Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - September 01, 2021


Ep 481 ｜ Thank the Lord： Texas Heartbeat Bill Is Law


Episode Stats

Length

48 minutes

Words per Minute

158.22955

Word Count

7,611

Sentence Count

377

Misogynist Sentences

12

Hate Speech Sentences

23


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week. If you
00:00:16.980 haven't listened to yesterday's episode, my conversation with Monique Dusan about actual
00:00:22.240 biblical racial unity and reconciliation within the church that is not laden with critical race
00:00:29.640 theory and all kinds of secular theories that unfortunately we've seen infiltrate some
00:00:34.920 Christian conversations about race and racism, you need to go listen to that or watch that on
00:00:40.480 YouTube. She is wonderful and provides a lot of resources for us who are trying to navigate that
00:00:45.980 space with both sympathy and with truth and with a gospel-centered approach. Today we are going to
00:00:58.140 talk about some COVID stuff and some vaccine passport things and the truth about vaccine
00:01:06.880 efficacy and why some of the arguments being made about Christians being selfish or not loving their
00:01:13.900 neighbor by not getting the vaccine just they just don't hold up very well in light of the facts. But
00:01:19.740 first I want to talk about some good news. So the first half of the episode is going to be talking
00:01:25.860 about this and that good news is a new law that goes into effect today in Texas and that is SB8 or the
00:01:35.000 heartbeat law. So this law bans abortion after the detection of a heartbeat, which is usually at about
00:01:42.740 six weeks gestation. It requires physicians to try to detect a heartbeat of an unborn child in pregnancy.
00:01:51.000 So here's what the law says and I will link the actual law, the text of the law in the description
00:01:57.100 to this episode so you can read the law for it yourself. But here is one part of it.
00:02:06.480 Unless it is a medical emergency, a physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a
00:02:13.400 pregnant woman unless the physician has determined in accordance with this section whether the woman's
00:02:19.940 unborn child has a detectable fetal heartbeat. So the doctor must also record how he or she detected
00:02:28.200 the heartbeat, record the gestational age, and record the methods used to detect the heartbeat
00:02:33.760 and estimate the gestational age. Also, the law says, except in the case of medical emergency,
00:02:41.660 a physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman if the physician
00:02:46.920 detected a fetal heartbeat for the unborn child as required by section 171203 or failed to perform a test
00:02:54.780 to detect a fetal heartbeat. A physician does not violate the section if the physician performed a test
00:03:01.260 for a fetal heartbeat as required by section 171203 and did not detect a fetal heartbeat. So removing a child
00:03:11.080 from the womb who has already been miscarried who has already died inside the womb obviously does not
00:03:17.540 count as an abortion and obviously is not prohibited by this law. So anyone who tries to tell you that
00:03:24.260 the law is actually explicit that it does not prohibit the procedure of, for example, a DNC in the case of a
00:03:33.240 natural miscarriage. Now here is the catch with this law and I don't mean that in a negative sense.
00:03:39.920 This is the thing that allows this law to pass constitutional muster while we still have
00:03:46.040 Roe v. Wade enforced. This law is entirely enforceable on the civil level. So meaning that
00:03:53.440 the state is not empowered through this law to throw physicians or anyone involved with abortion in jail
00:03:58.760 or to punish people involved with abortion. This law enables anyone in Texas who is not an agent
00:04:04.880 of the state to sue someone who is involved in abortion. So any person, the law says, other than
00:04:14.440 an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in the state may bring a civil action against
00:04:21.740 any person who, one, performs or induces an abortion in violation of this subchapter, two, knowingly engages in
00:04:29.760 conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for
00:04:34.960 or reimbursing the cost of an abortion through insurance or otherwise. If the abortion is performed
00:04:39.980 or induced in violation of this subchapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should
00:04:44.720 have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter or three,
00:04:50.640 intends to engage in the conduct described by subdivision one or two in this law.
00:04:57.320 So basically, this law empowers people who want to protect babies to be able to do so through civil
00:05:04.520 litigation. That makes it very costly, very risky for physicians to perform abortions, for traffickers
00:05:11.760 to pay for abortions, for anyone to seek an abortion to kill their child. You can bet that there is going
00:05:19.940 to be a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth from Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the ACLU, and all the celebrity
00:05:26.560 influencers who are going to tell you this is the handmaid's tale. This is sending us back to the
00:05:32.360 1950s, that these male politicians just want to control women's bodies. This is what patriarchal
00:05:39.120 authoritarianism looks like we'll hear. And here's my response to that. And here's how I want to help you
00:05:47.040 respond to that. You can use all the euphemisms you want. All the fear-mongering, all the hyperbole.
00:05:56.560 You can lament over the loss of so-called bodily autonomy and so-called reproductive justice. All you
00:06:02.760 want to. But nothing you say or do changes the fact that abortion kills a human. You can try to deny
00:06:11.960 that by using nonsensical anti-science language that it's just a quote potential life or that life
00:06:20.680 inside the womb is not actually life yet. You can say that it's not really a baby. I've even seen this
00:06:28.860 very strange new age method crop up recently in defending abortion that abortion just
00:06:35.220 sends the soul back into the universe to wait for another host for it to occupy. It's nonsense. And
00:06:44.640 yet it is a way to try to make yourself and to make those around you feel better about what abortion
00:06:53.200 is. The fact is that unless we define human life as beginning at conception, we wade into very
00:07:03.240 dangerous territory of deciding based on very subjective feelings-based standards what life is
00:07:11.760 and what life is not. If it's not the moment the egg is fertilized, or at least there's some debate
00:07:19.280 about this among pro-lifers, at least in plantation, when that fertilized egg attaches itself to the
00:07:25.780 uterine wall, then when does human life begin and why? Because in that moment at conception, that child's
00:07:34.580 DNA makeup is present. Their eye color, their sex has all been determined. That is a human being. We don't
00:07:41.320 determine human status by size or by appearance or by age or by ability or by location. You determine
00:07:48.260 human status by what we know about biology. And biology says that every single human starts out as a
00:07:55.680 fertilized egg. And as a fertilized egg has everything that makes us human. He or she simply
00:08:02.000 needs time and nourishment to let these characteristics grow into a fully formed baby ready for
00:08:08.660 birth. When people say that a baby in the womb is not human, that it's just a clump of cells, that is
00:08:15.980 anti-science. If a baby in the womb is a clump of cells, then we are all just a clump of cells. What they
00:08:22.660 actually mean, whether they realize it or not when they say that, is that they don't consider the
00:08:28.080 human in the womb a person. And personhood is considered a more philosophical, subjective debate.
00:08:35.500 There's no debate, no real debate over whether life in the womb at all stages is a human being.
00:08:42.260 Some do debate what makes a human being a person. So with worth and dignity and rights, namely a right
00:08:48.720 not to be murdered and at what stage. But again, I would argue, if we say that some humans do not
00:08:57.180 have personhood, so are not people, which is what you're saying if you say that a human in the womb
00:09:03.840 is not really a person, then we have, again, waded into very dangerous territory, the likes of which
00:09:10.740 have characterized the greatest human rights atrocities throughout history. Acknowledging that
00:09:16.800 someone may be technically human or saying, arguing that someone may be technically, scientifically
00:09:22.360 human, but doesn't deserve the dignity and the rights that come with being a person should probably
00:09:28.720 ring a bell to you when you think about some of the gravest injustices, the greatest forms of
00:09:37.120 oppression, and the worst genocides that you've heard about. The only objective standard then is to say
00:09:45.080 that a human is a person always. No matter the age, no matter the size, no matter the ability,
00:09:52.240 no matter whether that person is rich or poor, wanted or unwanted, an orphan or living with their
00:09:59.140 parents, dependent on someone else for care or independent, only heartless tyrants and barbarians
00:10:05.900 remove a group's personhood status in order to justify killing them. And it takes a special kind of
00:10:12.140 cruelty to do that for the most vulnerable, voiceless, and helpless group among us, unborn children.
00:10:19.400 Unborn children who, in an abortion, and this part is graphic, I share this from time to time to just
00:10:24.920 remind us really, literally, what we're talking about. Unborn children in an abortion either die by
00:10:31.140 poison or by an induced heart attack that is accomplished by sticking a needle through the
00:10:36.880 abdomen of the mother into the amniotic sac that the baby is in or directly into the chest of the
00:10:42.120 baby so that the baby squirms, fights for life, and likely in pain at that stage until his or her
00:10:49.640 heart stops beating. The chemical combination used for this procedure is the same chemical combination
00:10:56.440 used for lethal injection for convicted murderers who receive the death penalty.
00:11:00.800 So isn't it interesting that many who are against the death penalty for people who have committed
00:11:07.020 the most heinous crimes against humanity are unabashedly for using the same method of death
00:11:12.840 for babies? After ensuring fetal demise in later first and then second trimester abortions, the baby
00:11:20.680 is then dismembered using forceps and is removed from the mother's uterus that way. You actually have to
00:11:26.700 crush the skull of the baby in order to be able to extract the baby from the mother's uterus and birth
00:11:32.840 canal. And then there are even more grotesque methods of abortion used later in the pregnancy,
00:11:39.300 which comparatively are rare, but they still happen. We're talking about fully viable, meaning can live
00:11:44.440 outside the womb. So usually after 24 weeks, but sometimes even earlier, which is still the second
00:11:49.600 trimester, by the way, we're talking about those fully viable babies are aborted every single year.
00:11:55.260 And I know people say to that, well, late-term abortion is only chosen by the mom when absolutely
00:12:02.240 necessary to save her life, the mom's life. Well, that's not actually true. If a woman has a medical
00:12:09.180 condition that requires getting the baby out after 24 weeks gestation and maybe even a little bit
00:12:15.240 before that, the solution is delivery, not abortion. Because either way, in a live delivery or
00:12:22.620 an abortion, a birth happens. It's just either a stillbirth induced by abortion or a live birth.
00:12:30.160 Either way, the baby comes out. So it just, it doesn't even make logical sense to say that abortion
00:12:34.700 is necessary after the week of viability to save the mother's life. And if it's before that, if it's a
00:12:42.080 true medical emergency, this Texas law does allow abortion, although it does require the physician
00:12:49.840 to do everything within her power to save the baby as well as the mother, as it should be. And I'm
00:12:57.420 sorry, but a baby having special needs is not a good justification for killing the baby. That is
00:13:02.440 ableist. It is morally gruesome. There are parents lined up to adopt children. People don't like to talk
00:13:12.320 about that. And it's true that unfortunately our adoption process is complicated. And in some cases,
00:13:19.800 it is overly regulated, although there are a lot of regulations that exist for a good reason. But
00:13:25.520 there are many parents who are waiting to have a child and who are also ready and willing to have
00:13:31.860 the resources to raise a child with special needs. It's not a good reason to kill a child.
00:13:36.560 I am not naive to the dire situations women find themselves in when it comes to unexpected
00:13:42.920 pregnancies. And I know there is no end to this propaganda saying that the GOP and pro-lifers are
00:13:50.500 really just pro-birth, that we don't care about the babies after they're born, or we don't care about
00:13:56.120 the mothers. And that is the biggest lie that you can possibly imagine. Christians, pro-lifers who tend
00:14:02.720 to also vote Republican, though not always, pour their lives, their energy, their money into helping
00:14:10.340 vulnerable moms, babies, and families. They make up, this group makes up the vast majority of adopters.
00:14:18.180 They're often foster parents. They donate so many of their own resources to help those in need.
00:14:23.580 It's just who they are. It's just what they do. They run the pregnancy clinics that provide free
00:14:30.280 testing, free sonograms, free parenting classes, free supplies, help with adoption, help with
00:14:36.080 employment, help with Medicaid enrollment, help with refuge from abusive partners, help with education.
00:14:42.920 Most things Planned Parenthood does and will not do. Planned Parenthood preys upon impressionable
00:14:49.160 poor women, tells them that abortion doesn't really kill a baby, and that their life will be better if
00:14:55.480 they just abort their child, just like their father, the devil. They steal, they kill, they destroy,
00:15:01.240 they deceive. So you can miss me with the whole, well, I'm holistically pro-life thing, meaning that
00:15:08.040 you're for abortion being legal, but you're also for a bunch of, you know, government social programs
00:15:14.180 and open borders and masks, et cetera. We can debate the effectiveness of those other policies. That's
00:15:20.960 fine. But if you are not against making the murder of babies in the womb illegal, then you don't have
00:15:27.900 the authority to tell everyone else what it means to be, quote, really pro-life. Like that is the
00:15:33.900 baseline. That's the easiest, most obvious, most fundamental thing to advocate for if you really
00:15:40.660 care about protecting the vulnerable and the voiceless, this marginalized, oppressed group of
00:15:46.200 babies in the womb. That's, it's just demanding, trying to make abortion illegal. It's just demanding
00:15:52.080 that this group has the most basic right granted to us in our founding documents, the right to life,
00:15:58.680 and in the most literal sense, the right not to be murdered. If someone asks you to defend why you are
00:16:06.580 anti-abortion, or when you see Christians talking about the so-called nuance of this and being for the
00:16:13.920 legalization of abortion, but against abortion personally, whatever the heck that means,
00:16:19.100 before you defend your position, you ask them why. You ask them why they believe it should be legal to
00:16:25.440 kill an innocent, defenseless human. And if there are other situations in which they believe killing
00:16:31.160 an innocent, defenseless human should be legal, their answer will likely be no. They probably don't
00:16:36.920 think it should be legal, for example, for a poor, desperate mother or father to kill their five-year-old
00:16:44.400 or to hire someone to kill their five-year-old. They would probably say, the person you're talking
00:16:49.120 to, that those parents are cruel, they should be in jail. Okay? My question is, why does that standard
00:16:55.980 change just because the child is younger, smaller, and in the womb? Again, are age, size, dependency,
00:17:02.160 and location really how we determine whether or not a person should have rights? Those are very
00:17:08.180 arbitrary. And they may say something, the person that you are discussing this with, say something
00:17:13.980 about, you know, coat hangers and back alleys. And again, I would ask a question. Do you use that kind
00:17:21.800 of thinking to fight against the criminalization of other kinds of assault? If your argument is that
00:17:26.880 banning abortion doesn't stop abortion, but just makes it more dangerous for the woman,
00:17:31.580 do you use the same argument to say that murder or rape or abuse should be legalized so that it's
00:17:36.560 somehow safer for the people involved? And for the love, for the love of all things good,
00:17:44.040 please do not send me that graph that shows abortion declining more when Democrats are president.
00:17:50.340 We have debunked that. Presidents don't make laws. State and federal legislators do. And while
00:17:57.620 Barack Obama was president, where you see what appears to be a steep drop off of abortions while
00:18:03.380 he was president, more so than, for example, when Bush was president, while Obama was president,
00:18:08.860 state legislatures were dominated by Republican majorities, the most since FDR. And for most of
00:18:15.460 his tenure, Congress was dominated by Republicans too. So if you're going to ascribe the reduction of
00:18:20.280 abortion to policies enacted while Barack Obama was president, you're going to have to ascribe that
00:18:25.420 reduction to the people actually making policy during those eight years who were mostly Republicans.
00:18:32.640 Also, we don't just make things illegal to reduce the instances of those things. That's one reason,
00:18:39.660 but not the only reason. We also do it to protect the rights of the victim and of the potential victim.
00:18:45.760 And because it's the right thing to do, making abortion illegal recognizes that that human being
00:18:52.240 in the womb has dignity and rights because he or she is human. So always remember that. I've given you a lot
00:19:00.360 of arguments, a lot of ways to defend this. And if you're on the other side of this, a lot of things to
00:19:04.640 hopefully think about. You're going to hear a lot of compelling arguments or what seem like compelling
00:19:09.240 arguments. I've actually never heard a logically compelling argument for abortion. Never. Not even when I was
00:19:15.680 giving testimony about pro-life legislation when I was in Congress and I heard some of the arguments from
00:19:21.460 Democrats, the people who are supposed to be our, I mean, people in Congress are supposed to be our
00:19:27.960 intellectual leaders. I think that, you know, we all know that that's not true, but actually seeing and
00:19:33.700 hearing their arguments for abortion, I realized that they have no better arguments than the random
00:19:38.000 trolls online. Like there is no logically good argument for abortion, but you are going to see
00:19:44.360 arguments online. You're going to hear a lot of testimonies. You're going to see a lot of graphics
00:19:48.440 on Instagram, a lot of misinformation about this particular Texas law, a lot of feminist anger over
00:19:54.040 the next few months, a lot of, you know, pictures of people walking around in like their handmaid's
00:19:58.520 tail, you know, red hoods or whatever. And you're going to see this a lot in the months leading up to
00:20:03.840 the midterms next year. And the thing to always keep in mind, if you can't remember everything we've
00:20:09.280 talked about today, the one thing to always keep in mind and to come back to in every conversation
00:20:15.000 about abortion and abortion law is the humanity, the reality of the baby in the womb, his or her
00:20:20.980 life matters. And the question that you make the other side answer before you say anything about
00:20:26.500 your own position, which is the obvious position that we shouldn't kill babies inside the womb,
00:20:30.880 before you even try to defend that, you make the other side answer why they believe that taking the
00:20:35.900 life of an innocent human being is justified just because that life can't defend themselves.
00:20:41.440 Do babies in the womb deserve human rights, primarily the basic right to life? And if not,
00:20:48.200 why not? Give me a good answer that doesn't make you sound like a tyrannical lunatic.
00:20:53.200 And if, if not, why does anyone else have rights? Age, size, dependency, location, all those arguments fall
00:21:02.280 apart. When you realize that if you apply them to people outside the womb, things get pretty ghoulish
00:21:07.440 and genocidal real quick. Biblically, we know Psalm 139 makes clear that God forms us with intention and
00:21:14.400 love and purpose in the womb. We believe all people, no matter how small are made in God's image and are
00:21:19.600 therefore worthy and dignity, worthy of dignity and rights. Biblically and historically, we see that
00:21:24.620 child sacrifice is always the mark of the most depraved societies, the societies that are most
00:21:31.280 deserving of wrath. Historically, we see that children are always the most vulnerable victims
00:21:37.340 of abuse, of manipulation, exploitation. That's true today. There is no nuance that can make your
00:21:43.380 support of this legally or otherwise justifiable and in any sense. And again, you can't come at me
00:21:51.360 with while you conservative voters don't treat them with dignity after they're born. That's not true.
00:21:56.260 What you actually mean is that because we're not delegating our responsibility to care for the
00:22:00.940 least of these to bureaucrats, we must lack compassion. No, I don't believe in giving our
00:22:06.240 God-given call to care for others to the government. I believe in doing that work ourselves. No party is
00:22:12.300 perfect, but voting for the party that funds and openly celebrates the brutal murder of babies
00:22:17.080 could not be me. It just, it could not be me. Voting for the party that seeks to protect those babies.
00:22:23.500 Yeah. Like that's, that's going to be the main thing for me. That's going to be the main thing
00:22:28.640 for me. And I do also just want to note if you're someone who has had an abortion, going back to the
00:22:33.920 biblical portion of this, there is grace for you. There is redemption. There is forgiveness. There is
00:22:40.680 reconciliation to God through Christ. There is nothing that you can do. There's nothing that you've done in
00:22:46.340 your past that makes you too far off from God, that makes you not worth saving or not worth loving.
00:22:56.080 There are only two categories in this world. As we talked about yesterday with Monique,
00:23:01.480 dead in sin or alive in Christ. All of us who are alive in Christ, who have been forgiven by God,
00:23:07.040 who are walking with the Lord are not there because of anything that we have done. But as Ephesians 2
00:23:12.880 also says, verses eight through 10, we were saved by grace through faith. And grace means unmerited
00:23:20.280 favor. So it doesn't matter what you've done in your past. There is nothing that you've done that
00:23:24.340 is too much for God to forgive. There's nothing that you can do that would make you through Christ
00:23:29.900 unworthy of God's love. And so if you haven't already, go to him, go to a counselor about this,
00:23:37.580 go to a pro-life pregnancy center. They often provide post-abortion counseling. Go to a trusted
00:23:46.120 church member about this. And church, if there are people in your community who have had an abortion or
00:23:52.320 you know is struggling with this, it is our obligation to provide refuge for them and to provide
00:23:59.080 love and grace to them. And so I wanted to make sure that I make that clear as well. There is a way
00:24:05.340 that we can speak compassionately and lovingly about people who have gotten abortions and still
00:24:11.020 be so strong and so clear on this abortion issue to try to change as many hearts and minds as possible
00:24:17.820 and to try to save as many lives as possible. By the way, it is possible to change people's minds
00:24:22.620 on this. This is the number one issue that I get an email about from people saying,
00:24:26.880 you changed my mind or really God changed their mind and heart. And thankfully and graciously,
00:24:32.360 he allowed this podcast to be a vessel that he used to help change people's mind. Number one
00:24:38.100 subject that I get emails on, that I get messages on of people saying, you know, I listened to your
00:24:43.560 argument on abortion and I really hated it and I dug my heels in and I didn't agree with it,
00:24:48.220 but I realized that I couldn't justify it. I couldn't find a way to defend it. And so God can also
00:24:56.720 graciously use you, a humble vessel to have conversations with people and to hopefully
00:25:05.400 change their minds on this. It is absolutely possible. And this is just a great example
00:25:10.200 that God is working even when things seem like they are only going a bad direction. This is a really good
00:25:17.300 direction. So just pray, like pray that this, um, pray that this law holds strong and pray for our
00:25:26.140 elected officials that they would continue to legislate with boldness and with a virtue. I want
00:25:32.040 to talk a little bit more about this. That's going to transition us into the COVID stuff.
00:25:36.080 So there are other good laws going into effect in Texas today. Also, a lot of people are talking
00:25:48.820 about this online, which is why we're bringing up Texas, uh, requirement for officers to wear body
00:25:54.180 cameras, the entirety of every investigation, online ballot tracking system for mail-in ballots,
00:25:59.980 banning critical race theory themes in classrooms, expanding access to medical use of marijuana,
00:26:06.080 people whom it may benefit like people with autism and epilepsy. So go Texas legislature. Uh, you
00:26:13.480 are doing a lot of good things. Greg Abbott has signed, um, a lot of good laws this session. I'm sure
00:26:20.440 that, uh, there are, you know, many other States that are doing good things as well. Texas seems to
00:26:26.460 always be in the spotlight because it's seen as this kind of Republican stronghold. And so Democrats and
00:26:32.700 the liberal media, um, um, but I repeat myself, love to shine a spotlight on Texas to show what a,
00:26:39.100 you know, backwards, terrible place it is, but go Texas GOP. You are doing a really good job. Um,
00:26:47.040 so I, I want to transition by reading a couple tweets and a headline that, um, shows some pretty,
00:26:57.020 a pretty remarkable mindset among our media class. So Dan rather, he tweeted yesterday,
00:27:04.900 it's worth noting that many of the same people attacking the Biden administration for leaving
00:27:10.580 women's rights behind in Afghanistan are eager to control women's bodies and choices in the United
00:27:15.880 States. Unfortunately, this tweet has like, I think as I'm speaking, it has like almost 90,000 likes,
00:27:21.860 which is insane. An opinion writer, Dean Obadala for MSNBC wrote this stellar, stunning headline last
00:27:31.440 week. Afghan women's rights are threatened, but the GOP isn't their champion. The Taliban aren't the
00:27:38.100 only ones. Oh my gosh. Just like, if you ever hear yourself saying the Taliban aren't the only ones in
00:27:44.600 the next part of your sentence is to compare it to anyone in America, just stop, just stop,
00:27:50.240 give yourself the swirly and stop talking. Uh, the Taliban aren't the only ones trying to impose
00:27:55.560 their will on women's bodies and choices by Dean Obadala. So the argument here, in case it's not
00:28:03.080 clear enough, is that pro-lifers in America are like the Taliban, you know, the Taliban, the roving
00:28:09.920 group of barbarian terrorists, brutally murdering and raping women and children, boys and girls who,
00:28:15.320 like other Islamic regimes in the region, are selling children into sex trafficking on a daily
00:28:20.900 basis, forcing six-year-old girls to get married, preventing women from learning how to read,
00:28:25.720 preventing them from driving, leaving their house without a man accompanying them, or speaking less
00:28:31.040 spoken to. That's what Sharia law says. See, the people in the United States who don't think it's
00:28:36.340 right to dismember babies are the terrorists, but somehow the people for the death penalty for babies
00:28:44.120 are the good guys. Interesting. So you'll see again, um, that the argument that pro-lifers make
00:28:52.200 that it's wrong to kill babies is never actually addressed by these people, which shows you how weak,
00:28:58.740 how weak their position actually is. They use every language game in the book to obscure what abortion
00:29:04.480 actually literally is and why, uh, and why we're against it by just using vague terms like women's bodies,
00:29:12.460 choices. We don't want to police women's bodies. We don't want to limit people's choices unless those
00:29:20.540 things involve killing a baby. Yeah, then we have something to say about it. Just like all sane people
00:29:27.380 have something to say about all other kinds of assault and murder, we just think that standard also
00:29:32.740 applies to innocent babies in the womb. There is no good argument for abortion. None, none. But there's
00:29:40.760 another tweet that represents, um, a similar wild mindset, uh, on children wearing masks. And it comes
00:29:49.240 to us via Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan. Yes, Obama's education secretary. So this is not
00:29:55.540 what you will call nut picking, like looking for just like a random Joe Schmo on the other side to try to
00:30:01.560 characterize all of the left with that random nut. Nope. This is Obama's education secretary.
00:30:08.580 He tweeted this and then deleted after understandable backlash quote, have you noticed how strikingly
00:30:15.680 similar both the mindsets and actions are between suicide bombers at Kabul's airport and the anti-mask
00:30:21.880 and anti-vax people here? They both blow themselves up, inflict harm on those around them and are convinced
00:30:28.960 they are fighting for freedom. It's really, you know, sometimes doing the show is really hard for
00:30:34.460 me not to cuss. Like sometimes they're harder than others. Like it's a really, really hard. Holy spirit
00:30:39.960 help me. Oh my goodness. We just had 13 American service members die because of a suicide bomber.
00:30:48.980 And you're trying to say that people who question the efficacy of masks here in the United States are
00:30:54.380 the same as an ISIS case suicide bomber. I have so much that my tongue wants to say right now.
00:31:02.060 So much that I am holding in. I will let your imaginations fill in the blank for me. Have you
00:31:09.580 noticed how quick mainstream high up influential people on the left are to call their political
00:31:18.420 opponents terrorists? And we're talking about Dan Rather, MSNBC secretary or education secretary for
00:31:25.520 Barack Obama. Let me just say that there is a far stronger case for tweets like this inciting violence
00:31:33.400 than there is a case for anything Trump said directly inciting violence. It is so ugly. It's so
00:31:39.640 depraved. There's such calloused, ugly, depraved hearts. It is also, and this is how we're going to
00:31:45.820 transition into the rest of the show. It's also illogical. It's illogical, this kind of thinking.
00:31:52.440 First of all, we know that people who are vaccinated can get and transmit the virus. The vaccine is pretty
00:31:59.540 effective from what we've seen at preventing severe infection, hospitalization and death, but it does not
00:32:05.120 stop you necessarily from getting infected or spreading the virus. Again, it might, might make it less
00:32:12.360 likely to do those things, but it doesn't stop it completely here, or there's not even necessarily
00:32:19.000 a really high likelihood of it stopping you from transmitting the virus once you are infected with
00:32:25.540 the virus. Here's some news out of Duke University, according to News Observer. Quote, Duke University has
00:32:33.040 set new restrictions to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 as cases are rising on the Durham campus despite its
00:32:39.980 vaccine mandate. So has vaccine mandate. In the first week of classes, 304 undergraduates, 45 graduate
00:32:47.060 students, and 15 employees tested positive for COVID-19. All but eight of these individuals were
00:32:54.440 vaccinated, and the vast majority of them are asymptomatic. A small number have minor cold and
00:33:00.720 flu-like symptoms, and none have been hospitalized, according to the university. Duke administrators
00:33:06.160 announced the new guidelines in an email saying, quote, this surge is placing significant stress on
00:33:11.120 the people, systems, and facilities that are dedicated to protecting our health, safety, and the ability of
00:33:18.200 Duke to fulfill its educational mission, particularly our isolation space for on-campus students who test
00:33:23.540 positive. But as Nate Silver, who created the website FiveThirtyEight, as he notes on Twitter, or he
00:33:32.920 questions, which I think is a good question, how is it placing significant stress on the system if none
00:33:37.200 of the cases are hospitalized, then almost all of them are asymptomatic, and the overall positivity rate
00:33:42.160 is just 1.6%. This is a great example. He argues of the vaccines working, but the logic that they are
00:33:50.520 using here to try to enforce more restrictions, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. And this is
00:33:57.820 also an example, yes, maybe of the vaccines allowing for more asymptomatic cases, although we don't know
00:34:04.780 necessarily, since these are probably mostly young people, if they would have been asymptomatic
00:34:09.460 anyway. We're not really sure. We also don't know what's the deal with those eight people who are
00:34:13.500 unvaccinated. Also, if there was a vaccine mandate, how did that happen? Are they faring any worse than the
00:34:18.100 people who are vaccinated? I think that would just be interesting to know. But it just does show that
00:34:24.580 things can spread and things can spike even when the vast, vast majority of people in a place are
00:34:31.140 vaccinated. They are also, because of this, requiring everyone to wear masks outside, where we know
00:34:37.620 scientifically, COVID is very, very, very unlikely to spread. So it's just a reflex, it seems like,
00:34:46.600 some of these restrictions. So again, the point is that the virus is spreading even among those who
00:34:52.520 are vaccinated. I know three people personally who have gotten, who have gotten COVID despite at least
00:34:58.420 being partially vaccinated. And again, you don't know my vaccination status. I'm saying, I'd be saying
00:35:04.900 this either, either way, either way I am saying this. I'm not saying, I've never discouraged people
00:35:11.660 from getting it. My concern is logic, the science, following the science, and also freedom. I'm saying
00:35:21.220 it's illogical to blame the spread of COVID on people who have not gotten the vaccine. In Israel,
00:35:28.240 where 60% of the population is fully vaccinated, nearly 70% have had at least one dose of the vaccine,
00:35:36.560 where some of the greatest restrictions have been placed, including fines for not wearing masks
00:35:41.720 and vaccine passports, they're experiencing a surge of cases even bigger than the one that they had in
00:35:48.320 January, when only about 5% of the country was fully vaccinated. And all you have to do to fact check
00:35:55.040 that is to type in Israel vaccination rate on Google and then Israel COVID cases. I don't usually use
00:36:02.060 Google, but they do have the information right at the top really easy when you type this into the
00:36:06.580 search bar. Now, the deaths in Israel right now are lower during this surge than in January. Very,
00:36:14.300 very few deaths in either surge, though, by the way. So you could say that that's due to the vaccine,
00:36:20.660 and that's good, but you can't say that it's really preventing the spread. It should also be noted that
00:36:26.000 Israel lifted its mask mandate on June 15th because of a decline of cases and then reinstated it on June
00:36:31.780 24th and go look at the case numbers and pinpoint that date, June 24th. It didn't help. As we have
00:36:39.820 talked about, as we have gone through the data on this show, mask mandates are really not proven to
00:36:49.840 help stop the spread. I will link the post I put together with all the studies on this, as well as the
00:36:55.020 New York Magazine article that shows that there is no evidence that kids benefit at all from wearing
00:37:00.940 masks, as well as a new study that found that really only one type of mask, only at most a couple type of
00:37:11.920 masks are at all effective. And I will read you a quote from that article in just one second.
00:37:16.780 All right. So the New York Post summarized this study from Waterloo, and it says this, quote,
00:37:30.140 the results show that a standard surgical and three-ply cloth masks filter at apparent efficiencies
00:37:36.340 of only 12.4% and 9.8% respectively, according to the University of Waterloo studies conclusion.
00:37:45.260 And that apparently, probably, I am assuming from what I see here, is that even that efficacy,
00:37:54.000 like even that effectiveness of the masks is dependent on how you are wearing the mask,
00:38:01.060 if the mask is totally clean, whether the mask has gotten wet at all from saliva, how long you have
00:38:08.060 been wearing the mask. And so I would assume this means perfectly fitted, perfectly clean,
00:38:12.740 perfectly dry masks, as soon as you put them on, only have a 12.4% effectiveness if they're the
00:38:21.120 standard surgical mask. So those kind of like blue masks and 9.8% effectiveness if it's a cloth mask.
00:38:28.100 This is according, again, to the University of Waterloo. But KN95 and N95 masks afford, quote,
00:38:36.200 substantially higher apparent filtration efficiency, 60% and 46% for R95 and KN95 masks,
00:38:44.540 respectively, than the more commonly used cloth masks and surgical masks, and therefore are still
00:38:51.060 the recommended choice in mitigating airborne disease transmission indoors. I have personally
00:38:56.080 never worn a KN95 or N95 masks. When I have been required to wear masks, I wear a cloth mask
00:39:03.300 that has gone through the washing machine many times, or I wear a surgical mask. Most people,
00:39:11.160 the vast majority of people are not wearing R95 masks. Most people are wearing cloth masks,
00:39:16.440 and they're wearing them incorrectly. And again, once they become wet, they're totally ineffective,
00:39:22.380 which is one reason why kids wearing them in school doesn't make sense. Like even if you pack
00:39:26.340 several masks for your kids, it just ends up not being effective because of how kids function.
00:39:34.220 And that's exactly why in Scandinavia, in the UK, and even Australia, where there are very heavy
00:39:40.060 COVID restrictions, none of these countries, in addition to other countries, enforce masking among
00:39:46.420 young kids. And in some places, no students of any age are required to wear masks. And the spread
00:39:52.500 in those countries has not been worse than the spread in the United States. The US stands apart
00:39:58.200 in its draconian expectation of two-year-olds to wear masks. It is anti-scientific nonsense. It is
00:40:04.660 really a reflective reaction from both politicians who just want to, you know, CYA, and parents who,
00:40:12.920 I think, sincerely want to protect their kids. And they just don't realize that masking kids is really
00:40:18.960 actually political. And it's not scientific or coming from a place of compassion for the people
00:40:25.100 who are making these policies. So when I say that forcing little kids to wear masks is abusive,
00:40:33.000 I am not calling parents malicious abusers. And I understand in some situations, like,
00:40:39.100 you're forced to, you're forced to, you have to, you're in a district that is actually forcing it,
00:40:43.960 you're going on a plane, you don't have any other choice. I totally understand that. I don't think it
00:40:48.740 is the intent of parents who make their young children wear masks to be abusive. But I do think
00:40:55.400 that the impact of forcing a child to wear something over their face, even if they grow to like it,
00:41:01.180 when there is no physical benefit that's been proven, it may actually be physically harmful.
00:41:05.460 I think it's coercive. I think it's unhealthy. I think it's irresponsible. As we noted a couple
00:41:10.640 weeks ago, I'll link that previous episode in the description as well. Doctors Marty Makari and Dr.
00:41:17.040 Koei Meisner wrote for the Wall Street Journal that masking children not only can negatively impact
00:41:23.240 them developmentally, but may also affect their facial development. And I will link to that specific
00:41:29.640 article. Zach Ringelstein is a child trauma specialist who wrote a piece for Forbes,
00:41:35.060 just the other day, arguing that masks for kids can cause serious trauma for them. And guess what?
00:41:41.440 Forbes actually took the piece down. Insane. Just like the American Academy of Pediatrics took down
00:41:47.980 their years old study discussing why children and babies need to be able to see their caregivers
00:41:52.740 speak and see them smile. The only reason we know the CDC's mask findings show that masks don't do
00:42:00.480 any good in schools is because of that New York magazine journalist who actually dug into the study
00:42:05.620 past what the summary of the study said, which didn't include the findings of the masks. I'm sure the
00:42:11.800 people that are censoring legitimate perspectives, information, and science are doing it all for our safety
00:42:20.600 and all because they love our kids so much. Sure. I'm sure. I am sure. The same person, by the way,
00:42:28.660 who authored the New York magazine article analyzing the CDC's findings also tweeted this graph, which I
00:42:35.340 will, which I'll put up if you are watching on YouTube, which shows that the fully vaccinated adult
00:42:43.380 is actually more likely to die of COVID than the unvaccinated person under the age of 30 and
00:42:50.140 especially children. So like the fully vaccinated adult over, I think it's, let's see, the fully,
00:42:59.180 yeah. So the fully vaccinated, literally the fully vaccinated person that is over the age of 30
00:43:07.220 has the same likelihood of dying from COVID. And in some cases, a greater likelihood of dying from
00:43:15.940 COVID than the person under the age of 30. For example, like if you're 40 years old, if you're 40
00:43:22.420 years old, your risk of dying from COVID, if you are fully vaccinated is still higher than the risk of a
00:43:30.820 kid dying, who is unvaccinated from, who is unvaccinated, dying from, dying from COVID. And so
00:43:37.880 this hysteria that we're seeing from some parents, parents who insist that their kids can't go back
00:43:45.040 to normal until their kids can get a vaccine or are blaming all of these unvaccinated adults for
00:43:50.720 potentially spreading the virus to their kids are not living in reality, both because the vaccinated can
00:43:56.560 spread it. And because their kids still really are not at risk. I know there are kids that get it.
00:44:03.100 I know kids with underlying conditions can die from it. But also, as we've noted, more kids died
00:44:08.860 from the flu in six months in 2018 and the 2018 flu season than have died from COVID over the past 18
00:44:16.280 plus months. Now back to the vaccine. Israel also released a study last week that shows that immunity
00:44:24.320 to COVID is much stronger in unvaccinated people who have had COVID than vaccinated people who have
00:44:31.400 never had COVID. And I'll read you a little bit of that study in just one second.
00:44:39.620 Okay, so what this study out of Israel found was that those who had been vaccinated were 13 times more
00:44:45.520 likely to be infected by the Delta variant, what's called a breakthrough infection than those with
00:44:51.820 natural immunity. They did find that there may be some extra protection for people who have had COVID
00:44:58.240 and had one shot. But people who have had COVID had far greater immunity and far longer lasting immunity
00:45:04.680 than those who hadn't had COVID and were fully vaccinated. And Singapore recognized this. And so
00:45:12.820 they have decided to give up the goal of COVID zero because they have such a high vaccination rate.
00:45:20.140 And the vaccinated are still spreading. And they realized, okay, if people are gaining immunity
00:45:27.260 from getting COVID, then it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for us to keep on putting these very
00:45:33.800 restrictive measures in place to try to get no COVID whatsoever, because this is still spreading,
00:45:38.740 even though Singapore has an 80% vaccination rate among the adult population. The only country higher
00:45:45.800 than that is Malta's vaccination rate at 82%. And so they're saying basically, look, we're going to
00:45:52.960 probably have to live with the virus, which by the way, people have been saying since the very beginning
00:45:58.120 of all of this, that viruses are going to virus that you can't completely and totally get rid of it.
00:46:04.920 Even the common viruses, the common diseases that we are vaccinated against, they're not totally
00:46:11.240 always, they're not always completely and totally eliminated. And you have to weigh the risks and
00:46:17.380 benefits of the policies that you are putting in place that are taking away people's freedom and
00:46:20.820 livelihoods. Australia apparently has also realized this, they are ending the COVID zero policy, they've
00:46:27.160 realized it's quote, not a sustainable way to live. That's what Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said.
00:46:33.840 And so they are going to ease the restrictions once 80% of adults are vaccinated. Now, this also comes
00:46:40.700 after mass protests in Australia. So good freaking job Australians pushing back against the tyranny that
00:46:47.460 really just did not make sense. Helen Andrews and the American Conservative, she also makes a really good
00:46:55.260 case against vaccine passports. Not just because it doesn't it, not just because it doesn't make sense
00:47:04.180 scientifically, because you should be able to show an antibody test as well, if you're going to have vaccine, if
00:47:09.600 you're going to have a vaccine passport. But also, it doesn't make that much sense, because you can still spread if
00:47:16.780 you have the vaccine. But most importantly, it's tyrannical. And it sets up this structure for social
00:47:23.460 surveillance that I promise you, no matter what side of the aisle that you're on, you are not going to
00:47:28.280 like. It infringes upon too much freedom in the name of a very weak, a very flimsy, wobbly promise of
00:47:38.660 potential temporary safety. It's just not worth the exchange. And so I wish, I hope that there is some
00:47:45.340 bipartisan support when it comes to pushing back against vaccine passports. They're unnecessary and
00:47:52.220 they're tyrannical. All right, that's all we've got time for today. I will see you guys back here
00:47:57.980 tomorrow with an amazing, amazing, amazing conversation. I can't wait for you to hear it
00:48:02.680 and tell me what you think. So make sure that you tune in then.