All Episodes
Previous Next
March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
42:08
Abort, Abort
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, become a member of PragerTopia.
You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
Subscribe at PragerTopia.com.
Hi everybody and welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Coming to you from Florida.
We'll be at Mar-a-Lago, President Trump's place, a little later in the day.
For one of the debuts of the 2000 Mules movie of Dinesh D'Souza.
In the meantime, I explained yesterday and...
Indeed, all through my life, why Roe v.
Wade was a horrible decision, even if you believe in pro-choice.
And yet, I can't say that I am in a celebratory mood, if indeed it will be overturned.
It deserves morally to be overturned.
It deserves judicially to be overturned.
But we are going to enter another period of intense leftization of this society.
And there is no end in sight.
No end in sight.
I find it fascinating, and I'm using as diplomatic a term as I can, Think of that people are as intense to preserve abortion as people are intense to say that given what is involved the killing of the human life, at least at some point, we can all agree on that, most of us.
I understand the intensity of those who believe that it is a human life.
I don't understand the intensity of those who believe that it is a pimple if the woman declares it a pimple, and a human life if she declares it a human life.
We who believe that it is a human life, at some point, I'm going to be as...
Moderate as possible in that description.
You have to be willfully mendacious to argue that at no point is the baby a baby.
So I understand the intensity of those who believe that the society has gone in a bad direction in doing this.
In arguing for an unlimited right to abortion.
But how does one explain the intensity, which is equal, and maybe even equal in numbers, of Americans who are intense in their belief that no matter what, under any circumstance, a married woman who was healthy and wealthy There is no moral problem in her having an abortion.
That should obviously, therefore, not be any legal hurdle.
So, I'd like to discuss that.
1-8 Prager 776. What is involved in the intensity?
And this is not a little fragment of the population.
A serious number of Americans who believe with, again, the fervor that people who are pro-life believe that under every circumstance and any circumstance there should be a right to an abortion.
It's too bad that the word abortion is used.
It really is.
Abortion has to do with pregnancy.
And killing has to do with the baby.
It's too bad that some synonymous word for killing was not used instead of abortion.
Abortion is a sterile term.
It's morally sterile and it doesn't fully describe at all what is happening.
But is it that You can't tell me what to do, but these are people who believe you can tell people what to do in every other circumstance.
People on the left are representatives of the idea that we can tell people what to do.
You can tell schools to shut down.
You can tell people to stay at home.
I mean, we just...
We just realized that.
I mean, the number of laws that they pass, you can't ask a prospective employee.
It's against the law.
Gee, are you planning to have a family?
Now, that may be right, that may be wrong, but it's a law.
You're told what you can say in an interview, what you can ask in an interview.
The only arena where you can't tell people what to do is with the taking of a baby's life, an unborn baby's life, at any point.
I read to you yesterday how different it is in Norway and Sweden and Denmark and France and Germany and Belgium.
Um...
Nobody has same-day abortion, you want it, here you go, you get it.
No other country, maybe Japan, I'm not certain.
I don't know what...
There might be one or two countries, and I don't believe they're European.
It's a fascinating and important question.
Why the equal passion?
Yes, there should be abortion legal up until the ninth month, through the ninth month.
Why?
I haven't figured that out.
I spend my life dealing with the question, why, in every situation.
And I never quite figured it out in this case.
So, that's the fact.
And if this is the decision, we are in for another five decades, perhaps, of unending battle in this country.
The Roe v.
Wade decision inaugurated the civil war that we have.
I think it was preceded by one other decision, the decision against school prayer.
That it was somehow found to be unconstitutional.
The court injected itself into areas it didn't belong.
And now we see the ramifications.
The Supreme Court justices who ruled in Roe v.
Wade unleashed a whirlwind.
A whirlwind.
And it only gets worse.
People are elected on both sides.
People are elected solely on the basis of their position on abortion.
The staggering crises of our country are secondary to that issue for people on both sides.
This is just a fact.
I'm describing a fact, and it's all because of Roe v.
Wade.
Those justices whose names aren't even known to Americans wreaked havoc in a decent society.
And all we are doing now, there's no good answer for the Supreme Court.
What, are they going to uphold something that was patently wrong?
Brett Stevens in the New York Times speaks about the damage Roe v.
Wade did.
But it's 50 years, he writes.
And you just can't undo 50 years of a society.
He might be right, he might not be right, but his point is well taken.
But he doesn't draw the conclusion.
There is no possible right answer for the Supreme Court.
Upholding Roe v.
Wade is upholding a horrible, horrible decision.
Overturning it is overturning 50 years of practice in the United States.
That's the situation.
They were forced into an unwinnable situation by the fools who ruled on Roe v.
Wade.
That is the fact in which we find ourselves.
1-8 Prager, 776-877-243-7776.
You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show.
Public education has gone off the rails.
Parents and teachers have had enough.
Watch the groundbreaking new documentary, Whose Children Are They?
Today on SalemNow.com.
Go to SalemNow.com.
Many people own coins that have not performed as well as they had expected.
Some own coins that have done better than they expected.
Or maybe you just want to cash out and do something else with the money.
Markets change, and to understand the current value of your precious metals portfolio, you should get a new valuation.
So I'd like to tell you about my friend, and he is, otherwise I never use that term, Nick Grovich.
He became my friend because I so admire his honesty and integrity and knowledge of the coin world, of the gold world, the silver world.
He's owner of AmFedCoin.
Nick has built a reputation for trust and honesty, and his goal is to earn your business for life.
Nick won't push you to sell, but when you're ready, I believe he offers the best price trade and consignment deals compared to anyone.
Right now, Nick and the AmFed team are offering their exclusive coin performance review for free.
That's right, free.
With a no-pressure guarantee from Nick.
Call Nick at 800-221-7694.
That's 800-221-7694.
I was only walking through your neighborhood, saw you ride on honey.
It's a male-female hour.
Very rare, because I never talk politics, and this is not even politics, really.
So, be that as it may, I feel that I've crossed the line here, but it's intentional, and I'm trying to analyze something, and I think it's an important subject to understand.
A lot of women, not all by any means.
The fervor of the people who want all abortions, no matter what month, no matter what circumstance, legal.
And that needs analyzing, in my opinion.
And generally speaking, we all recognize it's mostly women.
Understandably, they're the ones who get pregnant.
Who are passionate about it.
But my question, not but, and my question is, why the fervor on behalf of abortion by women?
And it is not poor women, it is frequently the upper class and middle class, upper middle class who are the most fervent.
So what is the driving element?
Everybody has a psychological element in positions they hold.
Hopefully it is not the element that determines their position, but everyone has it.
I might add that part of the clue might be, part, is that the fervor of the pro-life movement is also particularly female.
Men are active in both sides, but women have the most fervor on both sides.
More women want Roe v.
Wade overturned than men, according to polls.
By the way, if you're even a tiny, tiny, tiny bit cynical, and it may not even necessitate cynicism, one of the reasons that some men are pro-abortion...
Is that it gets them off the hook if they impregnate a woman.
They don't want child support for the next 18 years.
Or emotional demands made on them.
They're more than happy.
I mean you hear all the time stories of he really wanted me to get an abortion, he forced me to get an abortion, etc.
So it really raises the question even further.
One understands why a lot of men might be pro-choice, gets them off the hook for irresponsible sexual activity.
But why the women?
So the last theory was interesting.
They know, every woman knows, especially a woman who's been pregnant.
There's something, or nearly every woman, there's something involved here and it's not a pimple.
And if society has any restrictions, it furthers her sense of guilt.
So that was an interesting theory.
I'm going to write these down.
I might write a piece on all of this.
Why are women...
In the forefront of the fervor.
Okay.
All interesting, shall we say.
All right, so thank you.
That was Lynn in Atlanta.
Okay.
All right.
Let me get to another call here.
Okay.
I'm trying to take calls that are specifically addressed to this.
Some people are calling in on the pro-choice or pro-life side, and that'll be fine later.
Let's go to Mike in El Segundo, California.
Hello.
I think the primary reason that there's such a fervor in women...
To be very activist pro-abortion is because they've been whipped up and incited that way by political campaigns, by the Democrat Party, to win the women's vote on a single issue.
If you can get voters to vote for you on a single issue, whether it's abortion or gun control, you get them locked in for a long time, maybe even for life.
So I think it's purely political, and as a result, America's killing a million babies every year I hear every word and I was quiet because I wanted to hear every word.
I thank you for it.
So, according to that theory, it's not as much internally driven as externally driven.
The passion and fervor on the part of many women in the community of those who want zero restrictions on abortion.
By the way, there are, as I read to you yesterday, restrictions on abortion in virtually every Western democracy except the United States.
That almost nobody knows.
You should see we have a video on that at PragerU, and it's quite devastating.
Belgium, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Denmark.
We all have restrictions on abortion in some way, at some point.
Our left is further left than their left on social issues.
They're further left on economic issues in Europe.
We are further left on social issues in the United States.
So that's true.
This was a way of saying, vote for us on the most important issue of your life.
Okay, there you go.
I'll take your calls, take more calls when we come back.
I will acknowledge again, as I did yesterday, a deep, profound puzzlement that people are not even prepared to acknowledge that there is a moral problem with many abortions.
That's the most disturbing part.
Back in a moment, you're listening to The Dennis Prager Show.
The Dennis Prager Show.
In November of 2020, the Democrats were up to no good.
Apparently, they were planning to pull off some degree, maybe decisive degree, of election fraud.
Well, they might have been caught.
Find out what they did and how they did it in the new documentary film called Two Thousand Mules, directed and narrated by renowned filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, and executive produced by Salem Media Group, with research from TrueTheVote.org.
2000 Mules tells the story of those who tried to hijack a presidential election.
You'll see actual video surveillance tapes.
You will see how their cell phones were tracked to box after box as they got paid to carry out this illegal scheme.
Watch the movie and decide for yourself.
Attend a limited release premiere of 2000 Mules on May 2 or May 4. Check your local listings and get your tickets today at 2000mules.com.
That's the number 2000mules.com.
Hi, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
This is the Male Female Hour, and a rare one in that I am really talking about a politically-driven issue, morally-driven issue, as opposed to the micro.
The intimate questions of men and women.
Anyway, it's a big one.
Why the fervor on the part of so many women, especially women, with regard to having no restrictions whatsoever on abortion?
See, I would love to have an analysis of the women who were most fervent on this issue.
Do they...
Do they run the gamut from no children to having children?
See, if a woman has given birth, so a woman has wanted the pregnancy and has given birth, has carried a child and then given birth, doesn't that in some way even...
Sort of raise the stakes of the question that I'm asking.
And this is not...
I don't have an agenda on this.
I admit when I have agendas, obviously.
But this one is just to understand.
You have had a baby.
You carried a baby.
And I guess the answer would be, well, I wanted that pregnancy.
Right.
But let's say...
Let's say you had sexual relations.
You're a 25-year-old, 20-year-old even.
You've had relations with a man.
You were not raped.
You engaged in it completely voluntarily.
And for whatever reason, carelessness or bad luck, you are now pregnant.
There is a couple that would...
There are always couples that would be happy to adopt the child, but you are fervent in your desire that under those circumstances, at any time in the nine months, a woman have the right to kill that child.
That's what it is.
I don't know why.
Well, I do know why.
We don't want to use that language.
Abortion is the pregnancy.
Killing is the child.
There's a woman writing in the New York Times a fervently angry, I mean, spectacularly angry article about this subject today and how, let's see,
she's a gay woman, she writes for the New York Times, and she's writing about how her wife's stepfather raped her when she was 12. And I understand why you would have fervor that a 12-year-old raped by a stepfather be allowed to have an abortion.
Most people, I don't know, I can't speak for all, but most pro-life people would fully understand.
Why you would want that, and I think most pro-life people would even be willing to make it legal.
You're not going to force a 12-year-old to carry the child of a rapist, especially a stepfather.
But how many abortions are...
Those, the circumstances, they're extremely rare and horrible, and we understand that, at least certainly I do.
So using that as an example is a bit unfair, I think, to the larger argument.
Anyway, my question is, why are women's passion?
Women carry babies, after all.
Do they really think they're carrying tissue?
They're carrying the moral equivalent of a pimple?
That's a very tough question.
Okay, let's see.
Gina in Westmont, Illinois.
Hello.
Hello there, Dennis.
Sorry I missed you.
I know you were just here, I think, over the weekend, but I was out of town.
Too bad, yes.
So here's my somewhat theory, and it's not my opinion, but it's just my theory.
So we've raised these daughters over the last how many years?
Go to school, get a job.
We've taught them that motherhood is important as a career and a job and money and finances.
We have a selfish society, right?
So these women, they go to college, they have these one-night stands, and they don't want to be burdened.
They don't want the responsibility.
All right, so hold on.
I'm going to continue with you.
So you have another added thesis here.
Towels just don't seem to dry you anymore.
They feel soft and lotion-y in the store, but you get them home, and they don't absorb.
Well, Mike Lindell at MyPillow found that out around 2006, and towels changed forever.
He found the best towel company right here in the USA. They have proprietary technology to create towels that feel soft, but actually work.
And that happens to be true.
I use them.
They are all made with USA Cotton, and they come with the MyPillow 60-day money-back guarantee.
Six-piece set, two baths, two hand towels, two washcloths.
Regularly $109.99, now $39.99.
Just go to MyPillow.com and click on the new radio listener specials and get deep discounts on all MyPillow products, including the towels, by entering the promo code...
Or call 800-761-6302 for these great radio specials.
MyPillow.com, promo code Prager.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager, Male Female Hour.
And I have a position, obviously, on abortion, but I am not interested in that, in pushing that even, in this hour.
I'm interested in understanding women.
And their fervor for unrestricted abortion.
And even through the ninth month, even with a healthy woman and a healthy baby, and even with a couple that would be around to adopt the child.
Every circumstance would mitigate against it, and then they're still fervent for their right to do that.
So I'm trying to find out why.
It's not bodily autonomy.
I never believed that because it's not her body.
The baby's in her body.
Nobody's restricting.
Well, that's not true.
People are restricting women's rights with bodily autonomy, but they're doing the same to men, and that might be part of my thesis.
It's okay.
The women who are most fervent about bodily autonomy for abortion are most...
Opposed to bodily autonomy with regard to vaccines.
So it's hard to imagine that bodily autonomy is the big issue.
Alright, now back to Gina in the Chicago area.
And you were saying that we tell young women, career is more important.
They enter, in many cases at college, a hook-up culture.
And your take is, I don't want to be inhibited with regard to my choices and my sexual life.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's one part of it.
But I also think just kind of like with how you talk about climate change, they think this world is awful, they don't want to put kids in it.
So I have two daughters, and they believe...
Unfortunately, abortion is okay because why raise a child in an environment that they're not wanted?
They're going to be poor.
Maybe they believe also there's not enough people that will adopt them, even though my married daughter would adopt if they can't have children themselves.
So I think there's so much going on there.
They feel that they're...
There aren't enough people to adopt these.
And they think of them as unwanted babies, right?
Why bring an unwanted baby into the world?
Well, the odds are somebody wants them.
I know that.
I adopted a child.
Believe me, like I said, my cousin's adopted.
They know that, but I don't think they realize it.
Does that make sense?
Well, I think, well, all right.
But, you know, an educated young woman should not go on, what don't I realize?
They should just know it's not a valid argument.
The unwanted child might be unwanted by the mother.
That's true.
You can't deny that.
But why does that determine whether it has a right to live?
All right, but anyway, we're not debating abortion this hour, or at least I'm trying not to.
I'm only asking why the fervor, especially among children.
Kenesaw, Georgia.
Is your name Keith?
Keith.
Hi, Keith.
This is how abortion works in their religion.
A woman has a natural instinct to protect her children.
When she has an abortion, she goes against her God-given instinct, which is impossible guilt to bear.
Rather than going to a high priest to absolve them, they went to the Supreme Court, the High Supreme Court, to absolve them from their guilt.
Now the court wants to take away the forgiveness that the court gave them.
And that will...
Well, it's interesting.
You're the second person to make this argument that deep down they have some at least moral ambivalence.
And for the last 50 years, as the prior caller addressing this one said, the higher source was not Religious, but Supreme Court-ish.
And that gave them the imprimatur, the approbation that they needed for the act of abortion.
Look, the Supreme Court said it's okay.
Which was an interesting transference of words from legal to okay.
There are many legal things that are not okay.
It is legal to commit adultery.
But in most cases, I say most because there are cases that I even know of where I was not prepared to morally condemn the individual like the man I knew took care of his Alzheimer's wife for over a decade.
And in the meantime, and of course his wife didn't recognize him.
She was there in body, but her mind had gone.
And he fell in love with another woman.
Am I going to go around saying this guy's an adulterer?
So, anyway, I just wanted to explain why I said in most cases we acknowledge adultery is wrong, and yet, correctly, it should be legal.
I mean, there are people for legalizing drugs.
I think drugs are horrific.
Absolutely horrific.
So, I don't like the transference of the word legal into morally valid, morally okay.
Legal is legal and moral is moral.
But I think you folks have hit upon something.
I think that deep down there is a recognition.
This may not be a particularly moral act, and I've had 50 years of vindication from the Supreme Court, and that might be taken away.
Very interesting.
I'm Dennis Prager, Male Female Hour.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Yeah, that's a great, great, great video.
Economic Illiteracy.
Is a pandemic worthy of panic?
More than COVID, in my opinion.
David, the latest just came in, at least to my attention now, but it is just in the last half hour, I think.
So the Fed has raised interest rates by half a percent, the largest increase since 2000. What are your thoughts on that?
It was kind of anticlimactic because the entire market knew that they were going to.
This is part of the new Fed, which they will not surprise markets anymore.
Whether they're raising rates or cutting rates, they're going to be telegraphing it.
And so we've known for some time 50 basis points was coming.
The market's actually up quite a bit right now.
And the fact of the matter is that...
The bigger issue is the balance sheet of the Fed.
They bought all these bonds that are sitting on their balance sheet and they have to figure out what to do there.
That's a bigger story than the interest rate.
What is that story?
Well, essentially, the Fed, before a financial crisis, kept about $500 billion on their balance sheet.
That seems like a big number.
But then they added $4 trillion.
In the five years after that, meaning that they were buying bonds with money that didn't exist.
And that money would sit on the banks, create excess reserves, and nothing would really happen with it.
And it was a way for the Fed to kind of put liquidity in the financial system.
Then after COVID, they went on a tirade doing the same thing and kept it going until just two months ago.
They just stopped two months ago, and really the financial emergency of COVID was done two years ago.
So now what do you do to start to pull some of this back?
Well, without tipping the economy in recession, it's very difficult.
Japan ran up their balance sheet 30 years ago, and they're still doing it today.
So there's no precedent for how to get off of this.
If you, based on your last comment, if you could enter the world of John Lennon and reimagine, no, he didn't say re, and imagine an ideal economic policy structure and imagine an ideal economic policy structure for the country that could begin to get us out of this horrible mess, what would it be?
I'm bound by Thomas Sowell's vision, which is a constrained vision, because there is no perfect and there's no pain-free scenario.
And yet, to answer your question, I would stop doing the things that made it bad, and I would start doing more of the things that made it good.
So, if you're in a ditch, quit digging.
Do not spend above your means anymore.
We cannot pay back all of this debt immediately, but we can stop running up the debt immediately.
That's the number one biggest issue.
The Federal Reserve only needs to be such an important part of the economy because the government spends out of control.
The government spends out of control because the people seem to want them to.
Is there a danger of the U.S. dollar not being the world's currency?
The answer is, of course, there's always a danger, but it's a tough thing for conservatives because to overhype this point can really cause us to lose credibility.
First of all, it implies that there's another one waiting in the wing, and the euro and the yen are not exactly knocking on the door of greater fiscal or monetary responsibility than we have.
So the greatest argument for the dollar has been for some time that it's the best house in a bad neighborhood.
The Chinese currency is not about to become the world's reserve currency, but it certainly is taking a better role.
They have a more responsible monetary framework than we have.
And if, indeed, Saudi starts allowing them to buy oil denominated by Chinese yuan instead of U.S. dollar, then that's a big issue.
But the dollar will not lose its reserve currency anytime soon because we do still have superior demographics, entrepreneurial DNA. My point is, why play with that?
Why risk it?
Why slowly change it?
Let's stabilize it for generations to come.
You're really clear, which is a joy.
I love clarity, as my listeners know.
By the way, where are you located?
Where am I talking to you now?
Today I'm in my New York City office, and by 1 in the morning I'll be back in Southern California.
Buying from my New York presence to my California presence tonight.
But don't worry, my taxes won't get any better no matter where I take off or land from.
So, I'm sure you have not been asked this publicly, but are you a masochist?
Yeah, no.
I think I was last asked that by you.
No, I do love the two areas in which I live and work, but it is masochistic when it comes to taxes and regulation.
And we've also opened an office in Nashville, as many other friends of both yours and mine have done.
And we're going into other red state tax friendly areas.
But there's so many circumstances that play into it.
And fortunately, see, that's an argument against the way you and I view the world.
I'm in California because I can afford to be.
And I think it's crazy and stupid.
But the point is that.
California is going to a place where there's no middle class left.
It's only going to be people who are wards of the state or people who have achieved a financial ability to not have to care anymore.
Either way, I don't think it's a good thing.
Why don't they care?
Oh, I mean, in my case, Dennis, it's that, you know, you have family considerations.
No, no, no.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I wasn't clear.
I was speaking in shorthand.
Why don't the authorities in California care that they are killing the middle class?
That was what I asked.
I'm sorry.
Now I understand what you meant.
I used to think that they just simply disagreed.
That there was an ideological difference of opinion.
And Jerry Brown would make comments about, look at how all these people have stayed even after we raised taxes.
And I thought they were just oblivious to the reality.
But now I do think you're right that they mostly don't care because it would require the admission of not bad things in California.
It would require the surrender of the entire blue state project, the notion of a social democratic state that looks more like Europe than the conservative American experiment.
And for them, it's life or death.
This is the entire ideology that they've bet their future on.
Good answer, sadly.
David Banson's video is up at PragerU.com.
It's terrific, Seven Economic Truths, and his book is a major world bestseller, as it deserves to be, No Free Lunch.
Thank you, David.
Speak to you soon.
Thank you, Dennis.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, Every single day, become a member of PragerTopia.
You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
▲
Export Selection