Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect a leaked Supreme Court abortion decision, arguing it weaponizes progressive narratives to shift midterm focus from Ukraine or COVID to reproductive rights. They debate the moral line of life at conception versus libertarian bodily autonomy, rejecting "my body, my choice" when applied to viable fetuses while supporting exceptions for severe genetic suffering. The discussion critiques CDC and Pfizer data on vaccine efficacy, accusing major media of suppressing contradictory evidence regarding pregnant women's risks, ultimately framing abortion as a wedge issue that demands societal consensus on protecting innocent life rather than mere state autonomy. [Automatically generated summary]
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Politics of Leaked Documents00:14:48
Fill her up.
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Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Heart of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks, COVID Jesus.
What's up, my brother?
How you feeling?
I'm doing swell.
How about you, Mr. Smith?
Doing well, doing well.
Getting real excited for Reno, Nevada, which is coming up soon.
And we still got a few seats available for that late show that we added there.
If you want to come out to see some stand-up from Robbie the Fire Bernstein and myself, as well as a couple other special guests, come on out.
Yep, there you go.
So come on out.
That show is going to be awesome.
And then the whole National Libertarian Party convention that weekend is going to be an unbelievable moment.
Just announced the other day that Ron Paul is coming to the Mises Caucus event on Friday night.
I've known about that for a few weeks.
Something I've been very excited about.
So that's going to be, it's just going to be an unbelievably cool moment in the history of the Liberty movement.
And so looking forward to that very much.
Me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be out in Chicago June 18th.
Two stand-up shows and a live part of the problem podcast.
Check that out.
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We'll start posting all the ticket links and shit.
Not a lot of tickets left for Chicago.
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And then this weekend in Florida for the opening of some report stores.
So coming out for it.
Hell yeah, dude.
Hell yeah.
I wish I could be there for that one.
That sounds like a lot of fun down at the Top Lobster Ranch.
Okay.
So I guess we got to talk about abortion for this episode.
It's not Rob's favorite topic to talk about.
I've dragged him through a few episodes on the subject before, but sorry, go ahead.
No, it's fine.
I've gotten most of the abortions I need to get done, done in my life.
So I'm comfortable talking about it now.
Now you're comfortable.
It's been a sensitive subject.
Rob is the product of a failed abortion.
So you understand it's a little bit of a, you know, a tough, a tough situation.
Yeah.
So, okay, as everyone I'm sure knows by now, right, there was a leak of a Supreme Court decision.
And this is the first time, I believe, ever, that there's been a leak of a Supreme Court decision.
They're very good at keeping things private until they come out and have their ruling.
And there's been like huge rulings.
You know, in my lifetime, there's been rulings on, you know, like Obamacare and, you know, gay marriage and a whole bunch of really important things.
And it's always, we never found out until they, you know, decide publicly to let us know.
So that in itself is interesting.
I talked about this a little bit on the last episode with Scott, but I do think that, you know, while I like the idea of government having as little secrecy as possible and as much transparency as possible.
So I'm kind of in the abstract, I'm pro-leek.
I do think it would be foolish to not kind of pay attention to how these leaks are weaponized and politicized.
It's interesting that none of this other stuff gets leaked, but then this one does in the same way that like, you know, I use this.
I already said this last podcast, but just to, you know, to restate it, the same way that like, you know, you see all these leaks come out of the Justice Department during the Mueller investigation to always make Trump look bad, to always keep the story going.
But yet when he's, He's, you know, being impeached over the Ukraine gate nonsense.
Hunter Biden was being investigated at the time, we now know by the Justice Department.
How many leaks?
Zero.
Doesn't come out at all.
You know what I mean?
It's like they really are good at controlling what gets leaked and what doesn't get leaked.
And it seems overwhelmingly likely that this was like it.
This was my point basically is like when it suits the progressive agenda, you seem that you see a lot of these leaks, sometimes true, sometimes not true.
When it doesn't, you don't.
And in this case, it seems pretty clear that this was leaked in order to get a huge backlash against it, to draw a bunch of protesters and to try to kind of pressure the court into a different decision again.
However, you might feel about it, it's worth noting.
I would also make note of, I would think this can change the midterm elections a little bit, where people are very anti-the Democrats right now.
And then maybe they realize, oh, I can't be anti-the Democrats because you got the Supreme Court and look at the changes they're making.
And then you also have suspicious timing.
And then it came out the same day as the last Pfizer data dump that nobody is reporting on in the media.
Yeah, it is that it certainly is interesting that all of these things kind of happen together.
And particularly with the Pfizer data dump, also came right on the heels of this report that the CDC was tracing, tracking Americans using their cell phone data that they bought from a private company.
But I think the point you made is a very good one.
One of the things that's, and we can get into like actually the topic of abortion a little bit in a second, but one of the things that's that's almost like to me was the most, because I certainly did not expect this to happen.
I don't think most people expected that this.
It kind of came out of nowhere.
And it's, it's just a very strange feeling that conservatives and right-wingers would actually get a huge victory in the cultural landscape of the United States of America.
It's just so rare.
Just like doesn't happen.
They all go in the other direction.
And so it's almost like it makes you step back and go, holy shit, wait, what?
They could actually have gotten something here.
You know, like that's, that's a big deal.
And you see that and like how that manifests itself in people.
Like, first off, the absolute like, you know, the hysteria from progressives over this.
I mean, this is like, it's, it's really something.
And it's not as if they would be assuming that Roebie Wade does get struck down.
It's not as if they're getting like the conservatives are not getting nearly as big a victory as the progressives currently enjoyed over this issue.
It's not as if there's a new decision now that says abortion is banned in all 50 states, like it or not.
This is now just kicks it back to the states and blue states can still be as, you know, as easy on abortion as they want to.
And red states can now be as strict as they want to, or as their, you know, their legislators want to.
But even that to them is just like, like, they're just not accustomed to losing these cultural fights.
And certainly to like a pro-life conservative or anyone pro-life, that's not going to be enough for you to say, oh, well, that wouldn't, no, that's, that's not going to change your opinion on this.
You're going to be like, well, I think abortion is murder.
And so it's better if it can be, you know, outlawed in more places.
But I do think the point you're making is something that's really important for people to realize that it is, even if you're pro-life and even if you think, you know, if you, if you are pro-life, if you see abortion as murder, then sure, the cost benefit, like the benefit of saving babies' lives is going to outweigh anything on the other side.
But just be aware of the costs of this as well.
And I think that this is in many ways, kind of ironically, a huge victory to hand to the Democrats because finally now they have an issue that they can make the midterms about.
And it's not that, you know, like much of a stretch to say, okay, the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
What we need now is Congress to write a law that protects, you know, abortion rights across the country.
And the only way we can do that is if the Democrats have control of the Congress.
And now, all of the sudden, the midterms are not a referendum on COVID policy.
They're not a referendum on the war in Ukraine.
They're not a referendum on Joe Biden being an old senile man.
Like the Democrats can't stand by it.
It's not a referendum on teaching, you know, like trans issues to your six-year-old.
Now it's all about this thing.
They at least have a story to tell.
And a lot, particularly in midterm elections, it's all about ginning up your base.
Like that's the big name of the game in midterm elections.
And this is an issue that undoubtedly gins up the Democratic base.
And they really care about this and see this as a huge deal.
And just saying, all of these things, you know, there's like ripple effects of all of these different decisions.
And so that's, you know, that's one of the issues.
I will say personally, even though I'm pro-life and all things being considered, I think it's worth it to, you know, repeal Roe v. Wade.
The thing about this that is a bummer is that I really would, I would much prefer in a way that this be that we keep those other issues in the forefront and don't lose those.
Cause I just think it's like, particularly with the COVID stuff and the war in Ukraine and the propagandizing little kids in public school, all of this.
It's like, these are really important issues to be soundly defeated and like let people know that like, you know, you will not have a future in politics if you're on this side, on the wrong side of these issues.
There's value in that.
And so in a way, it's kind of like, yeah, that sucks if that now, if they kind of get off the hook for that because of this.
I mean, you already see, look, obviously we have short attention spans.
This is, it just happened a few days ago, but you see the amount of energy that this has sucked out of the room already.
This is what everybody's talking about.
And now very conveniently, you know, like you said, all this other stuff kind of just fades into the background.
So this is just something to keep in mind.
That's a big part of the politics of how all of this is going down.
I think that's one of the most annoying parts about the abortion issue is that, you know, some people will be a hardcore liberal just over this topic.
And there's just so many things that are way more important.
This is one of like those really good topics that they get to make sure that you're, what team are you on?
And it's like, I don't know, I talk about a libertarian argument, just freedom.
And I know we're going to probably transition in a minute to abortion where you and I don't have the same views, which is fine.
But like to me, I just wish the topic didn't exist or wasn't in the hands of government so that this was not what we were making our decisions about.
Like we've got more important issues.
It's debt.
It's wars.
It's the Federal Reserve.
It's COVID policy.
It's freedom of speech.
Like, and then they get to just totally pretend like this is the most important one, which I guess if you really view it as murder and you don't want people killing babies.
So I get why maybe to you, you'd put it on in front of, you know, getting rid of the Fed.
But to me, I'm more like, can we just sell this thing?
It's annoying.
It's disgusting to talk about.
It's icky.
Just don't let government fund it.
And let's talk about important things.
Well, the thing from my perspective, I think that whether you're a pro-life or pro-choice libertarian, if you are a libertarian, that one of the major lessons over Roe v. Wade is like, look, you have an issue where there are, look, and I'm pro-life.
And I've talked about this before.
I'll get into it a little bit on the show today, but I understand the best of the pro-choice argument, you know, like, and I understand where, like, I genuinely believe there are good faith arguments on both sides of this issue.
And I disagree with one side, but there is to some degree two libertarian principles that butt up against each other, right?
Like one is the idea of like having like dominion over your own body and self-ownership and the government having no right to tell you what to do with your body.
And the other one is the protection of innocent life.
Those are kind of indirect conflict with a woman who wants to get an abortion.
And okay, so you have you have libertarians on both sides of this issue.
But what you have here is that you have a situation where there is no, there's no consensus about this throughout the country.
You have huge numbers of people on diametrically opposite sides here.
And that's one of the reasons why this topic works so effectively the way you were describing at, because if one side sees this as the most inherent freedom of women, you know, the other trying to control women's bodies or whatever they see this, and the other side sees this as murdering babies, it's a very difficult bridge to gap.
And you have, depending on what, you know, the polling you look at, I mean, there's more people identify as pro-choice than pro-life by small margins in this country.
But when you actually start drilling down on it, like you get over 50% support for like a 15-week abortion ban, which would, you know, is much harsher than Roe v. Wade was, right?
So you like you, or I guess maybe around the same, anyway, but you get into these areas where it's very closely split.
It's not like you have 99% of the population feels one way and there's this crazy 1% out here, you know, like what libertarians are.
Like we're not, it's not like that, where you can just have this giant government because, hey, you know, whatever, who cares what this little tiny percentage thinks?
This is more like Trump versus Biden, you know, there's huge, and when you have this situation where there's really no consensus, and in fact, there's diametrically opposed views about something that people consider very, very important.
And then you have the Supreme Court come in and say, nope, this is the law for all 320 million Americans.
We're forcing it down the throat of even the most red, red states where there'd be vast majority support against this.
Investing in Gold and Crypto00:03:07
We're going to enforce that this is what the law is.
You end up with what we've had, where you have 50 years of this policy and it has not stopped being a white hot wedge issue, you know?
And like, it's just, this is what you get when you have a system where there's, you know, it's like this kind of centralized national government making decisions for all of these people when there's a huge percentage of them who completely disagree with this, find it like to be the worst thing in the world.
And so I think that it is, it is much better preferable.
And I think you could feel this way whether you're pro-life or not, but I think it's certainly preferable to kick this back down to the states.
It's just more appropriate.
It's a more decentralized approach to this.
It's Murder laws and rape laws and all types of very serious crimes are handled on the state level.
Um, I don't see any reason why this one has to be done by the national government.
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Body Choice vs Libertarianism00:14:51
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All right, let's get back into the show.
And it seems that it's, I can't think of too many examples where the conservative states are trying to impose a law on the liberal states.
Seems to be all that the liberal wants to have the federal government so that you can't have state autonomy and that conservative states can't say, hey, we don't want things like abortions here.
So I don't really like, you know what I mean?
Just who cares?
Like you can figure it out.
It's a logistical issue.
You really want to make abortions available for people in conservative states.
You can figure it out.
If there's that much money in it, I don't know.
Just drive down there and pick them up.
You don't even need to get plane tickets.
It's not that much of a drive over a state border.
They got telemedicine.
This is not impossible to figure out how if people in Texas don't want to have abortions in their state to make it available.
It's not like this really just, it's just noise.
Yeah.
Well, it also seems to me, and I think this is just as I look at it, right?
And part of this is because progressives have won so much more in the culture than conservatives.
That's an absolute.
They want to be celebrated.
And so you also just get, you also just get a little bit more greedy and a little bit more, like you develop some more hubris about what you can pull off when you're winning all the time.
You know what I mean?
Whereas like the conservatives, it's so far out of their reach that the idea that they could enforce their laws on the blue states is just, you know, so there's something to that element.
Maybe we would see something different if conservatives had been winning every cultural battle, you know, and let's say we had like a more religious society than we had ever had.
And there was, you know, and people, you know, men were wearing suits and ties, and everyone was going to church every Sunday, and everyone, you know, whatever it is, and you saw nothing but like strong family values and your TV sitcoms and stuff like that.
Maybe they would start feeling like, yeah, we got to crack down on these abortions in New York.
You know, I don't know.
But the way things are right now, it's like you have this, like, you have Red America who largely feels like abortion is murder, yet it has to be allowed in their states.
Then, on top of that, the Democrats are going to be like, also, your tax dollars have to fund it.
I mean, they'll mock you and say, oh, no, it's not funding abortion.
It's just funding the organization that does the most abortions.
But I mean, come on.
And then they're going to start talking about like third term, you know, abortions and later, you know, if you remember like a couple years ago when this blew up as a huge thing, or you had the Virginia governor talking about even the day after delivery killing.
But I mean, it's like to the point that, you know, it's, it's almost just, it's like with all of these things, you, you're, it's not like you're just trying to win for your area or for your people.
It's like they won't be satisfied unless they've had the complete like humiliation and total defeat and total surrender of their enemy.
You know, it's not, it's not enough that we got prayer out of the schools or that we have a very, you know, culturally libertine, like progressive society.
It's not enough that every commercial during the Super Bowl has to be like a woke scold, you know, like yelling at the guy watching the game.
It's like, also, I want to teach your boy that he's a girl.
Like it's, they really want, and like, you go, it's just who's really imposing on who here?
From the libertarian perspective, after a while, you're like, Jesus, man, like not everyone sees the world the same way you do.
And I think those people have a right to live the way they want to live.
Also, also these things, you know, anyway, it's, it's just, it's, it's an interesting development.
Now, to, you know, I also have my own, you know, thing that I, what I hate about abortion being front and center is that I think that it does divide the libertarian movement.
And that's, that is certainly not my goal.
That's not what we want to do right now.
I think especially after the, you know, totalitarianism of the last two years, the last thing I want, I want there to be a strong liberty movement that's like really opposing all these things as we're, you know, debasing our currency and flirting with nuclear war and coming off of two years of lockdowns and mandates and passports and all this.
And then, of course, this is now an issue that's, you know, there are people in, you know, liberty, people who believe in liberty who fall on each side of this.
I will say that I think the, you know, the what makes me pro-life is what really like, you know, pushed me over the edge was having kids.
It really changes your perspective on all of this stuff.
And the, you know, I've told the story on the podcast before, but it's one of the things that I think a lot of fathers can relate to is the feeling of, I remember literally the first day I had my daughter is the first day I, you know, had a little baby in my arms and being kind of blown away because you've gotten used to now, like for nine months, you've had a pregnant wife.
Now you have a baby, you know, and it's like, and you're used to your wife being pregnant.
Now you have a baby.
And it's a pretty crazy feeling.
You'd be like, wow, like earlier today, this baby was in my wife.
And now it's here.
And really, you know, realizing that like yesterday, this was still my baby.
It just happened to be inside my wife.
And it doesn't really make any sense that there is something magical that happens when you take it out.
That now, all of a sudden, it'd be like, you know, it's pretty crazy to think that it goes from like, this is the worst thing in the world, would be to kill a baby, the worst thing in the world.
But yesterday, what?
It's just a clump of cells in there.
And then you take that back a day and a day and a day, and you're like, well, where exactly are you drawing this line?
Because man, if you're getting this line wrong, you're doing the worst thing a human being can possibly do.
And eventually I just realized that there's really it's really all arbitrary.
And there's really the only like non-arbitrary line is conception.
So more or less, that's my perspective.
But one of the things that started pushing me, because I was rethinking this, I used to be very pro-choice, and I was rethinking this over the last couple of years, I think, before I had my daughter.
And one of the things that really started pushing me toward that more of a pro-life direction was just, I was just noticing that the pro-life arguments were a lot stronger than the pro-choice ones.
And that most of the pro-choice arguments kind of almost like the way you said it, Rob, it kind of comes down to what you said.
It's just like, I'm not putting all of this on you, but it's kind of something like, I don't really want to talk about it.
Just like, if you want to go do it, go do it.
I don't really want to be confronted with what we're talking about doing here because it's a very hard thing to actually confront and really defend.
And I see these arguments constantly from the arguments from progressives are like the level of hypocrisy is mind-boggling.
And I know, I know, people can point out like, oh, they don't care if they're hypocrites or not.
But you know what?
The people who we're appealing to do care about hypocrisy and we care about consistency.
And so, yeah, it's still worth talking about.
And that's true, by the way, I think for anyone who's trying to talk about ideas.
It's like, yeah, well, we do care about the ideas and truth.
So that's who we're talking to, the other people who are persuaded by that.
But even from like libertarians who are pro-choice, just start seeing these arguments kind of like, oh, they're just very weak.
The progressive hypocrisy is just outrageous.
I mean, Rob, I tweeted something about this the other day.
And I think it blew, I think it's my most popular tweet I've ever sent.
I think I got like 3 million impressions or something like this.
But I said, here, let me read this to you.
And I know records.
Well, I think you'll like this, Rob, whether, you know, even though you're not in complete agreement with me over this.
Yeah, I got 80, 80,000 likes or 80,000, 80.7,000 likes on this baby.
But I said, progressives have given away their two favorite go-to responses on abortion.
Quote, my body, my choice rings pretty hollow after vax mandates.
And quote, it's a woman's issue is tough if there's no definition of woman.
So it is just, you know, the idea, right, that you could have democratic leaders saying, my body, my choice after the last two years is just like, I mean, even for like not the brightest people, I think they're connecting some dots on that one and going, hmm, that is really interesting.
It is really wild to see progressives almost embrace this like libertarian type of argument, but only when it comes to killing a baby growing inside of you.
That's the only time that this is, this becomes an issue.
You know, who is the government to get in the way of someone in their healthcare decisions, Rob, says Nancy Pelosi, right?
Isn't that kind of amazing to like see like, oh, all the, all of a sudden, all of a sudden you believe in this like self-ownership principle.
So that's just, you know, all over the place.
But in general, I always just find like these arguments to be lacking.
The, you know, the my body, my choice thing is like, look, who believes that more than us?
We're libertarians.
But of course, that's not in any way taking on the pro-life position.
I mean, the only way to take on the pro-life position is to headfirst take on the idea of whether or not it's acceptable to kill a baby because it's still inside of you.
And there's not this distinction between fetus and baby is like completely made up.
You know, people go into labor early all the time.
In fact, I have my wife's cousin, they had like, I forget the exact issue, but the mother had like some type of issue with her placenta.
They had to induce labor way early.
It might have been, it was months early.
Baby came out was like under two pounds.
Baby's fine now, doing fine.
You know what I mean?
But this would have been considered a fetus.
And then what they just decided it's a baby now because we induced labor and it came out.
You have to kind of like grapple with this argument of why it is exactly that it's the worst thing in the world to kill a baby after it's out, yet totally acceptable.
I mean, if you really like, this destroys the my body, my choice argument.
It's not just your body.
There's also a baby involved here.
And we'd all acknowledge that like, like my body, my choice should imply that you should be able to have an abortion anytime it's the baby is in your body, all the way up to the very end of the third trimester, if that's the logic.
And we'd all acknowledge that like, so like, in other words, if a woman's say 25, 26 weeks pregnant and they induce labor and the baby comes out, we'd all say it's, it's completely unacceptable to kill the baby the next day.
But if they hadn't induced labor and that baby was inside her, then it's okay.
It's literally the same thing.
It's the exact same baby.
And anyway, a lot of times you see people on the pro-choice side, when they do try to address this argument, I think they end up making just incredibly poor arguments.
Like it'll be something like, they'll say things like, well, when it's viable, that's the standard, you know, if the baby's viable or not.
But of course, that's got a lot of problems to it.
I mean, first off, the viability is like kind of dependent on where technology is at.
And that's a weird standard to have.
So if as technology improves, then the morality of when you can kill a baby changes.
Like that just doesn't really make sense.
I mean, like, there's no other standard of killing people that we would ever say the morality of killing someone changes based on medical technology.
I mean, you might be more likely to survive certain things, but I don't think you would say like murder, murdering a person is any different, you know, 20 years ago technology or 20 years ago today technology, right?
It's not like there was some drastic difference in any other type of killing a human being in 90s technology versus today.
But if you want to talk about how, you know, the potential of a fetus living outside of the womb, it's drastically changed in the last 20 years.
So the standard of when the baby is viable is completely different today and will be completely different in the future.
And by that argument, it would.
Sorry, go ahead.
Let's say you got an old guy and you got him on life support and you got a decision whether or not you're going to cut off life support.
Well, that decision is going to be nearly entirely dependent on, well, one of the factors is going to be, well, if I don't cut off life support, is there a chance at recovery?
Right.
And that's going to be largely dependent on what technology is available.
Okay, sure.
So in a certain technological like environment, like let's say I told you, hey, there's a treatment and it's three months away.
We'll have this.
Then you'll go, all right, I'll keep them alive for three months.
Or you might go, oh, there's going to be nothing that we could possibly do for him.
And now you got a moral decision about whether or not you're going to let the guy lay there and suffer.
You're going to be pulling some plugs.
Yes.
Okay.
So I agree with that.
And in fact, I think that one of the rare exceptions that I would make to being pro-life, like, I mean, I consider this still being pro-life, but one of the very, very rare, you know, these situations are very rare.
But if there was, if there are situations, which there are situations where the baby is going to, you know, has some like horrific illness and is going to suffer enormously and only has a life experience of like, you know, expectancy of like three years or something like that.
Then I would equate considering abortion more to something like what you're talking about, like at euthanasia type of situation, like what is going to create the least amount of suffering.
I think that's a reasonable decision for families to be able to make.
But the major difference between what in these non-extreme cases, which, you know, in the 99% of abortions, 99 plus percent, it's like, no, this isn't the same thing as like someone in a vegetative state who's not going to recover.
This is someone who you, everybody expects to recover and go on to live a life.
It makes sense for the decision to be somewhat relative to the technology.
Viability and Vegetative States00:08:21
No, but what you're making in a certain technological environment, like in other words, let's say we did all babies were in labs.
Like you basically got your chick pregnant and then they yanked it out, put it in a lab, and I don't know, someone else paid for it.
So that's not an issue.
So then in that environment, you might go, okay, then it's clearly life at time because that's where viability is.
Well, here's my point, right?
So in your example that you used, if there was some new technology that could like save someone from a vegetative state and let them live another life, they go, oh, it's three months away.
What the reason why the technology, I grant you, the reason why the technology would change the situation in that example is because the situation that you're looking at is somebody who like, let's say, are like in a vegetative state and can never recover.
But now the technology has changed that dynamic.
So the dynamic isn't really whether they're in the vegetative state or not.
The dynamic is like whether they can recover.
And so fair, technology could change that.
But if you compare that to a baby, nobody's making the argument that they can't recover.
It's your deciding they won't be able to recover, right?
So like you're deciding to have an abortion when the baby clearly could be born and live a life.
So my point is that the technology being able to like you going to that point is irrelevant.
But all of that is relative to technology because I bet if you look at birth rate survivals, I mean, of the actual kid over the last hundred years, it's probably up astronomically as a result of technology.
Yeah, but like so it's all tech driven.
Well, no.
I mean, if you like, look at it this way.
If let's just say we lived in a world where only 10% of babies past the age of three months actually made it to pregnancy.
Let's just say we lived in that universe.
We would view it differently because we go, there's a substantial chance that that kid never even's being born.
It is somewhat of a math equation.
There's only a 10% chance that it makes it.
So it's all technology.
I'm saying the technology creates a substantial variable in terms of like, you know, I guess the viability of it, which would kind of changes the viability of it.
But I don't think we would say if there was like some disease that was killing 60% of people, I don't think we would say, well, now murder isn't as bad because they were less likely to survive.
This is different because it's not an absolute at ever even of having had life.
In other words, I'm sorry, say that again.
I'm saying this is different because we're changing.
If I'm saying only 10% of babies actually make it, like that, like 90% of them come out as stillborns.
So, then you don't know that it was actually a life until it comes out.
So, there's actually a 90% chance that there isn't life there.
That's okay, sure, sure.
But that's only living human.
Yes, okay.
But in the case of an abortion, right, you know, whether or not you, I mean, I mean, I'm being an autist here, but I'm saying it's all relative to technology.
So, yes, well, I'll grant you now, but that's not, but the technology is not what you were making your point relative.
The implication there would be whether the baby is already dead.
Yes, I will grant you that at a very autistic point.
If you want to say that if the baby is already dead, then yes, you're not morally killing the baby.
So, then that would be a separate conversation.
However, in the vast majority of these cases, that's not what's going on, and there's no doubt about that.
Like, you people are well aware.
Um, in fact, in many of these abortions, there's already a heartbeat that's been detected.
Um, so okay, you know, that I guess I would grant you, but I'm just making the point that like viability or consciousness or any of those things are not really what we use as the standard of whether it's acceptable to kill someone.
And even in the euthanasia example, the standard is usually whether they'll ever be able to have these things in the future or not.
And if not, and there's nothing but suffering, then you usually go into a situation where you go, okay, well, now I would let this be the decision of the person and the family.
By the way, that's not the way it is under the law, but I would be fine with that.
I mean, I think it's a very difficult, you know, thing.
But, you know, anyway, um, but the arguments that I see being made by even a lot of, say, even some libertarians who are pro-choice will make the argument about like the consequences of banning certain abortions and the you know, okay, it might lead to like a police state or it might lead to like black markets or things like this.
But again, those arguments just ring kind of hollow if you haven't addressed the central argument.
You know what I mean?
Like, if you if you haven't addressed whether or not this is killing a baby, then yeah, you might say, like, okay, will it lead to a black market?
If we have if I, if we outlaw uh slaves, you might have a black market for slaves.
Yeah, that's better than having legal slaves.
Yes, or murder.
Murder.
I mean, you might have hit men, you might have a black market for murder.
In fact, we do have a black market for murder.
We still recognize that that's better than legalizing murder.
You know, it's just like that because whatever the consequences are of that, you, if, if it is murder, which is the pro-life position, then that just can't be allowed.
You have to try to do whatever you can.
Now, there are arguments to be made that, like, there are other things that would be more effective for pro-life people to do.
In fact, I've heard some pro-life people make these arguments and they make some compelling arguments that it's like this just what your focus on this should be is you know, whatever to like you know, raise resources for women who are in these positions to, you know, essentially, I think paying them to carry the baby to term and give it up for abortion is probably a better market solution than any of these other things.
And in fact, I think that would that would probably like if every pro-lifer put all of their energy into that, you'd probably yield better results than trying, you know, lobbying a way to change the laws.
But anyway, I just think that the basically, and I think one of the reasons why this is so important to progressives, and I think one of the reasons why a lot of people, particularly young men in And young women, I shouldn't say particularly young men, but young people in our generation have this kind of knee-jerk, like, well, there's no way this could, you can't do this.
You just can't ban this reaction is because it really is so much of the kind of like not conservative, very progressive culture and the cultural norms in our society are kind of dependent on abortion on demand being like this final safety net there for them,
you know, that you just couldn't live your lifestyle the way you do right now, unless you were like, well, look, this is here to catch me just in case we get into this situation.
And again, to me, that's just not, it's not a compelling argument, but I do think that it's, it's an explanation of a lot of this stuff.
And look, there's no, I remember thinking when, like, when I first got my wife pregnant the first time, like just being really like aware of the fact that I was like, wow, I am so lucky that I got the woman I'm marrying pregnant.
You know what I mean?
Like, I'm so lucky that I got my wife pregnant and she's the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with.
And it's not just like some nightmare chick that got, you know, and it's something, oh my God, it's still to this day.
It scares me so much for my younger brother, scares me for like, I mean, my boy's still a baby, but that to me is like the scariest thing ever that for a guy, you could, if you just have sex with some nightmare crazy chick and you get her pregnant, your life is in her hands.
Car Parts and Family Planning00:02:46
Now, that's true, no matter what the rule on abortion is, because that's, it's 100% her choice.
And if she decides she wants to have this kid, that's it.
You are now, you have a child with a nightmare woman, and that's your life, which is a really tough thing for the kid, for you, for everybody.
It's, it's really, really terrible.
And, you know, that's a thing.
And then you also realize, you know, for women, how different the stakes are if you can't have an abortion, that you might, you know, if you, you know, and like the truth is that it's like, you know, you can say like, oh, there's these things like the pill and like condoms and stuff like that.
But the truth is that if you're living a promiscuous lifestyle, if you're having sex with lots of different people.
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You know, First off, you're probably not going to be perfect on always taking the pill when you're supposed to and always using condoms.
I don't think most people are perfect.
You know what I mean?
In that regard, if you're living that way, you're probably going to slip up.
Yeah, right.
You know, and also these things aren't 100%.
But if you're living this way, then you are risking kind of like, yeah, you're risking getting pregnant.
And then that's that.
Now you got pregnant with what?
Some guy who was just supposed to be a hookup, and now you have to have a baby.
And you could give it up for adoption, but that's still, that's a lot to go through nine months.
Risks of Contraceptive Failure00:04:54
And I think most people, unless they're in a really terrible situation, are probably not going to want to give up their baby at the end of nine months.
And most women are like pretty damn attached to that baby at that point.
Now, I understand that changes things drastically.
You know, like that's like, holy shit, if that's the case, then man, hookup culture is really going to change.
But again, to me, none of that is really the relevant question.
The relevant question is, is this morally acceptable to kill the baby that's growing inside of you?
And if the consequences of that are this other thing that hookup culture gets reined in, it's like, well, I don't know if that's necessarily the worst thing either.
So anyway, I just, you know, it's, it's one of these things to me, like the way I think about it with the issue of abortion is it's almost like, and I've heard when there will be like good faith people arguing the pro-choice position.
And it's almost like they're shutting off a wall.
Like, well, I can accept this pro-life position, but they're granting all of these arguments that like just make way more sense once you accept the pro-life position.
And once you accept it, it's kind of like everything falls into place.
And you're like, oh, yeah, this just, this is just what makes sense.
Like, this is just the correct way to view this argument that it's just not morally acceptable.
And, you know, you'll see sometimes, like, they don't say this so much anymore, but like, well, they say some of these things, but the Democrats used to say all the time that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
You know, that was their, that was like the Clinton 90s perspective on abortion.
You want to make it safe, you want to make it legal, and you want to make it as rare as possible.
But that kind of leads to the question, right?
Like, why rare?
Why do you want less of this?
Why?
Why not more?
I mean, safe and legal.
Okay, I can understand the arguments for that.
And I can understand the connection that you're making between that.
But why rare?
Why do you want less women getting abortions?
Why don't you want more women getting abortions?
This is one of the arguments that you'll hear pro-choice activists make constantly, where they're like, you have no understand, like, you know, you're acting like women make this decision flippantly, but like you have no idea how difficult this is.
And it's like, well, why?
Why is it so difficult?
I mean, if you're telling me that there's no moral issue here with this, then why do you care if it's rare?
And why would it be so difficult?
It's like, it's almost obvious that the implication is that you're going, yeah, now we know.
We know you're kind of killing a baby here.
You know, it's like, well, just take one step over and just go, yeah, that's it.
Well, that's then it's not okay.
Then you can't do it.
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And again, like they will oftentimes both sides will invoke the hardest position to argue.
You know, so you'll see a lot of like talk of rape and incest from pro-choice people, and you'll see a lot of talk of like late-term, you know, abortions from pro-life people.
Both of these are incredibly rare.
That doesn't mean they don't happen, but they're incredibly rare statistically.
But the truth is that the vast majority of abortions happen because the woman doesn't want them.
You know, it's just like, I don't want to have a kid.
I don't want to have a kid.
I have financial concerns about having a kid.
I'm not ready.
You know, something like that.
That's like the vast majority of them.
And it's, I just don't see any compelling argument for why you should be able to kill the baby growing inside you because you don't want it.
And I think there's like a real disregard for human life to accept that view.
And, you know, again, we've, you know, we addressed this when I went on one of the last podcasts that we talked about this, but my view of it from the libertarian position is that, you know, some people take like the hard, like a hard libertarian stance and say, well, it's your body.
Obligations After Bringing Life00:03:27
You own the body.
So you have the right to evict the baby from your body.
I just don't, I don't buy that.
I don't think it's a strong argument.
I think any more than you, if you own your house and you have a newborn baby, like, no, you don't have a right to just kick the baby out of your house.
You know, it's just a snowy day.
I'm just going to leave the baby.
I'm going to escort baby.
You got to leave.
I'm going to take you and put you down in the snow.
Like, if the baby dies, the baby dies.
I kicked him out of my house.
I had the right to evict him.
It's like, no, that's murder.
Like, you had a baby, and now that carries with it certain obligations.
And one of the obligations is that, no, you can't just kick it out of your house.
You have to like arrange for it to survive.
That's that's a bare minimum obligation.
And having a baby, which I think most people who have kids can attest to this, it is really, as far as our existence goes, it's the closest thing to magic that you'll ever experience.
And I mean this literally.
I'm not even like talking about like the emotional stuff attached with it, like how much love and happiness and meaning and all of that.
I'm just saying the actual process of it is like damn near magical.
Like it's like, like, Rob, you knew me before I was with Lauren.
It's like you met Lauren.
Like, I'm like dating this girl now.
I'm engaged to this girl now.
I get married to this girl now.
And then just me and her made two more people.
It's really kind of like, it's like trippy and magical.
It's like you like rub up against your wife for a little bit, and then you summon another human being into the world.
That's like the action of all of it.
It's really crazy.
And, but the truth is that when we have sex, we know that this is a possibility.
You know, we know somehow that this is a possibility that this magical process can happen.
And in fact, biologically speaking, it's the reason we have sex.
It's the reason like everything around sex, the reason why men are attracted to like breasts and ass, like is all for biological reproductive purposes.
You know, it's like birthing hips and the, you know, your baby's lunch.
That's like really what you're looking at that you get attracted.
Now you're disconnected from that reality, but that is the biological reality.
And so I go, if you have two adult people, you know, it's like, I think I use the hot air balloon analogy, which is not mine, but I think I forget who I heard it from originally.
But with you, where I was saying, like, oh, you know, if you take someone into your hot air balloon and you're like, hey, look, this is the basket.
This is everything.
Like, okay, I'm going to close up now.
I'd like you to leave.
You have a right to ask someone to leave.
It's your property.
But if I take you into my hot air balloon and I fire it up and we go, you know, 5,000 feet in the air, and then I go, okay, I'd like you to leave.
It's like, no, I don't have the right to evict you up here.
I brought you up.
And now that carries with it an obligation to bring you back down.
That's reasonable to assume.
In the same sense, like if you have two adults and they perform this magical ritual in a hot air balloon that summons a baby into the balloon, the baby did not choose to be summoned into this world.
The parents did.
The two adults knowingly did this.
And I think it's reasonable to say that comes with obligations.
And I think the most bare minimum obligation there is to not kill the baby.
Shady CDC Data Discrepancies00:10:05
That's kind of my perspective on this.
I know there's a lot of people with different perspectives and tempers and emotions run high, I should say, with this topic.
But I do think that to me, it's consistent with libertarianism.
It's consistent with logic and morality to just be like, yeah, it's just, I know that we've all accepted, like, or that we've lived in a culture that has accepted this practice.
But that's, it's really, it's really just not okay.
And it's, it's interesting.
So anyway, I guess I do not see it as some catastrophe that the Supreme Court would say, you know what, states can decide.
States can decide what they want to do on this.
I do think that there should be exceptions for very, very rare cases.
Like I said before, the one, the one that comes to mind for me personally the most is like severe, like severe, like crazy rare diseases where the baby's just like, this kid is going to like suffer and won't live past two or three situations like that.
I understand.
I'm much more sympathetic in those situations to being like, this is, this is more on like, it's still killing, but it's, it's more like mercy killing than anything else.
But the idea want that decrepit soul.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Maybe he does.
I don't, I don't, you know, I only talk to him like a couple times a month.
So I don't know.
I haven't gotten his take on this.
But I just, I can understand the argument there.
But the idea of just like, well, I was in college and I was just getting drunk and having sex with a lot of different people and, you know, didn't wear a condom that day, but I don't really want to have a kid.
So I'm going to, seriously, saying that's not allowed, I'm fine with that.
I also think it's like most of these places.
Now, I don't know exactly what's going to happen because, of course, these laws that were attempted were passed under the Roe v. Wade regime.
So I don't know what's going to happen.
But a lot of the rules that the red states were floating out, like Alabama and some of these other places that put in these laws that got struck down, they would say things like, you know, it would be like eight-week bans and things like that.
Like you have, you know, if you want to get an abortion, you got to get it within the first couple of months of being pregnant.
Otherwise, you can't get one.
You know, I don't know, maybe that'll end up being the law of the land somewhere.
I certainly don't see this as like such an unbelievable, oppressive thing.
Oh my God, you can't get an abortion three months into your pregnancy.
I don't know.
I just don't.
I don't have any issue with that.
I also think that like, you know, there are things like the morning after pill, which basically flushes out a pregnancy before conception.
I mean, I don't know.
Work to make those readily available.
And if women want to take those the morning after, like, okay, fine.
I put a pull of them on my nightstand.
Breathmans.
You're like, wait a minute.
Are the breathmans on the left and the morning after on the right?
All right.
Better take a handful of each.
By the way, it's like a juice cleanse.
It's all good.
Don't worry about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, you'll be fine.
You'll be just fine.
You might as you know, you might, I don't know, lose some hair on your chest or something.
I don't know.
What's in them?
Estrogen?
Anyway, but so that's more or less my thoughts on this.
And I, and then I would also think that, you know, I'd hope that this gets struck down.
It's like, okay, the states will deal with it now.
Life will go on and more life will go on for some babies.
And let's hopefully everyone still stays focused on fucking, you know, what the Democrats and a lot of the Republicans have done to this country.
And still, you know, still put a lot of pressure on them for like, you know, as you mentioned before, this stuff with Pfizer coming out.
I mentioned the stuff with the CDC.
I mean, it really is just incredible.
Did you, did you read through that Pfizer stuff?
So, I mean, it's not easy because a lot of pages were dumped all at once.
Luckily, it was actually trending on Twitter.
There was a hashtag for it.
And people collected some of the some of the best finds.
I haven't verified all of them.
I can give them real quick.
The least interesting was just that the actual utility of the vaccines were less, much less than reported.
It was more like 12% than 95%.
And if you looked at the absolute risk reduction, there's a pretty big difference.
Those are pretty different numbers.
Yeah, but that's just that it doesn't really work.
The worst ones were that there seemed to be, I would put the need for evidence of safety on the CDC.
So based on what I saw being reported from the Pfizer documents, I would turn to the CDC and say, you guys were aggressively making recommendations that this was safe for pregnant women.
What data were you going on?
Because seemingly the risks of giving it to pregnant women was flagged in the Pfizer study.
So I would just say to the CDC, what evidence do you have?
Because it would seem like from the Pfizer documents that they were recommending against it.
And then the last one was that typically speaking, it's been reported, which means I can't verify fucking everything.
What am I an expert?
That usually they pull studies if there was a death within the first 30 days and there were like 1,200 deaths within this trial.
So it doesn't really make a lot of sense why.
I mean, forget the fact that they did an emergency authorization, the fact that the trial wasn't even stopped by what has been reported as being the usual measure of a single death.
So those were like the three bombshells in this drop.
Yeah, it's interesting.
And especially that, you know, if you put it into the context of how many people were being censored and just totally like demonized for even mentioning any of these concerns, like safety concerns, and even just like effectiveness concerns with the vaccines, like we're just, you know, completely shut out of the conversation very intentionally and very aggressively.
It really is, it's something.
I will say those are broad stroke claims based on what I'm, what people have picked apart from it.
But the fact that there's just zero coverage of it whatsoever, I mean, that's the more shocking part is that clearly, I mean, they didn't want these documents out.
They said it was going to take 75 years, even though it took three months to get the, I mean, six months to get it authorized.
They lost the court case.
They had to release the documents.
There's clearly information in the documents.
So at the minimum, I would think if I was CNN, I'd be going, oh, look, here we got more of the data and it proves everything that we've been saying.
At least that would be news.
But clearly, if the evidence is bad in there, you're not even talking about it whatsoever.
There's something fucking shady.
The whole world should be talking about this.
They should be the number one on every news station.
Well, in the same way that, like, you know, we were saying, you know, like, obviously they're, they're fucking liars, but like, if they weren't, it almost in itself proves they were.
But like, if you were CNN and you had said Trump-Russia collusion every day, 20 gazillion times a day for three years, you would think you'd really have to report on all the information coming out that proved that it was all bullshit, but they don't.
And the same thing is true for the vaccines.
Like, guys, you made this your number one issue that like everything we had to talk about was how great the vaccines were.
And everyone who doubted that was an anti-vax kook and all of this and dangerous and all this stuff.
And like, now here you go to have like a pretty huge victory for the people who were skeptical about this thing.
And that doesn't get coverage.
Pretty much exposes the whole thing.
Or look at it this way.
If they were reporting on the Russia thing for two years, and then all of a sudden there was a new treasure trove of documents and CNN didn't want to mention it whatsoever.
Do you think those documents prove their point of view?
Of course not, because then they'd be getting on the news.
Hey, look, the documents are out.
Of course they would.
There's just more proof.
So the fact that they don't want to address it whatsoever would seem to suggest it's not proving their perspective, which is also just further point that they're not doing journalism because they're not, you know what I mean?
Otherwise, they'd be reporting on it.
Either it would be, hey, this proves our point of view, or hey, look, there's some information here everyone should be aware of.
Not reporting on it whatsoever sounds like you're bearing the story for a reason, which leaves me no choice other than just to go to Twitter and see what people are pulling from the documents, which would seem to suggest that the CDC advised that pregnant women get this when all evidence was to the contrary.
Yeah.
And then, you know, the other thing that's like kind of like ironic about all of this is that, you know, they complain so much about people getting their news from like Twitter and from these sources that aren't as verified or whatever.
And it's like, well, yeah, but a lot of times like you almost force people into that situation because you won't report on any of the real shit.
So now you have to go online and like find someone who's reporting on it.
You know what I mean?
And the best thing to do is to try to find people who are like trustworthy and stuff.
But sometimes you're just like, well, here's this random source saying blah, blah, blah.
You will not find it in Google, any news source.
They're not talking about it.
If you just try and Google it, you're getting Pfizer as your first search results.
You got to like use like tricky terms to then find like random blog that are literally just random schmucks from the internet on like a poster board type thing.
Feels like you're in the 1990s early Craigslist internet for information.
The only place that someone has it is a Twitter.
They, at least this morning, there was like a trending hashtag for Pfizer data something.
And, you know, people were seemingly screenshotting things that were right in there that had the information and looked pretty flagrant.
But it's amazing the Elon Musk times of Twitter and how much more interesting life is when you can actually get information.
Yeah.
God, man, I really hope that trend continues.
All right.
We're going to wrap up there.
Don't forget, come see us in Reno in Chicago.
Come see Rob this weekend in Florida.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
Check out Run Your Mouth podcast, Rob's other show at Robbie the Fire on Twitter.