The Michael Knowles Show - Fighting for Life

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00:00:21.720 Our president is about a thousand years old. The birth rate has fallen to the lowest level

00:00:26.860 ever after having been below replacement for 50 years. People are getting married at the lowest

00:00:31.940 rates ever recorded. And we kill a million babies a year through abortion. We are living in a culture

00:00:38.920 of death. If a conservative said that 30 years ago, 40 years ago, people would have written him

00:00:46.480 off as a kook, as a hyperbolist, as some kind of radical. Now it seems undeniable. How do we get

00:00:55.120 out of it? I am joined right now by my dear friend, one of the great pro-life activists

00:01:01.520 ever, you know, not, not even just right now, but, but in the history of the country,

00:01:06.000 Lila Rose, Lila Rose, the head of live action and the author of fighting for life, becoming a force

00:01:13.140 for change in a wounded world. Lila, thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me, Michael.

00:01:19.860 So Lila, after that cheery introduction, how do we fix it? How do we get out of it?

00:01:25.120 Well, it's funny. I end fighting for life, the book that's this guidebook for activists or change

00:01:30.800 makers. And I end it saying, you know, have families, embrace family life, embrace marriage,

00:01:36.740 embrace kids. And if you don't feel called to that yourself, support other people who are,

00:01:41.820 because ultimately the change is made in our own families and how we commit to love and commit to

00:01:47.640 responsibility. That's really the deeper cultural change that's necessary. The reason we have all these

00:01:51.960 political excesses and the most pro-abortion administration in our history, I mean, even

00:01:57.060 worse than under Obama, Joe Biden stepped into the and even more radicalized version of himself when

00:02:02.780 he partnered with Kamala Harris, who's going after, you know, our friends, David Daleiden and Sandra

00:02:08.140 Merritt in California, when she was attorney general to try to prosecute for like journalists in,

00:02:13.580 despite all of that, what's the end game for, I think, not just conservatives, but people of

00:02:17.820 conviction and truth, people who care about the future of this country, it's really rebuilding in

00:02:23.140 our communities. And that's primarily through the family. Yes. I'm on my second kid. We're expecting

00:02:29.820 number two. And I know, I know that you're, you're married, Michael, and that's the whole daily wire

00:02:34.820 thing is the family and promoting families. And that's, that's really the future. I think

00:02:38.760 it is. You can see the effect of my first child on my under eye balance. You can see that that is

00:02:43.540 really deepened and we, I can't wait for number two. And I, then I want to have three, four,

00:02:46.880 five, and six. I want an army of little Michaels to spread around this country. But, but a lot of

00:02:52.940 people are not doing that. And I think a lot of, you see it reflected in, in the data. A lot of

00:02:58.760 millennials in particular are just putting off getting married and they'll cohabitate and they'll

00:03:04.200 have long relationships. They're putting off having kids. They'll get a little puppy that they

00:03:08.440 drag around on a thousand dollar stroller, but they, they don't want to have babies. And, you know,

00:03:14.860 I say this from some personal experience. I, like you, Lila, I'm a mackerel snapping papist and

00:03:21.240 Catholic. And so I expected to have a kid nine months after my wedding day and it didn't happen.

00:03:27.180 You know, it actually, sometimes it takes a little while. And so it, you know, I, it's just so,

00:03:32.560 so sad to me that there are some people who can't have kids. There are some people for whom having kids

00:03:38.060 is a very difficult thing. And there are some people who can do it and they just throw it away.

00:03:44.440 They, they describe, uh, having children as basically as a venereal disease. They describe

00:03:51.080 the problem of overpopulation. You notice the people who talk about overpopulation never want

00:03:56.000 to take themselves out of the population. They always want to take somebody else out of the

00:03:59.420 population. So how do we, how do we push back against, uh, that, that movement that seems to have

00:04:04.600 so much momentum? Well, it's funny cause I mean, even British Vogue, there was a couple of that

00:04:09.860 article a few weeks ago saying it's having children, environmental terrorism. And there

00:04:14.820 is this push that saying having children is a bad thing. And there are, you know, economic struggles

00:04:19.460 and all sorts of concerns that millennials have about kids, which I think are important to discuss

00:04:24.520 and explore. But what I did in fighting for life is I walked through, how did we get here? I mean,

00:04:29.280 it's built the story of live action and starting at age 15 and building it into this global

00:04:34.360 pro-life movement, but it's also, how did we get to the point, as you described, where there were

00:04:38.500 nearly a million abortions a year and why do we have this negative attitude about kids? And

00:04:43.480 what I explore and what I think is so, uh, incredibly important to talk about Michael,

00:04:48.740 which I know you've discussed before, but it needs to be talked about more is it really goes back to

00:04:54.020 two things. Number one, something called the sexual revolution in our country, where we divorced,

00:05:00.240 we separated sex from children and marriage. So now sex is about one thing only consent, basically

00:05:07.840 don't rape other people. That's the, that's the morality today around sex. Don't rape, have fun.

00:05:13.840 If you can, whatever you want to do, as long as it's two adults, you're good to go. And that's not

00:05:18.660 the way sex works. I mean, sex can create new life. Sex bonds people together very powerfully,

00:05:24.300 um, emotionally and spiritually, I believe. And it's not something that is just about moments of

00:05:29.460 pleasure. It's about a relationship ultimately. And there's a reason, I mean, I discussed in

00:05:34.060 fighting for life, how even Planned Parenthood admit, I mean, it's the biggest abortion chain

00:05:38.200 and the Guttmacher Institute is their research arm. And Guttmacher Institute admits the pro-abortion

00:05:43.940 people admit that 50% of the women who have abortions today in our country, and that's 2,300 abortions a

00:05:51.920 day. 50% of those women were using contraception in the month that they got pregnant with this

00:05:58.640 unplanned pregnancy, 50%. So this idea that contraception safe sex will protect against

00:06:05.820 abortion is a myth and a lie. And it's one of the reasons we have so much abortion be because

00:06:10.680 people societally, we expect that sex is without responsibility. And that really is part of the

00:06:17.500 solution is changing our mindset on relationships, changing our mindset on sex and, and encouraging

00:06:23.620 younger people. I mean, I think the message that abortion is a solution if you get pregnant,

00:06:28.600 but you should just have sex freely. You know, it's not, sex is not about love and responsibility

00:06:32.560 is a completely backwards message. Instead of saying, celebrate children, no matter how they're

00:06:37.040 conceived and sex is actually precious and involves responsibility. That's the message we should be

00:06:42.240 sending people. So I think that's part of the change that's needed, that cultural educational

00:06:46.480 shift for our country to have. Right. And, and I love this, this focus on consent. I think you're

00:06:52.540 totally right. Consent has now become the only thing that matters whatsoever when you're talking

00:06:58.520 about sex. However, you'll notice that, that, uh, when sexual matters go awry, when the sexual

00:07:05.500 revolution leads to bad consequences, the left needs to put this in the language of consent. So what

00:07:12.260 they'll say is, well, yes, this looked like a totally consensual sexual act, but actually the

00:07:18.460 woman was drunk and now the man was probably drunk too, but they'll say, well, if you're drunk, you

00:07:22.600 can't give consent, which means that basically any sexual union between single people under the age of

00:07:28.040 30 is de facto rape, mutual rape, right? Because most people are having a couple of cocktails before

00:07:34.320 they make these sorts of decisions. Okay. Now let's say that alcohol is not involved or drugs or any

00:07:40.700 sort of impairment. You, you've seen this now with some allegations against rock stars like Marilyn

00:07:44.720 Manson, where a woman will say, look, I was in an ostensibly consensual relationship and no, we

00:07:51.460 weren't drinking a lot or using drugs or anything, but it was still, it still wasn't really consent

00:07:56.480 because he manipulated me. He groomed me when I was 20. He, he, uh, just, I don't know. He warped my

00:08:05.760 mind into consenting to things that I've now come to regret. And it seems to me what they're grappling

00:08:10.480 with is the fact that as you described very well, these virtues are habits. You know, you've got to,

00:08:18.220 the more you practice virtues, the easier they become. And vices is a sort of habit too. And when

00:08:23.700 we engage in vice and sin, we compromise our free will. And, you know, so the, the heroin addict is

00:08:28.840 a heroin addict and all he wants to do is shoot up heroin. He can't consent anymore. Even, even when

00:08:33.680 he's sober, he can't consent because he has this vicious desire. So I'm so with you. I really wish we

00:08:38.820 would take the conversation beyond these, you know, shallower talking points into another area.

00:08:44.600 But, but how do we do it? I, you know, so much of your work is focused on abortion. This is,

00:08:50.420 you know, one of, if not the greatest scourge in the country, but the pro-life issue is about more

00:08:55.800 than that. The culture of life would be, be about even more than the issue of abortion.

00:09:00.520 Right. It's about, um, ultimately who we are individually and how we love others. I mean,

00:09:07.260 that sounds so fundamental, but it is the truth. It's about how we see the dignity of every single

00:09:12.660 person we encounter. And so a lot of my book fighting for life is about just that. It's not

00:09:17.780 just the story of me starting this organization at 15 and how you get started as an activist or,

00:09:23.000 you know, how you, if you're a young mom at a school and you want to get involved in the school

00:09:25.960 board, or if you're a student or whatever you are, how you get involved in the pro-life fight or

00:09:29.780 really any cause. But it's also this journey of personal transformation, a journey that I'm still

00:09:34.800 on, which I think is the ultimate solution to the crises today. I mean, how do you solve the

00:09:40.880 problem of abortion? Well, it goes back to a problem of personal relationship and really how we see

00:09:46.780 ourselves in our own sexuality, right? Just this cheapening of sex, as you were describing,

00:09:51.440 um, addictions around sex and dysfunction around sex. And where does that come from?

00:09:55.720 That comes from a misunderstanding of who we are as people and what love is, um, of what really we

00:10:01.820 should be aiming for in life. What makes us happy? Does short-term sexual pleasure make us happy?

00:10:06.840 That leads to an unplanned pregnancy. And then we go have an abortion. Does that make you happy? No,

00:10:10.620 statistically women who have abortions are up to a hundred times more likely to commit a hundred

00:10:16.080 percent more likely to commit suicide in the following year because of the trauma of that decision.

00:10:21.420 So we know that these things actually don't bring happiness. I mean, mental health,

00:10:25.720 crises are sky high right now. Every year, addiction increases, pornography use increases,

00:10:32.260 mental health, anxiety, depression increase, suicide rates increase. So whatever we're doing

00:10:38.320 around how we treat our bodies and how we relate to other people, the abortion rate, it's not working.

00:10:45.240 And so my biggest solution in the book, and I share these 27 principles and some of them for me

00:10:49.700 are, first of all, knowing your worth. This is a really important message. If there are young women

00:10:53.540 listening, or you have young women in your life, knowing your value as a woman, respecting yourself

00:10:58.720 as a woman or as a man, I mean, as a human being made in the image and likeness of God. I mean,

00:11:04.440 that's an idea that we're endowed by our creator in our declaration of independence, right? It's not

00:11:09.060 just a religious belief per se that you have to subscribe to the entire religion, but it's actually

00:11:14.200 fundamental for how our whole legal system is built. Our whole idea of human rights come from a God who

00:11:19.080 gave them to us. And it's this idea that we're like God or human nature. We have the ability to

00:11:25.760 love, to choose. And that's why we have rights that should protect certain freedoms of how we

00:11:30.960 operate, how we want to live our lives. And so if we can know our value and respect the value of other

00:11:38.360 people, then we have higher standards. We have higher standards for our dating relationships. We're not

00:11:43.620 going to go sleep with Marilyn Manson, as you were talking about earlier, Michael. I mean,

00:11:47.620 the women are now saying, you know, he, it wasn't consensual, whatever. I mean, we're going to have

00:11:52.420 higher standards for who and how we love, for what our life is about. I also talk about the

00:11:58.460 importance of, for those that are still wrestling with faith or don't have a faith, letting God find

00:12:03.640 us. So I should actually share my faith journey because I do think that's very important. You know,

00:12:08.480 I respect anybody where they are in their journey with God or what they believe on that, but I share how

00:12:13.360 really understanding, you know, what are we aiming toward? Is there a God in our life? Everybody has

00:12:19.260 some sort of religion we hold to, whether we realize it or not, what is yours? You know, is it

00:12:23.700 based on absolute truth? Is it based on a God who is loving, or is it based on, you know, this idea of

00:12:29.140 science? Maybe science is your God, or maybe you're your own God. You decide morality. You're kind of the

00:12:33.900 end all be all. But who we put our admiration in, what we put our trust in really affects who we are too.

00:12:41.560 And I talk about the power of heroes. You know, if you're going to make a difference in the world,

00:12:45.260 if you're going to stand up in these cultural or political battles, knowing who your heroes are,

00:12:50.040 your models are, and having good one is so powerful and important. So these are some of the principles

00:12:56.100 I share, but I think that is actually key to building the culture of life is ourselves,

00:13:02.080 allowing ourselves to be changed as much as we want to change the world around us.

00:13:05.840 Certainly, a culture is defined by what it worships. Cult and culture come from the same root word.

00:13:10.980 And, you know, where you put your time, where you put your focus, where you put your money,

00:13:15.160 that is what you're going to worship. Now, what you're saying is that the culture of life is

00:13:21.060 coherent and it has integrity. If you respect a culture of life over here, it's going to express

00:13:27.080 itself over there and over there and over there. If you have respect for the human person and you're

00:13:30.980 dealing this every day with people, then you're going to have respect for unborn babies. Then you're

00:13:34.500 going to have respect for this person and that person. Okay. For people who are older,

00:13:39.180 for instance, you're going to oppose assisted suicide. Okay. But the left, and I use that term

00:13:45.420 specifically because they might have different views on certain issues, but they consider

00:13:51.820 themselves on the left. They'll come in and say, okay, you crazy pro-lifers, you want less abortion?

00:13:57.560 The way to get less abortion is not to have a coherent culture of life. The way to have less

00:14:00.860 abortion is to have a ton of sex ed in schools. It's to have condoms everywhere. It's to get every

00:14:05.420 girl on the pill. It's to have people having casual sex, but where they're really focused in on the

00:14:11.480 timing and the risks. And okay. So those two things can't be true at the same time.

00:14:17.740 You're shaking your head, which makes me think you've got an answer on which one's right.

00:14:21.640 Well, as I said earlier, it's a feeder system. And I mean, I've been investigating Planned

00:14:26.060 Parenthood for over 10 years now, and it's absolutely a feeder system for abortion. I mean,

00:14:31.780 there's a reason that Planned Parenthood's abortion rates have gone up over the last 10 years,

00:14:35.780 but the national abortion rates have gone down. So this is what Planned Parenthood does. They want

00:14:40.900 to sexualize our kids. They want our kids to sexually experiment. They don't want kids and

00:14:46.020 young people to see sex as something sacred or connected to responsibility or commitment.

00:14:51.520 They want to ultimately have kids be sexually experimenting because they know that contraception

00:14:58.000 has a failure rate. And that is, I mean, I mentioned earlier, the statistic, 50% of women

00:15:03.220 who have abortions were using contraception the month they got pregnant. So contraception,

00:15:08.260 every kind, even sterilization, getting a vasectomy will give you a failure rate. There's a failure

00:15:13.800 rate there. The only thing that has no failure rate for unplanned pregnancy is the responsibility

00:15:18.120 and the choice to say, I'm not ready to be a parent yet. And I respect you so much. I'm not going

00:15:22.380 to have sex with you unless we're going to get married and have a family together. I mean,

00:15:26.020 that's the ultimate proper path. And to say, oh, kids, you know, Planned Parenthood's line is,

00:15:32.080 well, that's not going to work because kids are kids and, you know, people are people and they're

00:15:36.120 just going to act on their biological impulse. We're more than that. We're more than just

00:15:39.820 our biological impulse. We do have the power to make decisions. We do have the power to have

00:15:45.560 self-control. And yes, does that mean mistakes are sometimes made? Yes, they are. And I actually share

00:15:49.540 in my book the story for our family. I mean, my sister is one of my heroes, my little sister,

00:15:53.920 Katerina. I had her ultrasound picture growing up when I prayed to God for a little sister on the

00:15:59.360 on the fridge. And her she she shares her story. She allowed me to share a story. She's very open

00:16:04.840 about it. She went through a really hard time. She struggled with things. And a lot of I talk about

00:16:08.920 mental health challenges in my book and and her struggles there. And then she ends up having an

00:16:13.680 unplanned pregnancy and the pressures of friends, not our family, thankfully, but friends around her

00:16:19.160 that she should just she could just take care of this. You know, that was that was the message. I

00:16:22.980 mean, they weren't telling her when she was having sex and not ready to be a mom. Don't

00:16:26.160 do that. They were when she gets pregnant, then it's go have an abortion. And she bravely chooses

00:16:30.520 life. It changes her life. And, you know, my nephew, this amazing kid changes my sister's

00:16:36.380 life, transforms her. She ends up marrying the guy they have there. They have another child

00:16:39.720 now. And her her story is, yeah, we in a society, mistakes are made. I mean, we're not

00:16:46.280 trying to be prudes here about that. But the bottom line is this. What where are we directing

00:16:50.720 people? What what is the moral code that we're pointing to? And if there's no moral

00:16:55.380 code and Planned Parenthood is in the schools teaching kids pornography, masturbation, sexual

00:16:59.440 deviancy and now trans ideology. I mean, Planned Parenthood is setting up shop with hormones

00:17:04.420 in our communities to secretly give them to little boys and girls. A lot of parents don't

00:17:09.040 know this, but that's their new their new thing, their new gig. That that's a culture of

00:17:14.120 death right there. You're creating death cycles for those people. You're feeding the abortion

00:17:18.520 market. I love this idea. We're not we're not the prudes. You know, I think what what

00:17:24.260 the sexual revolutionaries want to say is, oh, you fuddy duddy conservatives. Look, we're

00:17:28.900 the world wise radicals here and we really know what's going on with sex. And I think, hold

00:17:34.560 on a second here. You're the people who say that casual sex has no consequences and that

00:17:40.840 rampant abortion has no psychological consequences and that the contraception always works and that

00:17:46.220 little boys can become little girls. And you're accusing me of being ignorant and naive. Actually,

00:17:51.040 maybe it's the pro-lifers who have who have a little bit more of a keen sense of how life

00:17:57.460 really works. We only have a few minutes left, but I would like you to address what I have

00:18:02.840 found to be the most honest argument for abortion I've ever heard. This is from Naomi Wolf. Naomi

00:18:09.640 Wolf is a feminist. She's actually seems to be having some disputes.

00:18:14.540 She's changing. Yeah, she's changing before our very eyes. But she infamously said some years ago,

00:18:19.740 she said, look, all this talk about how abortion doesn't take a human life and it's just a zygote or

00:18:25.720 a fetus or that's all bunk. That's ridiculous. Yes, abortion does take a human life. However,

00:18:32.920 women and men are not the same. Women have this disadvantage. They got to deal with something men

00:18:37.220 don't have to deal with. And so for there to be true equality between the sexes, women need to be able

00:18:42.700 to kill their children in all their humanity. And she got a ton of blowback for it. And I mean,

00:18:48.080 what she's saying is ghastly, but I felt the blowback was undeserved because that woman,

00:18:53.300 unlike virtually every other abortion supporter I know, was being honest about the stakes.

00:18:58.480 So how's her argument wrong?

00:19:00.900 Yeah, there's honesty to her argument in the sense that she's admitting the reality of the humanity of

00:19:06.020 those children and just saying, yes, it does kill them. And that's okay. That's my right.

00:19:09.240 Um, but listen, what is equality? Equality is not saying this. If I had, if I had the right as a

00:19:15.300 woman to be equal to every other man, then I have the right to have your same strengths physically,

00:19:19.900 to have your same attributes. I mean, equality is not saying, uh, the fact that I can bring life

00:19:25.360 into the world and you can't, Michael doesn't mean that we're not equal in dignity, but it means that

00:19:32.060 we're different and that's good. I'm glad we're different. You know, I'm glad we're, everyone's

00:19:36.480 different. So what are the differences are actually gifts. And to say that our ability to bring

00:19:43.120 children into the world means that we have the ability to then kill them. It's like saying,

00:19:47.040 because a man has the ability to be strong and, and be oppressive over another individual that's

00:19:51.900 physically weaker than he has the right to somehow oppress that weaker individual. We will all have

00:19:56.980 the ability to be stronger than others and have others even dependent on us. But another person,

00:20:02.040 especially a child, our child dependency, biologically, emotionally, um, their weakness

00:20:08.840 does not give us the right to take their life. And I think that's the key. The natural place for a

00:20:14.500 human life to begin their life is in the body of their mother. That's how they start. That's how we

00:20:19.040 all start our life. And so we should have a profound respect for that bond and fight to support those

00:20:25.440 mothers. Men should be supporting those women. Um, if they're the father, that should be 100%

00:20:29.980 their focus is helping her and helping that child instead of saying, because I'm, I have another

00:20:35.840 human dependent on me, I have the right to conquer them and kill them. That's not morality. That's not

00:20:40.700 justice. Well said. And you, you've rubbed it in, but you make the point. No one ever confuses me for

00:20:46.360 Lila Rose. Nobody, I try, I do my hair up. I try to look nice. Nobody, nobody ever does.

00:20:52.440 You're great the way you are. Embrace your, like my book, know your worth, Michael.

00:20:56.420 I will know my worth. I will not try to identify as other people. Uh, I really,

00:21:00.660 really strongly recommend it. Well, one, I mean, just go follow Lila. Well, Lila,

00:21:04.160 where can people follow you on social media? Thank you. So I'm all over wherever you are on

00:21:08.220 socials. Uh, Lila Grace Rose, Lila Rose official on Instagram, on Facebook, and then it's liveaction.org

00:21:14.060 and live actions all over. So we're the leading educational, uh, educational leader for the

00:21:18.400 public movement. So check us out and get equipped and then fighting for life is anywhere you get your

00:21:22.860 books. So I hope it's inspiring and helpful for you. There it is. Go get

00:21:26.300 the book fighting for life, becoming a force for change in a wounded world. Read the book,

00:21:31.680 do the stuff and help repair the world just a little bit, make it a little bit less wounded.

00:21:36.280 Lila, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Michael.

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The Michael Knowles Show - May 23, 2021

Fighting for Life ｜ Lila Rose

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