Sept. 27, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:18:19
3836 The Abortion Debate | Steven Crowder and Stefan Molyneux
One of the more fiercely debated topics centers around abortion, whether human life begins at conception and a woman's right to "choose" whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. Stefan Molyneux and Steven Crowder sit down to debate this controversial topic in the latest of our ongoing mock debate series. Steven Crowder is a comedian, political commentator and the host of Louder with Crowder on Conservative Review TV. Website: http://www.louderwithcrowder.comYouTube: http://youtube.com/StevenCrowderTwitter: http://twitter.com/scrowderMug Club Sign Up: http://crtv.com/mugclubYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
For The Art of the Argument, which you can get at theartoftheargument.com, I'm doing a series of mock debates, which is debates where we mock each other.
I'm currently, my mock partner is Stephen Crowder.
He's a comedian, political commentator, and the host of Louder with Crowder on Conservative Review TV. The website is louderwithcrowder.com.
YouTube, Stephen, thank you for being here with me with these generous plugs.
I've been dreading this for weeks, so let's...
Let's see what happens here.
So, we are going to talk about abortion this morning and we are going to talk afterwards about our real perspectives.
Well, Stephen's coming in hot with the honest goods and I will tell you about what I think afterwards, but we are going to have a shot At this most challenging and repetitive and often spiraling and escalating and hysterical conversation, you will, and it is sad to say, we have to roleplay a good debate in order for you to get a good debate, but you certainly, certainly will.
So, Stephen, why don't you lead things off with where you're coming from in the abortion debate?
Sure. And I would like to submit one request.
Like you said, since this goal here is to show kind of a reasonable debate, I will request that you – because you can either roleplay Daniel Day-Lewis and freak out and storm off like a liberal, so don't get too into character.
But, you know, I want to try and keep this back and forth relatively, you know, accurate to sync direct with our answers so that we can actually – Explore the issue.
Because anytime you get into it with a liberal, they just obfuscate, which I'm sure you'll probably do.
I am very...
By the way, for people, I don't need role-playing.
We need to say this again. When we did the Confederate thing, half the comments were, I can't believe Crowder believes this.
I am pro-life in this debate, and I know you'll be taking the position of...
abortionists.
So I don't know.
I think we almost need to do it in outrageous foreign accents, like made up foreign accents, just so people don't sound clip us and give us into oblivion.
But yes, it is a role play.
And just be aware of that.
These may not represent the views we hold outside of this particular debate.
Right.
Do you, are you planning on doing opening statements at all?
Or do you just want to lead this off and I'll.
No, I would say, why don't you start with the case that is strongest for you in terms of denying a woman's right to choose.
See, I'm already douching it up.
Oh, framing the debate already.
Oh! Go ahead.
You did. OK. Well, I think there are a few questions that everyone wants to ask in this conversation.
Before we move on down the trail to these other questions about a woman's right to choose, which – I always find it interesting coming from the left who don't necessarily believe in choice as to what car you drive, what insurance you purchase, down to what kind of drink you can purchase if you're in New York City.
All of a sudden, it comes down to choice when we're dealing with the issue of abortion.
And of course, I try to point to conservatives being inconsistent because this is an issue where we are not pro-choice because my views are being infringed upon somebody else, which we have a problem with if someone were to say, you can't smoke a cigarette in your own home.
You can't drink a Big Gulp.
We understand that. The difference here is we are not talking about infringing on a woman's right to choose.
We are talking about infringing on that most basic right, the right to life of that living organism in the womb.
Living within the womb. We're not at all concerned with taking away rights from the women, but making sure that that, however we end up determining it, which I think is the foundation of this argument, what is in the womb, determining what rights that living organism has.
And if we can't agree on that, if we can't determine what that is, then the rest of the arguments are moot.
So I think that's always an important place to start.
Stephen, are you for a free market in healthcare?
Oh, I know what's going on here. Yes.
Oh, good. So you are for or you are pro or you accept the argument that it is wrong to force other people to keep people alive.
In other words, if there are people in a family who want to keep somebody on life support alive, then those people, of course, can do it.
You can do it through charity. You can do it through church organization.
You can. Keep people alive who require other people's resources to stay alive, but you are against forcing people to keep other people alive.
In other words, just because somebody's in a coma or they're on life support, they don't have the right to force other people to fund their survival.
So I'm just curious why there seems to be this Rather reverse vortex that occurs, this little eddy on the side of the river of thought, wherein with regards to pregnancy, you're perfectly comfortable forcing a woman to keep a life alive.
I believe you answered one thing.
Hey, sound guy, Edward, if you could make sure Stefan's a little higher.
Sorry, I'm hearing you soft and myself really loud.
I think you just answered your own question.
I paid him for that. There's no trick that I will not think to.
I'll pretend to be buffering at some point as well.
I think you answered your own question there, Stefan, with the reverse vortex.
I think there's a very fundamental, I think very easily recognizable difference between forcing somebody to sustain somebody else who would...
Be in the process of dying and committing the act of ending a life that is growing and is capable of being down the line a viable, rational human being.
I do think, like you said, it's a reverse vortex.
It's not the same. You're ending a life in this instance, taking a life, as opposed to forcing someone to artificially provide life.
If I've taken your question correctly, because you started off with, are you against I recognized it.
So if someone is on life support, right, they require external machinery or resources.
That's expensive. It's time consuming.
It requires people's resources.
And you do not like forcing people to pay for the resources required to keep someone alive.
You don't like forcing people to provide resources necessary for the continuance of life with somebody on life support.
It's just another kind of life support.
And in the same vein, we should not force people, according to this free market philosophy, we should not force people to keep people alive, and we should not force the mother to keep the fetus alive if she desperately doesn't want it.
A couple of things there. I think it was interesting that you brought up the idea of life support, because that'll negate any future of us going down this road of viability.
So we've now determined that what determines a human life cannot be in terms of viability, because that person is not viable.
So in other words, if someone is a coma, they're not viable, but we agree that you can't necessarily terminate a life, just because they're not necessarily viable or artistic.
I'm sure we can expand on that.
As it relates to this, it's different.
This is not any form of artificial Sustenance for a person.
This process is occurring.
This is a living organism existing in a womb that will grow regardless of your tax dollars, that will grow regardless of you paying to support it, that will grow short of the woman actually starving herself or us proactively committing the act of Terminating, of killing this baby.
That's very different. One is unplugging, and one is going in, dissecting, and killing.
And I think that's an important differentiation to make.
That is a living organism inside a womb that is entirely separate from the mother, from the father.
It is a human being.
It is a unique and different human being, an autonomous human being.
And we don't have the right to end that life any more than we have the right to end someone's life because they're squatting in an apartment.
Well, I think that what we've come up with is a bit of an artificial distinction, which is to say, well, one of these life-sustaining things is artificial and the other one is organic.
I think that's a distinction without a difference.
And let me sort of understand how this would play out.
Because I think we can both agree that it's better for there not to be an abortion than there is for there to be an abortion.
I think that there are very few people who- Can I ask a question real quick there?
I'm sorry? Let me just ask- Let me ask a question really quick there.
Sure. Why? Well, it's expensive.
It's time consuming.
It can be traumatic. There can be risks associated.
Prevention is better than cure.
Even if we look at the baby as some sort of problem or something that is negative for the woman, if you can prevent a child from coming into conception, it is better than expending time and resources and risk and just even being in a hospital.
I mean, unforced medical errors are huge predictors of fatalities and hospitals are riddled with germs and that horrible things can happen even if you don't go to a hospital but rather to a clinic.
So it's negative as a whole. I just want to be clear before we move on to this.
You're saying that it would be better for there to not be an...
We can both agree that it would be better for there to not be an abortion as opposed to being an abortion.
Sorry, let me just be clear.
In the same way, it's better to not get cancer than to be cured of cancer.
It's better for the problem to be solved ahead of time.
I'm for education.
I'm for free contraception.
I'm for all of these things that are going to help minimize the prevalence of abortion.
If you have the choice, it's better to have...
Well, I think, again, we're getting away from the comparison where you talked about medical practice versus just incurring some kind of a disease.
Getting cancer is different from getting pregnant, right?
And we'll get into the idea of choice there, reproductive choice, in a minute.
But I just want to make sure you are saying that it is better to not have an abortion than to have an abortion because of cost or complications.
That is your justification? Well, and I'm sure it's upsetting for some women.
Some women may end up regretting it.
And sure, it diverts resources.
The cost of healthcare is insane.
Do you know, like from 2004 to 2010, the cost of just being pregnant went from like $30,000 to $50,000.
I mean, it's an insane increase, right?
And part of that, of course, if you can prevent a problem, it is better than curing the problem.
So, you know, I would certainly rather there be fewer abortions and less abortions, and we can achieve that through proper education of kids and some subsidized or free contraception and so on.
So, yes, I'm absolutely in favor of reducing the number of abortions, just not by throwing people in jail.
Well, I understand, but I want to make very clear that the point for this, because for us to say, hey, it's better to not have an abortion as opposed to have an abortion, if we both agree on that, we have to determine why do we believe that to be the case.
Now, in my case, it's pretty clear because it's immoral.
If it's not immoral, then there's no real justification as to why would it be better to not have an abortion than have an abortion.
You shouldn't care unless, as you say, it relates, it seems your justification is cost.
Potential complications, potential upset to the mother.
Well, we could name a litany of procedures that would be very expensive that could come with complications and could be upsetting to the mother.
Chemotherapy. We could talk about people with Parkinson's using L-DOPA as a drug which can come with complications.
We can talk about certain psychotropic medicine.
Again, these would be expensive complications and cause great stress.
So if that's the justification, Would you be against those other forms of medical treatment?
No, no, no. Stephen, I'm not talking about banning medical treatment.
I'm saying that prevention is better than cure.
You know the old saying, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, which for my metric listeners is completely incomprehensible.
So sorry, Europe. You're out of luck for understanding that one.
But no, I mean, I would rather people not smoke.
Then get lung cancer and require radiation therapy and chemotherapy or whatever they do to deal with that.
So what I'm saying, I would rather there not be cancer.
I'm not explicitly and emphatically, I'm not saying there should not be cures.
I'm just saying I would rather there not be so we can work at preventing that.
I mean, in that agreement, let's not hand out abortions like candy.
Well, okay, so now we've gone away from, so it's not a moral reason.
You did list cost and complications and upset to the mother.
Now you've said that it's, we've gone to an entirely different reason about prevention rather than a cure.
So is there contention that the child, the baby is comparable to a disease in need of curing?
Well, certainly from the standpoint of the mother, if she is choosing to have something removed from her body, whether it's a tumor or a baby, clearly, like, I don't want to say babies are the same as tumors.
I understand that they both are rapid growth organisms, but I don't want to say, like, because, I mean, that's a repulsive thing, just aesthetically, like, oh, a baby is a tumor.
But if a woman is looking...
At the fetus as something that is going to debilitate her.
It's going to lower her sexual market value.
She's going to be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It is going to change her life.
It's going to interfere with her career.
It may even destroy her career completely.
Maybe she's poor. And of course, the number of poor women who are getting abortions is going up.
The number of Rich women who are getting abortions is going down.
So it's going to destroy her future, destroy her life.
It's hard for most people, just looking at it frankly, like I don't want to sugarcoat this stuff.
Looking at it frankly, Stephen, it's hard for most people to say, okay, well, this woman wants this growth removed because she thinks it's going to destroy her life.
How is that not her looking at it as if it's some sort of ailment?
Well, I think this brings us back to the fundamental question.
It's not about aesthetics.
It's not about optics, the differentiation between a tumor and a baby.
Will we both agree on that?
What would you say is the difference between a tumor and that baby in the womb?
You said aesthetics, but why would you not want to actually compare them?
What would be our reason for saying they're different?
I just want to be clear on the terms here.
I don't know how to answer that other than basic biology.
A tumor is not going to grow into a sentient life form.
John McCann accepted. I don't think that we can equate the two.
However, in terms of negative impact on a woman's life, if there was some illness that debilitated her and cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars and made her somewhat unmarriable and gave her no sleep and caused her boobs to hang to her knees and ache for all eternity, we would look at that and we'd say, well, if it wasn't if there was some illness that debilitated her and cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars and made her somewhat So, no, I mean, basically biology, they're not the same.
However, let's be clear.
If the woman's going for an abortion to have the fetus removed from her womb, she's viewing it as a negative or intrusive or destructive set of cells that is interfering with her life and her future.
Okay, so if I may do an exercise here, entertain me if you could do me that courtesy.
This comes down to the fundamental question, okay, tumor versus what is that fetus?
What is that woman? Is it a human life?
We need to determine what a human life is.
So you said if the woman recognizes it as a tumor.
Well, let me ask you this, because we're using the terms killing, murder.
If you eat a fish, Are you a murderer?
No. No, okay.
I'm stout. Right, yes.
So you're not. Now, why would you not be a murderer if you eat a fish versus, let's say, eating a human, which is cannibalism, which is a crime?
A fish is not a human being.
Okay. This is tragically, this is where we get to.
A baby is not a tumor.
A fish is not a human being. I mean, these are basic biological facts that we have to deal with.
This is important because we need to define the terminology.
So, a fish is not a human being.
Right. Okay. How do you, you've just recognized that fish as not a human being.
How do you know that fish is not a human being?
I would examine the cells and its actuality and its reality as a biological entity.
Great. We'll come back to that.
Now, if you were to address that...
I would also... Sorry, just to interrupt.
There's one other test that popped into my mind.
I could hold you and a fish underwater for a set amount of time.
Let's say 20 minutes.
Just kidding.
All right, go on.
No, no.
See who does better.
Most people would like to.
And then we could get into it.
What if I had an oxygen tank?
And then what if I could find anything?
But let's just stay with this.
So you said that fish is not a man.
Yes.
Yeah, most useless superhero ever.
So a fish is not a human being.
You've not recognized it as a human being.
Let me ask you this.
If I were to dress that fish up in trousers and a cardigan and make him look like Mr. Rogers, is he a human being?
He's still a fish. Yes.
So whether I recognize him as a fish or as a human being, whether you recognize him as a fish or choose to recognize him as a human being, it's a fish.
So we need to determine what is and that is a fish.
We need to determine exactly, as you said, scientifically, you look at the actuality, what that Let's start with the term organism.
I'm going to give you as much leeway as possible.
That organism in the womb.
This is important because it goes back to differentiating from a tumor.
I'm sorry, you cut out there for a sec.
Was that organism or orgasm?
Because when it comes to orgasm, I will agree with you that the source of life remains relatively constant for many of us.
Yes, exactly. And I will remain with you that we all practice fervently.
So lots of orgasms, not as many organisms.
But this, again, is important to differentiate between the tumor and the baby.
So that baby in the womb, just as we recognize the mother as a human being, we both have.
So as she is, this organism is also.
What is that organism?
What is it? The organism is a fetus, which is a human being in the making.
Okay, so it's a human being in the making.
What makes it different from, because I know you want to kind of create a delineation there, what makes it different from a human being, for example?
Why is it okay to kill that fetus in the womb, and then 20 minutes later, many would argue, is not?
Well, it is a human being and where it ranks on the hierarchy of humanity is pretty clear.
In that, if the mother needs radiation treatment to treat a cancer and the radiation treatment is going to kill the fetus, we say go ahead.
So we recognize that the life of the mother is superior to the life of the child.
And we do that because there is a biological relationship that is parasitical.
You could say symbiotic in terms of joy, but biologically it's parasitical in that the baby is taking resources from the mother.
The baby cannot survive without the mother.
And if we have to choose between the mother's life and the child's life, we choose the mother's Because the mother can make another baby, but the baby can't make another mother.
So we put human life in a hierarchy in this unique situation.
We don't do this generally in other situations, but in this situation, because...
We have this biologically dependent relationship of fetus to mother.
We say that the mother...
And it's not even like, okay, well, if she's got twins, okay, well, we'll keep the twins and kill the mom, right?
That the mother's life has infinitely greater legal and moral status than the baby.
And I think we all recognize that.
And for the people who say...
I don't want to get into – it's really boring to get into the incest and rape arguments.
They are, as you point out, less than 1% of abortions.
So we don't have to spend a lot of time.
And it is a thin edge of the wedge.
Well, do you agree with these? Well, then all abortion – I understand all of that.
But we do recognize that if there is a rape, we sort of at least raise the question and say, okay, well, should a woman be forced to bring her rapist's baby to term?
And we do give precedence to the woman's choice over the life of the fetus when it comes to medical decisions.
So yes, it's a human life, but it is not a human life at an equal level to the mother's life, and most people recognize that when it comes to making medical decisions.
First off, let's put that aside as far as what most people recognize, because that really has no effect on what science determines to be a human life.
So let's put that to the side and let's unpack this.
Stephan, I'm very surprised here.
I feel like such a dick. Sorry, I know you're role playing.
Because you've just made a very, I would argue, let me ask you this.
What is the definition of a bad argument?
What would determine a poor argument?
If the premises are false, if the reasoning is not sound, and if the conclusion is not valid.
Yes. I believe Socrates described it as using, if the terms are used ambiguously, if you use a false premise, or if you fail to draw the proper conclusion from a premise, or fail to display a proper conclusion from the premise, showing your work, as it were, with math. First off, you just said people agree that the mom's life is more valuable than the baby.
Now, you used examples where we're not dealing with actually attributing some sort of status to the mother's life and a baby's life.
You're dealing with an instance, for example, with chemo where both lives will end.
So we're looking at likelihood and actuary tables, and we're actually at that point looking to actively preserve a life.
At that point, no one is actively terminating life.
This is the act of, all right, we need to preserve at least one life here.
So that's very different.
We do choose the mother over the baby in that instance.
Well, neither is going to live if we're talking about a mother with cancer at that point.
No, no, no. Sorry. Just to be clear about the example.
I'm sorry to interrupt. But let's say that the mother can come to term, but the cancer will spread to the point where her life is seriously at risk.
So that the baby will survive and the baby will be cancer-free, but the mother, by deferring treatment to the point where the baby is born, is at significant risk of death because cancer will spread.
So we're talking about if you can save one life, you generally would choose to save the life of the mother rather than the child.
Oh, sorry, the fears. Right.
Well, again, I would argue we're getting into an extreme example where from all the all the literature that I've read has shown us that the reasoning for this decision is there's a high likelihood of both lives ending or both lives somehow having serious complications.
So let's put that aside for a second.
Let's deal with the vast majority of abortions.
So you did say human life.
It's a human life.
We agree that it's not going to grow into a dolphin.
I'm pretty sure of that, even though a lot of people seem to want to give birth underwater.
I don't think that's because of blowhole status.
Yes. There are actual dolphin births that occur.
And one couple had their baby killed by dolphin.
So I think that put a stop to that trend really quickly.
I believe so. Yeah.
Not on purpose.
They just like carried the baby down.
And they're like, oh, well, that's that.
Wow. Experiment failed.
I did not think we'd be discussing, you know, postnatal aquatic abortions in this show.
But, you know, I guess we have a show title now.
There you go. Dolphin performed abortions.
The Dolphin-Gosnell trials.
So I'm surprised that you agreed so quickly to the terms that this is a human life.
Sure. No, I mean, that's science.
I mean, that's science. It's not going to grow into something else.
It's human cells. It is a human life.
I mean, it is alive. It is dependent.
It is parasitical in a way that a human being is not.
But it is certainly, of course, it's a human life.
I think it would be insane to argue otherwise.
It's not a fridge.
It's not a safe. It's not a duster.
It's not a cluster of flies.
It's human. It's human.
Okay. It's a human life, and it's a human life, autonomous from that mother.
You're saying it's parasitic.
It's dependent. Yes.
At what point would we delineate that?
Because that seems to be the justification here.
When we're dealing with an abortion, we're dealing with a mother who doesn't want this child, right?
We're dealing with a mother who... Doesn't want it for whatever reason.
That's the vast majority of abortions.
So we've just agreed that we are ending a human life.
The life of the mother is not in jeopardy here.
So that requires extreme justification if we are ending a human life.
We've agreed it's a human life.
So we are killing a human life.
Why is that justifiable?
Does it go back to the nature that you just mentioned?
It's parasitic. It's dependent.
I've never really heard a consistent reasoning for why that's okay once we acknowledge it's a human life.
Okay, so the continuum question is interesting and not interesting at the same time.
So let me sort of point out what I think about that.
So as far as when the fetus becomes a viable human life, well, the general answer is after it's popped out of its heavenly Crater, right?
So after the child is born, then anyone can take care of the child.
Anyone can breastfeed, anyone can provide formula, anyone can take care, can be adopted and so on without, you know, an extra whiny pack of legs around it as well.
So there is this statement around when the child is born.
Now, I personally don't...
I think that's a little bit too late because the child is viable before that.
And it's viable in terms of like, can you stimulate the birth process?
Can you extract the child? When it's able to be viable outside the mother, I think that's a reasonable time.
Because as you know, very few abortions occur after sort of 12 to 16 weeks.
So the vast majority of them are very, very early on.
And so once the mother has gotten that far, to me, it's like, well...
Unless you're going to have a C-section, the baby's going to have to come out anyway, so why not bring it out and keep it alive?
So when the baby is alive, is able to live outside the mother, I think that's reasonable.
Now, you could say, well, why not five minutes before and why not five minutes after?
But the reason why that's boring is there's so many of these arbitrary lines that we make in society.
Well, we're going to say that You can drive when you're 16.
Well, why not five minutes before you're 16 and why not five minutes after?
You know what I mean? When are you an adult?
You're an adult when you're 18.
When can you drink? Why can't you do it?
We make these distinctions all the time as a society and they negotiate it and there's science and we just come to some reasonable.
And so you can always split this hairs before or after, but we do have to make some distinctions as a society.
And I think, of course, when a human being becomes a human being, like a viable human being, Okay, so a couple of things.
Essentially, you said the vast majority of abortions occur before 18 weeks when people are considered folk heroes like Elizabeth Graham, Elizabeth Warren, sorry, Lindsey Graham, Elizabeth.
They're almost interchangeable at this point.
It's so hard to tell the difference. Elizabeth Warren fighting for...
Yes, yes. Fighting for abortion after 22 weeks.
Now, these are the strict abortion laws that people are complaining.
So as it relates to the DNC platform, there is no recognition of a difference.
So I appreciate that you have some kind of a recognition of a difference.
Now, you've talked about how, as a society, we draw these arbitrary lines as to what determines this.
Seems as though your line is viability.
I would argue that it's very different as far as society determining when people can drive.
Again, that's different from country to country, state to state.
Some places it's 18, some places it's 16, like with drinking.
These are very different delineations than the ending of a human life.
And so the only reason you're saying we create these arbitrary lines is because you've created them, because you've acknowledged that this is a human life at this point.
Once you've done that, Anything beyond ending human life is acceptable in any capacity.
The lines being drawn are arbitrary and inconsistent.
I think as we walk through this, we'll prove that.
I want to be clear, the argument that you're making right now is that of viability within reason, correct?
Well, my major concern, Stephen, is who has the gun been pointed at?
Who is the gun being pointed at?
Now, once the child can survive outside of the womb, then the woman can give up the child and she's already taken it that far.
It doesn't really make any particular difference in terms of resource acquisition.
But my concern is that before that, If the woman has the abortion, well, you're going to throw the abortionist in jail, you're going to throw the woman in jail, you're going to whatever, right?
So, at this point, I'm concerned with minimizing the amount of force that is used, and we all understand if a woman strangles a baby after it's born, assuming that not one cell of it is still somewhere near the vagina, then that is an evil action, this infanticide, and she's going to get charged with first-degree murder and go to jail for a long time, and rightly so.
But the morning after pill, you know, most people are like, well, it's going to prevent, like the egg has met the sperm, but it's not going to implant, so it's not really that big a deal.
So somewhere between the morning after pill and the baby exiting the vagina, we have to give it a legal status as a protected human life.
And I think that we're going to have to make some distinction.
To me, viability is good, too, because as science increases and as science improves, we can move viability further and further back and save more babies.
Yeah. Not necessarily because viability is very circumstantial.
Let me ask you this. And again, just play my exercise here.
Okay, is a baby that's immediately born outside of the womb viable?
Well, I would assume in most cases, yes.
There are cases, of course, where babies need to be on ventilators and like a whole bunch of other complications have ensued.
But in general, you know, on average, which I think we should try and deal with, yes, a baby who was born is viable.
Even though it can't feed, clothe itself, take care of itself, it requires somebody else.
Well, sure. As a married man, you know this is the general state of married men as well.
And we are still considered viable and have rights, whatever rights our wives choose to give us.
That's cute, but not entirely accurate.
Because I want to determine what viability is.
In this case, we're talking about – again, sorry for being a dick.
I'm treating you like Sally Cohn here.
I've got to believe it.
That's why I keep looking away because I feel bad.
Because it seems as though maybe you're just saying viability means it has a heartbeat – No, viability is when it is no longer directly physically drawing its resources from the mother and cannot be substituted, right?
So you've got an umbilical cord jammed in your six-pack.
Well, you can't substitute that.
There's no swapping out.
It's not like, well, I could take regular.
I could take unleaded.
I'm going to pick whichever tube to jam in the feeding hole.
Once the baby is out, the umbilical cord is cut, anybody can feed that baby.
There's no direct parasitical relationship with the mother.
So the only, I want to make sure that we're clear, the only way we are defining viable is if there is no longer an umbilical cord attached to the baby.
If other people can feed the baby.
Okay, so what about a baby that's born late?
What about a baby that's born two weeks after its birth date, an entirely developed baby that we know for several months would be entirely viable outside of the womb?
It just so happens to have an umbilical cord attached to it.
It could be fed, it could be clothed, it could be swaddled by somebody else, but it happens to be in the womb and we have to induce pregnancy.
Do we not determine that to be a viable life form?
I thought we weren't going to deal with exceptions in very rare situations if we're going to try to deal with the middle 99% of the bell curve.
I mean, those are exceptions for sure.
As long as the baby is inside the womb and must be directly fed by the mother and there's no possibility of substitution, then I would say it does not have protected status because – That is a unique situation wherein you're directly dependent on other people.
In the same way you can't force people to provide feeding tubes and respirators to people in comas.
This must be a voluntary action, but charity, family, or whatever it's going to be.
When people are dependent, you can't force other people to provide for them.
You're not a big fan of the welfare state.
You're not a big fan of forcing people to provide this kind of resources to people.
And you can't force the mother to continue to provide for bodily resources.
She has to eat extra. It's uncomfortable.
It's difficult. No smoking, no drinking, which as far as I understand it is quite popular among certain sectors of the society, particularly the fairer sex who end up with a lot of pregnancies.
Oh! Drifted. Drifted out of character just for a moment.
Drifted. Drifted. I'm back. You've got to believe in it.
I'm back, man. I've got to stay this mofo up.
All right. So while it's directly dependent, now the goal of course is to get the baby out of the mother and make it independent so that other people can feed them as much as possible and as early as possible and that's when I would consider them to have protected rights.
Okay. Well, first off, I have no problem dealing with the extreme examples.
I just didn't want to rush to rape in order to get off the topic of this being a human being, which is what you were doing earlier.
If we want to go back to that, I'm more than happy to.
And I also would argue that, of course, a baby being born after the due date is far more common than abortions being performed for rape.
As a matter of fact, it's a very common occurrence, even between me and my brother.
I was almost born early.
My mother was given medication because I was getting me out of here.
My brother was born a little bit late.
So this is pretty common. By your own definition, it cannot be consistent as to what is viable.
So I want to make sure that we're clear because, for example, someone in a coma is not viable.
For example, a baby, an infant on its own outside of the womb is not viable.
The definition that you have right now, what determines whether killing a human being is okay or not, is if it is...
Well, I see something there, and we can get back to it.
Is if that other human being who we are killing is...
Dependent through the use of an umbilical cord is using the mother's resources even though it is a separate human being from the mother.
That is the definition of viable that we're using.
Well, of course. Look, I mean, if you're a woman, you have a kidney removed, you don't have a party.
You know, like, and you hold the kidney around in swaddling and so on.
Like, oh, look, I've got a lovely kidney here.
He's going to grow up to be a big kidney.
You don't hashtag shout your kidney removal? Yeah.
Yeah, so for sure.
But the question is, again, you're focusing on the fetus, which, of course, I understand.
It makes perfect sense. But...
The human fetus, absolutely.
Totally conceded, the human fetus.
But Stephen, my question is, are you comfortable?
Because you know, whenever there's a law, there's a gun pointed at someone.
That is the reality.
The police don't invite you down to the station when you're arrested.
You know, hey, anytime you come by, bring some scones, we'll have a party.
You're down there or you're on the ground.
Are you comfortable?
Because this is what it comes right down to.
There's a gun in the room whenever you have a law.
Are you comfortable pointing the gun at the mother?
Who wants to have an abortion and saying, you go to jail.
We're going to keep you away from abortionists.
We're going to lock you up with all the stress hormones and the cortisol hormones that flood into that.
Because the baby is incredibly vulnerable to the state of mind of the mother, right?
There are certain theories that say sexual orientation may have something to do with stress, right?
So hang on, hang on. If you're comfortable saying, okay, if there's a guy in a coma, And the family doesn't want to pay for that guy in the coma.
They're going off to jail. We're going to point a gun at them, drag them off to jail.
If you're comfortable saying that to a pregnant woman, saying, gun to the head, off to jail, you're considering an abortion or you had an abortion and therefore we're going to throw you in jail.
You're considering an abortion. You went to go and visit an abortion doctor and therefore you and the doctor go to jail.
The problem is she's got a hostage, and you have to be careful when you have a hostage.
I think you should try and, quote, rescue that hostage from a dangerous situation as soon as possible, but you can't just go waving guns at people because the fetus is very dependent on the emotional state of mind of the mother.
I would answer your question absolutely because we are not dealing with a hypothetical gun.
We're dealing with a very real and physical set of Prongs and scissors and tubes going in to kill that baby.
So I am not forcing a mother to do anything.
I'm merely forbidding the mother from killing a human being, which you've acknowledged is what we're doing.
The question then, of course, and of course we should not have people running around killing human beings.
I mean, what are we, Chicago? I mean, of course we shouldn't have that.
Or killing cinema. That film was shit.
Go ahead. But the question is around, so do you feel that the moral What objection occurs even with, what is it, RU486, which I keep thinking is an Intel chip, but is it the morning-after pill, is that also, in your mind, grounds for first-degree murder?
Okay, so this is interesting because I hear some stuttering here and I didn't necessarily hear an answer to my question.
I apologize if I short-circuited I was trying to think of a good joke, which is extremely immature and irresponsible, if not unprofessional.
Could you please repeat the question?
I will take another swing. It's a genre of joke, the dead fetus joke.
My point is, I don't have to deal with...
It's a dying art. Oh!
Sorry, go ahead. I don't have to deal with a hypothetical gun.
You have to deal with a very physical set of scissors, prongs, poison, tube dismembering.
Uh, to which this baby, this human life is subjected.
I am not forcing the mother to do anything.
I am merely forbidding you from taking the life of a human being.
Now you've acknowledged that this is a human being and you've acknowledged that you're killing a human being.
So when you talk about a gun to the head, what gives you the right or the mother, the right based on these premises to kill another human being?
We are going back to the question of definition.
I am not for the killing of human beings.
What you're trying to do is we're trying to figure out where the definition of human being starts.
And you're now sort of backtracking and assuming that it starts right after conception, right?
So this is why I asked the question about the morning after pill, right?
So after conception, you have human cells embedded In the lining of the uterus.
I don't know. It gets a little mysterious, that plumbing for me.
But you have the egg implanted.
It's, of course, starting to grow and so on.
So you definitely have, other than, you know, the most prolific abortionist in the world, known as Mother Nature, who, what, a third of pregnancies end up self-aborting.
But let's say that you have a viable egg that's implanting.
Are you saying that the morning after pill should be treated the same as first-degree murder?
Because I'm trying to figure out where it starts.
If it starts for you there, then we can go from there.
Yes. Well, I think it's important because you acknowledged earlier a human being, and now it seems as though you're backtracking.
We need to determine what a human being is.
No, no. When it's viable outside the womb, when it can be taken care of by somebody else, that's sort of where I'm working from?
Okay. But then we weren't able, again, that went into the question of, it went into the legal question.
So you transitioned from that to the legal question of what gives me the right, because you weren't necessarily able to consistently answer with this form of viability.
So let's go back to, it always comes back to this, right?
We can say, well, what about the mother?
Okay. If the mother is a human being, we have to figure out, is this life that we're ending?
Before you said human being, now you want me to define human being.
Okay. What defines a human being?
That's the fundamental question that we are asking right now.
Okay. That's a good question.
No, we did that. Look, the fetus is a human being.
I have no doubt about that.
But it is not a human being with the same legal status as a baby.
Right, because we're talking about law here.
I mean, in terms of ethics, yeah.
I mean, I'd love to talk every woman out of having an abortion.
You know, it's one of the great tragedies of Western civilization.
What have there been? 50 million abortions in the last – well, since Roe v.
Wade, 1973, there have been, what, 50-plus million abortions in the United States.
And you know what they're saying now?
Now we need to import everyone from Somalia because there are just not enough people in the United States.
So don't get me wrong.
I'd love to talk everyone out of having an abortion.
But the question is around the legality of it.
The morality of it is a different matter.
Why would I want to talk anyone out? Why would you want to talk anyone out?
You've just given a litany of reasons as to why it's a good thing.
The virtues of abortion, saving costs, reducing complications, undue suffering.
I'd love to talk everyone out of smoking.
I'd love to talk everyone out of drinking to excess.
I'd love to talk everyone out of their gambling addiction.
That doesn't mean that I think smoking or drinking or gambling should be illegal, right?
So the question is, I'd love to talk people out of a lot of stuff.
I'd love to talk people out of making false, sophistic arguments.
Hell, I'd like to talk to myself out of that right now, but I'm role-playing, so I can't, right?
So there's lots of things I'd like to talk people out of that I don't necessarily want to make illegal.
You've never listed the virtues of smoking.
You've never listed the virtues of not wearing a seatbelt.
You listed the virtues.
You listed the positives of an abortion.
So I cannot see any justification for the argument.
No, no, no. Not positives. No, no, no.
Yes. Yes, reduced cost, less strain on society.
It's the avoidance of a negative, right?
So there's a difference between winning the lottery and not being robbed from, like not being stolen, right?
So if some guy sticks you a knife in your belly in the alley or near your belly and says, give me your money, but you push him and run away, Well, that's a positive, I guess, but it's really the avoidance of a negative.
Whereas if somebody says, hey, here's $5,000, right?
Then that's a positive, right?
So the abortion is really the avoidance of a negative, which is the destructive impact that the fetus is going to have on the mother's life according to her perceptions.
And so it's really the avoidance of a negative rather than the pursuit of a positive.
It still begs the same question.
Why would you consider that a travesty?
Why would you want to stop tens of millions of avoidance of a negative?
I think doesn't that question sort of answer itself?
Why would you want millions of people to avoid a negative?
No, no. You said avoidance.
You said abortion is an avoidance of a negative.
So while it's not a positive, it's better than the negative.
It's an avoidance of a negative.
It's not an ideal situation. Here we are.
Abortion is an avoidance of a negative.
You just said that I considered a travesty.
I would like to tell everyone to not have an abortion.
If it's an avoidance of a negative, which is the best case scenario, why?
Please, pray. Do tell. Why would you want to tell anyone to not practice this avoidance of a negative?
Sure, that's a great question.
And I think that what we want to do in society is not point guns at people and throw them in jail, if it's at all possible to avoid that scenario.
So, you know, I mean, you know the case as well as I do, which is, first of all, be responsible with your sexuality.
You know, ladies and gentlemen, Well, for ladies, there are 18 different kinds of birth control, and they're available for free.
Or you can order bulk condoms online.
Obviously, I have to pay extra because I have to get small British dirigible size, but you can get them in bulk.
It's ridiculously cheap. You can get them from Hong Kong very inexpensively.
Continue. Three times the product, same amount of materials.
Anyway, so you can prevent all of this kind of stuff.
If you do get pregnant, you can choose to get married and raise the child.
If you do get pregnant, you can choose to bring the child to term and to give the child up to adoption, wherein the child has a very positive life outcome adopted into a happily married couple or whatever.
So I would like to make the case for people to have this.
That does not mean.
That I wish abortion to be made illegal and outlawed and people having guns pointed at them and thrown in jail.
And as you know, the statistics are, it's not a perfect argument, but it's not unimportant that around the world, there are like 68,000 women who die from back alley abortions every year, 5 million who have, you know, long term complications from these horrible procedures.
The fact is that, unfortunately, when women get pregnant outside of wedlock, they will do just about anything.
Historically, people drank all of this horrible stuff.
As you say, they starved themselves, they punched themselves in the stomach, they throw themselves downstairs just to try and avoid having this baby.
That's pretty gruesome stuff.
The woman ends up having the baby but hates the baby, feels it's ruined her life, ruined her figure, ruined her future, ruined her career prospects, ruined her sexual market value.
She's going to take out that hatred and that disgust and that contempt on the child, thus raising somebody who's probably going to be a backup dancer for Eminem.
I mean, there's so many life outcomes that happen, none of which are particularly good.
So I'd like to talk people into bringing the child to term.
I think it's better if there are, you know, People in the world rather than no people in the world.
However, the question comes down to, is it something that should be outlawed and people thrown in jail for?
As you said, none of those outcomes are good.
None of those arguments are good.
Everything that you listed there was circumstantial.
It comes back to the idea, I guess, let's get back and define what is a human being.
We keep coming back to this.
I want to make sure that I understand. Let me give you my definition.
Well, that's what matters.
If killing a human being is okay, again, we're talking about a gun to the woman's head.
Well, again, we have to define what this being is.
It is a human being. Let me give you my definition.
I'm not entirely clear because right now you did so.
I think it's still viability based on the umbilical cord, if I'm not mistaken.
But let me give you mine. So let me make a case as to why this is the only consistent way to judge it.
Viability is inconsistent as we've seen.
Being a sentient being is inconsistent as we've seen.
The only scientific definition that we can conclude as far as what determines a human being.
Are you familiar with genetic codes?
You know what our genetic code is?
DNA, you have a genetic code, I have a genetic code.
Are you aware of this? Yes.
Okay. And just like a fingerprint, it is unique to everybody.
Your genetic code is different from mine.
There's no two people alike who have the same genetic code.
Now, a sperm doesn't have a genetic code.
An ovum doesn't have a genetic code.
A fertilized egg, at the moment of conception, there is a genetic code which is separate from the mother, entirely different from the mother, which will determine that baby's eye color to its potential height, to its male pattern baldness, to its gender.
It is entirely separate from the mother-father, a brand new genetic code.
That is the moment that scientifically we recognize a new human being.
Well, absolutely, and I fully accept that with the one caveat, or I guess just the minor footnote, which is that the genes for male pattern baldness also associated with enormous genitalia and correctness in arguments.
I just wanted to mention that because it looks very cold in your office.
So please continue.
That's my definition of a human being.
And at that point, killing another human being is unacceptable.
It's as simple as that.
And you haven't provided any arguments or rationalizations beyond that as far as what determines a human being and what justifies the killing, the premeditated murder of that human being.
So I still am waiting to hear some kind of a justification to that.
Sure. I mean, I've given a little bit.
I can provide another one if it helps the audience and yourself understand this perspective.
Sure. So in most, let's just take sort of, you know, rape, theft, assault, and murder, and so on, the great thou shalt nots of most rational, at least common law, i.e.
non-governmental legal systems.
If I say, Stephen, no killing, not day Jared, right, then you don't have to do anything, right?
of not killing someone.
If I say don't steal, well, you having a nap, you don't do anything.
There's no positive actions required.
There is merely a ban on a positive action.
So the fetus is a unique thing where if we say, you can't kill this, Like if you say, well, I can't kill such and such, right?
Then you just don't have to do anything and you've achieved that.
But with a fetus that is growing inside a woman, she has to do a whole bunch of stuff.
There's a whole bunch of positive actions that are required, right?
In terms of, you know, keeping the kid healthy and getting enough sleep and exercise and no caffeine, no smoking, no drinking, all this kind of stuff that goes on.
There's a lot of positive obligations that go on for nine or ten months depending on how well she can clench or whatever, but there is a lot of positive obligations that are associated with this.
One thing that I find true about right-wingers such as yourself is you're very much not a fan of enforced positive obligations.
You must help the poor. You must We're good to go.
Unchosen positive obligations is something that conservatives or small government free market kind of people don't like at all.
And I can understand the arguments behind that.
I'm not saying people should be forced to pay for abortion, nothing.
But what I am saying is that when you have a fetus, you're in a unique position where You have to do a lot of positive things.
Like nobody's saying, in order to not kill someone, you have to crap out a watermelon through your nose, right?
I mean, that's a very different situation.
So that's one of the reasons why I think morally or philosophically it exists in a different category.
Well, let me ask this because you use this term repeatedly, enforced positive obligation, that we have no right to enforce a positive obligation.
Okay, let me ask you a couple of questions.
Once a mother has an infant, that infant we've said is viable only if someone is feeding, clothing, taking care of that child.
Is that an enforced positive obligation?
No, not at all because she can make one phone call and she can say, I don't want to take care of this child and the police or child services or whoever is the local agency or a charity, she can drop it off at a hospital.
She can drop it off at a church. So she can remove that positive obligation with virtually no effort whatsoever.
Okay, so let's, I just want to get through this if you can just answer these because I have a few questions.
Okay, so drops it off, adoption, church, wherever, orphanage, okay?
Whoever there is taking care of that child, is that an enforced positive obligation?
No, it's a chosen positive obligation.
If you choose, like if you sign a cell phone contract, then you have to pay that contract or return the phone.
If you lease a car, you got to pay for the car, return the car.
If you enter into a positive obligation voluntarily, that is the case.
But of course, as you know, with failures of birth control and so on, you do not consent to pregnancy when you consent to sex.
And so those are very different situations.
Well, okay. Then let's rewind that a little bit.
That mother decides she's not going to take care of that infant.
Okay? So she's not going to take care of it.
Is it enforced pregnancy?
An enforced positive obligation for her to notify someone else in orphanage hospital church to take care of that baby?
Yes. So it is an enforced positive obligation?
Well, yes, of course, because she chose to bring the child to term.
She chose to have the child inside her house.
Yes. Okay. So we've now acknowledged that enforced positive obligations occur in the case of infants of babies.
No, no, they're chosen. It's a chosen. No, if she takes that child home from the hospital, she's chosen.
But that act is an enforced positive obligation.
In other words, you've drawn a line where if this mother is not going to take care of this child, this infant who is alive...
It is an enforced positive obligation for her to notify the proper authorities or someone to take care of this.
Otherwise, we put this lady in jail for manslaughter at the very least.
It happens quite frequently. So that is an enforced positive obligation.
But hang on a sec.
No, no, no. Because she's chosen.
She's chosen that, right?
She's chosen to take the child home.
Like, if you come to my house and you go to the bathroom, hang on, let me just clear this, because this is an important point.
So if you come to my house, you go into the bathroom, I lock the door from the outside, and there's bars on the windows.
Well, you have something to drink, but you have nothing to eat.
So at some point, I'm going to starve you to death if I don't let you out of the bathroom, or I can make a phone call, or I can unlock, right?
So... If I've brought you in a sense like in a captured environment in my house, then I have to let you go or I'm guilty of killing you, starving you to death or whatever, right?
So sure, if you invite the child into your home, if you bring the child home, then sure, you have an obligation to feed that child, but it's still chosen.
Well, it's chosen because they've given birth at this point, right?
So you say, okay, so now your justification is because it's chosen, right?
This is chosen. This baby is now alive.
It's an enforced positive obligation.
But there is an enforced positive obligation that exists outside the womb.
Let me ask you this.
Was it an enforced positive obligation for the woman to have sex?
To conceive? We would hope not.
We would hope that it was a chosen act.
Yes. Let's assume, for this sake of argument, if you want to get to rape, we can address that as well later on.
But in this case, let's both agree this was a choice.
Okay, so just as you said she's chosen to bring that infant to birth, she's chosen to have sex.
So you said it's a positive obligation as a consequence of her choice to give birth.
So at this point now, there's been a choice that has occurred, a choice which we know can lead to conception.
So after that, we have a baby.
Now, is it an enforced positive obligation based on her choice to bring that child to term, or is it more of a proactive action to kill that child, to go in with scissors, forceps, suck it down a tube?
Which one is the enforced positive obligation, or in this case, an enforced negative action?
Let's deal with something that does happen, because I don't want to pretend like everybody's riding bareback at all times.
It's rare, but let's take it as a possibility.
The woman's on the pill and the man's wearing a condom.
And there should be no possible way that pregnancy can occur.
And let's say the pregnancy does occur.
Well, you're not consenting to a child when you consent to have sex if you're taking reasonable steps to prevent pregnancy.
So for instance, if I'm at a gun range, I'm shooting a gun, the gun is badly made, the gun blows up, you know, and causes some injury to me.
Well, you don't say, well, you went to the gun range and you pulled out a gun and you shot it, so clearly you consented to this horrible injury.
I'm like, no, I didn't consent to the horrible injury.
And so if a restaurant serves me food that is bad and I get sick, say, well, you ate the restaurant's food, you consented to that.
So consenting to sex is not the same as consenting to pregnancy.
Now, you could say, well, what about the people who do just have unprotected sex and you're rolling your dice and all that?
Well, those people are horribly irresponsible, in which case I'm not sure that they would be really great parents at all.
Well, that's irrelevant whether they be good parents or not.
Let's not deal in the, I guess, sort of the metaphysical at that point.
Here's what's interesting because we've agreed it's a human being.
We've agreed that it's killing a human being.
We've agreed that there are positive...
Wait, wait, what's... Hang on, hang on. I always like it when people tell me what I've agreed to.
What if I agreed to now?
Well, you've agreed it's a human being.
You just nodded your head. So what would we call the forcible ending of a human being's life?
No, no. I've said it is a human being biologically, but it is inferior in legal status to the mother, which we know because we choose the life of the mother over the life of the baby.
And also, when it is in a state of parasitical dependence on the mother's body, it is not an independent human being with the same legal rights.
However, when the baby is born or when the baby can be taken care of by somebody else, when there's no direct umbilical, then its legal status changes.
I just want to be clear on that because I think you may have overreached a little bit in your definition of my definition.
No, that's still a human and you're still okay with the ending of that human being's life.
So can we agree that the term for forcibly ending another human being's life is killing?
Again, you're saying that a human being is like the moment that the egg goes into – the sperm goes into the egg.
And you're saying it's not.
Death Star style, right? I mean, so I don't agree with that definition.
But certainly when the child is independent of the mother and you kill that child absolutely, completely and totally, that is murder.
It would be infanticide. Okay, let's come right back to that because I want to get back to this enforced positive obligation.
Here's what's interesting because this is what's so important.
We'll bring it right back. If that is a human being, it is killing a human being.
And I think we've just established that even by your own standards of human being, you're okay at some point with the killing, the termination of that pregnancy.
You want to use the term termination.
It's the forcible extinguishing of human life that's killing a human being.
But let's deal with these enforced positive obligations.
If somebody has sex, this is where we come to the idea of reproductive choice.
There are plenty of choices at that point that don't directly kill another human being.
There are, first off, there are four choices.
There's abstinence, there's contraception, motherhood, and adoption.
So let's not act as though I have a problem with a choice or I'm putting a gun to someone's head.
The only choice, the only issue that I have a problem with is the forcible killing of another human being, which you have yet to establish it isn't because we've established a unique or living organism, a unique genetic code, a human being and the killing, the ending of that human being's life.
So to justify a fifth choice on top of the four, which I'm okay with, The onus is on you at that point since it's a human being and we're killing it.
I'm not sure if that was a question or a statement or why.
The onus is on you as to why it's necessary to provide that fifth option when there are four options on the table.
What is my fifth option?
The fifth option is abortion.
There are four other options because you brought up the idea of choice and putting a gun to the mother's head.
So in other words, putting a gun to the mother's head means she doesn't have a choice.
This hypothetical gun is you have no choice.
You have to bring this child to birth.
Long before we get to that situation of killing another human being, we have abstinence, contraception, and then once conception has occurred and a human being has been created, we have adoption and motherhood.
There are four choices.
You are in fact arguing on behalf of the fifth choice, which you have yet to prove is not the killing of another human being.
So one last crack at it.
Why is it okay to kill, to terminate the life of an entirely unique, genetically coded individual human being?
Well, as I said before, once the child is independent of the mother, it's the mother's rights that I'm particularly focused on.
I don't like the idea that a woman...
Let's just give you a theoretical example, because I think people need to understand, Stephen, where your position leads to.
A woman goes and gives blood.
And let's say that they screen for the presence of RU486, right, or the morning after pill.
And they find traces of the morning after pill in her blood.
Then they turn this over to the police, and then the police charge her with first-degree murder or manslaughter, and she goes to jail for 10 years.
Because she took a pill that dislodged or prevented the implantation of a fertilized egg, which as you say, unique genetic code, a full human being with full rights comparable to an adult.
She has just killed a human being by taking a pill in her body before it's ever shown up anywhere in her physiology, at least visibly.
So if traces of a morning after pill are detected in a woman's bloodstream, she goes to jail for 10 years.
And that is where humanity would be.
Was there a question in there? No, I just want to point out like if you're going to say, well, you know, your definition of when a human being exists independently and legally and is entitled to full protection of the law is, you know, is challenging and arbitrary and so on.
Okay, well, I find the idea of throwing a woman in jail for taking a pill to be pretty rough as well.
And that I think is where we're stymied.
Now, I know you're a little bit pressed for time.
Can we pause here and talk about our strategy?
So did you want to make one more statement?
I was just going to say quite simply, who here talked about throwing a woman in jail for a pill?
You said the life begins upon conception and that destroying that life, which is what the morning after pill does, is the equivalent of murder.
No, I did not say anything about throwing women to jail.
So let me ask you this. An abortion doctor who performs an abortion at that point, who is ending the life?
Who is guilty of the murder?
Well, that's like saying, who hires the hitman to shoot someone?
They both go to jail, right? The hitman is the one who kills someone, but whoever hired and paid that hitman, they go to jail too.
So both the woman and the doctor would go to jail.
No, there is a difference there with culpability, particularly if the doctor knows it is ending a life.
Oh, come on. Do you think the woman is too stupid to know that she goes to an abortionist and is going to, oh, wait, where are my twins?
I thought I was going to get them back to go.
I think you are. I think most people are.
By the way, you, meaning you, the pro-abortion.
I think you are. I think most people are.
I think most people are ignorant enough to not understand this as a human life.
This is Stephen the White Knight.
I was always wondering when Stephen the White Knight was going to show up and protect women and throw his manly arms around feminine insensibility to the consequences of their actions.
No. If the woman hires...
If killing an independent genetic code is...
Murder. And she takes a morning after pill.
She takes that knowing it's going to destroy the baby.
If she goes to an abortionist, she's hiring someone to end a human life, which is exactly the same morally in your universe as hiring a hitman.
So they would both go to jail.
You can't just say, well, the woman is somehow excluded from moral responsibility because vagina, that's not reasonable.
No, that's not the case. There's a reason why we have murder one, murder two, manslaughter.
Now, I'm not saying that the woman is innocent at all, but there is a reason that committing manslaughter is different from committing murder in the first degree.
So she goes to jail. The abortion doctor.
Okay, she goes to jail.
Yeah, there would certainly likely be punishments if this is a woman demanding an abortion.
So I'm trying to figure out, you said nobody said she was going to jail.
So she is going to jail for getting an abortion or taking a morning after pill.
The doctor is. But why not the woman?
Well, again, for the same reason that we're dealing with manslaughter or negligence is a big issue here.
When we have parents who don't go to jail because they've been negligent in providing for their child, most women believe as you do.
Negligence is inaction. They don't believe they're terminating a life.
Negligence is inaction.
Going to an abortion doctor and having him scrape out the growing fetus is a very positive action wherein money and value is exchanged.
You're paying someone to end the life in your belly.
How is the woman not culpable for that?
In a world where abortion is illegal, she is.
Okay. So she would go to jail for that, and she would go to jail for the morning after pill, for at least manslaughter.
In a world where abortion is illegal, there would be consequences for it.
Your question was asked, right now, should we be sending women to jail today in 2017 in the world?
No, because it's not illegal. I mean, it's not illegal.
You can't send people to jail for something that's not illegal.
Exactly. I mean, you can't even send women to jail who do things that are illegal, Hillary.
So yes, I understand that it's a challenge.
Yeah. There are no abortions down in her timeline anywhere, not unless she's a modern miracle of science and she was impregnated by Huma.
Well, she, I mean, also, yeah, we can break character now, but she also was for this, you know, well, there's still a toe inside the vagina so you can saw off the baby's head.
I mean, she had, like, really horrendous, like, stuff.
I mean, Canada, there's virtually no restrictions on abortions.
Okay. So first of all, I thought that was great.
It was really, really fun and really powerful and enjoyable.
And I just wanted to thank Stephen for taking that roleplay.
It's a challenge. And now I know that these are your perspectives and opinions, if I understand this correctly.
They're not mine. I just wanted to be really clear on that.
But what were your thoughts about what we did?
Well, I think, again, obviously it was pretty clear that I was using the Socratic method, and I think that it's pretty obvious that there's only one consistent way to scientifically determine what a human life is.
And I think you were shirking that a little bit, and again, it kind of gets to circumstantial.
I wasn't able to get to the point of, you know, viability changes from society to society.
Viability changes... In New York City to the boonies in West Virginia.
Maybe that's viable with modern technology in the city is not necessarily viable out in the boonies.
There's no standard that's consistent.
At a certain point, you're drawing these weird lines for viability or if it's a sentient being or self-awareness.
The only scientific measurement that we can have for it being a human being is that of conception.
And the more we learn about science, the more that is substantiated.
So I think what's most important and what people often do is, well, what about reducing abortions?
Well, what about not infringing on someone else's right?
All of those are completely irrelevant arguments if we are talking about killing a human being.
And I think the onus is on the person performing that to prove that it's not.
Because obviously, if you're driving down a road tonight, and let's not even say human being, you think it's a person, but you think it's a dog, you're going to stop.
And if it may be a dog and you can stop, you're still going to stop.
You're going to err on the side of not killing the dog.
So the onus of proof is on the person to prove that it's not a human being.
And I think you did your damnedest, but I don't think that you convinced me.
No, and it would be appalling to me if I did.
I just wanted to let you know that.
People, of course, make these weird bubble distinctions all the time and most people aren't even remotely aware of it.
I've made the argument for years that taxation morally is just theft.
You're just pointing a gun at people and you are taking their money by force.
But we've introduced this phrase taxation to completely remove it from the base physical interaction.
So we do this all the time.
We call it the welfare state when it's vote buying and corruption and bribery by any other – oh, it's foreign aid.
No, no. It's taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries.
It's the arms sale.
It's not saying we need a military to defend against a dangerous world, a world which you are in fact arming as the government.
So anyway, so we have all of these euphemisms and peeling back these euphemisms is really, really important.
And you're right. If you accept the argument that the human life begins a conception, then ending that conception, ending that fetus, ending that pregnancy is the outright positive evil action of murdering.
I mean, this is where people, of course, have a great deal of difficulty.
And you're right. There is this sort of magical, well, it's out of the womb, or well, it's this week or that week, and suddenly it goes from a tumor to a full human being, so to speak, medically speaking.
And that is a challenge for people to maintain and sustain.
You could say, okay, well, theft is really, really bad and of course theft is really, really bad.
But if you have a communist system, you have to steal to survive a lot of times.
So if you have a free market system, the incentives and rewards for theft go down enormously and the rewards of respecting property rights go up enormously.
Now, we have, of course, as you know, since Roe v.
Wade, in America, there is the very real problem, and it's throughout the Western world, that as this right to abortion has gone up, the destruction of the family and single motherhood has also increased.
And that is something that's really important.
People have an out of wedlock birth rate of 2%.
It's only 2% of kids are born outside of wedlock.
And this has been constant for the last, I don't know, 50 years or so on.
Whereas if you look at, you know, inner city black quote families, you got a 73-75% out of wedlock birth rate and so on.
So the problem to me, I'd love to deal with the sort of fundamental moral legality of abortion, but the problem is that the incentives are so skewed at the moment.
It's like saying to people, well, you have to steal in order to survive, and I'm going to make stealing illegal.
The incentives are all wrong.
The incentives to do with the welfare state, the incentives to do with a whole variety of other things have made...
Everything weird. I mean, parents used to have strict control over teenage sexuality, right?
You remember this, like you'd have to go on, there'd be chaperones and there'd be all these rules and, you know, the idea of like teenagers showering together in college dorms like would just be completely incomprehensible.
And parents have given up on that obligation because the welfare state has picked up the slack of if bad things happen in terms of like the woman gets pregnant outside of wedlock.
If we change the incentives, I'd like to see how much abortion is left.
Oh, how much of that incentive is left?
If people have to pay for it themselves, and if the incentives are fixed.
So because right now, outlawing abortion when the incentives are all screwed up is to me kind of a recipe for even more totalitarianism.
So I'd like to fix the incentives, which are moral issues as well, and then see what's left over.
I think it would be vastly diminished.
Well, I agree with you. I think there's, with this point, we're arguing more so the morality of abortion.
And I like how often, like liberals, you went from, well, this is kind of viability.
But then we went to the legality of it.
Why are you against choice? Putting a gun to a woman's head.
That's what they did. They did the jumping back and forth.
Like, listen, if the woman is a human being, then we have to determine what this life form is.
And I think the longer this goes on, if we had three hours, the more and more you'd be tied in loop-de-loops trying.
Because, again, you went to this enforced positive obligation, which was just a layup.
I think there's two issues here.
I think, yeah, the pragmatic necessity to reduce abortions is important.
And if we can start, like you said, sort of peeling that back like layers of an onion with, let's use the term, incentives.
Yeah, murder is bad, so let's not spend our lives in perpetual warfare where people have to kill.
Right, yes, exactly.
First off, two things, but it's based on the premise we have to convince people that this is a life and it is terminating a life.
And then at that point, we're no longer dealing with incentives.
We're dealing with people either supporting murder or they're not.
And then I also think it's really important when you actually look at the platform of the DNC, when you look at the actual platform of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Warren, they want abortions after 22 weeks.
They believe abortion up until birth, on demand, taxpayer-funded, period.
They're not allowed to stray from it.
That is the actual official platform.
So that's where I think we can get in.
You know, these politicians get up there and they try and get into these wordplay and extreme examples like, listen, your platform believes that up until that toe pops out of that vagina, that abortion is a human right.
So let's not act as though there's a middle ground here where we can find common ground because what's most important is determining whether that in fact is a human life or not.
And that's why liberals avoid it like the plague.
And that's why actually, you know, we're looking at a lot of people don't really know what Roe v.
Wade is. Roe v.
Wade isn't the unlimited right to abortion.
Roe v. Wade dealt a lot with, was dealing in the concept of viability, which is why it might be revisited because science has changed since Roe v.
Wade. A lot of people don't know.
They say, Roe v. Wade, Roe v. Wade, Roe v.
Wade. I was actually hoping you were because like, well, Tell me about Roe v.
Wade. And they don't necessarily know exactly what it is.
So there's really no common ground with the modern DNC. They are the extremists.
And I think moderates at that point, moderates end up being pro-life if you have this conversation with them.
Unless they're dyed-in-the-wool liberals, they go, okay, viability?
No. Okay. All right.
Yeah, I guess it's terminating a life and then we can move on from that position.
Well, and of course, it always struck me as kind of ironic that DNC is also very close to DNC, which is the dilation and curatage.
It's actually an abortion procedure or can be used as an abortion procedure.
I think this is kind of an aesthetic point, Stephen, and I just wanted to drop it in here.
It's not a philosophical argument, but I think it's important nonetheless, is that the question of destroying a fetus, a growing baby in your womb...
There's a coarsening, I think, of public discourse that happens when it's just like, well, it's a woman's choice and therefore she should just be able to kill.
Like, what a huge issue.
What an important and deep moral issue that is.
And the fact that people are just like, well, if you have any problems at all… With women killing babies in their womb, you hate women.
I mean, it coarsens and it's really brutal.
You know, there was a study, you cited it actually in one of the things I was looking at to prepare for this.
You were talking about how there's a study that says, well, women who tried to have abortions and failed, they don't feel any regret.
I think that the fact that – it is a tragic and horrifying thing to do.
Wait, I referenced a study like that? I don't even remember.
So you referenced a study and this is back when you were talking about Samantha Bee's statement.
You referenced a study and the study was comparing women who had abortions with women who failed to have abortions and they didn't actually have a group called women who'd never had an abortion.
Yes, that's right. That study, yeah. Right.
So there is a huge coarsening that I think is really important.
I mean, it is a horrible thing to go to a doctor and say, please scrape this baby out of my womb and throw it in the trash or sell it for parts on eBay or whatever the hell happens, right?
That is a horrible thing to have happen.
We need to have a conversation as a society, understanding that it's a horrible place to be.
If you're in that place in life, something's gone pretty far astray.
And this sort of, well, if you even want to raise this question, do you hate women?
That's just so coarse, and it's so brutal, and it's so frustrating.
Far from the delicate moral sensitivities that do need to be explored in this question.
And it's the typical leftist thing is, well, you just hate women.
And a woman's right to choose, well, what about a man's right to choose whether he wants to fund this or not?
What about a man's right to choose whether he wants to be involved in the raising of the child?
You know, it's like, my body, my choice.
Well, how about my wallet, my choice?
Well, that, of course, doesn't really exist as much.
No. No. And listen, by the way, I'm not someone who supports that argument because I think you both made a choice when you had sex.
Obviously, we'll put the rape thing on the side.
But that's one thing that bothers me too sometimes where you talk with these people, you know, when they're talking about alimony laws, which are horribly abusive in certain states.
I understand it. Then they go like, I should even be able to choose if I want her to have an abortion.
I'm going, no, no, no. Hold on a second. You also have to be a man.
You chose to have sex.
So it is your job now to be a father.
Now, if we're talking about abusive women who are abusing the marriage and the court system, absolutely, those need to be reformed and we can have that conversation.
So It really does come back to the personal responsibility.
And I think it's an important argument that I don't hear a lot.
There are four choices.
No one's holding a gun to the head.
You're holding a gun to my head as a taxpayer for a fifth choice, which is killing another human life.
And I can't say this is anecdotal, but my wife works at a crisis pregnancy center.
Hundreds and hundreds of women who have come in.
Not a single one has ever been rape or incest.
As a matter of fact, I don't think she's dealt with more than what she could count on one hand out of the hundreds of people who accidentally conceived while using contraception.
It's nearly always women.
And this is not a Planned Parenthood.
They go to Planned Parenthood, get the abortion spiel, and then they often come here.
And what this crisis pregnancy center does They offer them alternatives like, well, okay, we can help you with prenatal care.
We can help you with prenatal vitamins.
We can help you if you want to put your baby up for adoption.
We can help you do that.
We can find families. If you want to be a mother, we can help you.
We can find you affordable daycare or free daycare as provided here with assistance.
They do provide options.
That's a big lie. There are so many options available.
They want a fifth one, which is killing.
What they say is, Most Americans, and I see this all the time, most Americans are pro-choice.
Well, hold on a second. You then say that and say, and Texans want to reduce women's right to choose.
No, hold on. You say most Americans are pro-choice.
The question in the polling is, are you pro-choice?
Yeah, I guess so. They don't say, do you support dismembering and sucking a five-month-old baby down a tube after 22 weeks because that's what Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton believe.
You'd have two very, very different answers.
And so here, we weren't dealing in the legislative.
I thought we were more so dealing in the philosophical.
And I just think it's really important to define these terms.
What is a human being? What is killing?
What is murder? And how do we justify it?
And I have yet to see an argument that's consistent from the left on that, which is why they never have that conversation, which is why they go right away, you would put the woman in jail?
Why don't you support the right to choose?
You would be honest and honest.
Okay, we still haven't answered.
What is it we're terminating, killing?
What is that? And they never want to talk about it.
No, I think you're right and this is why I had to keep switching gears all the time.
It's like, oh no, he's closing in.
So I think genital management used to be a core focus in society, recognizing that unwanted babies are incredibly destructive for society as a whole.
Like you know as well as I do, the outcome metrics for children of single moms is almost universally dismal and terrible, the outcome.
Unwanted children are a huge, huge problem in society, and they have taken down societies prior to us.
The dissolution of marriage and the welfare state in ancient Rome, as I've talked about in a presentation, is a huge issue and foundational to the end of Rome as a whole.
Once you... Take consequences away from sexuality.
Sexuality runs rampant.
Then what happens is you end up with all of these unwanted pregnancies.
Then what happens is you end up with a giant state to take care of all of these.
The welfare state is basically the single mom state.
Everybody wants to live consequence-free and it is like the worst thing in the world for us.
Like everybody wants to sit around, eat bonbons and not exercise, but it's the worst thing in the world for us as a whole.
So I think it is really important to open up these questions again.
And I do view women and people as a whole these days, they're kind of in a state of amorality because they've been lied to so much.
About the basic biology, about the causes of all of these kinds of problems that, you know, a woman who goes to an abortion – who goes and gets an abortion now, I view her almost in a state of nature or in a state of propagandize.
I don't view that person as morally wrong any more than I say, okay, well, if you were raised in Stalinist Russia in the 1950s, oh, look, you're a communist.
But it's like – but you've not been taught anything else.
It's like blaming a kid growing up with English and not speaking Japanese.
Right, and that's the point I was going to do before then we had to cut off.
My wife has these people, they often come from Planned Parenthood.
By the way, always sold abortion at Planned Parenthood.
That's all they sell. Once you're actually pregnant, it's abortion at Planned Parenthood.
So they often come over from Planned Parenthood.
And they don't know anything about abortion.
They don't know anything about the development of a child.
They don't know anything about DNA. They don't know anything about when fingernails, when there's an individual heart.
They don't know any of these things.
So before they go into my wife's, she doesn't own it, but where she volunteers, before they go into this crisis pregnancy center, They go into Planned Parenthood.
And if it weren't for that gut feeling, they would have no idea as to the act they just committed.
And there is an argument.
That is the one gray area where, okay, how culpable is a woman at that point?
Because most of them genuinely have no clue, particularly undereducated women who go in and they've just seen basically an infomercial, glorified infomercial from Planned Parenthood.
It's called the DNC. And they go in and the doctor knows.
The doctor knows he's ending a heartbeat.
It really is eye-opening.
These women come in. They don't use contraception.
And by the way, it's not just underprivileged.
You know, we talk about like black Americans.
You'll have just suburban girls who just, ah, we didn't, just one time we were irresponsible.
We didn't. I just played Russian roulette that one time.
Yeah, I'm going to go to college and I can't ruin my...
One thing I will say, we have to get going, but Quebec is a great example.
Quebec has one of the highest abortion rates in the industrialized world, one of the lowest graduation rates, has an incredible...
They don't consider it poverty, but if you actually look at their household income, you look at the kind of working class nature of Quebec.
Quebec is a telltale sign of the importance of marriage and strong families.
If you see a wedding ring in Quebec...
Guaranteed anglophone. Guaranteed anglophone.
Or a hobbit on a quest.
It's always hard to tell.
And this changed like up until the early 1960s.
Look at Celine Dion's family.
This is like a Noah's Ark family, like 8, 10, 12 kids.
They just changed like that.
All right. I really, really want to thank Stephen for the mock debate.
It was really great and I hope that people are appreciating this.
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Just one more time running through the stats.
Louderwithcrowder.com YouTube.com forward slash Stephen with a V Crowder.
Twitter.com forward slash S Crowder which I keep thinking is a seafood dish.
And Mug Club sign up at CRTV.com forward slash Mug Club.
Stephen, a great pleasure. Thank you so much for your time today.
