Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 345 ｜ Exposing Democrats' Pro-Abortion Plans for 2021 ｜ Guest： Alexandra DeSanctis

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and a

00:00:13.820 wonderful new year. So we thought that 2020 was going to end and everything would go back

00:00:20.280 to normal. We've been same for the past however many months, almost a year now, like starting

00:00:25.040 at the end of February. We were saying, oh, 2021 is so weird. Or 2020 is so weird. I can't

00:00:31.640 wait until next year. I can't wait till 2020 is over. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news,

00:00:36.700 but 2021 doesn't necessarily guarantee us normalcy. Like it doesn't guarantee us any

00:00:41.320 stability. Things are probably going to continue to be weird. Like that's just the age that we

00:00:47.300 live in. But hey, God knew exactly what he was doing when he put the people in the place that

00:00:54.640 he wanted to put them at the time that he wanted to put them. We're not here arbitrarily. We're not

00:00:58.400 here accidentally. He didn't just say, okay, I guess these people are good to be, you know,

00:01:04.000 put in this generation or at this spot in the span of eternity. He does everything with intention. He

00:01:09.760 does everything with purpose. And so we can take comfort in the fact that he is completely sovereign

00:01:15.400 over all of us. He knows every single one of our days before any of them come to be. Psalm 139,

00:01:21.300 says he is not wondering what this year holds. He has not been surprised or taken aback by anything.

00:01:26.960 So he is completely and totally in control. And we have every reason to rejoice and every reason to

00:01:32.980 be confident as we have ever had. And so we can look forward to this year, knowing that things could

00:01:40.320 still be weird. They could still be hard, but knowing that God is completely in control and he is worthy

00:01:44.820 of all of our hope and our praise. Okay. Today, we're having a very fascinating policy-centric

00:01:50.080 conversation about abortion. So we talk about abortion a lot. We talk about abortion legislation,

00:01:54.840 but we really talk about the underneath of abortion, like the worldview and the philosophical views

00:02:01.180 that lead someone to be pro-choice. And they might say personally pro-choice, but outwardly,

00:02:07.100 or personally pro-life, but outwardly pro-choice, or even encourages someone to be pro-abortion

00:02:12.800 because those people do actually exist. But today, we're going to focus a little bit more

00:02:17.840 specifically on what's going on legislation-wise, both federally and on the state level when it comes

00:02:23.920 to abortion and what the Biden administration specifically looks like when it comes to abortion

00:02:28.940 advocacy. And we will get into also kind of the worldview implications and the thinking behind the

00:02:35.900 pro-choice movement and the pro-choice position. I'm talking to Alexandra DeSanctis. She is a writer

00:02:40.780 for National Review. She is an excellent expert and an excellent resource on all of this. And I'm just

00:02:47.040 really excited for you to listen to and learn from this conversation. Without further ado, here is

00:02:53.780 Alexandra DeSanctis. Alexandra, thank you so much for joining me. Can you tell everyone who may not know

00:03:04.680 who you are and what you do? Yes, I'm a staff writer at National Review, and I cover elections,

00:03:12.060 politics, culture, and especially the pro-life movement and abortion policy. Yes, you are one of

00:03:17.360 my go-to sources when it comes to breaking down legislation that has to do with abortion. So I

00:03:23.720 really appreciate just the thoroughness of your reporting when it comes to this beat. Can you tell us

00:03:30.120 what is coming down the pipeline as far as federal abortion legislation goes, especially if Democrats

00:03:39.860 end up taking the Senate if they win these two races in Georgia? I think the biggest thing to keep an eye

00:03:46.600 on would be the Hyde Amendment. This is a longtime conscience protection policy that has been put in

00:03:52.760 place almost always since Roe v. Wade to ensure that pro-life taxpayers and all taxpayers don't have to fund

00:03:59.540 abortion procedures through Medicaid. And the Democratic Party is now taking aim at this policy.

00:04:05.400 House Democrats have been having hearings. They've been pushing various amendments and bills trying

00:04:10.060 to get rid of this conscience protection. And it seems, you know, with Joe Biden having reversed himself

00:04:15.320 on this issue and now also opposing the Hyde Amendment if Democrats take the Senate, this is

00:04:20.640 unfortunately probably one of the first things that they would do on abortion. And can you explain a

00:04:25.860 little bit more about what the Hyde Amendment is, how it came about, what exactly it protects,

00:04:32.080 and why we as pro-lifers should care about it? Sure. So it was first put in place right after

00:04:39.300 Roe v. Wade, a couple of years after the Supreme Court sort of invented this constitutional right to

00:04:44.440 abortion. And it was actually backed by a really big bipartisan coalition. You know, something like 250

00:04:50.680 Democrats supported the first Hyde Amendment in the House in 1976. And it's been added as a rider to

00:04:58.520 relevant federal budgets, essentially, to ensure that something like Medicaid money, for example,

00:05:04.000 does not reimburse for abortion procedures. So unfortunately, the Hyde Amendment does not mean

00:05:08.780 that abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, for example, can't get federal money. As most people

00:05:13.780 know, Planned Parenthood does get about half a billion dollars in federal money every year. But Hyde is

00:05:19.060 supposed to protect sort of the direct use of federal funds to underwrite or reimburse providers

00:05:25.540 for abortion procedures. And it's supposed to be a protection of essentially the pro-life Americans

00:05:30.180 conscience rights. And you said Joe Biden reversed course on that. He has been one of those Democrats

00:05:36.480 that even though he considers himself pro-choice, he has at the very least said, OK, you know, we're not

00:05:41.840 going to overturn the Hyde Amendment. But as that has become more mainstream and more of a posh Democratic

00:05:46.440 talking point, he has decided, OK, yes, we are going to overturn it. What do you think his

00:05:51.060 thinking was there? I mean, was it was it really ideologically or values driven or was it just

00:05:56.080 because he wanted to make sure that he won over some of the more progressive wing of the party?

00:06:02.820 Yeah, I'm glad you asked that because it was a very conspicuous reversal, self-reversal on the topic.

00:06:07.980 Biden actually for several decades as a Democrat, supported the Hyde Amendment and said, you know,

00:06:13.240 called himself pro-life for a long time. And I think still might even consider himself,

00:06:17.200 as he would put it personally, pro-life as a Catholic, even though he's always backed

00:06:20.960 abortion, essentially unlimited abortion. But last summer when he was running for president,

00:06:26.840 he sort of went back and forth a couple of times in one week. He was asked about the Hyde Amendment

00:06:30.940 and he said he supported it and then he said he didn't. And then he said he supported it again.

00:06:34.160 And then he finally kind of came down on the anti-Hyde Amendment position. And I think it's very 0.58

00:06:39.620 obvious that this was a kind of nakedly political move because, you know, the very least you would

00:06:44.660 expect even from someone who supports legal abortion is to say, look, at least we can respect

00:06:49.300 pro-life taxpayers and not force them to fund this procedure. And that's what he said for a very long

00:06:54.720 time. And it was clear the party was moving in a different direction and he was afraid of being the

00:06:59.300 odd man out, wanted to get the nomination. I think he felt like that was a concession he had to make

00:07:03.580 to the left wing of the party.

00:07:04.700 You have to give him and some other Democrats who have in the past supported the Hyde Amendment

00:07:09.640 a little bit of credit for deductive reasoning, because the new talking point that has been

00:07:15.760 accepted, I would say, by probably the whole Democratic Party, that is that health care is a human

00:07:21.340 right and that abortion is health care. So if health care is a human right, which what they mean by

00:07:25.900 that, of course, is that it should be taxpayer funded completely. And if abortion is health care,

00:07:31.580 well, then that would mean basic algebra tells us that, OK, abortion needs to be paid for 0.99

00:07:37.440 by the taxpayer. And of course, they present this as this kind of social justice issue that people

00:07:43.700 who are, quote, hurt by the Hyde Amendment are poor women who can't afford an abortion. But would you 0.91

00:07:48.980 agree that that's all kind of just this convoluted mirage or facade? And really what's behind it is just

00:07:58.320 a push to force taxpayers to fund something that we find grotesque?

00:08:03.580 I think that's exactly it. And the problem is you've seen over the last couple of decades this

00:08:08.340 really radical shift in the Democratic Party back in the 90s. People like Bill Clinton, even Hillary

00:08:14.020 Clinton were saying, you know, abortion is kind of not something anyone wants to choose, but it should 0.95

00:08:18.620 be safe. It should be legal. It should be rare because sometimes women do need to make that choice. 1.00

00:08:23.160 But it wasn't something that people on the left, by and large, politicians at least celebrated.

00:08:28.080 And more recently, now we're hearing this rhetoric about abortion being a social good or something

00:08:33.020 that you should never say that a woman wouldn't want to choose that because it imposes some kind

00:08:37.580 of stigma on the choice. And I think a huge part of that logic, like you point out, is, OK, well,

00:08:42.580 now if we're going to pay for health care and abortion is health care, then we ought to pay for 0.97

00:08:46.640 abortion at the federal level and not to do so. The cover for it is, you know, not to do so harms

00:08:51.360 poor women in particular or women of color or whatever the rhetoric might be. But the fact

00:08:56.120 of the matter is, you sort of justify or add a kind of pretty gloss to abortion when you say

00:09:01.300 this is just like everything else we ought to fund. Yeah, you deal with the pro-choice,

00:09:07.760 pro-abortion euphemisms all day long. You know, reproductive freedom, reproductive justice and

00:09:14.180 health care, every kind of a bit of marketing and advertising and the PR campaigns that they use

00:09:21.140 that push for abortions obviously leave out who abortion is actually harming the child inside

00:09:27.080 the womb. And I would say the mainstream culture has just kind of accepted this, that abortion really

00:09:31.520 can just be safe, that it's something that is a moral good, completely ignoring the fact of what

00:09:37.900 abortion is. It kills an unborn child. How do you think, in your opinion, they have become so

00:09:43.640 successful in obfuscating what abortion actually is and presenting it as this just I don't even I don't

00:09:50.120 even know just some form of social justice that we should all applaud this form of of women's rights 0.99

00:09:56.600 and liberation. How has that been so successful? You know, I think you're exactly right. And I think

00:10:03.540 a huge part of it is just the sort of stranglehold that the pro-abortion cause and movement has on

00:10:10.300 the media. And that's not to say necessarily that every reporter is some kind of radical pro-abortion

00:10:15.680 zealot, not necessarily. But when you go to look for information about abortion policy or what

00:10:21.260 politicians believe about abortion, the top papers, the top outlets tend to be just rife with

00:10:27.880 misinformation. And so the average person, you know, you don't see an article about what abortion

00:10:32.300 is. You don't see an accurate article about why you need something like a Born Alive Abortion Survivors

00:10:37.880 Protection Act, for instance. That information is just not present. And Democratic politicians never get

00:10:42.800 asked, what is abortion? What do you believe abortion is? Why do you think it should be legal?

00:10:47.020 Instead, there are all these kind of nonsense questions about, oh, what's what's going to

00:10:50.920 happen to women after Roe or, you know, kind of puff or sort of side questions that are not getting at

00:10:56.780 the heart of what abortion is. And that so obviously is helpful to the people who support abortion, because

00:11:02.560 I suppose you could support abortion knowing and acknowledging what it is. But that's a much more

00:11:07.060 difficult thing to defend.

00:11:08.360 And I actually have more I don't even know if I would call it respect, because it's obviously a

00:11:14.580 position that I don't agree with. But there are some, you know, feminists in the so-called abortion 1.00

00:11:20.740 movement that actually do acknowledge what abortion is and acknowledge that abortion does kill a human

00:11:26.520 being. But they assert that it's an acceptable form of killing, that it is still right that we should

00:11:32.720 still allow women to do it. I say at least they're honest. But how the abortion movement has been 0.99

00:11:38.240 so successful isn't convincing people of this kind of euphemistic nonsense that abortion is no

00:11:44.380 different than a root canal, that what's inside the womb is, you know, no more significant than a

00:11:49.120 Tervis tumbler or a summer squash, that it's not really a human. And I think the people who buy into

00:11:54.780 that, they fancy themselves pro-science, not realizing that they've actually believed this kind of pagan

00:12:02.180 religious nonsense about gestation and fetal development and human DNA and what it means to

00:12:09.500 actually be a human being scientifically. Would you agree with that?

00:12:13.480 Oh, yeah. I mean, the idea that the left which supports abortion on demand is pro-science never

00:12:18.420 fails to make me laugh because, you know, something like 99.6% of biologists agree that life begins at

00:12:25.140 conception. I don't know who the other 0.4 are, but we just know scientifically speaking, this is 0.99

00:12:29.920 a human life. And you can have a complex, I suppose, ethical debate about whether or not

00:12:34.660 that life must be respected or what that means in tension with the mother's bodily autonomy, 0.95

00:12:39.320 for instance. But it's very clear that a human life is being ended in every abortion procedure,

00:12:44.340 and that's just totally ignored. And I think for obvious reasons, because that's a very difficult

00:12:48.880 thing to defend. And it's difficult to get the average person who might say, oh, I love women's 1.00

00:12:53.260 rights or I'm pro-choice to to acknowledge and support something that is killing.

00:12:57.780 Yeah, exactly. And that's why I think it actually is so effective for pro-lifers to talk,

00:13:04.220 frankly, I mean, not hyperbolically, of course, but very frankly and factually about what abortion

00:13:10.280 actually does and what it is, because unfortunately what I found, so many people who consider themselves

00:13:15.600 either personally pro-life or pro-choice or even pro-abortion, some people say that pro-abortion

00:13:21.080 people don't exist. They do exist. Shout Your Abortion, Abortion AF, NARAL, all of those

00:13:25.840 organizations are very pro-abortion, but they can't actually tell you what happens in an

00:13:32.080 abortion. They couldn't. And if I describe what an abortion is, even reading from Planned

00:13:36.540 Parenthood's website, as euphemistic as they are, I will get messages saying, you're making

00:13:42.720 this up. This is a lie. That's not what happens in an abortion. And I just kind of wonder, like,

00:13:47.000 what do they think happens in an abortion? Like, do you think it's fairy dust? Like,

00:13:51.520 how do you think that this goes about? Unfortunately, there's just so much ignorance

00:13:56.180 surrounding this issue. And I think that's probably one of our biggest obstacles as pro-lifers,

00:14:00.080 don't you think? Absolutely. And I think a huge part of it is so many people, either, you know,

00:14:05.000 something like one in five women, one in three, the statistics are a little murky, but a lot of

00:14:09.260 women have abortions. A lot of people know women who've had abortions or who have thought about

00:14:12.960 having an abortion. And, you know, I always talk about or I try to keep in mind the importance of

00:14:18.000 acknowledging those people, reaching out to them, not, you know, making them, isolating them,

00:14:22.300 because it's such a personal and sort of deep issue where you're kind of pressing on a lot of

00:14:27.440 guilt or sadness or regret or who knows what anger and people who've been involved in this procedure

00:14:32.580 because it's so prevalent. And so I think that's a big part of why there's this reluctance to

00:14:36.800 acknowledge or talk about what it is. And so I think as pro-lifers, we have to be really conscious

00:14:41.140 about that. And yet, like you say, not shy away from what it is. And, you know, abortionists who've

00:14:45.840 become pro-life former abortionists talking about what happens in an abortion, I think,

00:14:49.580 is one of the most powerful tools the pro-life movement has to help people see, you know,

00:14:53.940 not in a judgmental way, but just factually speaking, this is what happens and we have to

00:14:57.920 oppose that. Yeah, it's it can be very difficult to balance. OK, here's the grotesque reality just

00:15:04.560 factually of what happens in an abortion, but also there's grace and love and compassion and

00:15:09.060 forgiveness and acceptance for women who have gone through that. And I think, you know, there are

00:15:13.620 definitely Christians and parts of the church who do that really well. I do think that as

00:15:18.240 Christians and just the church in general, that we can always get better at things like that to

00:15:23.300 make sure that we are not just saying, sure, women who have had abortion are accepted here in our

00:15:28.760 church, but making kind of intentional space for them and reaching out to them ourselves. Because I

00:15:35.120 think a lot of times the abortion movement itself neglects women who may be dealing from dealing with

00:15:41.880 trauma and regret and guilt and maybe feelings of shame and sadness and loss, there's almost there's no

00:15:49.400 place for them. And if the church is not that place, if Christians can't be that refuge for those

00:15:54.760 women, then they're not going to find refuge. And I think that that's that's a that's a huge loss and

00:16:00.880 that's a huge problem. Do you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. And I do think there's sort of this

00:16:05.840 tension between, you know, on the left, if you embrace abortion, if you think it's a social good, if you

00:16:10.420 want to erase the stigma, as they put it, of having gotten an abortion, there there isn't, like you

00:16:15.160 said, room for women who might even feel the smallest bit of regret. And I think women like

00:16:19.460 that probably feel silenced or like they're like you said, there's no home for them. Because, you

00:16:23.960 know, to justify abortion as this wonderful thing, you have to erase stigma rather than acknowledge

00:16:29.160 that it's not always, you know, sort of a walk in the park. It's rarely, if ever, some kind of walk in

00:16:34.420 the park or a wonderful, exciting choice that a woman makes with a big smile on her face. That just

00:16:39.280 doesn't really happen in the real world. And I think some of the best ministries for women, 1.00

00:16:44.100 you know, spreading mercy and compassion for women or people, you know, men who've been affected by

00:16:47.940 abortion come from the pro-life movement. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Okay,

00:16:52.860 I want to get back into some of the politics of what's going on in abortion. We talked about

00:16:58.380 Joe Biden and kind of how his stance has shifted. One person who I don't think has really changed her

00:17:06.520 position on abortion, but is none. Well, I guess it's just become gradually more radical. It seems

00:17:11.980 is Kamala Harris, but she has been an enemy of the pro-life movement and pro-life organizations for a 0.97

00:17:18.260 long time. And I'm wondering if you can give us some background of her experience and the battles

00:17:24.920 that she fought when she was attorney general of California, some of the bills that she has pushed

00:17:29.760 for while she was senator and what you're kind of expecting her influence to be in this abortion 1.00

00:17:36.360 realm. Yeah, I think the fact that Biden picked her as his running mate and that she's now vice

00:17:42.440 president is a sign that this administration is not going to be moderate on any kind of social issue,

00:17:47.000 especially abortion. You know, back when when Harris was attorney general of California,

00:17:50.720 she helped ringlead the felony charges against pro-life activists who went undercover

00:17:56.800 to discover that Planned Parenthood was illegally profiting from the sale of fetal body parts from

00:18:02.520 aborted babies. And she aggressively went after the people who uncovered that wrongdoing. And in 1.00

00:18:08.620 the Senate, she's been, I would say, one of the most radical pro-abortion senators. She sponsored 0.99

00:18:12.820 legislation to overturn any state law that regulates abortion, including, you know, in the third

00:18:18.480 trimester. She just is radically against any kind of abortion restriction. She voted against the Born 0.98

00:18:24.760 Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which requires doctors to treat newborns who survive

00:18:29.500 abortion the same way they would treat any other newborn. So she her influence on the ticket, I think,

00:18:34.580 is very clearly going to be shaping an administration that backs unlimited legal abortion.

00:18:40.140 She has been her campaigns at least have been funded a good a good bit by Planned Parenthood. And so,

00:18:48.000 of course, she sees Planned Parenthood as an ally and is going to continue to fight for their

00:18:52.420 interests, which is taxpayer funded unrestricted abortion. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong,

00:18:57.960 but also while she was attorney general of California, she was championing the effort to

00:19:04.000 try to force pro-life centers to advertise for free or affordable abortions. Is that correct?

00:19:11.880 That's right. And that case, that law was actually so radical that it was struck down 7-2 by the Supreme

00:19:16.980 Court a couple of years back. And could you explain a little bit more of what that was?

00:19:21.100 Sure. So the policy required all pro-life pregnancy centers in the state to advertise

00:19:25.340 within their clinics or if they had a billboard advertisement, any place they were talking about

00:19:30.440 their pro-life work. They had to also offer very visible information about the state's free or

00:19:36.520 low-cost abortion program so that women who were seeking, if they wanted pro-life help or

00:19:41.740 assistance in keeping their baby, they had kind of the, here's where you can get your free

00:19:45.460 abortion information also shoved in their faces. And so the Supreme Court struck that down on First

00:19:51.140 Amendment grounds, I'm guessing? That's right. Yeah, they ruled it was a violation of the free

00:19:55.280 speech of pregnancy resource centers. So we're not just seeing what Kamala Harris thinks about

00:19:59.680 abortion, but we're also seeing what she thinks about our basic constitutional rights, like those

00:20:04.780 that are recognized in the First Amendment, which I would say is troubling in the least. Let's talk

00:20:10.820 about this other pick that has come out of California, Xavier Becerra. He is the HHS pick.

00:20:17.460 And so pro-lifers, I mean, Republicans in general, conservatives in general are concerned about this

00:20:23.200 pick and how radical it is because of how radical he is and really how incompetently he has helped run

00:20:32.040 California and also how he has gone after pro-life organizations in California. So can you break all

00:20:37.220 of that down for us? Yeah. So Xavier Becerra, as a former congressman in Congress, he received a 100%

00:20:43.160 rating from both NARAL and Planned Parenthood. He voted against a bill, for example, a pro-life effort

00:20:49.040 to restrict sex-selective abortions, so abortions that were chosen based on the sex of the unborn baby.

00:20:55.920 And as attorney general, he took over right after Kamala Harris became a senator. He went ahead and was

00:21:01.440 enforcing that law. We were just talking about requiring crisis pregnancy centers to advertise for abortion.

00:21:06.080 And he's been just an abortion radical in every sense of the word. He's ring-led coalitions of

00:21:12.160 blue states trying to force red states not to enact pro-life policies. He's led legal challenges to the

00:21:19.020 Trump administration's pro-life policies. He is kind of a dyed-in-the-wool abortion progressive.

00:21:24.960 And with this pick, I think Biden has contradicted himself because he's tried to claim he's going to be

00:21:30.100 a moderate president, that he wants to have this middle-of-the-road administration that will

00:21:34.180 reach out to all Americans. And then he goes and picks as, you know, the HHS head, one of the most

00:21:38.840 radically pro-abortion politicians in the country.

00:21:41.780 Right. And like I was saying earlier, a lot of people say that, oh, no one is pro-abortion. I think

00:21:47.220 that if you could find any two examples of people who are actually pro-abortion, at least in the

00:21:53.720 policies that they push and the policies that they advocate for, you've got Kamala Harris and Becerra,

00:21:58.680 who are both picks by Joe Biden, who calls himself, at least he used to personally, pro-life. So I think

00:22:04.920 that you're right, that that's absolutely revealing and that people have a reason, pro-life people have

00:22:10.540 a reason to be troubled by that. OK, I want to talk also about House, what you think that is going,

00:22:19.720 what else you think is going to be passed if Democrats do take the Senate, what other kind of

00:22:25.800 legislation and policies in regards to abortion do you see gaining some steam and possibly being

00:22:31.520 passed if Democrats control both chambers? Well, something that the left has been talking about

00:22:36.760 for a while now, and you heard a lot of Democratic presidential candidates tossing this phrase around

00:22:41.720 is codifying Roe v. Wade. And no one has ever really said, at least none of the presidential

00:22:47.160 candidates said what they meant specifically by that. But my sense is it would be this Democratic

00:22:52.200 bill that's been floating around for a while called the Women's Health Protection Act, and this would 0.92

00:22:56.040 make it essentially impossible for states to pass pro-life legislation, even restrictions on abortion

00:23:02.260 in the third trimester, restrictions on elective abortions of healthy unborn babies. It would, I guess,

00:23:09.000 enable the federal government to strike those down. I'm not convinced that it's a constitutional

00:23:12.340 proposal, but this is something Kamala Harris has backed. This is something that growing numbers of 0.99

00:23:16.540 Democrats support. I'm not sure. I mean, I don't think it's something that even a Democratic Senate

00:23:21.260 could push through, given how narrow the margin will be. But this is kind of where the sort of

00:23:25.460 hardcore on the left is headed when it comes to abortion. Why do you think abortion is an issue

00:23:30.420 that the Democratic Party has become so militant on? You know, that's the million dollar question

00:23:37.740 right there. And I do think a big part of it does go back to the money that the party gets from these

00:23:42.400 massive pro-abortion groups. Planned Parenthood and NARAL have an immense amount of political money that

00:23:48.100 they pour into these campaigns. And you can see the power that it has, at least in some smaller

00:23:52.780 races. For instance, this spring, longtime pro-life Democrat Dan Lipinski lost his primary to a pro-abortion

00:24:00.520 challenger, Marie Newman, who is backed primarily by abortion rights groups. So they can go right after

00:24:05.960 someone. They can use their money to unseat a Democrat who they think is insufficiently supportive

00:24:10.300 of abortion. And, you know, that's not to say they control the party, but the optics of being labeled

00:24:15.420 anti-choice or anti-woman by Planned Parenthood, I think, are very frightening to most Democrats.

00:24:21.340 And Democratic supporters have, whether or not they fancy themselves pro-choice or pro-abortion,

00:24:30.080 they have kind of convinced themselves that this is a really small issue, that this is not something

00:24:36.140 that a Joe Biden administration would really fight for. And there's even some people who describe

00:24:41.560 themselves as, you know, Christian Democrats or holistically pro-life Christian Democrats

00:24:47.300 who say that, OK, but they're passing other policies that are reducing abortion. So it's

00:24:54.200 actually pro-life to allow women to have this choice, but also, you know, provide other services

00:25:01.360 or programs that are going to help women and then consequently reduce abortion. Do you buy that line

00:25:07.540 of reasoning? I think this is something pro-lifers hear all the time. You know, you're not actually

00:25:12.880 pro-life unless you support a vast welfare state or unless you're pro-illegal immigration or whatever

00:25:18.220 it might be. But the charge never goes in the other direction, right? It's never, oh, you can't be

00:25:22.840 pro-life if you support loosening immigration laws and support a welfare state, but you must also oppose

00:25:28.560 abortion, right? They never say that. It's always, well, we'll just forget about unlimited legal abortion

00:25:33.240 as long as you're supporting these other progressive policy items. And I don't buy that

00:25:38.060 argument at all because the best way to reduce support rights is to make it illegal. And of course,

00:25:43.180 the pro-life movement is about a lot more than overturning Roe, about a lot more than passing

00:25:47.220 laws to make abortion illegal. We want to make it illegal and unthinkable. But you can't just say,

00:25:52.380 oh, well, this is going to be a pro-life administration despite being, you know, having the most radical

00:25:56.860 pro-abortion politician on a presidential ticket ever in Kamala Harris.

00:26:01.260 Yeah. And it's not just about like, you know, sometimes we hear, well, abortion regulation

00:26:06.680 isn't going to decrease the number of abortions, which is something I, of course, disagree with.

00:26:12.080 And I'll get into that in just a second. But it's also not just about decreasing the number. It's also

00:26:18.060 recognizing the inherent dignity and therefore the rights of a child inside the womb legally.

00:26:24.720 And so like you were saying, it's funny to me that people who don't believe that a child inside

00:26:30.520 the womb has human rights, that they don't even have the very basic legal right to life, 1.00

00:26:35.680 that they shouldn't be defended legally at all. That person feels they have the moral authority to

00:26:41.420 tell me that I am not pro-life because I don't believe in single payer health care or something

00:26:46.860 like that. I just wonder why we can't say, OK, let's start there. Like, let's start at the very

00:26:53.240 basic belief that a baby inside the womb deserves the most fundamental legal right that there is,

00:27:00.900 the right to not be killed as an innocent person. But unfortunately, like you said,

00:27:05.760 they kind of ignore that as if that's not a fundamental part of being pro-life. And actually,

00:27:09.640 that's not a part of being pro-life at all. And you can kind of ignore that altogether as long as

00:27:14.620 you accept all of their other policy proposals, then you're really pro-life. I just think it's so

00:27:19.520 important for pro-lifers, people who are anti-abortion, to pull the conversation back in

00:27:25.400 the other direction and do not let this be the conversation that is dominated by leftism. Do

00:27:31.280 not let them redefine the terms according to their ideology. Do you agree with that?

00:27:37.900 Yeah. You know, I think it goes back to what we were talking about a little bit ago about how

00:27:41.220 the other side, you know, supporters of legal abortion don't want to talk about what abortion

00:27:45.700 is. And so when you hear these charges like, oh, you can't be pro-life if you don't support X,

00:27:50.440 Y, or Z sort of progressive agenda item, they're just trying to distract from whatever you might

00:27:56.280 have just said about what abortion is, right? If I say abortion is the taking of a human life,

00:28:00.680 and the response is, well, you don't support the welfare state, so who cares? It's obviously a

00:28:04.620 distraction tactic because they don't want to respond to why they support something that is

00:28:08.900 killing. And I think we have to return the conversation, like you're saying, to that fundamental

00:28:12.760 point, because it's very difficult to defend. And that's, you know, hopefully where you win people

00:28:16.860 over. Right, right. I do think it's so important, as you're saying so well, to get down to the nitty

00:28:22.880 gritty, to the fundamental disagreement. Because usually when you get down there, if you can get

00:28:28.380 someone who is pro-choice to say, why do you think it should be legal to take this human life,

00:28:33.160 but not another human life? What is the reason for that? Sometimes what you'll realize and what

00:28:38.600 they'll reveal is that they don't actually believe that that's a human life. And so you realize that

00:28:43.020 they're actually operating from a philosophical point of view about human significance and what

00:28:49.400 actually not makes a human, but what makes a person without even realizing that they have done so.

00:28:56.440 And then once you can get down to that, the foundations that people are building these pro-choice

00:29:03.000 pro-life beliefs on, I think that you can actually have a substantive conversation. But I think,

00:29:08.680 you know, with the pro-abortion side, the PR arm of Planned Parenthood and NARAL do such a good job

00:29:14.420 of covering up that part of the conversation with all of these euphemisms, that it's very hard to dig

00:29:20.500 down past the nonsense about reproductive justice and choice and women's autonomy, all this stuff that

00:29:26.720 doesn't make any sense, and get down to what you actually believe. Because that's like a

00:29:31.460 significant worldview, almost theological question that I think most people just don't want to deal

00:29:37.820 with. Yeah, and I think it's really important to get to that conversation, not only because

00:29:43.320 it's important to remind people what abortion is or force them to maybe reflect a little bit more on

00:29:48.380 what exactly happens in an abortion procedure, but because when you think about the logic that

00:29:54.300 justifies abortion, like you say, if we acknowledge that this is a human being, which scientifically

00:29:58.540 speaking it is, and if we acknowledge that this procedure ends that human life, suddenly we have

00:30:03.580 to find some kind of other fancy philosophical way of justifying that killing. And usually it is

00:30:09.820 something like, well, that's not a person because, but unfortunately for defenders of abortion, this

00:30:15.540 sort of depersonifying philosophy is, it's behind every oppressive regime, every oppressive policy in

00:30:22.600 human history. Once we determine, you know, we say these people with power can decide that these other

00:30:27.620 human beings are not persons and therefore can be oppressed or killed or enslaved. That's a horrible

00:30:33.200 position to be in. And I think most people don't reflect on the fact that they can't dehumanize or

00:30:37.940 depersonify the unborn without necessarily not only endorsing that horrible logic, but also, you know,

00:30:44.780 probably dehumanizing the disabled or the poor or the elderly or the sick or the dying. No one wants to

00:30:51.240 be doing that.

00:30:51.740 And ironically, and this is a phrase that I hear a lot from the social justice left is

00:30:56.380 taking on the language of the oppressor. Well, the depersoning, the depersonifying of any kind of

00:31:05.020 human being, whether it's like you said, a poor person or a person of a certain race or ethnicity or

00:31:12.940 religion or an unborn child is the language of the oppressor for a side that especially right now says that

00:31:20.680 they are so concerned with power dynamics, they're so concerned with hegemony, they're so concerned with

00:31:26.320 the oppressed versus the oppressor. How did they not see that the most oppressed class right now are the

00:31:34.440 children, the helpless children, the vulnerable children, that we are dismembering inside the womb? It's

00:31:40.360 really hard for me to understand how they have tried to make that worldview congruent.

00:31:44.440 Yeah, I think, unfortunately, the problem is the sort of modern abortion rights movement or pro

00:31:51.020 abortion movement is so deeply ingrained or imbued with the radical feminist logic that they they've 1.00

00:31:57.100 sort of embraced wholesale the idea that women are oppressed. And not only that, but that freedom 0.96

00:32:02.220 from pregnancy or motherhood or childbearing is a key to female autonomy. And so if you're going to 1.00

00:32:08.140 support women who are often oppressed by men in their worldview, then you have to embrace

00:32:14.380 whatever they need to free them from unwanted motherhood, which is a very dark view of what it 0.98

00:32:18.900 means to be a woman, I think, and what it means to be free. But I think they've sort of talked themselves

00:32:23.160 out of seeing the unborn as humans, because they see unborn children and children often as kind of a

00:32:29.540 competitor to women's happiness and well being. Yeah, that was very clarifying. It's almost that an

00:32:34.740 unborn, an unwanted unborn child is actually the oppressor. In that scenario, which when you think

00:32:41.960 about it is obviously very illogical. But from the point of view that you just explained, it makes

00:32:48.500 sense in scare quotes, if you will. I want to talk about a couple articles that you wrote recently,

00:32:54.200 just so people kind of have a finger on a pulse of what's going on nationally. You wrote an article

00:32:58.660 a couple weeks ago about a bill that was passed in Ohio, and I don't know the state of it now,

00:33:03.880 that is setting to require respectful disposal of fetal remains after abortion. Can you talk about

00:33:10.240 what this bill is, the state of it, and why the heck anyone would be opposing something like this?

00:33:18.400 Of course. So this bill in Ohio requires abortion providers to give women the option of burial or 0.98

00:33:25.880 cremation for the fetal remains after an abortion procedure. And if the woman opts out of making a 0.83

00:33:30.980 decision, then the abortion provider is responsible for selecting one option and carrying it out. So the

00:33:36.420 idea is we're acknowledging that although we're going to permit legal abortion, we have to permit

00:33:41.100 legal abortion. Women can choose this. We still want to be as respectful as possible to the remains

00:33:46.700 of that child who is killed in abortion. And so we'll require abortion providers to treat their remains

00:33:52.000 like they would any other human being. We don't just toss, you know, deceased people out with a medical

00:33:57.120 waste. Why should we do this for unborn children? And this law has actually met quite a bit of, 0.97

00:34:03.060 I guess, a furor from the other side. The ACLU is very opposed to this legislation. Abortion rights 0.96

00:34:08.880 groups are very opposed to this type of legislation. And that actually, I think, is very related to what

00:34:12.940 we were just talking about when it comes to dehumanizing, because a bill like this obviously

00:34:17.300 is the bare minimum of doing something pro-life. You're not stopping abortion. You're not regulating

00:34:21.720 abortion at all. But you are kind of emphasizing the fact that something is lost here. There's a human

00:34:27.140 being who's been disposed of, and we ought to treat those remains respectfully because this is a

00:34:31.960 human being. And I think that's so telling that the other side is opposed to that, because they hate

00:34:36.140 any acknowledgement that this is a human being. And I expect the bill will be challenged in court.

00:34:41.880 A similar bill in Indiana was challenged, and in fact, was upheld by the Supreme Court. So I think

00:34:46.300 that this will probably fare well at the judicial level. So you and I know, as you just explained,

00:34:52.840 what the underneath is of their opposition. But what are they saying their argument is? What is the

00:34:59.460 ACLU? What are these pro-abortion groups saying for the reason they oppose this?

00:35:06.240 They are claiming that it is a restriction on women's rights, which I can't explain to you

00:35:11.680 how that logic makes sense as it pertains to the law, because obviously it's not restricting women's 0.90

00:35:16.400 choice at all. Right. And it's so convoluted because I saw an organization, I forget what it's

00:35:24.840 called, but you know who Leroy Carhart is. He's, you know, he specializes in late term and third

00:35:32.140 trimester abortion. They are another pro-abortion group. And I just had the misfortune of looking

00:35:37.740 through their Twitter timeline and they were doing these like post-abortion boxes where you actually

00:35:43.760 put the baby's footprint. I mean, I just want to cry thinking about it. Footprint on, you know,

00:35:50.360 ink and on a piece of paper so people can remember the child that they chose to abort. And so it's

00:35:57.620 very strange that in those situations, they're okay with acknowledging that, yeah, this was a human

00:36:02.880 being. This was a child that was lost. But in the situation where the child's, I don't know,

00:36:08.320 another kind of abortion situation, they don't want to acknowledge the humanity. So again,

00:36:13.060 I think it just goes back to what you were saying. We see the inconsistency of this view

00:36:17.060 that personhood, according to this view, is assigned to people according to who has the

00:36:23.660 power to do the assigning. There is no inherent value to human beings. It's only what society

00:36:29.040 says is valuable. And that puts us in a really, really dangerous spot, don't you think?

00:36:33.940 It does. And I think you can see that same illogic on the other side when it comes to

00:36:38.460 late term abortion. Like you were referencing, a lot of the times we hear abortion rights supporters

00:36:43.640 or democratic politicians justifying their opposition to pro-life abortion regulations

00:36:49.220 later in pregnancy by saying, oh, you know, so much of the time these are wanted pregnancies and

00:36:53.940 there's some, you know, horrible health situation that comes up and, you know, the parents have to

00:36:58.420 make this choice that no parents want to make. Well, that obviously is in tension with the idea

00:37:02.360 that, you know, abortion is some great social good that women are excited to choose or we shouldn't, 0.94

00:37:07.760 there shouldn't be stigma surrounding this. And it's also in tension with the idea that there's

00:37:11.360 nothing inside a woman or it's a clump of cells or it can just be gotten rid of with no 1.00

00:37:15.420 consequences. If it's a wanted child some of the time, even in some of the cases where a woman 0.95

00:37:19.900 wants to choose abortion, how could it just at other times be nothing that we should just throw out 0.96

00:37:24.120 with the medical trash? Yeah, you're so right. And it's it's a it's an inconsistency that goes far 0.98

00:37:31.700 beyond just, you know, the existence of cognitive dissonance. I mean, this is moral dissonance with

00:37:37.840 real, tangible life and death consequences that we're talking about here. Massachusetts Democrats,

00:37:44.240 you wrote about recently, they pushed unlimited abortion in their annual budget. You wrote about

00:37:50.760 that back in November. I don't know where it stands now, but can you talk a little bit more about that?

00:37:57.420 Sure. So in Massachusetts, Democrats have been pushing a bill called the Roe Act for quite some

00:38:02.540 time. This is a bill that would essentially loosen regulations on abortion. There are very few

00:38:07.540 regulations already in Massachusetts on abortion, but it would make it easier to obtain an abortion 0.99

00:38:12.520 after 24 weeks, which is well after fetal viability. And it would actually also erase the parental consent

00:38:19.580 requirement. So as of right now, if a young girl, a minor is seeking an abortion, she has to at least

00:38:26.240 inform her parents. And if they don't consent, she can use the judicial bypass process to get permission

00:38:32.160 from a judge to go through with an abortion for whatever reason. And now the Democrats are

00:38:38.440 attempting to push this legislation through the fiscal year 2021 budget. So because they couldn't

00:38:43.700 get enough support, I gather, to pass this as standalone legislation, they're trying to incorporate

00:38:48.200 this into a budget. And the state's governor is a Republican. He tends to be supportive of abortion,

00:38:54.800 but he has signaled that he would prefer not to sign this in a budget, doesn't want to see non-budgetary

00:39:00.420 provisions in the budget. So I think there's a good chance he likely won't be signing it.

00:39:05.160 But that's sort of where the party's headed in Massachusetts.

00:39:07.920 Yeah. I just think it's so important for people to realize, you know, we saw a lot of people going

00:39:12.480 into the presidential election, making the argument that the Democratic Party actually is the pro-life

00:39:19.880 party, that being pro-choice doesn't necessarily preclude you from being pro-life, that no one is pro-abortion,

00:39:28.040 that they're not pushing very hard for this. And look, I'm not saying that you have to have voted

00:39:34.620 for Donald Trump. I'm not saying that you have to like all Republican politicians. All I'm saying is

00:39:39.220 that what we're seeing, based on the real legislation and the real policies that a lot of

00:39:43.840 people, not every Democrat, but the majority of the Democratic Party is pushing, they are pro-abortion 0.65

00:39:51.100 pieces of legislation. They are radical pieces of legislation in the way of abortion. This lie that we've

00:39:57.240 been told, the Democratic politicians and their policies actually reduce the number of abortions.

00:40:03.700 It's just not true. There is this CDC chart, I'm sure you saw it, Alexandra, that was going around

00:40:08.880 before the election that showed that under Democratic presidents that, you know, abortions went down by a

00:40:14.640 larger percent than they did under Republican presidents, trying to make the claim that somehow

00:40:20.320 Obama reduced the number of abortions, not realizing that actually under Obama, the state legislatures,

00:40:27.540 which make the majority of these kinds of abortion-related decisions, were dominated

00:40:32.080 by Republicans. That presidents have very little to do with the number of abortions because they have

00:40:38.220 very little to do with this policy or with this kind of policy. Have you seen that kind of fallacy?

00:40:45.560 The Democrats are really the pro-life party for allowing more abortion. Have you seen that grow 0.61

00:40:50.040 in popularity, in particular among Christians? Yeah, there's this sort of strange idea that somehow,

00:40:57.220 you know, whether or not you're regulating abortion or making it, you know, unavailable later in

00:41:02.200 pregnancy doesn't actually have anything to do with how often women get abortions, which is just 1.00

00:41:06.280 clearly not the case, right? Like, that's not the only way that one would go about trying to decrease

00:41:10.620 the number of abortions. And decreasing abortion is not the only goal of the pro-life movement,

00:41:15.040 but to say that there's no connection between abortion regulations and the abortion rate is 0.89

00:41:19.680 obviously pretty ridiculous. And I do think it goes hand-in-hand with what we were talking about 0.55

00:41:24.640 in terms of, you know, the abortion right side trying to delegitimize pro-life arguments. And I think

00:41:30.280 this is what you see a lot of the times in Christian circles. I know I've seen it among Catholics and

00:41:35.100 particularly left-wing Catholics who are either supportive of abortion or don't think it's an important

00:41:40.240 issue for Catholics to worry about, saying things like, oh, you know, you must vote for Democrats

00:41:44.880 because they support and then, you know, they list the policy platform positions that they think all

00:41:50.260 Catholics ought to support. And then they just either sideline or ignore or minimize the importance of 0.99

00:41:55.480 the fact that the Democratic Party is becoming increasingly radical, both at the federal and at most

00:42:00.380 state levels, when it comes to abortion later and later in pregnancy. And to claim that it's not

00:42:05.740 pro-abortion to allow abortion after a baby can survive outside the womb is insane, right? Because at that

00:42:11.240 point, the baby could just be born and given up for adoption or taken care of. Of course, it's a complicated

00:42:15.680 situation. But to say that a woman should be able to kill that child when it could survive birth is obviously 1.00

00:42:21.900 supportive of abortion as killing and not merely as not being pregnant anymore.

00:42:26.480 Yeah, you're so right. Can you leave people with any sense of kind of encouragement or maybe equipment

00:42:31.840 advice on what to do? They're like, oh, I want to oppose some of this legislation. I want to oppose some of

00:42:37.540 these policies. I want to get the word out. I don't know what to do. Can you give them some some wisdom and

00:42:45.120 some advice for how they can kind of push back against this radicalism towards abortion?

00:42:49.600 Well, I think when it comes to policies and legislation in particular, given how divided

00:42:55.820 the Senate will be, you know, we don't know how the Georgia runoffs will go, but we'll have a

00:42:59.400 closely divided Senate either way. And so I think it'll become really important to actually contact

00:43:03.840 your senators and emphasize that you don't want them to support radical pro-abortion legislation,

00:43:08.140 or you do want them to back pro-life legislation if it comes up in the Senate. Probably won't really go

00:43:13.900 anywhere for now with Biden in the White House. But that's an important stopgap and it will be for the

00:43:18.160 next four years. And I also think just kind of at the sort of lower level, the non-political level,

00:43:23.260 given how much misinformation there is out there, how many people are really ignorant about this issue

00:43:27.680 and how hard it can be to find accurate information, go looking for the truth. Educate yourself about

00:43:33.320 what abortion is. Find resources that you can trust and be willing to share those with people who you

00:43:38.440 might disagree with or who aren't sure what they think. I think that's really the best way to move

00:43:42.560 the pro-life movement forward is at that kind of grassroots level.

00:43:45.320 And I would just encourage people, if you're ever hearing about a bill that has to do with

00:43:51.400 abortion, especially on the federal level, but also on the state level, and you don't know what's true,

00:43:56.820 you don't know what to make of it, I just really encourage people to follow Alexandra and to see if

00:44:01.580 she's already written about it at National Review. She really cuts through the noise and she helps you

00:44:06.280 understand what's really going on, what's really in the bill. And so I encourage people to follow you

00:44:12.840 and to make sure that they are reading your articles. Can you give people more information

00:44:17.440 about where they can follow you and find you? Thank you so much. I appreciate that. So my work

00:44:23.400 is almost all at nationalreview.com. You can follow me on Twitter at Zan underscore DeSanctus. And I also,

00:44:30.080 you know, occasionally publish elsewhere, but you should be able to find that on my Twitter.

00:44:33.000 Awesome. Well, thank you. And as this is coming out, so this is coming out on Monday, January 4th.

00:44:39.080 That means tomorrow, as people are listening, is January 5th. And that is the day for the Georgia

00:44:46.520 election. So listen to all of this and realize that there is a lot on the line when it comes to this

00:44:52.640 election in Georgia. There's a lot on the line when it comes to Democrats potentially taking over

00:44:58.440 the Senate. There's a lot that's going to be passed, especially in the way of abortion. So make sure,

00:45:03.380 I know that there's a lot of hesitance when it comes to Georgia and the integrity of the election,

00:45:07.920 but make sure that you go out and vote. At least do your part, everything that you can,

00:45:13.280 especially when it comes to protecting this particular issue. Thank you so much, Alexandra.

00:45:19.100 I really appreciate you taking the time to come on. Thanks so much for having me.

00:45:28.440 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 04, 2021

Ep 345 ｜ Exposing Democrats' Pro-Abortion Plans for 2021 ｜ Guest： Alexandra DeSanctis

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