Ep 497 ｜ Surprise： The 'Women's Health Protection Act' Doesn't Protect Health ｜ Guest： Alexandra DeSanctis
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Summary
The Women's Health Protection Act has passed the House of Representatives and is headed to the Senate. We talk to National Review journalist Alexandra DeSantos about the bill and why it's so important that we push back against it.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful day,
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a wonderful week so far. Today, we are talking about this abortion bill that has passed the
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House. It's on its way to the Senate, the so-called Women's Health Protection Act. We're
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going to talk to National Review journalist Alexandra DeSanctis. She is going to tell us
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what exactly is in this bill, the likelihood of it passing the Senate. And then after that short
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interview, we're going to talk about this subject. We're going to talk about this bill and why, guys,
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this is so important. As much as we talk about abortion, I don't think that we can ever talk
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about it enough and remind ourselves what it is and why it is so important for us to push back
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against. So without further ado, here is our friend, Alexandra DeSanctis.
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Alexandra, thank you so much for joining us. So right off the bat, can you just tell us
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what is the Women's Health Protection Act? Is it really about protecting the health of women?
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Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with women's health care. Of course, this has to do with
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abortion, as it always does when Democrats talk about women's health. What the bill does is
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essentially eradicate or get rid of any state law, pretty much any state law that regulates abortion.
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And so when you hear Democrats talking about codifying Roe v. Wade, something they all talked
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about during the presidential primary a couple of years back, what they meant was the Women's Health
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Protection Act. And this bill, in fact, goes further than Roe. Not only does it codify Roe or turn it
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into a statute, but it goes further than that by preventing states from passing basically any law
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limiting abortion. This could be informed consent laws, ultrasound requirements, even kind of
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gestational age restrictions on abortion after viability. So this essentially allows for abortion
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or stop states from prohibiting abortion through nine months. Now, is it for any reason? I did read
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that there are some prohibitions or there are some stipulations that include, you know, it has to be
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for the health, mental health or physical health of the mother. Can you break that down? Tell us why that
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doesn't actually, that wouldn't actually prohibit any abortions from being performed in the second and
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third trimester? Sure. So the bill would basically make it such that states cannot prohibit abortion after
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fetal viability unless they have what's called a maternal health exception. But they define health,
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Democrats define health the same way that the Supreme Court did very expansively. So this can
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include anything such as psychological health, financial health, familial health, just this whole
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laundry list of things. And that's from Doe v. Bolton. That's right. They could account for kind of
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maternal health. It's not just these kind of health care emergencies that the Democrats try to pretend it is.
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There's all this whole host of factors that are considered. Plus, the bill would make it such that
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states would have to have to allow only one doctor to certify that a woman's health required this.
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So you could have just the abortionist who has this immense financial motivation to perform the
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abortion. It could be the only one certifying that a woman's health required the procedure.
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Right. And the response to that is from Democrats. Well, that hardly ever happens. That's so rare. Why do we
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have to put restrictions on it anyway? As if that's even an argument for something. But it's not
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necessarily rare, right? No, late term abortion is not rare at all. And it's very hard to get
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data on this sort of thing. But according to the best estimates we have, which come from the
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pro-choice Gettmacher Institute, there's somewhere around 12,000 abortions past the point of viability.
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And it's hard to find out what the reasons for those are. From what I've looked at, the best
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information we can find, typically they're for the same reasons as early abortions. They're very rarely
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these kinds of health care emergencies we hear about, and in fact, are basically never something
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that would be medically necessary. There's more late term abortions than there are gun homicides
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in the United States. And yet we're told that these are rare and only in emergencies.
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Right. And we're talking about second, third trimester. Obviously, we believe that life begins
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at conception. That's what science tells us. But second and third trimester, we're talking about a
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viable baby. That means a baby who can live outside of the womb with or without help. We're
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talking about a moving, squirming, sucking, hearing, seeing, feeling baby. 12,000 times a year,
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that baby is terminated inside the womb in very violent ways, which we'll talk about a little bit
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after this interview. And people say, you know, as you alluded to, that, well, no one actually wants
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that. It's only for emergencies. But as many OBGYNs will tell you, that actually doesn't make a lot
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of logical sense. If the mom's health, if the mom's actual physical health is at risk and the way to
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help her is to get the baby out of the womb, then you deliver that baby. The baby has to come out
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either way. There's no reason for as the baby has to be delivered to kill that baby. It just doesn't
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make a whole lot of logical sense. And yet, I don't know, we're just told this propaganda over
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and over again that this really is about women's health care. Yeah, this is the most common argument
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that you hear from Democrats justifying late term abortion, that somehow these always happen in cases
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of medical emergency. And yet there's never any data to back this up. And in fact, when Republicans
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or pro-life lawmakers push for some kind of, at the very least, better abortion reporting mechanism,
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so we know why women are getting abortions at this point, what the circumstances are, if there are
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these medical emergencies, those types of policies are always opposed by the Planned Parenthoods of the
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world, the NARAL, pro-choice Americas of the world, because they don't want us to find out what's going
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on. And so maybe they all are medical emergencies. But from the data we do have, that very much does not
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seem to be the case. And when we try to get better data, Democrats oppose that. And you'd think that if
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they were out to protect women's health, they would want to be documenting that kind of information.
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Yes. And again, even if it were an emergency, you get the baby out, there's no reason to kill the
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baby. In the meantime, that just doesn't make any logical sense. Either way, you're going to deliver
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the baby. It's just a dead baby versus a baby that's alive. Your colleague, John McCormick,
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National Review, wrote about Susan Collins. And that is the moderate Republican,
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you know, moderate in some ways, maybe even center left in other ways from Maine. She said this,
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I support codifying Roe. Unfortunately, the bill, this Women's Health Protection Act goes way beyond
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that. It would severely weaken the conscience exceptions that are in the current law, Collins
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said, adding that she found parts of the bill's language extreme. Collins said the bill would weaken
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the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects a person's ability to exercise their religion.
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She cited the past support for the act by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Biden when he
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was in the Senate. So can you break this down for us? Of course, I think we probably both disagree
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with Susan Collins and the desire to codify Wade. But when she says that this actually weakens
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conscience exceptions and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, what does she mean by that?
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Sure. So she's talking about basically the way in which Democrats now not only want abortion
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to be legal throughout pregnancy, not only to be federally funded by the U.S. taxpayer,
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but also performed by any doctor whenever a woman demands it. Right. And so what this means is if you're
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a nurse, if you're a health care professional of any kind, if you're a doctor, you could be
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conscripted into performing abortion. And the health care or the conscience exceptions, rather,
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that have always been supported on a bipartisan basis are suddenly now something that are becoming a
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partisan issue. Democrats don't want to support this anymore because the line has shifted from,
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you know, abortion as safe, legal and rare, this kind of necessary evil, perhaps, to abortion as a
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social good. And so the logic that follows from that is if you're a religious person or you have a
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moral objection to abortion, that's too bad. You better leave the medical profession or this might
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be something you end up having to participate in. And this seems this particular part actually seems
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like something that they are that Democrats are very insistent upon including in their bills because
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there was similar language in the Equality Act, which also seeks to eliminate conscience rights for
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doctors who would be made, not all doctors, but doctors in that field could be made to perform
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abortions, even if their, you know, conscience bids them otherwise. And so it seems like just as much
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an attack on life inside the womb as it is, or just as much of an attack on religious liberty as it is
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life inside the womb. They don't want any exceptions, any exemptions for people who might believe
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differently. And yet we're hearing constantly from them that they're right or the authoritarians.
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I mean, we were hearing constantly that the Texas law is authoritarian, that it's so bad.
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And yet here they are saying, look, not only do you have to do this or be OK with this,
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you have to do it if you're a doctor. And also, you got to pay for it if you're a taxpayer, right?
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Yeah. And Democrats are always arguing, you know, pro-lifers are these theocrats. They're just
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trying to force their religion on everybody. You know, never mind that you can absolutely
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oppose abortion without being religious, right? This is killing an innocent human being. This is
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bad for women. You don't have to believe in God at all to think that that is wrong. But they're
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always arguing this is just some kind of religious imposition on the rest of the country if you want
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to regulate or make abortion illegal. But in fact, they're the ones imposing this very obviously not
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morally neutral view on others, right? The idea that it's pregnancy discrimination of some kind not
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to perform an abortion if you're a doctor, that's obviously not true. And they're imposing this
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worldview on everybody or attempting to make it such that you can't even operate in the medical
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profession at all if you have some kind of conscience objection to these procedures.
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Yeah. And, you know, I feel like I used to say that a lot, too, that you don't have to be
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religious in order to be pro-life. And it's true. Like, I definitely know agnostics, atheists who are
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pro-life. They recognize what this is. Even there are people who identify as Democrats and,
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you know, leftists who recognize, okay, there's really no moral justification for it. But, you
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know, I was challenged on that once. And it really made me think, what is the reason to protect any
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vulnerable life unless you believe that life has some kind of inherent worth? And where does inherent
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worth come from if we are not created? If we really are just all clumps of cells, just all clumps of
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matter, then why does abortion matter? Why does genocide matter? Why does anything matter? And so
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I almost appreciate the honesty and the recognition from the pro-abortion crowd that this does come
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down to, essentially, you can accept it even if you're an atheist. It does come down to the belief
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that life is valuable, that there is innate worth to human beings, vulnerable human beings,
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life inside the womb because they are made in the image of God. So in one sense, it is kind of a
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religious argument. But all morality is, you know, all laws come from some kind of worldview.
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Really, the question is not whether who's neutral and who's not, but who's right and who's not. I
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don't know what you think about that. No, I agree. I think the case against abortion is obviously much
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stronger and easier to make if you believe in God and if you believe that all human life is created
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in his image and likeness. And that's where our ultimate value and our worth comes from. I think
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there are ways in which non-believers can participate in that argument in some way through
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natural law, natural rights, that sort of argument. And I'm, you know, I'm more than willing to accept
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them to the cause. But I do think it's a stronger argument from a religious perspective. And it really
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is, at the end of the day, as you say, kind of the culture of life versus the culture of death. Do we
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believe that all human beings are valuable for some reason and should be protected or that some
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can be discarded based on some rationale, you know, because the powerful are able to do so
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and they're too weak. Right, right. That's such a good point. Now, is there any way that this bill
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passes the Senate? I don't think that it will, no, given how close the split is. And Senator Manchin
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has typically been a pretty good vote on most pro-life issues. So I'd be surprised if he backed this.
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And if it did, somehow, either now or in the future, is this something that could be challenged
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in court? Do you see it being upheld? I don't think that it would be upheld. I mean, I am very
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bad at reading the Supreme Court tea leaves. That's always a difficult thing to do. But I think what's
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so troubling about the law is it's not even really a federal statute legalizing this or that, right?
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It's a statute trying to make it such that states cannot legislate on this issue. It's just ripping
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the issue of abortion entirely, even more so than Roe v. Wade did, out of the hands of the American
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people. And I suppose it's, you know, you can respond to Congress as a voter more than you can
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respond to the Supreme Court. But the idea that Congress should be dictating the abortion laws
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in every country, I don't think is something that will fly. Yeah. Gosh, talk about authoritarian.
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You wrote recently that Americans don't really understand Roe v. Wade. There was a poll that you
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referenced that said the majority of respondents said that, yes, we should uphold Roe. We don't
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think that it should be overturned. But then when the question was asked, well, do you think abortion
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should be legal? Do you think abortion should be illegal? It was split, like pretty much 50-50.
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So can you break that down for us? Like, where do you think this cognitive dissonance is coming from?
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Yeah, I always find these polls so fascinating. And this is something you hear a lot from abortion
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rights groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL. They're always saying, oh, the American people
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love Roe v. Wade. You know, this is popular. Seven out of 10 Americans want to keep Roe.
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And on the one hand, you just want to say to them, OK, well, if that's true, then certainly you won't
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mind if we overturn Roe, because the majority of Americans will ensure that you get the abortion
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policy that you want. Right. But what they also... Wait, can you break that down for us? What do you
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mean by if we overturn Roe, what would happen then? Because I'm not sure everyone knows.
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Right. Well, this goes to your first question as well, right? If Roe v. Wade were overturned,
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the issue, most likely the Supreme Court would decide the issue in a way where every state would
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then get to set its own abortion policy. And abortion rights groups profit from this lie,
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frankly, that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, abortion would immediately become illegal everywhere,
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which explains how you could have a poll where, you know, 65 percent of people say they support Roe,
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but the poll is perfectly split down the middle in terms of whether voters want abortion to be
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legal or illegal. They don't know that Roe v. Wade makes it impossible for abortion to be
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illegal anywhere, even at the state level. And they don't know that overturning Roe would make
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it such that states could set their own abortion policy and people could vote, which is why it's
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ironic when Planned Parenthood says, well, most people support Roe, but don't overturn it because
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then the American people won't get what they want.
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Yeah. Wow. It really is so much misinformation. I saw a tweet by NARAL the other day
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saying, you know, why do anti-choice extremists, which whatever, that's fine. You're right. I am
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against the choice of killing a child, but why do they rely on misinformation? Why do they lie
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on misleading language? And of course, the exact opposite is true. All pro-lifers have to do
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is tell the truth. Tell the truth about what abortion is. Tell the truth about what Roe v. Wade does.
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It's not an easy position always to defend because of the onslaught of misinformation
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that we're fighting against, but it is a very simple truth to defend, right?
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No, it absolutely is. And I think the hard part, you know, the reason why we get a poll like that
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is that so much of the media is complicit in lying to Americans about what Roe v. Wade is. Where is
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the piece explaining what Roe v. Wade did to abortion policy in our country? You know, where is the piece
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explaining from a mainstream outlet explaining to people what would actually happen if Roe
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was overturned? It's all this kind of fear mongering and propaganda, repeating Planned
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Parenthood talking points. And you kind of can't blame people for not knowing all the information
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that is kind of true. They don't know what reality is.
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Right. And even, you know, it's filled with euphemisms, even supposedly non-biased outlets
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and, you know, sources on social media who say that they're just kind of telling the fact
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about, for example, Texas's abortion law, you can see where they stand, not just by what
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they say, but also by what they don't say when they say terminating a pregnancy, when
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they refuse to say baby, when they refuse to say human being, when they refuse to say what
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happens in an abortion. Anytime that you are on the side that has to choose euphemisms in
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order to make your argument palatable, I think that's typically a good reason to double-check
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if you are on the right side. Well, thank you. Thank you for being so clear and for always
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reporting on this with so much courage and so much consistency. Where can people follow
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So my work can be found at National Review Online, and you can also find me on Twitter
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Okay, let's talk a little bit more about this bill, some of just the absolute radicalism and
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craziness that's in this bill, and then just a reminder of the subject that we're talking
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about, the grotesqueness of the subject that we're talking about. I think it's so important
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for us to remember that we're not just talking about this kind of nebulous policy issue that
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doesn't affect anyone. We are talking about life and death. We are talking about the killing
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of babies. Literally, sometimes the reality of what we are talking about when we're talking
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about the subject of abortion keeps me awake at night. Or I literally, I wake up in the
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middle of the night and I think, oh my gosh, I can't believe we're actually having a debate
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about this. And I especially cannot believe that people who profess the name of Christ can't
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get on board with trying to make this illegal. We'll talk more about that in a second.
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But I want to talk about this bill, because progressivism is constantly tripping over itself
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to try to keep up with where this moral and sexual and gender revolution is going. They
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are constantly trying to keep up with just how radical progressivism has become. And of
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course, that's the nature of progressivism. There's never like an end goal of progressivism.
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Of course, I believe it's very morally regressive, but it is constantly moving in a direction without
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any kind of understanding of what goal it's trying to reach or what it's trying to build.
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Its means is always destruction. And its end is some kind of mysterious utopia that never actually
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works out. Like throughout the history of the world, these kinds of revolutions, this breakdown
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of the family, this breakdown of morality and the understanding of right and wrong and human
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dignity and all of these things, it never actually ends up in the utopia that progressives think that
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it's going to, where people are just all happy and they're not owning any property. There's no
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hierarchies. There's no family unit. There's no religion. They just think John Lennon's imagined
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is going to manifest itself. It never actually happens. Like history shows us this, especially
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the 20th century. And this bill, this so-called Women's Health Protection Act is a really good
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example of all of that. Now, I was surprised by this title, Women's Health Protection Act, because
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Democrats have been pushing, especially over the past year, to remove gendered language from policy.
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So I would assume that they would use the word pregnant person instead of women. And just a note
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on that, like to deny the biological dichotomy of male and female, the reality of male and female is to
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deny what it means to be human. From a Christian perspective, it's to deny what it means to be
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made in God's image. There is no biblical category for gender identity that is separate and opposed to
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sex. And so this idea that we are going to do away with those categories and somehow we're going to be
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able to effectively obscure reality, it's not going to happen. It can't happen. Human nature, as I like to
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say on this podcast, is like a beach ball. You can try to push it underwater as much as you want to
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with all of your might. You can get the whole world to try to push that beach ball down. It's going to
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keep popping back up. That's what it does. And so we can try through policy, through legislation,
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through manipulation of language, through bullying, through censorship, to try to deny the reality of
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male and female. We will never be able to do it. And I do think the attempt at doing that through
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legislation is extremely harmful. It always leads to the erasure, never of men, but of women, which
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isn't a coincidence. Of course, I believe that Satan has a special hatred for women that we have seen
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from the Garden of Eden and continues to manifest itself now. And in this bill, that even though it's
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titled Women's Health Protection Act, they make clear that, hey, we're not trying to be bigoted by
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using this antiquated term, women. The bill says this. I'm going to include, of course, a link to the
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whole text of the bill in the description to this episode, because I want you to be able to read it for
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yourself. I never want you to just take my word for it. But here's one paragraph from the bill.
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The terms woman and women are used in this bill to reflect the identity of the majority of people
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targeted and affected by restrictions on abortion services and to address squarely the targeted
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restrictions on abortion, which are rooted in misogyny. However, access to abortion services
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is critical to the health of every person capable of becoming pregnant. Did you know that there are
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people that are not women who are capable of becoming pregnant? Isn't that amazing? Cisgender women,
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transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with the different gender,
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and others who are unjustly harmed by restrictions on abortion. So these people have the audacity to
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say that restrictions on abortion, which save the lives of unborn girls, by the way, is rooted in
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misogyny. And then they go on to say, well, it's not actually just a women's issue. This is affecting
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men, transgender men, which is a woman who identifies as a man. It's nonsense. It's nonsense. Like,
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remember, God is not a God of confusion. Like, He did not mean for us to be burdened with this kind
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of chaos. In His grace, in His creativity, He made us male and female. It's very simple. That doesn't
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mean that there are not genetic anomalies. That doesn't mean that intersex people don't exist,
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but that's a disorder. That's an exception that does not rewrite the rule. In the same way that we
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call human beings bipeds, even though there are some people that are born with one leg, the exception,
00:23:51.700
the exemption, or not really the exemption, but the exception does not change the rule. And yet,
00:23:58.060
people have given in to this kind of confusion, thinking erroneously that this creates order. It
00:24:05.360
doesn't. It creates destruction. It creates confusion. The bill goes on to say, reproductive justice
00:24:12.640
seeks to address restrictions on reproductive health, including abortion. Again, abortion isn't
00:24:19.100
reproductive health because reproduction has already happened when there is a baby inside the womb. So it
00:24:24.600
really doesn't have anything to do with reproduction except for the products of reproduction, which is
00:24:28.180
a human being. So restrictions on reproductive health, including abortion, the bill says, that
00:24:32.820
perpetuate systems of oppression. Like, they just can't even get over themselves enough to be able to say
00:24:39.040
what the bill is actually about. Lack of bodily autonomy. Again, abortion has nothing to do with
00:24:44.080
bodily autonomy. I mean, the human being is a human being that has DNA that is independent of the
00:24:51.940
mother, white supremacy, and anti-black racism. This violent legacy has manifested in policies,
00:24:59.180
including enslavement, rape. Okay, so anti-abortion policies, it's on par with enslavement.
00:25:05.280
Now, let's think about that for a second. Slavery. Black people were dehumanized. They were made to
00:25:14.680
feel and they were subjected as less than human, as subhuman, as property. Babies inside the womb
00:25:24.480
are called clumps of cells by the anti-abortion crowd. We're told that they don't have rights,
00:25:30.680
that they don't have innate dignity, that they don't have innate worth. And they are also objectified,
00:25:36.960
abused, and demonized in the same way that slaves were. And so they're saying the opposite, though,
00:25:44.780
that anti-abortion restrictions are on par with slavery, when really it's abortion that's on par
00:25:51.220
with slavery. And for some reason, that's controversial to say. But the reality is, is that
00:25:57.420
we have all kinds of instances throughout human history of people being dehumanized, and the
00:26:02.680
dehumanization leads to their marginalization, it leads to their victimization, it leads to their
00:26:09.740
death. That's just true. And yet all this kind of doublespeak, all this kind of doublethink, all this
00:26:15.260
kind of newspeak, this Orwellian nonsense is trying to flip everything that is true on its head.
00:26:22.020
That's, of course, what Satan does. These people who write this legislation, they can't help but
00:26:28.360
breathe out lies because they serve the father of lies. That's who, that's their nature. That's what
00:26:35.420
they do. And so they go on to say in this bill, experimentation on black women for sterilizations,
00:26:41.700
of course, I'm against that. Medical experimentation on low-income women's reproductive systems,
00:26:47.860
the forcible removal of indigenous children, of course, I'm against all of those terrible
00:26:51.620
things. But they are saying that that's the same thing somehow as anti-abortion legislation.
00:26:57.940
Access to equitable reproductive health care, including abortion services, has always been
00:27:02.180
deficient in the United States for black indigenous and other people of color and their families.
00:27:06.820
Hang on. Hang on. The violent legacy of white supremacy is ending abortion? Let's look at some
00:27:13.000
numbers. According to the CDC, the abortion rate among black Americans is wildly disproportionate to
00:27:18.800
their population size. In several years, including in 2017, according to the CDC, there were more
00:27:25.960
abortions among black women than among white women, despite black women only making up about 8% of the
00:27:32.920
American population. Since 1965, 18.7 million abortions of black babies have been performed.
00:27:39.580
That's an estimated 42% of the current population of black Americans, compared with only 14% of the
00:27:46.480
white population that's been aborted in that time frame, 15% of the current Hispanic population that's
00:27:51.980
been aborted since 1965, and 15% of non-Hispanic other as described in this report. So it seems to me
00:27:59.640
that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are actually carrying out the eugenicist legacy of the
00:28:05.700
Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Singer, who said in a letter that she did not want the word to
00:28:10.060
get out, that they wanted to do away with the black population. It seems like these abortion providers
00:28:15.760
are succeeding in carrying out that mission still today. And the authors of this legislation
00:28:21.180
have the audacity to say that the people who are standing against that killing, against that mass
00:28:31.740
murder, that they're the white supremacists, it's projection. It's evil. It is the darkest,
00:28:37.640
most wicked thing that you can think of. Late-term abortion, we hear, is rare. We alluded to that with
00:28:44.700
Alexandra. It's rare. It's rare. So it's fine that this bill wants to do away with any restrictions on
00:28:49.680
abortion in the last trimester. It's rare. First of all, that's a bad argument. Just because something
00:28:55.040
is rare, it means that there shouldn't be any restrictions on it. According to the Guttmacher
00:29:00.020
Institute, which is the research arm of Planned Parenthood, rare is more than 10,000 times a
00:29:05.880
year. More than 10,000 times a year. Babies who are developed enough to be able to live outside of
00:29:13.280
the womb. And again, that doesn't mean that babies who aren't able to live outside of the womb
00:29:16.720
independently are less valuable. But just to speak to this talking point that late-term abortion is rare,
00:29:23.900
more than 10,000 times a year. That would be the leading cause of death for children in the United States
00:29:29.800
10,000 times a year. Babies in the second and third trimester after 25 weeks, so that's after
00:29:36.680
viability, are aborted. Now let's talk about, and this is explicit, we know this, but let's talk about
00:29:43.100
how that happens. What goes on in those kinds of abortions that are happening thousands of times
00:29:50.520
a year in the United States that Democrats refuse to prohibit. And not only refuse to prohibit,
00:29:55.840
but they refuse to allow states to prohibit, that is actually being celebrated by a number of
00:30:02.340
organizations. That's another false talking point that no one is pro-abortion. That's not true. That is
00:30:07.380
not true. It is something that is celebrated now among mainstream Democrats. You can be in denial all
00:30:13.440
you want to. That's reality. That's reality. Go check out Shout Your Abortion. Go check out a dozen other
00:30:19.000
organizations on Instagram that talk about how abortion is great. Read the New York Magazine article
00:30:23.880
from a couple of years ago that says abortion is actually a moral good. Why don't you ask someone
00:30:28.880
that works at Planned Parenthood or NARAL? Why don't you ask Nancy Pelosi, the devout Catholic,
00:30:35.560
or even Joe Biden, the devout Catholic, whether or not abortion is morally good. They probably would
00:30:40.840
have a hard time actually saying it's bad, even though they say they're personally pro-life,
00:30:45.640
as if that's possible to be personally pro-life, and yet still against the legal right of babies to live.
00:30:51.540
Okay, I'm going to talk about what a late-term abortion is from the words of an abortionist.
00:30:57.980
It's going to be graphic, but I think it's really important. It's so important, pro-life or whether
00:31:03.740
you're still trying to decide, it's really important for us to know exactly what we're talking about.
00:31:08.720
Okay, so I'm going to read you some of a testimony from Leroy Carhartt, and he is an abortionist.
00:31:22.740
He is still performing late-term abortions to this day, and he had to give, he had to testify in court
00:31:30.540
in 1997, and he was asked a series of questions about what he does for a living. So the questioner
00:31:39.700
said, are there times when you don't remove the fetus intact? Carhartt says, yes, sir. Can you tell
00:31:45.360
me about that, when that occurs? So again, we're talking about second and third trimesters. Leroy
00:31:50.460
Carhartt says, that occurs when the tissue fragments, or frequently when you rupture the membranes,
00:31:55.240
an arm will spontaneously prolapse through the cervix. And of course, if you are not entirely
00:32:00.660
sure about what happens in a birth, the baby has to come through the birth canal, the cervix. And so
00:32:06.580
that's what he is talking about. Rupturing the membranes means like breaking the water. And so
00:32:11.280
he is having to deliver this baby that he is supposed to have already killed through abortion. He's
00:32:17.820
talking about an arm popping out. So the questioner says, what do you mean? Carhartt says,
00:32:22.140
my normal course would be to dismember that extremity and then go back and try to make the
00:32:27.380
fetus out. I might start crying. Take the fetus out, either foot or skull first, whatever end I can
00:32:33.640
get to first. Questioner, how do you go about dismembering that extremity? We're talking about
00:32:37.980
a baby here. Carhartt, just traction and rotation. This is really hard to listen to, but I think it's,
00:32:44.100
I think it's necessary. Just traction and rotation, grasping the portion that you can get a hold of,
00:32:49.220
which would usually be somewhere up the shaft of the exposed portion of the fetus, pulling down on
00:32:54.420
it. And then you use counter traction and rotating to dismember the shoulder or the hip or whatever it
00:32:59.760
would be. Sometimes you will get one leg and you can't get the other out. Questioner, in that
00:33:04.400
situation, are you, when you pull on the arm and remove it, is the fetus still alive? Carhartt, yes.
00:33:12.300
Questioner, do you consider an arm, for example, to be substantial portion of the fetus? Carhartt says,
00:33:17.580
yes. Questioner, and then what happens if you remove the arm? Then you try to remove the rest
00:33:21.680
of the fetus. Carhartt, then I would go back and attempt to either bring the feet down or bring the
00:33:26.200
skull down. And some, or even sometimes you bring the other arm down and remove that also and get
00:33:31.660
the feet down. Questioner, at what point is the fetus, uh, does the fetus die during that process?
00:33:38.040
Carhartt, I don't really know. I know that the fetus is alive during the process most of the time
00:33:45.860
because I can see the fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound. The court, counsel for what it's
00:33:52.200
worth. It is unclear to me with regards to the intact DNA when fetal demise occurs. Questioner,
00:33:57.660
okay, I will clarify that. Um, this is dilation and extraction. And the procedure of an intact DNA
00:34:03.960
where you would start foot first with the situation where the fetus is presented feet first,
00:34:09.300
tell me how you're able to get the feet out first. Carhartt, under ultrasound, you can see the
00:34:16.460
extremities. Sorry, this is so hard to read. So Carhartt says, you know what is what?
00:34:29.160
You know what the foot is. You know what the arm is. You know what the skull is by grabbing the feet
00:34:33.500
and pulling down on it or by grabbing a knee and pulling down on it. Usually you can get one leg
00:34:39.560
out, get the other leg out and bring the fetus out. I don't know all, all the controversy about
00:34:44.760
rotating the fetus comes from. I don't attempt to do that. Just attempting to bring out whatever is
00:34:50.900
the proximal portion of the fetus. At the time you bring out the feet in this example, is the fetus
00:34:55.820
alive? Carhartt says, yes. And then he goes on to explain what happens. Um, he says that he has to
00:35:06.120
try to cut the cord. And then the questioner says, let's take the situation where you haven't divided
00:35:12.160
the cord because you couldn't, and you have begun to remove a living fetus feet first. What happens
00:35:17.480
next after you've gotten the feet removed? Um, he says you have to bring the shoulders down,
00:35:22.540
but you can get enough of them outside. You can do this with your finger inside the uterus.
00:35:27.560
And then at that point, the fetal, the base of the fetal skull is usually in the cervical canal.
00:35:32.760
What do you do next? Carhartt. And you can reach that. And that's where you would rupture the fetal
00:35:37.240
skull to some extent and aspirate the contents out. We're talking about a brain of a baby,
00:35:44.580
living baby. Okay. At what point in that process does fetal demise occur between, uh, between initial
00:35:52.080
removal of the feet or legs and the crushing of the skull, or I'm sorry, the decompressing of the
00:35:57.360
skull. Um, Carhartt says this is 1997. So this has been going on a long time. This is where I'm not
00:36:05.360
sure what fetal demise is. Carhartt says, I mean, I honestly have to share your concern. You can remove
00:36:11.680
the cranial content and the fetus will still have a heartbeat for several seconds or several minutes.
00:36:16.020
So is the fetus alive? I would have to say probably, although I don't think it has any brain function.
00:36:20.980
So it's brain dead at that point. So the brain death might occur when you begin suctioning out
00:36:27.200
of the cranium. And then Carhartt says, you know, that he believes so. That's what happens, um, in some
00:36:36.660
D and E abortions. Now there are abortions that are supposed to, um, occur in the way that you
00:36:45.100
ensure fetal demise is what it's called before, uh, the, the baby is extracted. Um, and live action
00:36:55.080
went undercover in 2013 to talk to Leroy Carhartt and to see what that entails. Um, again, second and
00:37:02.960
third trimester abortion. So I'm going to play you a little clip of that. So you don't see a lot
00:37:07.740
of women like me. Well, it's all four this week. Okay. So at 26 weeks. Wow. All right. So I'm not
00:37:15.700
unusual. No, not at all. Okay. And the baby will come through. They'll compress down to come through
00:37:21.200
that because it's not alive. And so when you say compress down, just it's gets soft, like mushy.
00:37:27.720
Oh, so you put, you push it through. So what makes the baby mushy? The fact that it's not alive for
00:37:34.480
two or three days. Oh, so I'll have a dead baby in me for three days. Will it start to decay or
00:37:40.040
something? Oh, it's like putting meat in a crock pot. Okay. It doesn't get, it doesn't get broke,
00:37:46.460
but it gets, gets softer. It doesn't get infected. Okay. So the dead baby in me is like meat in a crock
00:37:53.340
pot. Pretty much. Yeah, kind of much. All right. All right. And what was it that killed it?
00:37:58.740
The injection. The first one? The second one. Oh, the second one. I mean, I've done some when the
00:38:04.120
women can't have that shot if they're alive. I mean, it just, you know, I'm sure the baby feels a
00:38:09.800
needle stick if the baby feels anything. And I truly don't believe that it does at 26 weeks.
00:38:15.020
For some reason, I'm not able to deliver what you'll be able to get it out in pieces.
00:38:19.780
All right. So now we know what happens in a second and third trimester abortion
00:38:29.740
over 10,000 times a year. Now, of course, you'll hear from pro-abortioners as if this makes this
00:38:36.840
better, that they're supposed to ensure fetal demise before they extract the baby. But as we heard
00:38:42.100
in that 1997 testimony, that is not, that's not always, that's not always the case. And just a
00:38:49.240
reminder, that combination of chemicals that's used in the needle that goes through a woman's
00:38:54.780
abdomen into the heart of the baby in her womb is the same chemical combination that's used in
00:38:59.840
lethal injections for convicted murderers on death row. And so I never understood the people
00:39:05.240
who are against the death penalty for convicted murderers, but for the death penalty for babies
00:39:11.820
inside the womb. I'm sorry, you're not going to tell me that you've got a monopoly on
00:39:16.260
empathy and compassion if you're on that team. According to the Center for Medical Progress,
00:39:21.460
publicly available information demonstrates that the University of Pittsburgh hosts some of the
00:39:25.680
most barbaric experiments carried out on aborted human infants, including scalping five-month-old
00:39:30.960
aborted fetuses to stitch onto lab rats, exporting fetal kidneys across the country, and killing infants
00:39:37.140
delivered alive for liver harvesting funded by U.S. taxpayers via the National Institutes of Health,
00:39:42.520
and in particular, Dr. Anthony Fauci's NIAID office. Local Planned Parenthood of Western
00:39:48.520
Pennsylvania, abortion providers supply the aborted fetuses, while Pitt sponsors the local
00:39:54.280
Planned Parenthood's operations in what looks like an illegal quid pro quo for fetal body parts
00:39:58.360
forbidden by 42 U.S. Code 289G2 and 18 Pennsylvania Statutes 3216. Pennsylvania law also makes it a felony
00:40:07.140
to experiment on a living fetus or to fail to provide immediate medical care to an infant born
00:40:13.020
alive. Now, we already know that Planned Parenthood has been trafficking the parts of unborn babies.
00:40:18.060
David Daleiden uncovered that and was punished for it by Kamala Harris when she was Attorney General of
00:40:23.320
California. Now, this is the same woman who a senator refused to vote yes on a bill that would simply
00:40:28.580
provide doctors or it would make doctors provide care to infants outside of the womb who survived
00:40:37.780
abortion. And you actually, it's just amazing. Like, you actually had Christian celebrate when she became
00:40:43.940
vice president. Oh, because she's a woman of color. Like, that is going to save her when she stands before
00:40:48.660
the judgment throne of God? I mean, what a horrifying, depraved, corrupt wench. I mean, same goes for every
00:40:54.620
single person who supports the legal killing of children. You heard what I just described to you. There is no
00:41:00.640
nuance here. Like, yes, of course. Yes and amen. There is grace for everyone who has had an abortion. I have
00:41:07.220
talked to so many of you who are pro-life and you are some of the most passionate pro-life advocates out there.
00:41:14.040
Nothing makes anyone too far off for God's rescuing power and love and grace. But once we know better, once we know
00:41:22.560
what abortion is, we cannot pretend that it's possible to call yourself pro-life or holistically
00:41:28.680
pro-life and vote for the party that exclusively advocates for the legalized killing of babies
00:41:33.140
through nine months. Yes, we can talk about different policies and practices that we can do to help
00:41:39.700
moms. I, you know, posted a link the other day. There are several pregnancy centers, pro-life pregnancy
00:41:48.460
centers throughout the country, but especially in the state of Texas that are overwhelmed right now
00:41:52.420
since Texas's law was enforced. Praise God, who are now choosing life. And I posted a link for a few
00:42:01.000
minutes of a pregnancy center that said, hey, we're desperate and we're in desperate need of baby
00:42:04.940
supplies and help for moms. Can you post our Amazon link? Posted it on Twitter, posted it on Instagram.
00:42:12.120
Tens of thousands of items were sent to the center. I mean, that's going to clothe babies. That's going
00:42:18.860
to help moms who chose life. Praise God. This idea that pro-lifers aren't for ways to help moms and
00:42:26.800
babies. Babies after they're born is a lie. It is a lie. And we do not have to talk about policies or
00:42:33.540
talk about strategies to support families in crisis instead of making abortion illegal. Like there's only
00:42:40.380
one side, only one party that is talking about picking one or the other. The right doesn't talk
00:42:46.040
about that. We say yes and amen. Let's talk about how we can create an entire culture of life. But
00:42:50.920
yes and amen. Let's, let's make this atrocity illegal. If you believe that, that babies in the
00:42:57.980
womb are human beings, which is not a belief, it's fact. So if you accept that fact, then there is no
00:43:02.600
logical reason why that human being shouldn't have legal human rights, the most basic of which is the
00:43:08.220
right to life. So if you're someone who says, you know, I'm against abortion, but let's keep it
00:43:12.340
legal. You are saying that you don't believe that baby has the same right to life as people outside
00:43:17.500
of the womb. And you need to be able to answer why. You're drawing the same illogical distinctions
00:43:22.500
that the pro-abortion side does. If babies in the womb are human, they're made in God's image and
00:43:28.040
therefore they have dignity. They have a worth. And beautifully in the West, we are supposed to
00:43:33.120
believe that that worth means your physical life is worthy of protection. That's the very least that
00:43:39.480
a government can do. And honestly, like, that's why I have a hard time with some organizations like,
00:43:45.000
like the AND campaign, because even though, you know, I think that their, their mission is sincere
00:43:50.520
and their faith is sincere. I've talked to Justin Giboney on this podcast. So I feel like I can talk
00:43:55.240
about this without it just seeming like I'm not allowing them to defend themselves. At the end of the
00:44:00.100
day, they vote Democrat. Like at the end of the day, they are voting for the representatives,
00:44:05.540
for the, for the legislators that's crafting the kind of policy that is enabling the kind of
00:44:11.900
grotesque procedures that we just described. And I have a really hard time understanding how
00:44:18.500
you can call yourself holistically pro-life and still consistently be voting for the party that not
00:44:24.900
just enables it, but celebrates it. I'm sorry. I just, I don't see it. Like making abortion illegal,
00:44:33.180
legally protecting the fundamental right of babies to not be murdered is the baseline for being able to
00:44:39.780
call yourself pro-life. Again, we can talk about all the things that we can do to create an entire
00:44:44.860
holistic culture of life, but let's start with just the basic legal rights to live, to not be murdered
00:44:53.960
in the womb. You know, how we used to talk about abortion, it was, it was different. Like, I don't
00:45:00.920
know what made me think of this the other day. But I thought of, you know, the Tim McGraw song,
00:45:07.460
Red Ragtop, a red, red rag top. I think, yeah, I think that's what it's called. I used to listen to
00:45:13.260
that probably not even knowing what it was talking about. Like when I was in high school, because there
00:45:17.160
was a day when, when kids were in high school, they really weren't thinking about politics and a bunch
00:45:21.940
of different issues. But I listened to it the other day and I was like, wow, this makes me sad. It's a
00:45:26.640
super sad song. And he talks about, you know, committing a sin. He talks about how it kind of
00:45:32.920
ruined their life and ruined their relationship or hurt their life at least. And that there was
00:45:36.840
regret. And that was obviously a mainstream song sung by a mainstream singer. And then I remembered
00:45:43.280
another song that was about abortion, Ben Folds. I used to be a huge Ben Folds fan, went to his concert
00:45:49.700
and all of that, even though, you know, he definitely is not producing content that is
00:45:54.840
God glorifying. But this song, Brick, I've heard it described as like the, the happiest sounding song
00:46:01.900
with the saddest lyrics. Like it's got a very happy melody, but it's a very sad and heavy song.
00:46:06.280
And it talks about him and his girlfriend going to get an abortion and how she ended up, you know,
00:46:11.340
they said that they were going to be fine, but she ended up not being okay. She ended up,
00:46:16.140
um, we don't know the details, but she wasn't all right. And they had to confess the fact that
00:46:21.400
they had lied and they had covered this up. And, you know, this was in the nineties when these songs
00:46:27.680
were coming out and I can just see how culture has shifted so much to saying, okay, you know,
00:46:32.980
abortion should be safe, legal and rare, which I'm not saying I agree with that, but it was understood
00:46:37.280
that this was a moral travesty that, okay, no one, no one wants this to now where we are,
00:46:42.420
it being so celebrated at least by, um, the, the radicals in the democratic party. I don't think
00:46:49.740
that that callousness describes the majority of people who identify as Democrats. I really don't.
00:46:56.700
I don't think that that callousness and that celebration, um, characterizes most of the country.
00:47:02.680
I think it's probably a very small percentage. And yet there is an entire political party that
00:47:07.380
supports it. I mean, when anti-shame is like our first priority, when we are so afraid of, um,
00:47:16.840
people feeling bad for their choices, when we're so afraid of stigma and we say that, oh, nothing
00:47:22.080
should be shameful. Nothing should be stigmatized. Every choice, every immoral choice has to be
00:47:28.740
celebrated. Um, then we create this very morally confusing and honestly devastating and lost
00:47:37.120
society. I'm not saying that we should drown people in shame who have had abortions. No,
00:47:42.260
far from that, but we should be very clear in what is right. What is wrong? What is good? What is evil?
00:47:47.940
Abortion is evil. The abortion industry is evil. We should be doing whatever we can to make sure
00:47:54.700
that it is as illegal as possible. We want better for babies. We want better for women. We want better
00:48:01.120
for society. And yes, we come alongside these vulnerable people and we help them absolutely
00:48:06.800
however we can, but let's start in the womb. Let's start with that basic right to life. I,
00:48:13.720
I can't even, I can't even imagine that we're living in a country where someone like Leroy Carhartt
00:48:21.080
is not only, um, allowed to be a free person and not go to jail. Um, but it's actually celebrated,
00:48:28.740
unfortunately in his industry. I want to change that. I want to do whatever we can to fight for
00:48:34.380
those babies, to fight for those potential victims and to fight for moms who, like I said,
00:48:39.340
they deserve so much better. All right. Um, tomorrow we are finally going to talk about this subject that
00:48:45.840
you guys have been asking me to talk about for a long time. We're going to talk, uh, with the head of
00:48:50.360
an organization Exodus cry, who is doing so much good work. Um, they are helping victims of sex
00:48:56.200
trafficking. They are raising awareness about exploitation. So we're going to talk about the
00:49:00.240
problem of porn and the access that unfortunately kids have to that. It's going to be a really good
00:49:05.540
conversation. And I think you're going to feel inspired to not just know about that subject,
00:49:10.320
but also to do something about it. So I'm excited about that. Remember Tuesday, next Tuesday,
00:49:17.180
it's going to be a really awesome, fun episode. It is going to be our 500th episode. We're going to
00:49:22.860
be doing a lot of different things. One thing that we're going to be doing though, is taking
00:49:25.960
voicemails from you guys. And you're going to, um, if you want to leave a voicemail saying what
00:49:32.400
relatable has meant to you, if there have been, um, if your mind has changed at all on anything,
00:49:37.680
I definitely want to hear about that. And the voicemail number, the Skype number for you guys to call,
00:49:45.480
to leave a voicemail at 682-503-1369. So call us, tell us why relatable has meant something to you.
00:49:52.380
Tell us if anything has changed your mind and we will be excited to, um, hear about that and play
00:49:58.980
some of those on Tuesday. I'm super excited. All right. I'll see you guys back here tomorrow.