Spencer critiques the Supreme Court’s Roe repeal as a premeditated move to ban abortion nationwide, exposing the right’s hypocrisy—pushing for no birth control or sex education while ignoring crises like baby formula shortages. Their 53 failed election lawsuits mirror Holocaust denial: reality doesn’t stop their agenda. Funded by religious lobbying and foreign donors, anti-abortion efforts now target Canada despite claims of non-interference. Unfollowing opponents on Twitter deepens division; real change demands relentless debate over flawed, power-driven narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that would have a better name if they weren't all taken.
I'm Spencer, your host.
No guest today, so just me.
It's time for the gloves to come off with this podcast thing.
I'm tired of beating around the bush and slowly circling things that I'd like to talk about.
So this week, I'll be talking about the thing that everyone is talking about as of a few days ago, abortion.
Less than two days ago, the Supreme Court of the United States, one-third of their governmental power, repealed a decision called Roe v. Wade.
This decision has always said fairly clearly that women have at least some autonomy over decisions related to their pregnancy status.
If you believe that removing Roe v. Wade was a good decision because it puts the decision back into the hands of the individual states where it belongs, then you are either naive or outright lying.
I will tell you now in unequivocal terms that the conservatives who currently inhabit the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States are not at all interested in giving up any power at all to individual states.
They will work tirelessly to end abortions nationally and for everyone in all circumstances.
I'd like to take a moment to relate briefly a few of the reasons why I think it is wrong to end abortions.
Allowing a person to make decisions about their own body is of increasing concern in our modern times.
If you are a person who strongly believes that abortion is always bad, it is my prediction that you will not be swayed by what I'm about to say.
Nevertheless, here goes.
If I was dying and it was determined that you could save my life, but the process would mean that your body would need to be both physically and biologically strapped to my own for nine months.
What would you think of that?
I couldn't eat or talk to anyone and everything I ate would be what you ate.
Your blood would supply me with life.
What would you think of that?
I couldn't eat or drink except for everything that you ate or drank.
Your blood would supply me with life.
Everything you took in would directly affect my health.
Indeed, my entire life would be supported by your body.
There would be no rest or breaks, no weekends off, no time away from this burden upon your life.
You might say, just to stymie my point, that of course you would be willing to do this because I'm a human and humans are worth saving.
But what if you weren't willing?
Would it be right to compel you to do this thing anyway?
Another thing to consider.
What is the exact difference between preventing all abortions and compelling everyone to get vaccinated?
It could be easily argued that mandating universal vaccinations could save even more lives than preventing all abortions.
One might well remind me that no one has tried to make that argument, but I will, in turn, remind them that no one has tried to make that argument yet.
Bodily autonomy is a concept in our society that does not stop at biological conception.
Or what about other medical and scientific questions?
Can we compel people with specific DNA profiles to participate in medical experiments to provide better treatments?
Can we inject them with things without their permission?
Does a person have a legal right to prevent having a clone made from their DNA?
Oh, you say we aren't allowed to make clones of humans.
Would you say that's a matter of settled law?
I think we have determined now that all matters of law can change eventually.
If it's in some rich person's interest for clones to exist, then it's entirely unclear to me how you will ever stop them, especially when the Supreme Court of the United States is for sale to the highest and most dedicated bidder.
I am not surprised that the Supreme Court has done this.
They have been telegraphing it for at least 10 years, maybe longer.
I'm surprised by its timing.
The swiftness with which they have made this happen is extremely troubling.
If anyone thinks they plan to stop here, then you really need to sit down and look harder at the world.
They are emboldened.
They have other things they would like to accomplish and they feel that they have the right to do any or all of them.
And the sooner the better.
A lot of people are talking right now about the hypocrisy of the people who are making these arguments against abortion.
They say the political right is not pro-life, but just pro-birth.
They will point out all the ways this is true.
The people who want to end all abortions also want to end all birth control measures and use abstinence only as a sex education method.
Those same people will push for tax breaks for the rich, but won't help to solve a problem with the shortage of baby formula.
Let's not forget how this court was built.
The political right successfully blocked Barack Obama's Supreme Court nomination after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of 2016.
At the time, they claimed it was too close to the next election and that the next president should decide because Obama's mandate would be finished soon.
This was nine months before the election and almost a full year before the next president would take office.
Four years later, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in mid-September of 2020, just six weeks from the upcoming election.
The same legislators who wholeheartedly slammed the door on Barack Obama's Supreme Court nomination worked overtime to rush through Donald Trump's selection, despite the fact that Trump's mandate might very well soon be ending, and of course, did.
At the time, I asked some people who were on the political right in the United States about this.
I asked why there was such a rush.
After all, shouldn't the next president make the decision?
What if Donald Trump loses the election and he doesn't have a mandate from the people anymore?
And what about the long time lapse between the death of Scalia and the appointment of Neil Gorsuch?
The answer I got, who cares?
They simply claim that the rules allow it, so it would happen this way.
They said that they wanted it, so they were going to endorse it for the outcome they wanted.
They didn't care in the least that it was hypocritical.
And that's the bigger point here.
The political right is not really unified by any underlying logic or even any real set of principles.
They are unified by their goals.
Hypocrisy does not even phase them.
It doesn't slow them down.
Certainly won't stop them.
All the cleverest memes in the world that float past online social media sites will not deter them in the least.
You can point out the flaws in their arguments until you're blue in the face and they will simply shrug and move on with their goals.
This is the bigger problem.
Anyone who is not swayed by arguments should not be in a position where we will rely on them to do so.
We rely on judges to follow the law and make decisions for us based on the best outcome for society and our individual rights.
Here's an interesting thing to think about regarding judges.
There were 53 individual lawsuits filed by Donald Trump and his allies in an effort to reverse the result of the 2020 U.S. federal election.
This was part of a coordinated effort made by people on the political right to simply get what they wanted.
They didn't care at all that every argument they were using was fraudulent and lacked both standing and evidence.
Of those 53 lawsuits, 14 were dropped, 33 were dismissed, and six had rulings against them.
53 lawsuits in front of 53 separate judges who all individually blocked this effort to get litigiously what the political right could not get electorally.
Despite this, many on the political right stubbornly believe fraudulent claims of vote tampering, illegal voting, and magical vote switching.
They continue to believe this because it is what they want.
It is the outcome they would have preferred.
And for some reason, they believe that the power of belief itself should give them the outcome they want.
They have goals and they will not let a lack of evidence or objective reality get in the way of those goals.
But what about those judges who heard those 53 lawsuits?
We are in a world where all 53 lawsuits ended without a victory for Donald Trump.
We still had a riot in the Capitol building.
People trying to intimidate politicians and legislators to change the result of the vote.
How much more emboldened will that group of people have been if even one of those 53 judges had decided things the other way?
How much more effort would the Stop the Steal crowd have put into their fantasies of political coup on January 6th of 2021?
The fact that people on the political right often claim that the troublemakers on January 6th were actually on Tifa really puts them in a difficult spot logically.
I mean, they all would have wanted Mike Pence to invalidate the result of the election and name Trump their leader.
Claiming that it didn't happen, but also that it would have been good if it did happen puts them in the exact same column as Holocaust deniers who would also like to remove the Jews from society.
They say, it didn't happen, but would have been good if it did.
To see the Supreme Court of the land make this kind of backward and obviously political decision is frightening.
People will ask, can we really rely on the laws in this land?
Can we really rely on the judges to properly assess situations and make good and reasonable decisions to balance both the best outcome for society and the individual rights of persons?
A lot of people who listen to this podcast will ask me why this decision upsets me quite as much as it does.
After all, I'm from Canada.
This decision doesn't affect Canadians or Canadian law.
Well, this is where the gloves start coming off, and I tell you the thing you probably don't want to hear.
The elephant that lives south of our border gets very enraged when it notices any attempt on the part of Canada or Canadians to influence its political outcomes.
But that same elephant sees no hypocrisy in moving its political outcomes north across our border.
The people who most rapidly wanted Roe v. Wade overturned in the U.S. did so because of dogmatic religious reasons.
They see no reason at all why those reasons would not apply to the people who are most likely to be mistaken for them when we travel abroad.
Overturning Roe v. Wade happened because a lot of money was spent in a lot of lobbying over a lot of years.
Some of the people who've been putting that money into this effort will be happy that they get to stop spending so much money on this thing and that it's finally done.
Some others won't.
Some others will happily redirect those funds to support anti-abortion groups in other countries.
We've seen this in other forms.
Money from U.S. sources being used to fund politically motivated interest groups.
Sometimes the effort is meant to leverage some particular legislation and sway public opinion on a particular thing.
It doesn't happen a lot, but it definitely happens.
And what will be done about it?
Will we point out the hypocrisy of the argument?
Will we wail impotently at the injustice of the thing?
Will we claim that it isn't fair that deep pocket U.S. donors get to fund hugely sprawling and deeply personal advertising campaigns to raise interest in the issue?
Will we call foul when they are found to be running disinformation campaigns on social media platforms to erode support for politicians who would otherwise support a woman's right to make appropriate choices about a thing that is incredibly personal?
I started this podcast because I saw something in the world that was taking hold of it and bringing it to an unlikable place.
More and more people are acting just like the people from the political right in the U.S. If they get the outcome they want, they don't really care how well it relates to objective reality.
People in general are willing to overlook the flaws in the arguments that support their cherished causes.
And if those flaws should be telling them to rethink their worldview, they are now able to completely ignore them.
They don't have to answer to anyone about why they think the way they think.
If they feel that something is right, then that's how it should be.
And if you mention something that counters it, you are the one who often needs to feel bad about being disruptive, about mentioning the thing that runs counter to the currently popular set of opinions.
I see a lot of people on Twitter saying something to the effect of, if you support the end of Roe v. Wade, then please unfollow me.
With all due respect to the people who are doing this, I think it is the wrong move.
First, creating a further division will not allow this to improve.
Second, they might still listen to you.
If you talk about this to them and they tune you out, so be it.
But to willingly turn down the opportunity to talk to them about how this has gone the way it has is a wasted opportunity.
People will say they aren't political or that their presence on a platform like Twitter isn't political, that they are there to discuss their favorite books or movies, or to just be a part of a community of like-minded souls whose interests are not political.
Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you have to make a choice now.
You have to either accept the reality of the situation as it is, or you have to choose to work against the reality of the situation as it is.
You weren't political, but politics has found you anyway.
It's important to remember that violence is not the answer.
Protests that could turn violent or into actual riots should be avoided by everyone.
Changing the minds of people who feel the opposite way you do about something is not going to be easy.
It won't be done in a few hours on a Saturday night.
It won't be done by next Wednesday before you have to review another episode of your favorite reality show.
If you sit idly by and watch the world move around you, then you will suffer the consequences of other people's decisions.
The only way it changes is for you to pick up the proverbial pen and get to work.
That's what I'm doing.
I cannot watch silently as people proclaim untruths in the name of feeling better about their decisions and beliefs.
I will not wait for someone bigger, better, stronger, smarter, faster, louder, or more stubborn than me to fix this.
If this world changes, it will be because I worked to change it, slowly, little by little, with words and ideas.