Ep 1015 ｜ Abortion Colonialism： How the West Blackmails the Third World ｜ Guest： Dr. Calum Miller
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Summary
Dr. Callum Miller is a pro-life advocate. He graduated from the University of Oxford Medical School in 2015 and has published over 30 academic papers in medicine, law, philosophy, and ethics. He is here to talk about why he has taken this stance, why he is so passionate about the pro life cause, and he is also sounding the alarm about something called Abortion Colonialism, where rich Western countries like the United States go to other countries and blackmail poor governments and individuals there into supporting abortion. Dr. Miller is going to highlight that atrocity for us today and equip us with the tools to push back.
Transcript
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Dr. Callum Miller is a pro-life advocate. He graduated from the University of Oxford Medical
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School in 2015. He has published over 30 academic papers in medicine, law, philosophy, and ethics.
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He is here today to talk about why he has taken this stance, why he is so passionate about the
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pro-life cause. And he is also sounding the alarm about something called abortion colonialism,
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where rich Western countries like the United States go to other countries and basically
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blackmail the poor governments and the poor individuals there into supporting abortion.
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He is going to highlight that atrocity for us today and equip us with the tools to push back.
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This is an amazing conversation. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code ALI at checkout. That's GoodRanchers.com, code ALI.
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Dr. Miller, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. If you could tell everyone who you are
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and what you do. Yes, I'm a medical doctor. I graduated about 10 years ago now from Oxford,
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and I also teach philosophy there and do research on abortion policy there. So a lot of my work now
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is speaking around the world and doing interviews and debates and things like that. But my sort of
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original work was really in medicine and academic research on the topic of abortion.
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How many anti-abortion people are you surrounded by there?
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Or just even just where you are in your particular field of study.
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Yeah. Well, so my country is about 6% pro-life if you look at surveys. So we're really a very
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small minority. I grew up pro-choice and I changed my mind at medical school. And so for me,
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I mean, that's an unusual direction to go in the UK. And so particularly, you know, you see people
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in academia and in the medical field tend to be more pro-choice than average still. So it's a very
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small number. But, you know, we have to use our voice where we can. And fortunately, we're still in
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a moment where it's still relatively liberal. Like I haven't, you know, people try to get me in
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trouble. It hasn't worked yet. And so at least at the moment, we're in a relatively liberal space
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kind of thing. Yeah. And 6% pro-life, what's the definition of that, of that kind of pro-life?
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So that would be, I think, trying to remember the survey, but I think it was a woman should be able
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to get an abortion, something like that. And so 6% said no. Okay. Gotcha. And so you said that you
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grew up being pro-choice, changed your mind in medical school. That's not the typical trajectory.
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Most people get even more radicalized in the direction of abortion or just progressivism in
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medical school. So tell us about that. Tell us first like why you were pro-choice, what your thinking
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was about that, and then what changed your mind? Yeah. So I kind of grew up just with the average view
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in the UK, which is that it should be a woman's choice. In the early stage of pregnancy, it's not
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really anything significant. And so at the same time, later in pregnancy, I thought, no, that's too
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late. Like you shouldn't allow abortion late in pregnancy. So it wasn't- Just kind of intuitively
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you felt that? I think so. It wasn't kind of, you know, it wasn't the whole like absolute bodily
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autonomy abortion up to birth for any reason, which you get a lot more in the US. In the UK, pretty much
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everyone thinks there should be limits on abortion. So here in the US, about a third of the population
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say abortion for any reason up to birth. And in Europe, that's pretty much unheard of. Like almost
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no one supports that. And that's really because we think in the early stage of pregnancy, it's not
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really a human. In the late stage of pregnancy, it is, and therefore it has to be protected.
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And so I just had that average European view. And fortunately at university, and I know this is
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increasingly rare at university, I had the chance to interact with different opinions. And it was a
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time where I could challenge my opinions. I saw in first year that this was a human being, that life
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began at conception. That was just a biological fact. It wasn't anything religious. And then it was
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really over time, I saw the impact on a woman's mental health. I saw what abortion actually involved.
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And because I had the knowledge to separate truth from falsehood, you know, I could see when
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groups like Planned Parenthood were just making stuff up or lying because I knew that, you know,
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the reality, it gave me a much more honest look at the conversation. And I remember this one time I
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was already pro-life by this point, but something that really solidified it for me was I was doing,
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I was involved in a cesarean section and I was on placement in obstetrics. We were doing a cesarean
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section and it was twin babies. And so it's a very surreal thing to do. You would think it's more
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technical than it actually is, but you do just kind of grab the babies and pull them out.
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Yeah. I've had two C-sections. And yeah, you do, you feel, even though you're supposed to be
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numbed, you feel the moment they literally just like, all this pressure is like relieved from
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your body as they just pull this little baby out of you. It's crazy.
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Right. Well, unsurprisingly, I don't have that experience, but I did do the pulling. And,
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you know, because it was twins, there was a point where there was one twin baby outside of the womb
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and their twin brother or sister was still inside. And what that meant in the country I was in,
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I was in New Zealand at the time, was that that baby outside of the womb was a full human being
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with the full set of human rights, just as equal to anyone else that we have to do everything to
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protect. And if their life was in jeopardy, we would do everything possible to protect them.
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And yet their identical brother or sister inside, who's the same in every way,
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just a different location, didn't have those rights at all and was seen as something completely
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different, not a human being, something that the woman should have choice over and that sort of
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thing. And so that just reinforced to me how crazy it is that we see birth as this moment that changes
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everything in terms of the baby itself, because I could see them. I could see both babies. They look
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the same. They were pretty much the same. And for me, it became even more clear that, you know,
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both of these were human beings that needed to be protected.
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And you said that you were already pro-life at that point. Was there a turning point for you
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and the light switch turning on in which you went from pro-choice to pro-life? Or was it just kind of
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a gathering of facts and beliefs over time that led you to saying, you know what, I don't think
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I think it was quite gradual. And I think this is the trajectory we see for most people. And it's
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something to be aware of as pro-lifers that we shouldn't necessarily just expect people to shift
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in one go, that most people shift step by step over time. And that was my experience. A lot of it
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was, you know, seeing the reality of abortion, seeing when life began, etc. But then I had to
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wrestle with a lot of complicated philosophical debates. And it was actually some of my American
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friends who were over in Oxford studying philosophy who were much more passionate about this, felt very
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strongly about this and engaged me on these things. And, you know, I had to deal with these worries
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about, you know, if it's not conscious yet, is it still morally, you know, important and that kind of
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thing. And I wrestled with that for quite a long time before I really just became convinced of the
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Not very. So we went to church, but it was an extremely liberal church. It would be like
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the equivalent of the liberal Presbyterians in the U.S. who don't really believe much that's in
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the Bible or anything else. And so we would never speak about it at home. Like my parents are just
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not engaged at all when it comes to speaking to us about it. So, yeah, we certainly weren't a fiercely
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religious kind of family. And at church, you know, you would never hear about anything like this at
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all. And if you did, it would probably be pro-choice. So, yeah.
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Yeah. So I go to a sort of conservative Church of England church, which there is such a thing.
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The Church of England is extremely diverse. So telling someone you're in it doesn't really
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tell you anything. You could be basically an atheist and some of the priests are atheist in
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Insane. I don't understand. I don't understand that at all.
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I mean, yeah, it's not even like they just openly say. So it's very strange.
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But then you do get sort of conservative evangelicals there as well. And so, especially
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for me, I grew up as a teenager being, you know, very, I sort of believed in the basics
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of Christianity, but also some heresies and believed kind of anything I wanted to that
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was convenient. To the point where all the stuff I was reading was that if you're intellectual,
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if you're academic, if you're a smart person, you become a liberal, either an atheist or a
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liberal Christian, because evangelicals are dumb, they're mean, they're ignorant, they're
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uneducated. And all the stuff I was reading said that, especially Americans, I'm sorry
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to say. And then I just at university again at Oxford, I met some evangelicals. They were
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very good people, intelligent, well-educated, could have a real conversation. And we had
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actually set up an alternative Christian union in our university. We were like, we don't want
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to be part of the evangelical one. We're going to set up a liberal Christian union. So I was
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the leader of them, the founder of them. And it was really seeing the sort of emptiness
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and the vacuity of their arguments as I was leading it that made me think, as an intellectual
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academic kind of person, this doesn't really sit well with me. I want to know the truth.
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And then I met these evangelicals who were really good, educated, thoughtful people.
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They were English. It was only later that I met Americans who were also good, intelligent,
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educated people. And so it completely upended my expectations and the stereotypes that I'd
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been taught. And so this is something we still see in England, that especially American evangelicals
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are just portrayed as thoughtless and totally disengaged with anything sort of intellectual
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or credible. And thanks to God, over the last five or 10 years, I've seen the opposite, that
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there's a great wealth of, you know, intellectual vibrance and, and also so much good that is
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just arising from people that are dedicated to doing the right thing because of their faith.
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Do you remember any particular conversations or subjects on which you said, oh, wow, I've
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never thought about it like that, that really kind of served as an impetus for your theological
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Not that I, I mean, abortion is probably the best example. I, yeah, that was, that was
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something I'd never really thought of. And I, I was probably in the middle of kind of converting
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to evangelicalism by the time I became pro-life. I can't really remember the details, but it
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definitely didn't kind of go together. It wasn't like I became an evangelical, I switched
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on abortion. They were both totally separate intellectual processes. And so, you know, I'm going to be
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like, you know, as I've gone on being an evangelical, and I know that word is like a nasty word in
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Yeah. Well, it could mean something different. It certainly has political undertones, at least
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to it here in America, because it's like a political subset of American life.
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When this is the sad thing, you know, it's, it now signals to people in many parts of the
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world that like, I have a particular political perspective. I'm like, absolutely MAGA kind of
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thing. And, you know, I would vote for Trump. I've always been very open about that. I think
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he's an awful candidate, but I think he's the best we've got. And so that's my position. I'm
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very open. I think he's terrible, but he's the lesser of the two evils. And I'm ready to criticize
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him when he needs to be criticized, ready to criticize any Republican or whoever, when they
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need to be criticized, because as Christians, we stand for truth and integrity more than any
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politics. And I think it's sad to see some of my evangelical friends run away from the
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label because they think, I don't want people to think I'm, you know, a Trump supporter or
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Republican or mean or whatever it is. And the reality is, what it really means is that you're,
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you know, you're committed to Jesus, who's the best person who's ever lived. And you follow
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him and you believe what he taught about himself. And that's, you know, however much trouble it
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might get me in or whatever stereotypes people might make about me because of the label I use.
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I think we should still use that label because it's still true that I follow Jesus, that I think
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he's the best person ever. And that what he said about himself was true. And so I'm happy to pin my
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badge to his, yeah. Right. Yeah. I agree with you. I understand that the left really controls
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much of the means of information and controls. Even we were just talking about how, like when Trump
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was convicted of all of these felonies, the Encyclopedia Britannica tweeted, like, we've
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already updated his bio. And I just say that as an example of how really progressivism dominates
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these once neutral institutions that are in charge of a lot of our information and a lot of our
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language. And if we continue to allow them to take over all of the definitions of all of the terms
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and all of the language that we use, then we're going to be left with nothing. And so at some point
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you have to just kind of counterclaim it and just say, no, evangelical means what it means. And we don't
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have to give in to the left's redefining of things. So I agree with you there. One thing that she said
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that was interesting and I want to go back to is the difference in abortion perspective in America
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and there is that it's a lot more extreme here in the United States. I mean, it's really hard to find
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anyone in the Democratic Party who will say publicly, here's what the limit on abortion should be.
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Instead, they say things like, we just need to trust women and their doctors, which is just kind of a
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euphemism for abortion through all nine months for any reason without apology and subsidized by the
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taxpayer. You said that's really hard to find in Europe. Why is that?
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I guess I should clarify. It's not hard to find among the activist class and among, you know, the
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radicals, but they're a tiny proportion of the population and even they shy away from it. So on
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television, you know, what they will push for is basically abortion for any reason up to birth,
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but they will say, you know, this won't change the limit that, you know, the proposal they're
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putting forward. They'll say the 12 week limit or the 24 week limit will stay in place because they
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know that most people disagree with them even as they push for this. And so to be honest, I don't
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know why it's Europe is like that. And the main guess I would have is that it's really a reaction
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to the other side. So in Europe, you don't really have a religious right. You don't really have strong
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conservative movements or religious movements in politics. And you certainly don't have the sort of
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toxicity sort of reaction to growing up in a sort of super religious household and then sort of
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rebelling from that. So, you know, this whole deconstruction movement that's big in the US and
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running away from, you know, religious trauma or abuse in the church and things like that.
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Of course, we've had that in Europe, but nothing to the same level. So most people in Europe still
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see themselves as religious in some way. And they don't see, you know, this big, bad sort of
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MAGA Christian enemy that kind of needs to be defeated. They just see this sort of relatively
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benign church that maybe is a bit antiquated and quirky, but it's not threatening. Whereas in America,
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it's threatening. And so you sort of go to the opposite extreme and you say abortion for any
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reason up to birth, it's a good thing. It's health care. We should all be paying for it.
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Whereas in Europe, because basically conservatism has collapsed and religion has collapsed,
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they haven't had the sort of scapegoat necessary to go to that extreme. And so most people have just
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become kind of comfortable with this middle ground view of abortion, usually up to 12 weeks.
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Most countries in Europe stop abortion at 12 weeks. The UK is 24 weeks. And a couple of
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others are also quite late. But yeah, the average is, you know, a good example, Mississippi, the case
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that overturned Roe v. Wade. This was a bill to ban abortion after 15 weeks. And everyone was talking
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like the house was falling down, that this was like the Taliban taking over. And you look at Europe,
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if Mississippi enacted that bill, which I guess maybe they did in the end, they would still be
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one of the most liberal pro-abortion countries in Europe. And yet it was, you know, people were
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talking as if this was going to be Afghanistan or somewhere else like that. So it really highlights
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just how I think extreme the debate here has become.
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Right. I think that the US is right in line with some human rights exemplars like North Korea
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and China and some other countries that obviously are riddled with all kinds of atrocities. People
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don't realize that not just when it comes to abortion, but when it comes to all kinds of
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reproductive technology, that America really is the Wild West, that we're really the outlier when it
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comes to how we treat pre-born life, how we treat embryos through IVF, how we treat babies via
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surrogacy, and how we treat babies in abortion, is that we really are very liberal, very extreme
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compared to the rest of the world. And you're right. We hear a lot that, oh, you're no, you
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Christian, right? You're no different than the Taliban. You're Christian nationalist and fascist
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because we believe in abortion limitations. So yeah, there is a big difference. It makes conversation
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in the United States really hard, but I imagine it's also really difficult where you are too,
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where so many people have just accepted, no, we're always going to have the 12 or 24 a week limit.
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Yeah, it is difficult. And I think it actually has got more difficult since Dobbs v. Jackson,
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which overturned Roe v. Wade, because to be honest, I get a lot of American interviewers or people who say,
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you know, what's the impact of Dobbs around the world sort of expecting me to say, oh, it was great.
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It's caused a whole kind of sea change towards pro-life in the rest of the world. And I'd love
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if that were true. And certainly there are signs of hope in the rest of the world. But the reality
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is in Europe, at least, it has mostly just mobilized the opposition. And so whereas we
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once had this sort of stable equilibrium of 12 weeks or whatever, you now get all of the pro-abortion
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groups in Europe massively mobilizing, saying, look at that, this can never happen here. We have to
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really clamp down on speech and things like this. So, I mean, France is a good example. In France,
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not only did they put it in the constitution, which I know is big news here, but they have a law that
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means you cannot dissuade someone from an abortion. And what that means is when it's actually interpreted
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by the judges more liberally than it was even written, it comes close to just banning pro-life
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speech. And once you get to that situation, there's very little you can do. And so we have a task,
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I think, in Europe of holding our ground when it comes to basic civil liberties on some of these
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issues. But at the same time, I think there is a, there is an increasing movement even among young
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people that is growing dissatisfied with the sort of crazy progressives in Europe. And so when you look
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at polls in the UK, the young age group, 18 to 24, seems to be the most pro-life. It's not by much,
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they're still only like 9% pro-life, but still significantly more than older age groups. And so,
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you know, we never know how history is going to shift. If you were in the 1980s in the Soviet Union
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or in Eastern Europe, you probably thought, you know, communism's doing just as well as it always
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has, it's never going to end. And then suddenly, pretty much overnight, it collapsed. And my perspective
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is, we have no idea from a purely historical perspective what's going to happen. From a theological
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perspective, we have no idea what societal changes are going to happen. And our job is to stay
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obedient. And so those seeds of hope, so that in 10 years, when that sort of major event does happen,
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we're ready. And I think the US is in that position as well that, you know, you've had some very big
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defeats in these ballot initiatives. But if you don't keep sowing the seeds and keep fighting, when you do get
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at the moment in 10 years, you're not going to be ready. Whereas what's encouraged me is the people
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who just keep going, keep going, keep going, we're not going to stop fighting. And then I think when
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you do get that shift in 10 years, when people begin to question again, you'll be in a great position.
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Sometimes I do get discouraged because I think, wow, we've got the technology that shows us exactly
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what's going on in the womb. The science is all there. We can see it. We know or should know exactly
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what happens in an abortion. If you can read through some of the euphemistic terminology on the
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Planned Parenthood site, they basically tell you, this is how we quote unquote, terminate a pregnancy.
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And I'm like, what else could we possibly need if people are not swayed by what they can see?
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And like you said, see the cognitive dissonance of, okay, yes, I believe this baby outside of the
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womb for two seconds is a full human being and shouldn't be murdered. But the twin baby just in
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a different location should be murdered. And it's bodily autonomy, termination of the pregnancy. I'm like,
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it's got to be some kind of spiritual awakening. It's not going to be the introduction of new
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To a large degree. I think you're absolutely right that there is this massive cognitive dissonance. And
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one of the ways we've seen this most is with miscarriages. You know, one of our main abortion
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providers in the UK actually confidently posts things like happy, or not happy, but sorry,
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but like, um, we'll post something on Instagram, like about baby loss awareness month.
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And they call it a baby. It's to do with miscarriage. The abortion provider is even
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supporting this terminology and using this terminology. And they feel confident that that's
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not going to undermine their core business or their core movements. And that's because,
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as you say, people are just very good at having this, this contradictory perspective.
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And I think something that has been very insightful, um, that was shared with me was
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thinking about how people really think through this decision, how women make this decision.
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There's actually pretty good evidence that a large percentage, I can't remember if it's the
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majority, but a large percentage of women know that this is a life and they know that they're ending
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a life. And so we can't just assume if we just show the scientific reality, people will change
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because it's, it's true in some cases, but not every case. And the best way I've heard it explained
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is that if a woman is considering an abortion, it's usually out of fear and specifically fear that
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she will lose her life as she knows it. And so it's not just done on a whim. It's not done for
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medical reasons. Usually it's not usually done because of some extreme situation like rape or
00:23:50.380
disability or whatever. It's usually a social or economic reason, but it's a reason that the woman
00:23:56.760
thinks threatens her life as she knows it. I'm not going to be able to go out with my friends when I
00:24:01.640
want. I'm not going to be able to get the job I want or the promotion I want. My education will be
00:24:05.760
disrupted. I can't just go even just to the shops or the, you know, the park when I want to.
00:24:11.280
Some of my friends might alienate me. I might have trouble with relationships in future.
00:24:16.640
And so everything that's valuable in her life is threatened by that. And although she doesn't
00:24:21.220
literally feel I'm going to, I'm going to die if I have this baby, she feels like my sense of
00:24:26.800
identity and my life as I know it is going to die. And therefore it's not just a case of choosing
00:24:31.540
to kill or to save a life. It's not a choice between life and death. It's a choice between two
00:24:36.860
different lives and you can only save one of them. And so rather than her saying, I'm going to kill
00:24:42.640
my baby because I just want to, it's her saying one of us has to die and I have to choose myself
00:24:50.640
because I'm the person I know. I'm sort of the most important to me. This is something that's maybe
00:24:56.560
a life in its beginning or not fully a life yet. It's not a life that I can see. It's not a life that
00:25:02.240
has relationships and so on. And so that has to be the one, if I have to choose, that has to go.
00:25:08.660
And when you think about it that way, it makes so much more sense that you can tell her all day long,
00:25:14.680
this is a life that you're taking. And in many cases she will know and she say, yes, but the
00:25:19.320
alternative is I lose my own life. And I think that's a big part of the reason why abortion is
00:25:24.580
still so persistent, even when we have the science on our side.
00:25:27.180
And it's even though it's a physical life versus kind of a figurative life because she's not really
00:25:32.700
losing her life. She might be losing portions of what she expected her life to be, which weren't
00:25:37.940
even guaranteed in the first place, or what she perceives her future holding versus the real
00:25:44.360
physical life of a human being, which is why I think so many euphemisms are used, like terminating
00:25:51.000
a pregnancy, ending your pregnancy. Planned Parenthood says pregnancy tissue.
00:25:57.180
And because I think that she does understand that even if she's choosing a life for a life,
00:26:03.700
even if she realizes that's the choice, she knows that there's a difference between murdering
00:26:08.640
a human being and missing out on some things that you wanted to have or expected to have,
00:26:13.460
which is why I think the abortion lobby works so hard at obscuring the reality of what abortion
00:26:20.740
is. And I actually do find that a lot of the pro-choice people that I talk to, they don't know
00:26:26.280
what happens in an abortion. Or I'll explain what happens in an abortion and they'll just say that
00:26:31.060
I'm lying. And I'll say, okay, well, what do you think happens? And they don't want to say. And so
00:26:37.620
it is almost a choice of saying, well, I don't want to confront that reality because I do think
00:26:43.580
intuitively most people are very repelled by what an abortion is. And you can't really make someone
00:26:52.020
listen to you or see the truth if they've chosen not to out of convenience or comfort or guilt or
00:27:01.400
I think that's right. Yeah. And I think, you know, euphemism is clearly a huge part of this. I
00:27:05.860
remember, you know, when I used to spend more time on the internet, I would say, I would just
00:27:10.480
quote an abortion procedure from an abortion like manual. And I would get people saying,
00:27:17.020
there's no way that that's true. If that was really how abortion happened, no one would be
00:27:21.600
pro-choice. And it really is incredible just the amount of misinformation that has to go. And this
00:27:28.920
is the other disheartening thing is, you know, we can give very objective information about what
00:27:34.000
happens, about the impact of abortion on women, the impact of abortion on society. And because the
00:27:40.160
institutions and academia has been so captured, and because people are so unwilling to believe it,
00:27:45.820
there are many times where you just cannot convince people, even when you have all the
00:27:50.080
facts on your side. And so it is frustrating. So I think part of the answer has to be working on the
00:27:56.260
institutions and opening a genuine debate, finding people with real credibility on the pro-life side
00:28:02.480
who cannot be just dismissed as, you know, a priest or whatever, but people who no one could deny
00:28:09.760
their credentials or their neutrality. I think that's important. But I guess coming back to what I was
00:28:14.820
saying before, I don't think we're going to solve this until we also show that motherhood can be a
00:28:21.000
path to success. So people feel like abortion is necessary. And when you read, you know, the people
00:28:28.500
in Casey versus Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court justices, they say our society is founded now on
00:28:34.780
abortion. It's like something that's so fundamental to the structure of our society that to get rid of it
00:28:40.400
would completely upend and tear apart our societal fabric. And that's true. And it's because people
00:28:46.880
have been told that you have to choose between your life and your baby. And for some reason,
00:28:54.960
we feel like that's an okay choice to force women into. We feel like it's fine that women just have
00:29:00.760
to choose between the life of their child and then everything else in their life. Like that's a choice
00:29:05.620
they should be happy with. And, you know, it's okay for them to have only those two options.
00:29:10.420
And that's a terrible position for us to have put women in as a society.
00:29:15.120
But is it true? Is that a true choice that they really have? Or is that what they perceive the
00:29:22.180
I think, I honestly think it's a mix. I think, I think there are ways in which we've made motherhood
00:29:27.500
needlessly difficult. And part of that is by encouraging a society and a culture that puts it
00:29:32.740
all on the woman that says, this is a woman's issue. It's a woman's choice. It's a woman's
00:29:36.280
responsibility. Because by legalizing abortion, the man can suddenly say, this is your choice,
00:29:42.340
your body, and it's your problem, and I'm going to walk away. And so that has caused structural
00:29:46.820
issues that leave women in poverty and single motherhood and has gotten rid of the key support
00:29:51.980
system that the woman would have had in earlier times. There are other things, you know,
00:29:56.780
the maternity leave in this country is very limited compared to most other Western countries.
00:30:05.520
It's very difficult to be a parent, particularly in America in many cases, but all across the West,
00:30:12.760
because society has not made things good for parents. It's disincentivized parenting. And so
00:30:19.680
part of it is that there is a sort of choice that you have to make because of the bad decisions and bad
00:30:25.460
structures that we have put in place. But I also think this is overstated. So, you know, when you
00:30:30.840
look at the evidence, people will say, if you deny a woman abortion, she'll have huge mental health
00:30:35.440
problems, she'll have financial problems, she'll have problems with her employment and so on. And
00:30:40.420
this is where the evidence is actually very different. What we see is that if a woman has an abortion,
00:30:46.860
she's more likely to have mental health problems like anxiety and suicide. She's more likely to die
00:30:52.380
within a year than if she has a baby. And also, even when you look at employment and poverty,
00:30:57.820
you know, we were told that if you legalize abortion, you'll get rid of single motherhood,
00:31:01.360
you'll get rid of women in poverty, because they can just decide about what they want to do and do
00:31:05.840
what's best for them. The reality is, and this was shown by some very pro-choice economists,
00:31:12.320
when abortion was legalized in the US, women in poverty actually increased because all the men ran away,
00:31:19.700
because they thought this is a woman's issue now. And even on an individual level,
00:31:24.520
you read the stories of women, particularly in the lowest socioeconomic classes,
00:31:30.360
and having a baby changes their life in ways that people in middle-class backgrounds struggle to
00:31:36.820
understand. You know, we read that abortion bans are particularly bad for poor women and women of
00:31:42.520
colour and so on. The reality is actually the opposite, that it is usually the wealthiest people
00:31:48.700
who benefit most from abortion, because they have their lives put together already, everything's very
00:31:53.660
neat, they have many other things they want to do with their life, and therefore abortion lets them
00:31:58.480
carry on with that. What we see when we actually listen to women who are most vulnerable in society
00:32:03.860
is that these are women who might be on drugs, they might be drink-driving other weekends,
00:32:09.120
they might be doing all sorts of things, they might be unemployed, no incentive or motivation
00:32:14.080
to get educated or to find a job. And there are some incredible books and papers that show
00:32:20.120
it's this group of women which is most positively affected by having a child in many cases.
00:32:26.140
There are countless testimonies of women who say,
00:32:28.600
my life was an absolute mess before I had my baby, but my baby has given me a reason to get an
00:32:34.880
education, it's given me motivation to get a job, it's given me motivation to stop drinking,
00:32:40.580
to stop smoking, to stop doing drugs, to get out of an abusive relationship. My baby literally saved
00:32:46.240
my life. And as I say, this is not just anecdotes. There are whole studies and books on this topic
00:32:52.960
just looking at the phenomenon of motherhood among the poorest people in society, and the overwhelming
00:32:59.600
trend among these women, maybe not every case, but the overwhelming trend is having a baby saved my
00:33:06.360
life. It didn't ruin it, it saved my life. And that's something that I think we really need to
00:33:10.760
think about seriously. How do we support women in those situations? And for any woman, how do we make
00:33:30.200
And so it really is, it's, I mean, it's a lie when women believe that they are going to, in their entire
00:33:38.360
lives, are going to die when they have a child. But at the same time, it is true that there will be
00:33:44.320
sacrifices demanded of them that were not before. And that is true when it comes to any addition of
00:33:50.840
responsibility, but especially this kind of paramount responsibility of raising a child.
00:33:55.600
It is true that, to use Christian language, there will be a dying to self that happens. There will
00:34:00.840
be a lose yourself to find yourself situation going on. In parenthood, things will be deferred,
00:34:06.540
they will be delayed, in some ways they will be complicated. And I'm not saying there's no
00:34:11.180
policy solution for any of that. Like you mentioned, maternal leave. I don't know how much of that is
00:34:18.380
really connected to the reason why a woman has an abortion. But also, I think, so it's not a matter
00:34:26.960
of telling a woman, no, your life isn't going to change at all, but that it's worth it, that it can
00:34:34.140
actually be better with this addition of difficulty and sacrifice that will be demanded of you. Yes,
00:34:41.120
that is true. But it is worth it. Now, I'm not saying that that's easy, because I agree with you,
00:34:48.060
it would be a lot easier if the father stuck around. I see that as like a huge factor in why women get
00:34:53.420
abortions, it seems. If she had a familial support system, if she had a community surrounding her,
00:34:59.820
I think it would be a lot easier. But at the same time, even that impoverished, lonely woman
00:35:05.340
needs to hear that the sacrifices that you will make for this child are worth it. It's better to
00:35:11.120
sacrifice on behalf of the life of a child than ask that child to sacrifice its life on behalf of us.
00:35:17.820
Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, and this is true, empirically, when they study the same women who
00:35:23.800
were denied abortions. There's a big study called the Turnaway Study, where women went to get an abortion,
00:35:27.760
and then they were denied. And then they, in most cases, went to have the baby, showing that the law
00:35:32.120
does make an impact and that it does save lives. They followed those women up five years later.
00:35:37.660
And they asked the women who had the baby and kept the baby, do you wish you could still have an
00:35:41.780
abortion? And 98% said no. 98%. Overwhelmingly, they said, I'm glad I have my baby. I'm glad I
00:35:48.780
wasn't given the abortion, even though I wanted one. And so that testimony speaks for itself,
00:35:54.860
that they felt that this was worth it. I'm sure it wasn't easy. But I think you're right. We can
00:36:00.720
make, we can have policies and societies and structures which minimize the level of sacrifice
00:36:07.620
and make sacrifice easier and, you know, do make it, don't make it unnecessarily difficult to make
00:36:15.620
those sacrifices. But parenthood will always involve sacrifice. And so I think we need two things there.
00:36:20.840
One is to teach the importance of that. And that actually sacrifice doesn't mean that you're less
00:36:26.280
of a person. It means that you're more of a person, that you're a hero. And that's what life is all
00:36:30.680
about. And secondly, I think the issue is that by portraying this as a women's issue, and this is
00:36:36.580
something that I think both pro-choice and pro-life groups do, by portraying it as a women's issue,
00:36:41.000
we are saying, yes, motherhood is a sacrifice, but it's worth it. And then what that gets people to
00:36:50.540
hear is, so why is motherhood a sacrifice, but fatherhood isn't? How come we have to choose and
00:36:55.880
we have to sacrifice, but men don't? And I think that's what's really missing. Because in the pro-life
00:37:01.280
side, we respond by saying, motherhood is the best thing. Motherhood involves sacrifice, but it's worth
00:37:06.100
it. Motherhood is what we need to support. When actually, the men need to hear just as much.
00:37:12.060
Your family is more important than your career as well. It's not like the family is more important
00:37:16.460
than the wife or the woman's career, because she's a woman. It's that family is always more
00:37:20.920
important than career, whether you're a man or a woman. And that, I think, is a message maybe we
00:37:25.000
haven't shared with men as much as we need to. Yeah, that's a really good point. And obviously,
00:37:29.980
it goes back even further than, you know, seeing the two lines on the pregnancy test. I mean, the
00:37:36.340
choice obviously came before that. And that's a whole other conversation about extramarital sex
00:37:42.620
or premarital sex. And there's a whole saying, at least here in the United States, I don't know if
00:37:47.320
this is popular in the UK, consent to sex is not the same thing as consent to pregnancy, which of course
00:37:52.540
it is. Of course it is. But there is kind of a separation there that goes back decades to the sexual
00:38:00.200
revolution that's been here for a long time that separates sex from pregnancy and separates sex and
00:38:07.180
pregnancy from marriage. And when you have like the most stable and the most protective institution
00:38:14.280
fall apart, which is marriage and the family, a husband and a wife together making a baby, then everyone
00:38:20.620
becomes vulnerable because everyone has the option to leave. Children are harmed, women are harmed.
00:38:27.360
And so it starts there. But is it asking too much for us for like the pro-life movement to say,
00:38:34.720
okay, instead of only talking about the choice of abortion, can we also talk about the choice of
00:38:41.920
like of sex outside of marriage? It almost seems like we don't want to touch that because that's
00:38:46.840
really archaic to go all the way there. But it seems kind of silly to not at least talk about
00:38:56.420
Yeah. And well, I think there's a couple of things to say there. One is that
00:39:00.280
there is beginning to be a sort of new sexual revolution or counter revolution. And there are
00:39:06.580
not just religious people, but secular people who are questioning what happened in the 70s
00:39:11.520
and seeing the impact on pornography use and the way that that causes violence against women and
00:39:17.240
things like this. The fact that the fruit of the sexual revolution looks much more like
00:39:23.860
men's preferences than women's preferences when you line them up. People are beginning to question
00:39:29.300
this and saying, are women actually better off? And they look at objective happiness levels among
00:39:33.280
women and see that they've been declining since then. And so, yeah, I think that's an important part of
00:39:39.180
it. But I think this is maybe an area where, again, kind of coming from a pretty left wing
00:39:45.540
background and still being kind of left wing in some areas, I think the marriage issue is something
00:39:50.400
that really got me thinking in that I saw an article the other day that was titled marriage is a social
00:40:00.140
justice issue. And it basically pointed out that marriage is the ultimate form of privilege. If you want
00:40:06.680
to use that terminology, maybe you don't, but let's just use it for the sake of it. It is the ultimate
00:40:10.880
form of privilege. If you have married parents or if you're married yourself, you're way more likely
00:40:15.360
to have better mental health, to have better education, to have much more stable financial
00:40:20.200
situation, to have successful relationships in future for your children and so on. Less drugs,
00:40:27.440
less crime, everything. It enhances your life in every way to have that stable family background,
00:40:32.520
much more than your race, much more than your even economic background, much more than your gender.
00:40:39.760
Having a stable family to grow up is the ultimate form of privilege. And therefore, one of the things
00:40:46.660
that people who are poor are most missing, and I'm not saying this because they're poor, but objectively,
00:40:53.320
marriage has particularly fallen apart among the lowest socioeconomic classes in the West.
00:40:58.940
It's just an objective trend. And when you think about it this way, what are we doing when we're
00:41:06.660
trying to substitute instead of the family that a child should have? We're just trying to give them
00:41:14.680
money. We're trying to give them handouts. We're trying to give them food, whatever it is. All that
00:41:18.760
stuff is good. I support it. I'm pretty pro-welfare in many different ways. But you're never going to
00:41:24.240
substitute for a missing father or a missing parent. And they're always going to feel the cost
00:41:29.820
of that, and they're always going to be disadvantaged relative to others. And so as someone who's very
00:41:34.940
committed to equality and cares a lot about equality, about the poor, about social justice, if you want
00:41:40.480
to put it that way, marriage is one of the most important things missing from the social justice
00:41:46.000
conversation, because it is one of the most fundamental foundations for the weakest in society.
00:41:55.080
People who are rich have many things to fall back on. They can fall back on their money.
00:41:58.580
They can fall back on their friends. They can fall back on all sorts of things. If you don't have much,
00:42:03.780
the only thing that you have is your family. And if even that is taken away from you, then you have
00:42:09.860
nothing left. And so the collapse of family and the collapse of marriage among the poorest people in
00:42:15.380
society is something that the left and the right should be able to join forces on, should be able
00:42:20.660
to say is an outrage and something we need to fix. And unfortunately, many people are just not
00:42:41.460
This is so this is another issue where, again, you sort of get left and right switching sides.
00:42:49.980
Yeah, this has been going on for a long time. And it was originally the Republicans and the Democrats
00:42:54.800
kind of together who did this. Basically, it's the idea that this is a new form of ideological
00:43:00.760
colonialism, the way that Western countries go to non Western countries. And they say, you have to
00:43:07.600
promote abortion, you have to legalize abortion, you have to put it in your schools or whatever
00:43:11.080
it is, or we're going to withhold something from you. We're going to withhold our, you know,
00:43:16.740
USAID money or whatever it is. And so they're basically going into these countries and saying,
00:43:21.840
your culture, your values don't matter, we know better, and you have to change them,
00:43:26.120
or we're not going to support you. And one of the most sinister examples of this was hearing about
00:43:30.660
the Pacific Islands, where these are very, very small countries that, again, you know,
00:43:36.120
whether you believe in climate change or not, the people there generally do.
00:43:40.180
And they are terrified that if the sea levels rise, their countries will disappear. It's a genuine
00:43:46.240
existential threat to these countries. And what we've heard stories from at the United Nations is
00:43:52.360
rich countries going to them and saying, we are going to vote for these pro environmental policies
00:43:58.140
that will save your countries, but only if you support abortion. So you get these sort of
00:44:05.660
green people and pro environment people who are so cynical that care so little about the actual
00:44:11.220
environment and climate change, that they're willing to base their support for climate change
00:44:16.620
policies or not, based on whether the Pacific Islands want to kill their babies. And so they're
00:44:22.660
threatening, basically blackmailing these countries with extinction, unless they support abortion. And so
00:44:27.460
that's just a vivid illustration of what this actually looks like. It's basically rich white people
00:44:34.060
in the West going to other people around the world and saying, you're wrong, we're right, you have to fix it.
00:44:39.900
Yeah. And it's the same thing for the LGBTQ issue. Of course, administrations here,
00:44:45.180
democratic administrations have said to countries like Uganda, if you don't repeal your laws against
00:44:50.580
homosexuality, whatever you think about those laws, that's the laws that were passed in that country.
00:44:55.440
But the United States saying we're going to withhold our aid or XYZ unless you conform to our ideological
00:45:02.860
positions. And as you said, it's kind of the left and right switching because the left here says that
00:45:08.180
they want to decolonize the world, that they're anti-imperialism. Progressivism is extremely
00:45:14.420
imperialistic, not just here in the United States. They will literally colonize every single institution in
00:45:19.420
every state. But like you said, also abroad. So what do we do about something like that? It can feel
00:45:26.540
like we're kind of powerless against that kind of action. Yeah, I think what you see in the
00:45:32.840
decolonization movement is it's really just a power play. It's not that they don't want a global
00:45:37.740
ideology enforced all over the world. Of course, that's exactly what they want. It's that they don't
00:45:42.060
want, you know, a conservative or a Christian or a pro-life ideology around the world. And so it's really
00:45:47.820
about just making sure that they decolonize everywhere of one ideology so that they can replace it with
00:45:53.860
another. And so I think one of the things I'd say is a lot of the conversation in the US has been about
00:46:02.240
fighting that by, you know, things like the Mexico City policy, where they say we're not going to fund any
00:46:08.480
organizations under Republican governments. We're not going to fund any international organizations that support or
00:46:14.620
promote or provide abortions. And that's a great first step. And it causes a huge difference. It cuts
00:46:20.460
millions of dollars from going to Planned Parenthood International or Marie Stopes International that are
00:46:25.900
just pushing abortion all over the world. And Trump supported that, of course, the Biden administration
00:46:30.500
reversed that. Exactly. And but but I think what I would say, especially to to Americans listening is
00:46:37.060
that is only the first step in order to really stop this and to preserve those other cultures around the
00:46:44.220
world, it's not enough to cut Planned Parenthood International's budget from 100 million to 50
00:46:49.520
million dollars, because they're still going to have 50 million dollars and our side is still going to
00:46:53.540
have almost nothing. If we want to preserve these countries and protect their cultural values and give
00:46:59.860
them the tools and resources to do that, we have to be proactive in reaching out to these countries,
00:47:05.720
providing them support, sending pro-life missionaries, giving them resources, giving them political
00:47:11.200
support, giving them education, whatever it is, we have to be actively on their side rather than just
00:47:18.500
saying we're going to just cut funding. Because the reality is that even if the US government's money
00:47:25.600
stopped going to all of these countries around the world, you would still have millions from the Gates
00:47:29.880
Foundation, from Soros, from Packard and a bunch of others. And it would still massively outweigh
00:47:35.920
anything that pro-lifers have. And so I guess the key thing I would say is, let's be proactive. Let's think
00:47:42.060
about how we can really utilize our church networks in other countries, utilize the enormous wealth that we
00:47:48.740
have in the West, and that we could share some of that with pro-life countries and help them to do this,
00:47:55.180
because they still have time. At the end of the century, half the world's population is going to be in
00:48:01.760
Africa. Nigeria is going to have 800 million people. That's crazy. If those countries in that
00:48:07.360
continent stays pro-life, then the pro-life side is winning globally for the next hundred years.
00:48:13.140
But they are not going to stay pro-life in the next 10 years, unless pro-lifers really begin to
00:48:18.720
support those countries. And so that would be my argument and my plea to people listening is that
00:48:23.020
they get really serious about how we can preserve those countries and be proactive in shaping and
00:48:29.140
developing their pro-life movements. Where can someone get started if they want to know exactly
00:48:33.660
how to do that themselves? There are a number of ways. There are some great organizations around
00:48:38.700
doing this kind of stuff. There are groups like Human Life International, World Youth Alliance,
00:48:43.280
ADF International do a great amount of work on the pro-life side internationally,
00:48:46.760
and a bunch of others that I haven't said. Institute for Women's Health is another great one. So get
00:48:52.640
involved with an organization like that, or Pro-Life Global, which is for students and young people.
00:48:56.980
So speak to me. We're thinking a lot about how we can support those countries and how we can equip
00:49:02.740
those countries to be safe. And we've realized that there's a massive impact that can be had.
00:49:07.440
You can really save millions of lives if we're strategic about this. And so, yeah, I'd love to
00:49:13.200
hear from people that are interested in doing that.
00:49:17.080
They can go to my website. So I have a couple of websites. One is calamilla.org.
00:49:21.460
And I'll correct that afterwards if it's wrong.
00:49:25.000
No, we can put the correct link, whatever it is, in the description today. Yeah.
00:49:29.260
So calamilla.org for speaking requests and for writing to me and finding out more information,
00:49:34.460
or calamusblog.com is where I have a complete comprehensive Q&A on abortion. So from my academic
00:49:41.700
background, I went through over 100 of the most common questions people ask me on abortion.
00:49:46.240
I found all the references and all the arguments and all the scientific evidence to respond to those
00:49:52.000
and then put them all on the website for free. So that's a hopefully helpful resource as well.
00:49:56.140
That is so helpful. Okay. We're going to put both of those links in the description of this episode.
00:50:00.720
I'm sure that's going to help so many people. Thank you so much, Dr. Miller. I really,
00:50:05.300
really appreciate it. And thanks for the work that you do. I know that it's
00:50:08.640
probably difficult feeling like you're swimming upstream, especially where you are.
00:50:12.280
Um, but I appreciate you standing strong. I really do. It makes a big difference. So thank you so much.