Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 533

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

00:00:14.080 if you follow me on Instagram and you see my stories, you know that I am recording this

00:00:19.720 episode that you are listening to or watching on Friday. Today, as you are listening or

00:00:23.700 watching, I'm in Nashville on Candace Owens' show. So make sure that you tune into that.

00:00:29.860 If you are a subscriber and I asked you guys on Instagram what you wanted me to talk about

00:00:35.220 on Monday's episode, and I gave you a lot of options. And honestly, I was a little surprised

00:00:40.120 that the option that you guys chose was Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Center. We touched

00:00:46.560 on it just a little bit last week when the oral arguments were being presented to the Supreme

00:00:50.940 Court by both sides, but you guys wanted me to dig into it. I offered, okay, we can have

00:00:57.920 a theological episode where we talk about, we break apart a particular hymn and we talk

00:01:02.400 about what scripture it corresponds to. We can talk about how I feel about Santa Claus

00:01:08.720 and what we should do about Santa Claus with our kids. But you guys, most of you, picked

00:01:12.180 Dobbs overwhelmingly. I will still do those things. I know there is a large section of you who really

00:01:18.860 like the strictly theological episodes. I love those episodes too, by the way. And so we will

00:01:23.640 definitely be doing those in preparation for Christmas. But because you guys are my executive

00:01:29.880 producers and I do what my executive producers say, I wanted to deliver what most of you said

00:01:37.200 that you wanted. Your wish is my command. So we will be talking a little bit about Dobbs versus

00:01:43.240 Jackson Women's Health Center today. Now, the reason I say a little bit is because we cannot

00:01:49.940 get into all of the minutiae of all of the different, all of the legalese that corresponds

00:01:56.500 with this case. And you guys don't come to me for that. You guys might go to people who have been

00:02:05.420 reporting on the Supreme Court for a very long time. You guys might go to some legal expert to tell you

00:02:11.320 exactly what that all means. It would take a really long time. Thankfully, that kind of information is

00:02:17.780 accessible to all of us. But that's not what you guys typically come to me for. I'm going to give

00:02:23.020 you a summary of what this case is about based on the expert analysis of people who have been

00:02:29.520 reporting on SCOTUS for a long time and have been reporting on abortion law, abortion cases for

00:02:35.820 decades. And then we're going to look at some of the arguments that were presented, some of the back

00:02:39.720 and forth between some justices and the legal teams representing both sides. So if you don't know,

00:02:47.820 if you missed the episode last week where we explained it, or if you haven't read about it

00:02:51.880 online, Mississippi in 2018 passed a law to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. And now let

00:02:59.100 me just pause there because before I got pregnant for the first time, I didn't really know anything

00:03:03.920 about pregnancy. I probably couldn't have told you which trimester 15 weeks is, which is,

00:03:10.320 you know, it's just not something I would have thought about. Obviously, it's pretty obvious if

00:03:14.280 you know what a trimester is, but I just hadn't thought about it. I didn't really know that much

00:03:18.840 about fetal development. I didn't really know very much about gestation, what pregnancy was about,

00:03:23.660 which is why when I had my second ultrasound at 11 and a half weeks, so typically you have your first

00:03:28.560 ultrasound at eight weeks just to make sure that everything is all good. That's typically where you see

00:03:33.620 the heartbeat if you have a healthy baby inside you. So I saw that beating heart. I didn't hear

00:03:40.260 the beating heart the first time, but really just that first ultrasound, he or she, which she is,

00:03:45.260 he or she, she has a he or she at conception, even though you can't tell yet and blood work wouldn't

00:03:51.180 even tell you as early as eight weeks probably, but you see that beating heart and it looks like

00:03:58.760 a jelly bean. It just looks like a little jelly bean. It's hard to believe that this thing

00:04:02.800 will turn into a full-size baby and then will grow into a full-grown adult. But then by the time 10

00:04:10.720 weeks rolls around and then even more so at 11 weeks, so we're still talking first trimester here.

00:04:16.360 When you hear first trimester abortion, you typically hear that talked about very flippantly as if

00:04:21.720 that's just nothing, as if it really just does look like a clump of cells. Well, that's not the case.

00:04:28.380 If you look at an ultrasound at 10 weeks and then 11 weeks and then at 11 and a half weeks when I had

00:04:35.300 my second ultrasound, what you'll see is what looks like a fully formed baby. And that is when, for me,

00:04:42.680 I had a very emotional experience. It's kind of strange seeing something inside your body that you can't

00:04:48.400 feel the first time, but it just kind of, it looks like a blob the first time around. And then by the time

00:04:53.680 that you're at the end of the first trimester, you've got a fully formed, of course, it still

00:04:59.780 has to develop and it still has to grow a lot more for several more weeks before he or she can enter

00:05:04.620 the world. But you're looking at this little child with arms and legs and fingers and toes that's

00:05:11.580 kicking and slipping around that you can't even feel. Think about how strange that is. If you found

00:05:15.740 out another human being was inside your body and you couldn't even feel this thing moving around,

00:05:21.940 that's how tiny it is. And yet I could see her brain, her skull, even where her teeth would come in.

00:05:26.700 You see the beating heart, you see the spine, you see the stomach, you see all the intestines and she's

00:05:31.140 flipping around, she's kicking. And again, we are talking still about the first trimester. That was a very

00:05:37.220 emotional experience for me. And honestly, it's very hard for me to understand how a woman could have that

00:05:42.360 experience in the first trimester and still somehow justify, sanitize abortion to the point to where she

00:05:49.880 thinks that it is in any way morally acceptable. It's really hard for me to understand that because

00:05:58.760 no matter the circumstances surrounding that child's conception, it's still a life. It's still

00:06:04.460 a child. I mean, you see that in the ultrasound. And that's why, for example, for that's why certain

00:06:10.780 laws, for example, like ultrasound laws or regulations that require a woman to hear a heartbeat

00:06:18.220 before she decides whether or not she wants to have an abortion or see the image of the ultrasound

00:06:25.780 before she decides to have an abortion is so powerful. Knowledge is power. And if we really are for

00:06:31.420 informed consent, if you really are pro-choice, then you should want that choice to be as informed as

00:06:36.780 possible. And yet, interestingly, the pro-abortion, pro-choice lobby is always lobbying against any

00:06:43.300 requirement for a woman or even just the encouragement for a woman to see the ultrasound image or to be

00:06:53.260 able to hear the heartbeat. So that just shows me that they're not actually pro-choice. If you're

00:06:57.980 pro-choice, you want the woman to be presented with all of the information, all of the options truly

00:07:02.580 available to her. And yet they're always trying to keep the woman in the dark because the pro-choice

00:07:07.420 lobby is, in essence, a pro-abortion lobby. So 15 weeks of pregnancy, that's when Mississippi,

00:07:13.800 this law, wants to ban abortion after 15 weeks. So after 15 weeks, we're talking second trimester.

00:07:20.580 So if what I'm telling you is true, that still in the first trimester at 11 weeks, even before that,

00:07:25.880 10 weeks, you're seeing arms and legs. You're seeing this kicking, flipping baby. Then 15 weeks,

00:07:31.880 you're looking at an even more developed baby that's obviously even bigger than that. Second

00:07:38.540 trimester, this baby is very close to being viable. Babies as young as 21 weeks gestation have

00:07:45.860 survived outside the womb, obviously, with a lot of medical help. And when I talk about the

00:07:51.080 development of the baby and the viability of the baby, viable means the baby can survive outside the

00:07:55.880 womb. I am not saying that babies who are bigger or babies who are more developed or babies

00:08:01.820 who are viable are innately worth more than a baby at six weeks gestation or a zygote or an embryo,

00:08:12.120 a fetus, whatever language you want to use. The fact of the matter is that this is still a

00:08:18.280 developing human being. It is not a potential life. He or she is a human being. It is a human life.

00:08:25.820 And therefore, from conception onward, the only logical, the only consistent view is to say that

00:08:31.820 from every second, from conception onward, that pre-born child, that baby has innate worth and has

00:08:39.460 the fundamental right to life. So I talk about viability. I talk about size. I talk about development.

00:08:45.580 That's just trying to get people to picture what we're really talking about here. I am not saying

00:08:50.420 that babies who are more developed are innately worth more than babies who are less developed.

00:08:54.940 So I just want to clarify that. But this particular law does give women several weeks to decide whether

00:09:02.300 or not they want an abortion. Obviously, that's not something I'm for. But this Mississippi law doesn't

00:09:07.940 even try to ban abortion outright. We're talking about 15 weeks well into the second trimester.

00:09:13.860 We're talking about a very developed baby who is about to be able to survive outside the womb.

00:09:20.400 And Mississippi is simply saying, OK, after this point, after you have had several weeks to decide

00:09:27.020 this, after the point that most women, the vast majority of women, if you're paying attention

00:09:32.560 at all, will know, they will know confidently that they are pregnant, you can't have an abortion.

00:09:38.580 And of course, the pro-abortion side thinks that this is so draconian, so awful,

00:09:42.580 so terrible, as you can see by some of the tweets of the pro-abortioners on Twitter,

00:09:47.620 just absolutely losing their minds over this. It's a good reminder that the United States is one

00:09:54.860 of only seven countries in the entire world that allows abortion after the point of viability.

00:10:01.180 The vast majority of countries do not allow abortion that's far into pregnancy. And two of the other

00:10:09.520 seven countries that allow abortion that late in the game, North Korea and China. And so it's

00:10:15.360 interesting that the side who always talks about empathy and compassion and being on the side of

00:10:19.040 equality and liberation and human rights, and also they are always trying to compare us to other

00:10:24.840 countries and say that other countries are so much better. They seem to be perfectly fine with the fact

00:10:30.620 that when it comes to the human rights of pre-born babies, that we are right on par

00:10:34.360 with the biggest violators of human rights in the world. So the Supreme Court heard this case

00:10:42.960 the other day, last week, to decide whether or not this law may be upheld fully, partially,

00:10:49.100 or not at all. If parts of this law are upheld, this could allow for states to enforce abortion

00:10:55.220 restrictions before viability for the first time since Roe v. Wade. So as it stands right now,

00:11:02.380 because of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood versus Casey, it's really impossible for states

00:11:09.100 to restrict abortion before the point of viability, which is said to be about 24 weeks. But like I said,

00:11:14.980 there are babies who have survived at 21 weeks gestation outside the womb. And so if this Mississippi

00:11:22.140 law is upheld, which as I'll talk about, it kind of looks like it will be, then essentially that

00:11:28.260 undermines Roe and the states are going to be able to make their decisions when it comes to how much

00:11:34.640 they want to restrict abortion. So abortion isn't going to go away if Roe v. Wade goes away. That's

00:11:41.200 a piece of propaganda that a lot of pro-choicers are trying to throw at you. I mean, I would say

00:11:45.540 amen, hallelujah, if that were the case. If abortion were banned, then that would be an amazing feat.

00:11:51.320 And I would celebrate and praise the Lord, and that would be such an act of mercy of God.

00:11:55.820 But that's not what happens if Roe v. Wade is essentially overturned and this Mississippi

00:12:00.740 law is upheld. It will simply say that states, and they will be Republican states, can restrict

00:12:05.840 abortion as much as they want to. And you're still going to probably be able to get an abortion through

00:12:11.120 nine months of pregnancy far after a baby can feel pain in states like California or Illinois or Hawaii

00:12:20.020 or New York. The very liberal states will allow and will fund and will encourage and will celebrate

00:12:27.220 abortion without apology for any reason through nine months. So a woman will still be able to get

00:12:33.000 an abortion, but the red states with a lot of pro-life voters will also be able to restrict abortion

00:12:38.440 or hopefully be able to ban abortion outright. This Mississippi law also allows for,

00:12:44.860 it allows for exemptions for the life of the mother. And I think there are some also,

00:12:50.900 there are also some other exceptions when it comes to fetal anomalies. And so this is not

00:12:59.160 trying to ban abortion altogether. So even after 15 weeks, a woman may still be able to get an abortion

00:13:05.860 for particular reasons. It does not make exceptions for rape and incest. And again, this is after 15 weeks.

00:13:13.780 So if a woman is raped or a victim of incest before 15 weeks, she will be able to get an abortion under

00:13:20.740 this Mississippi law. Now, we will not know the decision of the Supreme Court until summer of 2022.

00:13:29.440 So the oral arguments have already been presented, and we're not going to know how the Supreme Court

00:13:34.380 decides until the summer of 2022. And so that gives Christians such an opportunity to pray and to push

00:13:41.540 and to change minds and hearts until then. Like you can bet that the pro-abortion, pro-choice side

00:13:46.640 is not going to forget about this. They're going to be pushing hard. And again, as we'll talk about

00:13:52.720 to the Chief Justice Roberts, he really cares about public opinion. He actually seems to care a lot about

00:13:57.600 the so-called or the reputation of the Supreme Court and what people think about the Supreme Court,

00:14:05.880 what he might see as the integrity of the Supreme Court. He doesn't really like to rock the boat,

00:14:10.460 even if that means, you know, not deciding in a way that would uphold the Constitution. He really

00:14:17.920 just likes things to simmer down. And so you can bet that there are going to be forces on the left

00:14:23.780 that are pushing a particular decision. And you can bet that the liberal justices on the court are going

00:14:28.380 to be trying to persuade Chief Justice Roberts, as they already have in some of the arguments that

00:14:33.940 we'll read today. And so we need to pray. We need to pray for strength. We need to pray for

00:14:39.420 wisdom. We need to simply pray for true justice and righteousness and constitutionality to win over

00:14:44.720 here. We're not talking about trying to get the Supreme Court as pro-lifers to align with our

00:14:50.320 particular religious views. We're saying uphold the Constitution, and the Constitution does not

00:14:54.960 include a right to abortion. It would have been completely confounding to the authors of the

00:15:01.200 Constitution to hear that in some kind of implicit nook or cranny of the right to privacy, that there

00:15:10.560 is also a right to kill a human being, that there is also a right to kill a child simply based on the

00:15:14.720 location of that child. I mean, it's bizarre. It's truly any argument for abortion. It's truly,

00:15:20.760 truly bizarre.

00:15:21.540 Okay, so let's see what Ed Whelan has to say. He reports on, he's reported on several abortion

00:15:31.540 cases, and I read him often in National Review when it comes to, when it comes to the law,

00:15:39.760 when it comes to Supreme Court cases. So he writes for the Wall Street Journal, and he really breaks

00:15:44.100 this all down for us. What's on the line? What's going on? He says this, quote,

00:15:47.940 the Supreme Court hears its most important abortion cases in, sorry, most important abortion case in a

00:15:54.660 generation on Wednesday. So he wrote this last week, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

00:16:01.000 concerns a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks gestation. That's more permissive

00:16:07.160 than the laws of nearly every country in Europe, as we already noted. But because it applies before

00:16:11.960 viability, it conflicts with Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Many observers expect Chief

00:16:17.860 Justice John Roberts wary of overturning precedent and anxious to defend the court from political

00:16:22.940 attacks to search for a compromise. But his record provides compelling reasons to think he will

00:16:27.840 forge a super majority of justices to overturn Roe and Casey definitively. So that would be amazing

00:16:34.580 news. In Roe, the justices imposed a uniform national policy on a contentious social issue.

00:16:39.860 In Obergefell v. Hodges, that was the case on gay marriage that legalized gay marriage. The court did

00:16:46.300 the same thing with the Chief Justice Roberts in dissent. Just who do we think we are, Roberts asked

00:16:52.260 plaintively. The majority's decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces to

00:16:58.980 same-sex marriage has no basis in the Constitution or this court's precedent. And so Whelan is arguing

00:17:05.640 that because the Chief Justice was in dissent on Obergefell for the particular reason that he just

00:17:11.460 listed, if you follow that reasoning, that he would also be against the decision in Roe. He says,

00:17:18.600 the majority seizes for itself a question the Constitution leaves to the people. At a time when

00:17:22.780 the people are engaged in a vibrant debate on that question, the same was true of abortion in 1973.

00:17:28.320 And so Whelan is looking at the dissent that Roberts put forth when it comes to Obergefell,

00:17:35.200 which basically he said, look, this is not a question for the court to answer. This is a question that

00:17:40.620 should be answered democratically, which is true. This should have been left. Obergefell should have

00:17:44.740 been left to the states. The states should have been able to decide whether or not they wanted to

00:17:49.760 legalize gay marriage where they live. It should have been up to the constituents. It should have

00:17:53.780 been a democratic process. And the same is true of abortion. Whelan is arguing and he is saying that

00:18:00.700 probably Chief Justice Roberts feels the same way, that it should have always been left up to the

00:18:06.620 democratic process because the Constitution doesn't actually talk about it. It doesn't talk

00:18:11.460 about gay marriage and it doesn't talk about abortion. Therefore, this should be a matter of

00:18:16.040 legislation. Now, people on the left don't like that. They really like to use the court.

00:18:21.260 They weaponize the court. They use the court to simply push what they think is good, whether or not

00:18:26.960 what they think is good is constitutional. And so you'll hear them saying, like, I heard I saw Reese

00:18:31.840 Witherspoon post on Instagram that she hopes that the court will see women as full human beings and

00:18:41.240 make the right decision. Actually said she's she didn't even just say she she's hoping she said

00:18:45.860 demonically that she's praying that the court will see women as full human beings. And there are many

00:18:52.940 problems with that, obviously, that the right to abortion, the right to abortion doesn't make a woman

00:18:59.960 a full human being. A woman is a full human being, but so is the baby inside her womb at every single

00:19:05.580 stage of development. All that child needs is time in order to grow into a baby that is ready to live

00:19:15.400 outside of the womb. But at no point is that human not a human being. So the baby is also a full human

00:19:23.220 being and as such deserves human rights. It's really, really simple. But the court is not deciding

00:19:31.020 whether or not a woman is a full human being, whatever the heck that means. Reese Witherspoon,

00:19:36.100 the court is deciding whether or not this Mississippi law is constitutional. That is the role of the court.

00:19:40.840 The court, any court, not just the Supreme Court, is not simply to put forward whatever one side of

00:19:47.740 ideologues wants or thinks is good or even thinks should be a human right. Really, the left doesn't

00:19:54.040 like to leave things up to democratic processes. Ironically, since they're always talking about

00:19:59.840 the importance of democracy, really, they are authoritarian in nature. Progressivism is and a lot

00:20:06.040 of people who adhere to progressivism are. They really just want things to be decided that they think

00:20:12.580 are good and they call that democracy. So they really don't they really don't care whether or

00:20:17.900 not gay marriage is a constitutional issue. They're just glad that the court sided with them. They don't

00:20:23.180 really care whether or not abortion is constitutional. They just want the court to do what they think is

00:20:29.000 right. That is why they threaten to pack the court. That's why Joe Biden, when he was running,

00:20:35.840 wouldn't put that off the table. And what they mean by packing the court is not just

00:20:39.180 putting justices on the court. If current justice resigns, putting the justice on the court that

00:20:46.900 they nominate. Of course, every president does that, but actually expanding the court to, for example,

00:20:52.180 13 seats and filling those new four seats with liberal justices who will do what they say.

00:20:59.880 That is packing the court. That is something that that President Trump did not do. And yet they say

00:21:07.140 that he did. And he obviously didn't. He didn't expand the court because they are authoritarian in

00:21:11.540 nature. They are authoritarian in wanting to push the things that they want. Apparently, there's a good

00:21:18.460 chance that this is going to be overturned. And the New York Times saying that there were four opinion

00:21:27.740 writers for the New York Times that all agreed that their guess is that it gets overturned. So this is

00:21:36.000 Lulu Garcia Navarro Ross Duthat. I think that's how you pronounce his last name. He had a really good

00:21:42.480 opinion piece. I'm thinking, I think that it was the same person. I'm just remembering this off the

00:21:46.640 top of my head, who he had a really good opinion piece in the New York Times recently, the case

00:21:52.520 against abortion. And he just so eloquently talks about why abortion is a moral travesty and why it's

00:21:57.660 not constitutional and why we should be against it. And I thought it was really good. And then Charles

00:22:01.260 Blow and then one other writer that I forgot to include in my notes. But they basically they all

00:22:06.500 agree that it's probably going to be that the Mississippi law is going to be upheld and that

00:22:12.740 Roe will, in essence, be overturned. So Garcia Navarro says that the plainly or that the liberal

00:22:20.100 justices plainly spoke about the politics of the issue. Justice Sotomayor's comment about whether the

00:22:26.100 court can survive the stench of overturning Roe was almost a direct appeal of Chief Justice Roberts.

00:22:31.800 So when Sotomayor was asking questions to each side, to the attorneys that were arguing in front

00:22:39.120 of the court, she was basically saying that, look, if we overturn this, if we uphold this law,

00:22:45.180 this is going to be damaging to the reputation of the court. And she's appealing to the chief

00:22:48.780 justice, who is a swing vote in this particular case, basically saying, look, you don't want to

00:22:54.120 ruin the reputation of the court. Do you? It's funny. Whenever the reputation of an institution

00:23:00.020 is on the line, the Republicans are always the ones to acquiesce. The Republicans are always the

00:23:04.680 one to say, OK, you're right. We care about the reputation. We care about the so-called integrity

00:23:09.980 of this institution. So we'll just do a Democrat say it never goes the other direction. And so that's

00:23:15.080 what Sotomayor is trying to do. She's talking about the politics of it because they care about the

00:23:19.140 politics. But we don't want this entity to be political one way or another. Ross Douthat says,

00:23:25.860 yes, it's a it's a peculiar situation where everybody assumes that none of the conservative

00:23:29.840 justices think that either Roe or Casey was rightly decided. So the question then becomes,

00:23:34.120 to what extent do they act like politicians? Something Roberts especially is always ready to do

00:23:38.180 as opposed to just following their legal conviction. So that's like what I was saying.

00:23:41.640 We don't want them to act like politicians. We do want them to follow their legal convictions,

00:23:46.400 especially Kavanaugh, especially Barrett, especially Roberts, who are all kind of seen

00:23:52.040 as swing votes. And actually, Gorsuch could, too, because we saw he made a decision in Bostock

00:23:56.820 that we never thought that he was going to make as a conservative justice. Really, the votes that we

00:24:02.560 know for sure are Alito, are Thomas, who are conservatives. And obviously, we know the votes

00:24:08.900 of Sotomayor, of Kagan, and Breyer as well. And Charles Blow says, you know, that he agrees and

00:24:19.020 basically that they think that it's going to be overturned. But if you read some other scholars,

00:24:24.760 they say it's really not a shoo-in yet. There's a lot that could happen. There's a lot that has to

00:24:28.660 be decided upon in the next several months. And we don't know for sure. We don't know for sure

00:24:34.000 if it is going to be, if Roe is going to be overturned. There are a lot of factors that go

00:24:40.380 into this, and we just don't know. And so I think that you'll see a lot of people, particularly in

00:24:46.180 the liberal media, who are going to say that Roe is going to be overturned. What they're trying to do

00:24:50.360 is they're trying to prepare for the midterms. They're trying to drum up outrage. And I think,

00:24:55.400 honestly, probably there are some Republicans that don't want Roe to be overturned in the summer,

00:25:00.080 as cynical and terrible and political as that is, because they're afraid it's going to hurt them.

00:25:04.000 In the midterms. Terrible. Terrible. But I think that that's probably true. However,

00:25:09.780 as people who hate abortion, who know that abortion is the true stench from which America

00:25:15.760 must recover, but may never recover. I mean, we're talking about a true holocaust of millions and

00:25:22.120 millions of babies over the past several decades, torn apart limb by limb with forceps. We're talking

00:25:29.060 about a brutal and barbaric procedure that happens thousands of times a day on defenseless human

00:25:34.840 beings that millions of people in the United States openly celebrate and advocate for.

00:25:41.820 It's hard for me to understand how the court or really the country is going to recover from the

00:25:48.480 reputation that we have gained by allowing and celebrating that. Now, I do want to point out,

00:25:55.980 again, what Andrew McCarthy National Review is saying, the consequences of all of this.

00:26:02.700 So here's what Andrew McCarthy says. He says, substantially, if Roe is overturned,

00:26:07.300 nothing will happen. That's why it's what he calls a big fake. Blue states will enact highly

00:26:13.400 permissive abortion laws. Red states will tightly regulate abortion to the point that it is available

00:26:17.760 only as a dire measure when necessary to save the life of the mother. Since we are the richest,

00:26:23.880 most mobile society in history with a political class that would find ways to subsidize abortion

00:26:27.960 for the needy regardless, no woman who wants an abortion will be unable to get one. And that's an

00:26:32.140 unfortunate reality. But I guess it's a comfort for the people on the left who are screaming like

00:26:36.840 banshees over this. Life will go on mostly as before. The disappearance of Roe will barely be

00:26:41.200 noticed. The federal courts will return to being what they should always have been on this matter of

00:26:46.320 democratic self-determination. So he's arguing that's what abortion should have always been.

00:26:50.460 Irrelevant. He's saying that the courts should be irrelevant when it comes to issues that should

00:26:56.920 be democratic. That's what ought to happen. And what I hope will happen, the justices will tune out

00:27:01.360 the demagogic noise, do their jobs, and realize that the hubbub will die down when it quickly becomes

00:27:06.720 clear that, in fact, catastrophe has not struck. And so we need to pray for the court to be insulated

00:27:11.700 from the demagoguery and from the cries and the complaints of people outside the court and simply

00:27:20.300 apply the law. They simply need to uphold the Constitution. I'm not even asking them to so-called

00:27:27.680 do what is right. I am simply asking them to uphold the Constitution. That's their job. There's no

00:27:32.380 constitutional rights to abortion. Read the entire Constitution. You will not find a right to

00:27:39.080 abortion in there or even implied. Now, I want to read you, and I'll even play you, some of the

00:27:47.780 arguments that were put forth in the court, some of the questions that were asked by some of the

00:27:54.920 justices, and we'll respond to a couple of those. But I want to read you the opening statement of Scott

00:28:02.500 G. Stewart, who is the Solicitor General for the state of Mississippi. He is arguing in defense of

00:28:07.860 Mississippi's abortion law, and he said things that I think deserve to go down in history and that are

00:28:16.540 very profound and that we should hold on to because he's absolutely right. So he said this before the

00:28:22.240 court. Mr. Chief Justice, it may have pleased the court. Roe versus Wade and Planned Parenthood versus

00:28:27.660 Casey haunt our country. They have no basis in the Constitution. They have no home in our history or

00:28:33.700 traditions. They've damaged the democratic process. They've poisoned the law. They've choked off

00:28:38.860 compromise. For 50 years, they've kept this court at the center of a political battle that it can

00:28:43.680 never resolve. And 50 years on, they stand alone. Nowhere else does this court recognize a right to

00:28:49.540 end a human life. Consider this case. The Mississippi law here prohibits abortions after 15 weeks. The law

00:28:55.940 includes robust exceptions for a woman's life and health. It leaves months to obtain an abortion. Yet,

00:29:01.400 the courts below struck the law down. It didn't matter that the law applies when an unborn child

00:29:07.080 is undeniably human, when risks to women surge, and when the common abortion procedure is brutal.

00:29:14.440 The lower courts held that because the law prohibits abortions before viability,

00:29:18.560 it is unconstitutional no matter what. And it is unconstitutional no matter what.

00:29:25.320 Roe and Casey's court holding, according to those courts, is that the people can protect an

00:29:29.020 unborn girl's life when she just barely can survive outside the womb, but not any earlier

00:29:34.200 when she needs a little more help. That is the world under Roe and Casey. That is not the world

00:29:39.980 the Constitution promises. The Constitution places its trust in the people. On hard issue after hard

00:29:45.440 issue, the people make this country work. Abortion is a hard issue. It demands the best from all of us,

00:29:52.440 not a judgment by a few of us. When an issue affects everyone, and when the Constitution does

00:29:58.000 not take sides on it, it belongs to the people. Roe and Casey have failed, but the people, if given the

00:30:05.280 chance, will succeed. So what he is primarily arguing here is not about abortion. Again, it is about who

00:30:12.800 should decide how legal abortion is, if at all. And he is arguing that this should be a democratic process

00:30:19.300 that is decided by the people who represent the people who voted for them and is done through

00:30:27.360 legislative process. So this is about principle. This is about constitutionality. What you will

00:30:32.420 often hear from people on the left and what you'll hear from Sotomayor, which I will play you in just

00:30:37.800 a second, is not really about whether or not it should be a democratic process. It's not really about

00:30:43.780 whether or not it's constitutional. It's about what they feel and what they like, which is so

00:30:48.280 typical for how leftists view every system. So I want to play you some of the dumbest

00:30:59.720 words that I've ever heard in my life from apparently one of the top legal minds in the

00:31:04.760 country and in the world. And I believe that is clip number eight. So if we can play that.

00:31:11.040 The literature is filled with episodes of people who are completely and utterly brain dreaded

00:31:18.880 responding to stimuli.

00:31:20.160 There's about 40% of dead people who, if you touch their feet, the foot will recoil.

00:31:31.600 There are spontaneous acts by dead brain people. So I don't think that a response to, by a fetus,

00:31:44.320 this necessarily proves that there's a sensation of pain or that there's consciousness.

00:31:53.520 Talk about brain dead. She might be brain dead herself. And yet she's talking, which is amazing.

00:31:59.440 But what she's saying doesn't make any sense. So if you could understand that, what she is saying,

00:32:03.180 she's responding to the contention that around 15 weeks, a baby can feel pain. We have been studying

00:32:09.480 this for a very long time. And we know that their nerves are developed to the point to where

00:32:13.320 they can feel pain, which means that in a second trimester abortion, which is obviously what you,

00:32:19.480 what you have to do in around 14 weeks. So right before the cutoff of this particular law,

00:32:27.800 you have to, you have to kill the baby, starve the baby, and then you have to remove the baby using

00:32:33.480 forceps. And there have been testimony of people who have watched an abortion on an ultrasound when

00:32:41.240 the needle that is supposed to stop the heart of the baby is inserted through the woman's abdomen.

00:32:46.200 You actually see the baby flinch. You see the baby writhe in pain. You see the baby try to get away from

00:32:51.560 the needle. And yet the doctor is chasing that little baby around using his needle, looking at the

00:32:58.120 ultrasound to make sure that he can stab the baby and the baby goes into cardiac arrest and then dice.

00:33:05.560 That's what happens in a second trimester abortion. Okay. It's never fairy dust. It doesn't just

00:33:09.480 dissolve. The baby is brutally and barbarically and cruelly callously murdered. And in response to

00:33:17.540 that reality and the argument that look, a baby at this point can feel pain. We see all these things

00:33:23.180 that I just described. Justice Sotomayor, one of the most learned people in the country and in the

00:33:28.900 world, is saying, well, dead people also respond to stimulus. So just because a baby flinches during

00:33:33.640 an abortion doesn't mean that the baby is alive or doesn't mean that the baby has consciousness. But

00:33:38.620 of course it does. Of course it does. We know that the baby isn't dead. That's why the woman is having

00:33:43.580 an abortion, you idiot. I mean, what do you think is happening in an abortion? If the baby isn't alive,

00:33:49.240 then you don't need to have an abortion, right? You would just remove it. But because the abortionist

00:33:54.720 has to ensure fetal demise, that's why the baby is getting a needle inside his or her heart.

00:34:01.840 So why are they even weighing in on, why are they even weighing in on this? Does she have, I mean,

00:34:08.460 does she have some medical expertise that trumps the medical expertise of the people who have been

00:34:13.640 studying babies inside the womb for decades? And are she really trying to compare what we know is

00:34:22.220 a living baby? If it wasn't alive, it'd be a miscarriage and you wouldn't need an abortion.

00:34:28.100 Is she really trying to compare a living baby to a dead person that responds to stimulus because the

00:34:33.360 nerves are still alive? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any scientific sense. It doesn't

00:34:38.380 make any logical sense. We know the baby is alive, okay? We know it's a living human being. That's not a

00:34:43.020 question. That's not a question. The only question that is relevant, well, not even to the court.

00:34:47.700 Really, the only question that is relevant to you in deciding whether or not abortion is justified is

00:34:52.100 whether or not you believe that in some cases it's okay to kill an innocent human being. If you are for

00:34:57.680 abortion, if you're for the choice of having an abortion, you believe that it's okay sometimes in

00:35:04.000 some cases to kill an innocent defenseless human being. That is your position if you believe that it

00:35:08.520 should be legal to kill a baby inside the womb. Now, you can try to obfuscate. You can try to avoid

00:35:14.580 that. You can try to say that that's not what you believe. But you probably say that you believe in

00:35:19.760 general that innocent people shouldn't be killed, that people do have a right to life, that you have

00:35:24.620 a right not to be murdered. You probably say that you believe that. You probably say that you believe

00:35:28.960 in human rights and empathy and compassion. But the reality is when it comes to abortion, if you're on

00:35:33.160 the pro-choice side, you are suspending that rule. You would say that the rule that you live by is that

00:35:37.660 you shouldn't hurt innocent people, I'm sure, and that you certainly shouldn't kill innocent people,

00:35:41.500 that that would be murder. There should be a punishment for that. But for whatever reason, you have

00:35:45.260 decided that you suspend that rule only when it comes to babies inside the womb. And you need to

00:35:50.720 understand and you need to be able to articulate why. Why do you suspend the rule that you say that

00:35:56.340 you abide by when it comes to babies inside the womb? Is it because of location? Is it because of their

00:36:01.180 size? Is it because of their development? Is it because of their dependence upon the mother? Those are all

00:36:06.720 very arbitrary reasons that you could also, by the way, apply to many people outside of the womb

00:36:11.840 to justify the killing of a baby. It should honestly encourage pro-lifers that someone like

00:36:18.280 Sotomayor, who is a Supreme Court justice, who I'm sure in a lot of ways is very smart, very learned,

00:36:25.360 very educated, knows a lot about the law, that this is the best and most sophisticated argument

00:36:30.680 that she can make. It should encourage you that the top legal minds in the world have no sufficient

00:36:37.760 logical argument for abortion. When I testified before Congress, and it was about abortion law,

00:36:49.080 it was actually about Missouri abortion law, and I was defending it. And I was the only pro-life

00:36:55.160 witness with four other pro-abortion witnesses that the Democrats called and Republicans called me to

00:37:01.080 testify. And I heard all of these arguments and I heard all these Democrats pontificate about abortion

00:37:07.680 and how mean and draconian anti-abortion law is. And what I realized, and I've said this before,

00:37:13.020 what I realized as I was listening to them is, wow, you guys, as smart as you are, are really stupid

00:37:19.400 when it comes to this. But that's what sin does. Sin makes you really stupid. Depraved minds are going

00:37:27.360 to spew out depravity, no matter how much knowledge, no matter how much education, no matter how many

00:37:33.220 books they've read. What does 1 Corinthians 1 say? That God shames the wisdom of the wise,

00:37:38.180 that he brings to nothing things that are, and he glorifies, he raises up the people that may seem

00:37:45.040 foolish to the world, that may seem small to the world, that may seem insignificant to the world.

00:37:49.000 And Romans 1 also tells us what a depraved mind actually produces. It produces a lot of stupidity.

00:37:56.060 And I know, I call Zedemayor an idiot, and I typically, I don't like to name-call. But honestly,

00:38:02.380 if that makes you madder than the fact that she is defending very idiotically, which I think is a

00:38:09.320 generous term, by the way, if that makes you madder, my calling her a name makes you angrier than the

00:38:15.720 fact that she is defending the barbaric practice of abortion, makes you angrier than the act of

00:38:20.160 abortion itself, your priorities are totally out of whack. I think that the God who called the

00:38:24.540 Pharisees a brood of vipers would be okay with calling a woman who is trying to defend the

00:38:29.640 indefensible an idiot. Her argument is idiotic. Now, I want to also play some good arguments.

00:38:38.120 I want to, I want to play, let's see, let's play what Clarence Thomas said in clip one.

00:38:48.500 General, would you specifically tell me, specifically state what the right is? Is it specifically abortion?

00:38:58.700 Is it liberty? Is it autonomy? Is it privacy? The right is grounded in the liberty component of the

00:39:08.740 14th Amendment, Justice Thomas, but I think that it promotes interests in autonomy, bodily integrity,

00:39:14.700 liberty, and equality. And I do think that it is specifically the right to abortion here, the right

00:39:19.720 of a woman to be able to control without the state forcing her to continue a pregnancy, whether to carry

00:39:25.140 that baby to term. I understand we're talking about abortion here, but what is confusing is

00:39:34.280 that we, if, if we were talking about the Second Amendment, I know exactly what we're talking about.

00:39:40.300 If we're talking about the Fourth Amendment, I know what we're talking about because it's written,

00:39:45.480 it's there. What specifically is the right here that we're talking about? Well, Justice Thomas,

00:39:53.200 I think that the court in those other contexts with respect to those other amendments has had

00:39:57.720 to articulate what the text means and the bounds of the constitutional guarantees. And it's done so

00:40:03.000 through a variety of different tests that implement First Amendment rights, Second Amendment rights,

00:40:07.680 Fourth Amendment rights. So I don't think that there is anything unprecedented or anomalous about

00:40:12.280 the right that the court articulated in Roe and Casey and the way that it implemented that right

00:40:16.560 by defining the scope of the liberty interest by reference to viability and providing that that is the

00:40:22.160 moment when the balance of interest tips and when the state can act to prohibit a woman from getting

00:40:28.600 an abortion based on its interest in protecting the fetal life at that point. So the right specifically

00:40:33.840 is abortion? It's the right of a woman prior to viability to control whether to continue with

00:40:39.020 the pregnancy. Yes. So he's making a great point there. Basically, he's saying, okay, where are you

00:40:44.880 deriving this supposed right to abortion that you say is found in the Constitution? Like what right are you

00:40:50.160 talking about? Are you talking about a right to privacy? What right? Because we see these particular

00:40:53.800 rights in the Constitution. We obviously don't see the word abortion. So what umbrella are you

00:40:58.460 putting abortion under? And basically what he causes her to narrow down to is that it's not

00:41:04.140 really essentially a right to privacy. It's not essentially a right to any kind of liberty or

00:41:08.500 autonomy. It is essentially a right to abortion. And what I'm guessing that he is implying is that,

00:41:13.520 well, there is no right to that. What you're arguing is that they have a right to abortion.

00:41:17.320 But where do you actually find that in the Constitution? And she, of course, will be

00:41:21.280 unable to say so. Now, we don't have time to go through all of the arguments that I think were

00:41:26.960 good that were put forth by the conservative justices. Roberts asks a good question. You

00:41:31.760 know, why is it 15 weeks enough? If you say that you're pro-choice and you're for the choice of a

00:41:36.000 woman to be able to have an abortion, why can't you do that before 15 weeks? What's the argument

00:41:41.100 there? So he asks that. That's a good question. Kavanaugh says, which this I think is a good

00:41:45.840 indication for where this case could go. Good in terms of where conservatives and pro-lifers wanted

00:41:51.540 to go. He says precedence isn't everything here. Really what the court has rested upon for

00:41:58.340 the past several decades is simply precedent. Not really looking at whether or not Roe is

00:42:03.340 constitutional, which is decidedly not. But what does precedent say? It's kind of an easy out so they

00:42:08.900 don't have to make the decision. And Kavanaugh says, well, precedent isn't everything,

00:42:13.180 even though justices like Kagan, like Breyer, like Sotomayor are saying it is precedent. They

00:42:18.700 know they can't argue constitutionally. And so they're arguing politically. They're arguing

00:42:22.020 emotionally. They're arguing stupidly. They're arguing on precedent. But Kavanaugh is pushing

00:42:27.960 back on that same precedent isn't everything. Barrett also, she pushed back on this idea that

00:42:36.680 this idea that was being put forth by one of the attorneys, I think it was Reichelman who argued,

00:42:43.900 you know, women who aren't able to have an abortion, you know, babies might not live the life that they

00:42:51.520 should live. Like this is not good for women. This is not good for children. And Barrett brings up

00:42:56.660 safe haven laws. There are safe haven laws in several states where if you get pregnant and you have a baby

00:43:02.020 and the baby is unwanted, like you can put this baby in a safe haven box and there is a person on

00:43:07.320 the other side of the safe haven box that will take that baby and make sure that baby gets to

00:43:12.580 a safe place. And so that should absolutely be taken into account. Let's take into account that

00:43:18.640 there are thousands and thousands of pro-life volunteers and pro-life pregnancy centers that

00:43:23.380 will help you take care of your baby and help take care of you financially, will help you find refuge,

00:43:29.780 find a job, find education, find supplies and clothes and everything that you need if you are

00:43:34.920 a woman who is pregnant in crisis. Like all of those things have to be taken into account if you

00:43:39.460 are honestly going to argue before the Supreme Court that a woman who can't get an abortion

00:43:43.140 and her baby will absolutely be destitute. That's not necessarily true. And then there were other good

00:43:50.220 things that were said by Scott Stewart when he talks about, you know, why this isn't constitutional

00:43:59.220 and the arguments that he put forth are all available. All of these, the entire transcript

00:44:05.580 of the arguments, I think it's about 125 pages, are all available online. I encourage you to read them

00:44:11.180 for yourself. We'll include the link to all of those in the description of this episode. It's a

00:44:17.160 contentious issue. Obviously, it's a very dramatic issue. There's going to be a lot of propaganda

00:44:20.660 in the next coming months. Certainly, it's going to whip up a lot of hysteria before the midterms.

00:44:26.620 That's the purpose. But at the center of all of this, there are babies. There are human lives.

00:44:32.440 We're talking about human beings, innocent, defenseless human beings, babies that deserve

00:44:39.080 a right to life. That's what it is. That is at the core of this debate. So remember that.

00:44:44.640 Whenever you hear the sob stories of why we should be able to legally brutalize children

00:44:49.060 in the United States, remember that you're talking about brutalizing children.

00:44:53.020 All right. So a reminder, once again, that we should be praying about this. We should be trying

00:44:59.860 to change hearts and minds. I still get messages all the time from people. It's the number one

00:45:05.640 subject that people tell me that they changed their minds on after listening to this podcast.

00:45:09.580 I don't take credit for that at all. Not a single bit. I give thanks to the mercy and the grace of God.

00:45:15.960 And I certainly am not the only person who God is using to change people's hearts and minds.

00:45:21.740 Live action has done excellent work on this. Abby Johnson. There are so many other pro-life advocates

00:45:28.420 that have been fighting this battle for so long, who have been so effective in persuading people.

00:45:34.640 And really, the number one thing that I am told when I ask people on Instagram,

00:45:38.720 what changed your mind about abortion? The number one thing is not having a child yourself,

00:45:42.920 not hearing an argument on relatable, not hearing some compelling testimony of a survivor of abortion,

00:45:49.840 although those are all incredibly effective. The number one thing that I hear changes people's

00:45:55.340 mind on abortion is knowing Christ. That when someone became a Christian, when they started following

00:46:01.400 Christ, he opened their eyes to what abortion is, to the image of God in people. And they were able to

00:46:10.240 see how destructive, how terrible, how sinful, how awful, how murderous abortion actually is.

00:46:18.200 For people who say that they follow Christ and they don't see the brutality of abortion,

00:46:22.900 I would certainly implore you to humbly seek whether or not you truly believe in the Christ who said,

00:46:33.640 let all the children come to me. I think that's something that you should consider,

00:46:37.060 especially this Christmas season, is whether or not you are truly saved. All right,

00:46:41.580 that's all I've got time for today. I'll see you back here tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - December 06, 2021

Ep 533 ｜ RIP, Roe v. Wade

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