, you are describing someone who has carried this fetus for, like, you know, nine months, 40 weeks, whatever it may be, And you are acting as though those people are completely unaware of the situation they find themselves in.
	And usually people who are at that point in their pregnancy have decorated the nursery, have picked out a name, have went to prenatal appointments, things like that.
	And so for you to try to say that women are wanting abortions right up until the moment of birth, you are demonizing them.
	I'm just describing their behavior.
	But women aren't doing that.
	That is not something that happens.
	It's not something that happens.
	So then why do they keep changing the law in all of these liberal states?
	They're changing the law to protect women and protect women's access because there's also a lot of these laws that are trying to criminalize women for things like miscarriages.
	And so rewriting these laws...
	All of that is protected, and especially because of the Doe decision.
	People don't realize that the Roe v.
	Wade decision was really two cases, Roe and Doe, right?
	And Doe creates this right that protects women's ability to have abortions for women.
	For psychological reasons, for emotional reasons, practically until the very end.
	And so that already exists.
	That was already protected in New York.
	There was no risk whatsoever in New York that abortion was going to be criminalized or miscarriages were going to be criminalized or whatever other propaganda comes out.
	So if you're telling me that abortions do not happen late term, Why would multiple liberal governors and state legislatures change the law to permit abortion up until the moment of birth?
	I'm not saying that I agree with those laws, but I also believe from what I've read as well that a lot of those, the way that you're describing it is a misrepresentation of the purpose of the law, but I'm also not saying that I personally agree with those laws, if that is what they state.
	Oh, good.
	Well, that's good.
	Why do you disagree with them?
	Well, because, as I've said numerous times, I'm prioritizing the needs of the pregnant person.
	But if you're going to prioritize the needs of the pregnant person, surely they should have the greatest window possible to have an abortion, which would be up until the moment of birth like in New York.
	I don't believe so, because I believe if you've reached that late term in the...
	You know, in the pregnancy, then, you know, at that point, then the fetus is somewhat, it has the ability to be viable and autonomous, and that is when their life can and should be, you know, weighed heavier.
	So post-viability, you think abortion should be illegal?
	With the exception of medical concerns.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Well, by medical concerns, do you include emotional distress, or do you mean real serious medical risks to the mother?
	I mean, not to discount medical or mental concerns, because those can be serious, but primarily physical.
	Wow.
	So you would support a post-viability abortion ban?
	Yes.
	Great.
	Oh, that's good.
	That's progress.
	With the exception of medical and protecting medical providers based on certain scenarios.
	So post-viability.
	Okay.
	So then I guess I have to ask, why?
	Why is viability so important?
	Why is independence so important?
	Because, you know, a baby who's born...
	Newborn baby can't do a damn thing.
	You leave the baby outside, or even inside, for 72 hours, the kid's going to die, right?
	Maybe a little bit more.
	That's functional autonomy versus biological autonomy.
	Right, but practically it's the same thing.
	It's not.
	Biological autonomy and functional autonomy are two very different things.
	They're distinct, but practically speaking, they're the same thing.
	Because if you leave the baby, who you say is biologically autonomous, if you leave that baby alone to his autonomous self for, let's say, five days even, That baby is going to die.
	That baby has no control over himself or his surroundings at all.
	Because they lack functional autonomy.
	So it's really a distinction without a difference.
	No, but the difference is anyone can provide food and shelter to that infant.
	Where only the singular pregnant person can provide the womb for the fetus.
	That is where...
	And you can surrender your parental rights.
	We cannot force someone to be a parent.
	They can give up those parental rights.
	And that is the same thing in pregnancy.
	Because you cannot force someone to use their body and use their time in a way that they do not agree with.
	Do you think parents...
	Of children who are five years old should be able to just renounce them and say, go away?
	Renounce their parental obligations?
	I mean, if they're incapable of providing a safe home...
	No, what if they're capable and they just don't want to be a parent?
	It's just their consent.
	But if they're not mentally willing and capable, then...
	I'm not saying capable, though.
	Let's say that they are totally capable.
	It's some rich lawyer with a nice house in the suburbs, two cars, nice dinner every night.
	They just don't want to be parents anymore.
	You think they ought to have the right to renounce their parenthood?
	That seems like that would be better for the child.
	No, but I wouldn't want the child to grow up in a home where they're unwanted and resented.
	So yeah, I think that they should be able to give up their parental rights because that doesn't seem like an appropriate environment for that child.
	Well, if you're saying child protective services should go in and take the kids away, maybe there's an argument for that.
	But I guess it's just this right part, because you keep coming down to consent and rights.
	If you're saying that a parent of sound mind really has the right to abandon his own children, that seems crazy to me.
	It's prioritizing the wellness of the child.
	I would never want a child to grow up in a home where they're resented and abused because their parent isn't willing to take care of them.
	Why should we force a child to stay in that environment?
	We're not talking about what is prudentially best for the child.
	I'm really focused on...
	That's not what we're prioritizing?
	The needs of the child?
	It's just not the topic of discussion.
	What I'm asking about is the rights.
	You're saying a parent has a right to renounce his or her child?
	Again, if it is prioritizing the well-being of the child, I think that the government...
	What if it's not?
	What if it's worse for the child?
	Why would staying in an abusive home...
	No, I didn't say it's abusive.
	Why, a neglectful home?
	I'm not saying it's neglectful.
	I'm telling you, all things being equal, this guy, this nice guy and his wife, you know, good jobs, good money, nice house, they take care of the kid just fine, they just don't want to do it anymore.
	And they'll do it if they have to, but they just don't want to, and it'd be a little easier if they could renounce the child.
	I'm really focusing on this question of rights, because I think that's where the abortion argument really starts to unravel.
	You're saying they have a right to do that?
	Again, prioritizing the well-being of the child.
	If they're in an environment in which they are unwanted, then that is not an appropriate environment for them.
	And I believe that if a parent is unwilling to care for that child appropriately...
	I just think you're not accepting the...
	No, I just think that you continuously want to ignore the well-being of people that we share society with.
	Well, I don't want to kill them.
	Right.
	I don't want to kill them to the tune of 800,000 years.
	Whenever I bring up the well-being of people, it seems like you're like, that's not the discussion.
	I want to brush this off.
	No, because you keep bringing up rights, too.
	And then when I focus on rights, you shift to well-being.
	And then when I focus on well-being, you shift to rights.
	And so I think you're trying to evade the topic.
	Our rights protect our well-being and our rights basically have a large effect on our well-being.
	So they're not two exclusive things.
	We decide what our rights are depending on the way that they affect our health and our well-being and our mentalities.
	We decide what our rights are?
	As a society.
	So where do you think rights come from?
	This might help me to understand your view on abortion.
	Where do you think rights come from?
	Well, it depends on what kind of rights you're talking about.
	Because in a society, our government is a system designed to protect our rights.
	That is the purpose of it.
	So the government protects our rights.
	So where do those rights come from?
	I mean, I think it's a convoluted question because essentially if we were cavemen, we wouldn't necessarily decide that we had rights, right?
	I don't know.
	I think cavemen were a lot smarter than we give them credit for.
	The only thing we know about cavemen is that they painted on the walls.
	The only thing we know about cavemen is that they were artists.
	So I think they probably had a pretty good intuition of these things.
	Right.
	But I mean, our rights don't necessarily come from anywhere aside from our own analysis of our human experience.
	Oh, so then we don't really have any rights at all.
	The rights that we have decided on, based on the analysis of our human experience, we have decided that these are the rights that prioritize the health and well-being of society, and these are the things that we need to protect in order to prioritize the health and well-being of society.
	So you're saying that my rights...
	My rights are just whatever I say my rights are?
	No.
	Our rights are what our society has decided on, on a large spectrum.
	And there's...
	When we look at the...
	Okay.
	Well, then our society, on a large spectrum, has just decided that abortion is not a right.
	And in about half the country now, abortion is severely restricted, if not outright illegal.
	And so that's...
	Those are our rights.
	And we're arguing with it.
	So again, 61% of Americans, which is the...
	No, I'm talking about the Supreme Court and the legislature.
	No.
	Right, but that's how our government is conducted.
	Our government is not conducted by Pew Research.
	And that was stacked corruptly.
	How is it stacked corruptly?
	When I talk about society, I talk about both society as a general sense and then society as also the experts as it pertains to that right in particular.
	So when we talk about 61% of Americans, according to the Pew Research Center, agree...
	Let me finish...
	I agree with the ability to access abortion in all or most cases.
	And 95% of OBGYNs said regardless of their personal feelings, they would help a patient access abortion.
	So that is what I mean by coming to a consensus as a society about what is a right that should be protected.
	And both society as a whole and the society or the group of experts largely as a whole has decided that this is a right that should be protected.
	But I think you're ignoring the way that our society is actually governed.
	The civil authority in our society has decided that there is no right to abortion.
	That just happened.
	The Supreme Court just decided that, which is in keeping with the longer jurisprudence throughout the United States and England and elsewhere in civilization.
	And so that was how the actual civil authority in our society that governs us determined we would live.
	And so then I would say, if that's your understanding of where rights come from, you should accept those rights.
	But then you respond to that and say, no, That's actually, that doesn't matter what the civil authority says through our self-government because of this one Pew Research Survey and because of the trade organization for the obstetricians.
	So who is the we in we decide our rights?
	As I've said, pregnancy is a medical condition and abortion is a medical procedure.
	And so when I talk about the experts and when I talk about people who should be deciding these things...
	So our rights come from the experts.
	It comes from society as a whole in addition to the experts.
	And society as a whole is typically guided by experts.
	But society as a whole...
	Well, what represents society as a whole?
	Is it the civil authority or is it...
	No, it's not.
	No, because the government is meant to serve society.
	And if society decides that something should be protected as a majority...
	Then they lobby their representatives.
	And in self-government, the representatives pass new laws and appoint different judges.
	And the judges make rulings about statutory and constitutional interpretation.
	And in this case, they've said there's no right to abortion.
	But as I've said, the legislation is not appropriately representing the needs and desires of the people.
	How could you say that?
	Because 61% of Americans believe that abortion should be protected.
	Oh, so you're saying that the way that the people in our self-government express their will is through a Pew Research survey.
	Not through our elected representatives at the ballot box on Election Day.
	But through some survey from this one...
	No, our desires are represented by surveys.
	But we have abysmal voter turnout here in the U.S. And so what is represented in our legislation isn't necessarily representing the desires of the people.
	It should, but it doesn't.
	So I don't think that our rights come primarily from just what we all sort of agree upon.
	But even if I did, you realize how absurd this sounds.
	You're saying that our system of self-government, where we go to the polls and we elect our representatives, they're there to represent us, imperfectly as a fallen world might do, but that's what they do there.
	You're saying that that is not the way to understand The will of the people.
	But just like one survey of, who knows, usually these are 1,000 to 2,000 people, that is the expression of the will of the people, even when other surveys contradict it.
	That seems a little silly, right?
	If you're saying our rights come not from the civil authority, but from the Pew Research Center, that seems a little silly, doesn't it?
	No, it...
	It is very clear, as of recently, that our representatives are not properly representing the will of the people.
	And like I said, we have abysmal voter turnout.
	By the way, who controls the government?
	In what way?
	Right now.
	I mean, money?
	Who has unified government today?
	A lot of money controls our government.
	Which party controls the government right now?
	I think the Senate is the Democrats.
	Our presidency is a Democrat.
	And then I believe the House went to the Republicans, or it hasn't been called yet.
	I haven't...
	Well, the Republicans will take the House in January when they're sworn into office.
	Yes.
	But today, we have a unified government run by the Democrats.
	And so when you say that our government is not adequately representing the people, I agree with you entirely, but...
	Yeah, but we also have a filibuster which is essentially kneecapping our ability to pass proper legislation that is the will of the people.
	But the representatives of the people agreed to have the filibuster in the first place.
	Right, and that is a point of contention right now.
	That should be abolished.
	Sure, I'm just saying the filibuster itself was an expression of the popular will and the self-government.
	But it's not right now, and it should be abolished according to...
	Well, they can abolish it if they want to, but it just hasn't been done yet by either party.
	Correct.
	Right, because...
	Yeah, and I disagree with that.
	Because the polit...
	Sure, you might disagree with it, but the politicians do not abolish it because presumably they believe it's in their electoral interest not to abolish it because they are accountable to the voters.
	And so...
	Regardless of what you think about the filibuster, nevertheless, if you accept the premise of self-government, Republican government at all, that expresses the will of the people, right?
	Well, also, we live right now in a binary political system in the United States, which our political spectrum as a whole of society doesn't exist in a binary.
	Nothing exists in a binary.
	And so when we only have one of two options, it's not going to accurately represent the desires of the people, which is a big problem in our political system.
	Do you call yourself a Democrat?
	No.
	You're not.
	What do you call yourself?
	I'm more of a leftist.
	You find the Democrats are a little too weak?
	Financially, yeah.
	I don't agree with all the Democrats do, but I believe it was Obama who said that voting is not marriage.
	It is public transportation.
	You aren't going to find the one, but you take the one that is getting you closest to your desired destination.
	And for me, that is the Democrats in our binary system.
	But you're not a liberal.
	You're a leftist.
	I'm a leftist, yeah.
	You're a feminist.
	Yes.
	You know, I find myself, I don't know, maybe I'm going crazy in my old age, but I find myself agreeing with the radical feminists more and more than I do with the leftists.
	Or, I'm sorry, more and more than I do with the liberals.
	Okay.
	Elaborate on that for me.
	Well, there was a great clip that was going around of Catherine McKinnon.
	Are you familiar with her?
	No, I don't think so.
	Catherine McKinnon, wonderful, great radical feminist.
	And it was her debating some conservative over porn.
	And she made this point.
	She said, you know, You conservatives, some of you conservatives, are tolerant of porn.
	You think porn is no big deal.
	And obviously since the internet, it's exploded everywhere and it's caused a lot of problems.
	And she says, but you know, imagine if you were in your apartment and you heard some guy knocking a woman around every single wall, abusing some woman.
	And what would you do?
	I hope you'd go over to the apartment, try to stop it.
	I hope you'd call the cops.
	But that's what you're doing when you're watching porn.
	And this weak conservative, he said, well, you know, but people have a right to look at whatever smut they want.
	And she said, what are you talking about?
	You know, that's completely insane.
	And the conservative said to her, well, don't you agree with that?
	All these free principles of just watching whatever you want?
	She said, no, because I'm not a liberal.
	I'm a feminist.
	I'm not a liberal.
	I thought, oh, I guess maybe I'm a feminist, too.
	Who knew?
	Would you describe yourself as...
	She called herself sex negative.
	That's the kind of anti-porn feminists.
	Are you the anti-porn feminist or the pro-porn feminist?
	Yeah, because largely the pornographic industry is a huge issue as far as perpetuating and supporting sex trafficking and human trafficking.
	And so, no, I'm not a supporter of the porn industry as a whole.
	I knew we'd agree on something.
	Yeah, and as far as sexual liberation and the ability to I consciously and responsibly consume porn.
	I'm not necessarily opposed to that.
	But the large porn industry as a whole, as it supports sex trafficking and is largely unregulated, I am...
	Is it only the trafficking that bothers you, or is it...
	The women who are involved in porn...
	Come from bad backgrounds, almost all the time, and usually neglectful and abusive backgrounds, and they're very vulnerable, and they're completely exploited, and they're paid pennies, and they're treated literally like meat, and then they're thrown out two years later, and it's just the whole thing's so ghastly.
	And that's not a matter of trafficking exactly, but it's still an exploitation.
	Yeah, I agree.
	But then you just said that you don't mind people watching porn in certain circumstances.
	Right.
	If the industry was better regulated, people were paid living wages, there wasn't this whole situation where people feel pressured or forced into that industry based off of certain life experiences or certain circumstances.
	It was 100% of the time.
	Right.
	Well, not necessarily 100%.
	I do feel like people can consensually and responsibly...
	Treat themselves like meat?
	I mean, that's not necessarily what happens.
	See, and I think that that is sort of dehumanizing, and I think that...
	It is dehumanizing.
	Right.
	But that's also removing the consent aspect, because there are a lot of people who do do sex work responsibly, and they do so of their own volition.
	So before you were sounding sex-negative, like the radical feminists.
	Now you're sounding sex-positive, like the liberals.
	Well, I am sex-positive, but, I mean, it depends.
	All right, never mind.
	I thought we agreed on one thing, finally, but...
	I mean, we agree that we both do not like the porn industry as a whole.
	But would you ban it?
	The porn industry?
	Yeah.
	Frankly, according to the law, it already sort of is largely banned.
	It's just a few court decisions kind of screwed that up.
	Yeah, I mean, I think that things like OnlyFans should stay legal when they are run.
	I think that if it is run by the worker themselves and it is there deciding to do something of their own volition, then I'm not necessarily opposed to that.
	But I do think that the porn industry should be banned or regulated as a whole.
	Well, that's good.
	So people should not be permitted to look at Pornhub, for instance.
	That's what you're saying.
	Yeah, I think Pornhub should be shut down because a lot of it is unregulated and there's a lot of things on there, too, that perpetuate abuse, that perpetuate radicalist ideas of objectifying women.
	And so that, yeah, definitely not.
	So, does that not undercut a little bit of your argument about bodily autonomy and doing what you want, you know, in your own bedroom with the blinds closed?
	I mean, if a guy wants to go into his bedroom and pull up some disgusting pornography and do whatever with his own body, you know, sex with someone you love as Woody Allen described it, is that not a matter of his personal bodily autonomy that he allegedly has a right to?
	I believe he has the right to do that.
	But like I said, it doesn't have to be done through Pornhub.
	There are responsible and worker-run...
	But what if he really likes Pornhub?
	What if that's his favorite one?
	Well, we don't have to protect his right to access Pornhub.
	No, I don't believe we should...
	No.
	That's good.
	All right.
	That's something.
	But OnlyFans, you think, is okay?
	Yeah.
	I think OnlyFans is okay because, like I said, it is run by the workers themselves and they aren't exploited by an industry and they aren't forced into certain things.
	Don't you think...
	That pornography intrinsically is exploitative and degrading.
	I guess that's my problem with it.
	There are other problems, too.
	But it's not just the consent, is what I'm saying.
	Because you seem to think that the only moral criterion that matters is consent.
	If you consent to do it, then it's fine and dandy.
	But I think there are plenty of things that you can consent to do that are not good and are degrading and feed your basest passions and enslave you and should be illegal and are illegal even today in some cases.
	Yeah, elaborate on that.
	Well, like, drugs would be an example, right?
	I don't think you have a right to do drugs.
	But I don't think you have a right to do all sorts of things, you know?
	I don't think people should have a right to cheat on their wives.
	Maybe a married man consents to sleep with his secretary or something, and the secretary consents...
	I think that should be illegal.
	And it was illegal for a lot of American history.
	I don't think you ought to have a right to that.
	I don't think that if you are under the delusion, if you're a man and you're under the delusion that you're a woman, that you have a right to chop your healthy genitals off any more than you...
	That you would have a right to walk into a doctor's office and say, Doc, I identify as a quadriplegic.
	And the doc says, Man, you've got problems.
	You need to go see a psychologist.
	I'm not going to chop your limbs off.
	But then that same man walks into a doctor's office.
	He says, Doc, I'm a woman.
	And that doc says, Wow, oh my gosh, that's so brave and wonderful.
	You're a stunning, beautiful woman.
	Let's get you onto the operating table and cut off the family jewels.
	That seems to me preposterous.
	I don't think anyone has a right to that.
	I guess, ultimately, I'm saying, I don't think you have a right To wrong.
	Well, what we define as wrong is different between you and I because I do agree in providing gender-affirming care to people because when you are in a body that doesn't feel right to you and you do not identify as the gender that people perceive you as, that can have psychological consequences.
	And again, when we look at medical experts who study this and provide this care, they agree that gender-affirming care is essential in order to prioritize the needs of these patients.
	What about Dr.
	Paul McHugh?
	Dr.
	Paul McHugh was a doctor at Johns Hopkins and was the pioneer of the gender transition surgery and was the head of their gender clinic.
	So he pioneered the whole thing.
	Then he found after a few years that it wasn't improving psychological outcomes.
	He didn't find that it was damaging psychological outcomes in most cases, but it just wasn't really doing anything.
	And it wasn't helping, and so if it wasn't helping, he shut it down.
	And so he's not only one figure in the transgender care medical community, he's a preeminent figure in it, and he says that it's awful and we should stop the surgeries.
	So does his expert opinion color your views at all?
	No.
	So in medicine, we are taught something called paternalism is something that we should avoid.
	And paternalism is essentially putting your own personal views into the health care of other people.
	So if you believe that a patient is going to regret this decision, then you are going to prohibit their access to this.
	And as medical practitioners, as physicians, we are taught to avoid paternalism.
	And acting paternalistically is unethical.
	So that's an interesting use of the word paternalism.
	So By that you mean just having opinions and acting on them?
	No.
	No, it is a specific terminology in medical ethics.
	It is not prohibiting your patient's access to medical care based off of...
	So you would give advice.
	Right.
	You would say, I don't think you should chop your genitals off, or I don't think you should have an abortion.
	See, and that is putting your personal opinion that is unrelated to medical studies and unrelated to proper psychological practices.
	Why would you hold a personal opinion that is completely out of step with reality?
	Would you?
	I mean, I just fail to understand this distinction between a personal opinion and, say, a public opinion.
	A professional opinion.
	Yeah, I just don't see...
	If they disagree, the professional opinion that you're supposed to hold, and your personal opinion, and if they're contradictory, only one of them can be true.
	So if the professional opinion is true, then why do you hold your mistaken opinion?
	Personal opinion.
	And if your personal opinion is true, then why would you give a damn what some lunatic who's telling you to perform a lobotomy has to say?
	So when it comes to medical practice, your personal opinion is colored by your own personal experience, where your professional opinion is influenced by evidence and training.
	But is your personal opinion not influenced by your faculties of reason and your moral conscience and your ability to perceive reality?
	True, but my moral conscience and my ability to perceive reality is based off of my own personal reality, and my personal reality differs from someone else's.
	Hold on.
	I thought the purpose of reason and perception is to ascertain objective reality.
	It's not like the imagination where you're just concocting your own fantasies, right?
	So what you're telling me then is that your faculties of reason and moral conscience are not reliable and they can have nothing to say about objective reality.
	So then I have to ask, why should I care what you think about anything?
	Well, it depends on what you're asking me my opinion on.
	Because again, there's a difference between personal and professional opinions.
	Because when professional opinions, especially in medical practice, are colored by statistics and training, that is going to supersede my personal opinion when it comes to offering someone medical advice.
	So are you saying you simultaneously hold two opinions at the same time?
	Or are you saying that you just defer to the board of obstetricians on every question?
	I'm saying that I understand as a medical professional that I need to avoid paternalism and that although my personal opinion and my personal experience and my perception of life based off of my own worldview isn't going to be completely accurate when it comes to the life experience of a patient sitting in my exam room.
	So what if it's 1950, You've just graduated medical school.
	You're doing your residency.
	And the fancy people in the lab coats say, all right, Bronte, here's your first assignment.
	You're going to perform a lobotomy on this crazy lady.
	And the crazy lady comes in.
	And you say, you know, I think it's probably a bad idea to perform this lobotomy.
	I think scrambling up poor women's brains is not good.
	But the consensus medical opinion, the professional opinion, disagrees with my personal opinion here.
	Would you just put your personal opinion and your own view from your reason and your conscience aside and scramble up the poor woman's brains?
	So does the woman, is she wanting this procedure?
	Well, she's a bit crazy, isn't she?
	But maybe she says she wants it.
	Maybe one day she says she wants it.
	Another day she says she doesn't want it.
	I mean, with any kind of psychological treatment, there's a lot of ambiguity.
	So in this sort of situation...
	But let's say that she does want it.
	So in this situation, we have the privilege of perspective, right?
	In the 1950s, you don't have the privilege of that kind of perspective.
	So we understand that medically...
	And lobotomies are not appropriate.
	But in the 50s, we are working with the evidence that we have at the time.
	And if the patient is wanting the procedure, and the evidence and studies at the time support that procedure, then sure, you would move forward.
	You would perform the lobotomy, even if your faculties have...
	Because it was controversial at the time.
	Right.
	Just as abortion and transgender surgery are controversial now.
	And so you're saying, even if you...
	Because it's not only that we learned in foresight, or rather in retrospectively, oh gosh, can you imagine we did these lobotomies?
	Wow, everyone agreed to do them, and then all of a sudden we all realized it was wrong.
	No, it was very controversial at the time.
	But the lab coat people said, go do them.
	So I think the analogy is quite apt to abortion and to transgenderism.
	And let's say you know I disagree with you.
	Well, let's just go to the lobotomy thing then.
	You know at the time, as did many, many people in the medical profession, that lobotomies are really spooky and weird and not good and you really disagree with it.
	But you're there, there's the patient, the docs are telling you to perform the lobotomy.
	Do you really put your own moral conscience aside and your own rational thought aside and you just do what the doctors tell you to do?
	I mean, not necessarily, no.
	Oh, okay, good.
	Right.
	And I also don't believe that lobotomies are, you know, analogous to gender-affirming care.
	And when we are talking about—because gender-affirming care is not necessarily controversial in the medical field.
	Well, the guy who invented it says that it's terrible.
	No, as you said, it might not have improved their mental state, but it also didn't necessarily damage it.
	I mean, he shut the whole thing down.
	Him personally, but on the whole...
	He campaigns against it.
	It's convenient that you choose this one person who campaigns against it.
	Well, he happens to be the pioneer of it.
	Well, he might have been one of the first to do it, but in the medical field, it is shown that providing gender-affirming care is beneficial to the patients when done with evidence-based medicine and appropriately.
	In the medical field, it was shown that lobotomies were really good for crazy ladies.
	And it was shown with evidence and studies and papers and very serious men in horn-rimmed glasses and lab coats.
	See, and I just feel like this line of questioning is inherently transphobic.
	And when you act as though people who have gender dysphoria or body dysmorphia or whatever it may be, when you act as though their situation is equivalent to someone in the 50s needing or wanting a lobotomy, you are perpetuating this idea that their life experience and their opinions you are perpetuating this idea that their life experience and their opinions about their own bodies is inappropriate
	Bronte, I think your attacks on lobotomies are extraordinarily misogynistic, first of all, and I think they deny the science and the scientific consensus.
	And they're frankly ignorant because all of the educated people with all the power, they say that lobotomies are really, really good and they're for women and they're to make women feel better.
	These poor women are dealing with anxiety.
	Hysteria, actually, is what we would have called it then.
	And you're denying them care that will ease their suffering.
	And I just think it's really awful.
	I didn't say that I would deny them that care.
	If the patient is consenting to this procedure and the evidence and the consensus of the medical field as a whole is supporting this kind of procedure, then I would go forward with it.
	So you would perform the lobotomy?
	I'm not going to say that I would perform the lobotomy.
	You just said you would perform the lobotomy.
	I would perform a procedure.
	Previously you said you wouldn't, and then before that you said you would.
	I would perform a procedure if the evidence supported it and the patient consented to it.
	That is it.
	And in the 1950s, the evidence supported lobotomies.
	I don't know enough about lobotomies in the 50s in order to give you an accurate response to that question.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So it seems to me that your deferral away from moral conscience, your admission that your moral conscience and your faculties of reason are purely subjective, solipsistic even, they only pertain to your own body and your own Possibly diluted view of the world.
	And so that's why you have to defer to the experts and the people in the lab coats.
	And those people are the ones who have the ability to make our rights anyway.
	Our rights, in fact, come from the Academy of Obstetricians or whatever.
	And because of all of that, if the medical science supported it and if the patient consented to it, you would perform the lobotomy, you would perform the gender-affirming surgery on the men who think that they're women, and you would perform the abortion.
	I just say humbly and respectfully, Bronte, it should give you pause if you're on the side of the lobotomies.
	I am on the side of gender-affirming care and reproductive health care.
	Yeah, and lobotomies.
	Not necessarily lobotomies, no, because those aren't analogous to gender-affirming care.
	If you want to, because it seems like you are intent to use manipulative and emotional language in order to, no, because if you need to refer to lobotomies in order to make your point, then that means...
	My point is that the scientists often get things dramatically, including in the medical field.
	We should be able to have a conversation about gender-affirming care and abortion without bringing in a controversial procedure from the 50s.
	But we have to.
	No, we don't have to.
	No, but here's why we have to.
	No, if you are not able to just discuss gender-affirming care and just discuss abortion without bringing in, you know, manipulative language and outdated procedures, then you're not able to appropriately discuss this topic and these procedures.
	No, but I must because your defense of...
	Well, now transgenderism, but also abortion, is based on the authority and the credibility of the medical authorities.
	And so I have to demonstrate to you that those medical authorities don't have all that much credibility.
	Especially on sort of bizarre and controversial matters, because historically they don't have a great track record.
	And that's why I'm going into the not-too-distant past, by the way.
	It's not like I'm going back to leeches and bleedings and all sorts of bizarre medical practices that were accepted by the experts for all of human history.
	I'm going back to a very, very recent example and showing you that those experts in the lab coats that you are deferring to, even for the question of rights itself, are very frequently wrong.
	But in this case, we have shown that gender-affirming care is beneficial to patients who have gender dysphoria.
	We haven't, though.
	We have.
	The pioneer of the surgery says it isn't.
	Currently, with the evidence that we have right now, we are showing that it is medically responsible to provide patients with all the information and all of the access to health care that can benefit them in their medical care.
	And so that is the topic at hand, is it not?
	Is it not discussing people who exist in a body that they don't feel comfortable in?
	And modern medicine has the ability to help them address that issue.
	Bronte, when you say exist in a body, or you say they find themselves in a body, or Who do you think they are?
	What does that mean, exist in a body?
	Our fellow citizens that we share this society with.
	You're saying that they are distinct from their body?
	Yes.
	So you are not your body?
	No.
	What are you?
	I believe that I'm a soul with a body.
	But you are the soul.
	And your body is just...
	It's the physical manifestation.
	The body's a costume.
	Oh, the body is the physical manifestation.
	That's different.
	Well, I agree with that.
	I think that the body is a symbol of the soul.
	I think that the soul is a substantial form of the body.
	We agree on that.
	But then that means that the soul and the body are linked.
	Right, but they're not the same.
	But they're linked inextricably.
	If you agree, as we just said, that the body is actually a symbol of the soul, then you don't just go about trading out the body.
	The body is not something merely to be discarded.
	The body is, in fact, part of you.
	To say, I have a body, is an incoherent statement, according to what you've just agreed to.
	Because you would say, I am a body, and I am a soul, and the technical term for it is hylomorphic being that is body and soul inextricably linked on this earth.
	Right, but that doesn't mean that my mentality and my soul is accurately represented by the body that I present to the world.
	So if you find a discrepancy between your metaphysical perception of yourself and the physical representation, which you acknowledge is tied inextricably to your soul, why do you have to mutilate the body?
	Wouldn't it be a little easier just to change your mind and recognize that your perception of yourself is a little bit wrong?
	If you're a woman, I think, you're very clearly a woman, and if you said one day, I'm a man, well, rather than my saying, oh, well, good, go chop your body up, shouldn't I just say, no, you're not, you're a woman, and you're just misperceiving yourself, or misconceiving yourself, and you need to get your mind right?
	Well, then you would be denying what I am telling you is my life experience.
	Right, because you would be wrong.
	According to you, but you can't tell someone that their life experience is wrong.
	No, I can tell people that their statements about reality are wrong.
	So why do you see the world in such a binary?
	Why do you think that we are men and women and there is no spectrum in between?
	Oh, well, because I have eyes and reason.
	So I can see you're a woman.
	All evidence shows that you're a woman.
	What makes me a woman?
	Well, I haven't, you know, I'm a married man, so I don't have too much...
	What would, in abstract, what would quantify sex to you?
	Well, it would involve your bodily features.
	It would involve your chromosomes.
	It would involve your soul.
	It would mean that you're not a man.
	It would mean that you're complementary to a man and not identical with a man.
	So are you aware that, medically, your genitalia, your hormones, and your chromosomes do not always align with a particular sex?
	There are multiple medical conditions in which your chromosomes, your hormones, and your genitalia do not match and do not fit into this binary.
	Yeah, there could be ambiguity, of course.
	Right.
	And so what I'm saying is, naturally, sex is on a spectrum.
	No.
	No.
	Yes, it is.
	Well, there's such a thing as a liger.
	Are you familiar with a liger?
	Like a lion-tiger?
	It's a hybrid of a lion and a tiger.
	But if we say that there are some ligers, not very many, but there are some ligers, this would not deny that there is a categorical distinction between lions and tigers.
	And the same thing would be true.
	You mentioned a chromosomal abnormality.
	Let's say Turner syndrome.
	Turner syndrome is where you have 1X chromosome, right?
	Not an XY, not an XX, you have 1X. Well, why don't we talk about Klinefelter then?
	Because that's when you have, I think, two Xs and a Y. Yeah, sure, sure.
	I mean, you can talk about any of these chromosomal or genital abnormalities.
	There can be certain ambiguities, but in that expression...
	It's pretty easy to categorize.
	I mean, I mentioned Turner Syndrome because it's so easy to categorize people who have Turner Syndrome as women.
	But in the others too, even when there's more ambiguity, you can categorize these things.
	And so then we talk about this distinction between sex and gender.
	And people say, well, sex and gender are different.
	So you might be a woman, but your gender, by which people really, I think, mean your soul, I think you're using the more precise language there.
	Your soul might be the soul of a man, say, or something like that.
	But I just don't see how that would be true if your soul and body really are linked.
	And also, if it were true, then why is it that we would say that you then have a right to mutilate your body?
	Wouldn't we then say you have an obligation to express your gender in accordance with your sex?
	Well, body modification is an entire industry.
	I can get tattoos.
	I can get permanent scars.
	Porn and drugs are in industries, too, yeah.
	Yeah, but that's not the same.
	Porn and drugs is not the same as gender-affirming care.
	They're not the same, but they're all bad.
	I mean, to you.
	Sure, porn and drugs obviously have, that is a negative industry.
	But when you compare them to something like gender-affirming care, you are coloring gender-affirming care in a negative light.
	I'm just saying that the sex surgeries where you chop off the boy's family jewels, that that's also bad.
	See, and where I stand on it is I think that acceptance and tolerance and respect for people who are different from you is inherent in being a compassionate, moral being.
	And I don't believe that I get to tell someone that they are wrong based off of my interpretation of their life experience.
	Right.
	So to get us back, I think, to the top, I sincerely believe that abortion is evil because it is, as you describe, ending the life of a human being.
	And so that's what I believe, and I sincerely believe that abortion should be illegal throughout the United States.
	And I really would just request that you not impose your liberal beliefs on me and force me to surrender my political views in a self-government, for goodness sakes, and force me to live in a society where women are permitted to kill their children.
	I would just ask you to respect and include and be welcoming and tolerant of my views and identity.
	My identity as the correct person in this debate.
	So I respect your opinion as it pertains to your body and your life.
	That is the entire point of being pro-choice.
	I am not saying that you or your wife or whoever should get an abortion.
	I'm not forcing you to get an abortion.
	I will never get an abortion.
	Right.
	Very clearly.
	And being pro-choice means that I respect everyone's ability to decide what is best for their body and for their life.
	Not the baby, of course.
	It is their body and their life.
	And whether physically, financially, or mentally, they are incapable or unwilling to endure pregnancy and labor.
	And I hope every pregnant person who's watching this can try to understand if they had to endure that unwanted and unsupported, how terrifying and traumatizing that would be.
	They should be supportive.
	And you consistently center the fetus, and I just want to say that I consistently center the pregnant person.
	I think I center them both.
	I respect women and their ability and their knowledge about their own body and their own lives, and I want to protect their right to access health care.
	What if they believe that their baby is not a...
	that the fetus is not a human being?
	You respect that belief?
	I mean, well, that would be medically inaccurate.
	So you don't respect their knowledge?
	I mean, I respect their belief, but it doesn't make it correct.
	You respect mistaken beliefs?
	Incorrect beliefs?
	I mean, if it doesn't impose on my ability to access health care and it doesn't reflect my life individually, then they can think whatever they want.
	But you respect it?
	I respect their right to have that opinion.
	But just not to act on it in public?
	I mean, I don't understand what you mean by that.
	Well, you're saying you respect these views that are wrong.
	But we live in a self-government, right?
	We live in a republic.
	So the government that we get, at least in theory, is going to reflect what people believe.
	And so what you keep coming back to in these questions of transgenderism and in questions of people mistakenly believing that the human in their body is not a human being, you keep saying, well, I just respect your wrong...
	You're entitled to your wrong beliefs.
	But, you know, those wrong beliefs in a self-government end up becoming law.
	But they must be evidence-based and medically accurate and medically appropriate.
	Oh, so you only respect the beliefs if they're medically accurate.
	Yeah.
	But you just said you respected the woman's belief even though it wasn't accurate.
	I respect her right to have that belief.
	She can have that belief if she chooses to have that belief.
	As long as there's no consequence of it in society.
	Right.
	But ideas do have consequences.
	I mean, it depends.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Like, your ideas that you're pushing on your show do have dire consequences for pregnant people.
	As the University of Colorado showed, banning abortion can increase maternal mortality by 24%.
	And so pushing these medically inaccurate and emotionally manipulative views on your show and many others, they do have impacts on living, breathing people, and they will lead to more harm and more suffering of people's mothers, daughters, sisters, of women in our society.
	Well, you know, because I'm a gentleman, I obviously disagree with everything you just said.
	But since I'm a gentleman, I'll give you the last word, Bronte, and I will leave it there.
	We know my position in the debate.
	I am firmly opposed to abortion and the transgender surgeries and the mutilation.
	And to lobotomies.
	And I guess my critics and opponents support those things.
	And people can decide for themselves who is more reasonable.
	I am sincerely really impressed with you that you came out here and were willing to come on the show and express your point of view.
	And I really wish more...
	Well, I won't call you a liberal because you're a leftist.
	But I wish more leftists would do it.
	So thank you, Bronte, for coming out.
	Where can people find you?
	They can find me at Bronte Remzik on TikTok.
	And my website is BeKindAndCurious.com.
	Alright, be kind and curious out there folks.

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