Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 610 ｜ If Roe Ends, the Fight Over Abortion Just Begins ｜ Guest： Josh Hammer

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00:00:22.060 Man, oh man, you guys know exactly what we are talking about today. We are talking about this

00:00:27.240 leaked draft decision by Justice Samuel Alito overturning Roe v. Wade. This was reported by

00:00:37.020 Politico. I am going to tell you my reaction to it. I am going to show you some reactions from

00:00:42.600 people on the left, what this means for us as a country, what this means for us as people who are

00:00:47.880 against abortion, what this means for us in particular as Christians. We are first, before I

00:00:53.080 get to my reaction and kind of my whole monologue on this, we are going to talk to Josh Hammer. He is

00:00:59.260 an editor at Newsweek. He is also an attorney by trade. He has a background in this. He knows a

00:01:07.140 lot of people who work on the Supreme Court and he always has incredible insight into what is happening

00:01:13.280 on the court. And today he is going to give us some clarity on what this drafted decision says,

00:01:19.560 what it means, why Roe v. Wade was unconstitutional in the first place, how he thinks this leak

00:01:26.340 happened, and then what he believes the implications are, whether he believes that this decision is going

00:01:32.000 to be the decision that Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned or not. And so we are going to get

00:01:38.540 into all of that before we get into the conversation. Let me kind of set this up a little bit. So I got a

00:01:43.600 text from a journalist friend last night with the link to the Politico tweet that then linked the

00:01:50.700 Politico exclusive report. The title of that report is Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion

00:01:57.140 rights. Draft opinion shows and just a lesson in bias right away. We see what perspective they are

00:02:03.020 writing from. If you're writing from a neutral perspective, certainly if you're writing for a pro-life

00:02:07.680 perspective, you would not call this abortion rights because the right itself is up for debate.

00:02:17.440 Abortion rights is really a euphemism. The ability legally to kill your baby is what we're talking 0.56

00:02:23.220 about. And while I don't expect Politico to use that kind of explicit language, any use of euphemism 0.50

00:02:29.060 really indicates kind of where a person and a journalist is coming from. So the subheading says,

00:02:35.580 we hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. That is Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood,

00:02:40.780 the kind of landmark abortion decision, Supreme Court decisions, Justice Alito writes in an initial

00:02:46.680 majority draft circulated inside the court. So as you will hear Josh say, this is unprecedented.

00:02:53.880 This kind of drafted decision leaking is something that has not happened before. The Supreme Court

00:02:59.840 blog that reports on the Supreme Court that is one of the most read sources of journalism when it comes

00:03:09.760 to the Supreme Court and their decisions tweeted this. It's impossible to overstate the earthquake

00:03:14.480 this will cause inside the court in terms of destruction of the trust among the justices and

00:03:20.140 staff. This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin. The document leaked to Politico is almost certainly

00:03:26.700 an authentic draft opinion by Jay Alito that reflects what he believes at least five members

00:03:33.660 of the court have voted to support over ruling Roe. But as Alito's draft, it does not reflect the comments

00:03:40.100 or reactions of other justices. Shannon Bream of Fox News, who also reports on the Supreme Court,

00:03:47.960 has said that this is a draft that possibly was circulating all the way back in February and is

00:03:52.680 not going to be the final draft. It is probably an indicator of what is going to be decided, but

00:03:59.020 things could absolutely change between now and then. And so Politico reported all of this. There

00:04:06.900 was some CNN reporting about what Chief Justice Roberts thinks as well. This was a wild night. If you

00:04:14.640 are an observer of the Supreme Court, if you are an observer of politics, if you are someone who cares

00:04:19.600 about abortion, if you are a journalist, I mean, Twitter was just wild last night with all of the

00:04:26.920 very disparate reactions. Things are about to get, I don't want to say ugly. They are about to get

00:04:34.100 perhaps more polarized than ever. You are going to be able to see perhaps more clearly than ever

00:04:39.880 light and darkness in the reactions to this decision and really in this potential decision that we saw

00:04:45.820 leaked to Politico. So before I get into too many details, I want Josh to answer our questions again

00:04:52.000 about how this happened and what this all means. So without further ado, here is our friend Josh Hammer.

00:04:59.640 Josh, thank you so much for joining us. I just want to get your initial reaction to the craziness that

00:05:05.260 has been the past 24 hours. What was your reaction at first when you saw this Politico report that this

00:05:11.860 drafted decision by Alito had been leaked? Yeah, I mean, I felt like every group chat that I was in

00:05:17.960 just start blowing up immediately. Look, I mean, you know, Ali, I like you. I'm in the conservative

00:05:23.020 commentary world, but I am a lawyer by training. This is the world that I come in. You know, I'm

00:05:27.040 friends with numerous current Supreme Court clerks. I mean, I feel like I have a good grasp of the

00:05:31.400 institution. To call this unprecedented, I think, would be an understatement. There is simply no

00:05:35.480 precedent for this, not even just in the modern history of the court. This is probably the biggest

00:05:40.720 breach of norms, confidentiality, ethics, whatever you want to call it, that the Supreme Court has

00:05:46.960 probably ever had, ever, as far as kind of the internal operating procedures as to how the Supreme

00:05:52.160 Court operates. It is a famously kind of airtight institution. Leaks of this just simply don't

00:05:57.920 happen. There is no such thing as a leak from a clerk. When you get to that office, the Supreme

00:06:02.620 Court clerks know. And I was watching kind of Laura Ingram's opening monologue on Fox last night.

00:06:06.860 Laura, of course, clerk for Clarence Thomas back in the 1990s. And she was saying how when she first

00:06:11.400 got there was a clerk, the chief justice at the time, it was Bill Rehnquist, basically said to them,

00:06:15.640 if there are any leaks whatsoever, you guys will be disbarred for the rest of your lives.

00:06:20.140 Wow. So, you know, I am hoping that we know the identity of the leaker within the next kind of 48

00:06:25.420 to 72 hours at the most. I'm hoping that he or she is disbarred. But there is simply no precedent

00:06:30.780 for this, Ali. We are in uncharted territory right now. Yes. So do we know that it was a clerk? I

00:06:37.140 mean, I'm guessing that's the only possibility, too. Would it be possible at all that there would

00:06:44.020 be a Supreme Court justice, perhaps a liberal Supreme Court justice that would have been on

00:06:48.900 board with a leak like this happening? Yeah. So my best guess, my absolute best guess

00:06:55.760 is that a rogue Sonia Sotomayor clerk gave this by his or her own volition. I having said that,

00:07:03.580 I think it's possible that the leak came from one of the other two liberal justices chambers,

00:07:07.120 Kagan or Breyer. The Breyer thing is potentially interesting, right? He's about to retire,

00:07:11.020 obviously. So maybe there's a possibility there that his chambers basically has kind of given up

00:07:15.740 on any semblance of norms. I don't think so, because he's been on the court for 30 years. He's

00:07:19.340 kind of an older guy with kind of a more slightly more traditional view of the institution.

00:07:23.880 Sotomayor, of course, substantively, as far as her jurisprudence is waged to the left of basically

00:07:28.560 anyone else up there. She totally beclowned herself at oral arguments in the Dobbs case back 1.00

00:07:32.420 in December when her kind of questions to the lawyers sounded a heck of a lot like Democratic

00:07:37.220 National Committee or MSNBC talking head partisan hacks. So my best guess is a Sotomayor clerk. But

00:07:43.480 having said that, I do not think it is crazy to think about the possibility that Sotomayor herself

00:07:48.580 leaked this. I am not alleging that because I have no direct information, obviously. There's no way for

00:07:53.540 me to know. But it would not surprise me. It really would not. And suffice to say that if we

00:07:59.520 are able to confirm that, that an actual justice did this, then impeachment proceedings should start

00:08:04.420 within an hour or two. I mean, that is what they that is in your opinion. Gosh, I mean, you know,

00:08:10.160 the Democrats obviously control the House Judiciary Committee. Right. So, I mean, it really just depends

00:08:13.900 like how big a partisan hacks they want to be. I mean, at a bare at a bare minimum after Republicans

00:08:19.000 retake the House this fall, which it seems like they probably will. That should be like day one

00:08:23.520 agenda item for the next Congress starting, you know, starting in January. But will Democrats

00:08:28.220 actually do it? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I guess you probably have to think not. I mean,

00:08:33.940 because honestly, Ali, when this first happened last night, my first reaction was like, OK,

00:08:38.300 this clerk threw out whoever it was, he or she threw out a Hail Mary pass. It's not going to work.

00:08:42.980 Probably I do predict a probably probably will only stiffen kind of Kavanaugh and Barrett's spines.

00:08:47.560 But the idea here was that I think he or she will then kind of self-dox, will get kind of a

00:08:51.780 flashy New York Times op-ed that leads to a book deal, the MSNBC speaking circuit. But having said

00:08:57.500 that, the blue-checked reaction from left-leaning Twitter last night from like the ACLU was unbelievable.

00:09:05.660 Right. They are celebrating this. I mean, they're already calling this clerk brave.

00:09:09.880 Like we're in such uncharted territory right now. It's really, yeah, it's calling.

00:09:14.660 Yes. That's why I think that a justice like Sotomayor, that there's no way that she would be 0.76

00:09:20.200 impeached if, of course, we don't know. But if she took part in this at all, or even if it was a

00:09:25.300 clerk, would they be disbarred? That's probably more likely than a justice getting impeached. But

00:09:29.140 where would the political pressure come from when it comes to Democrats? Because when you saw Nancy 0.98

00:09:33.460 Pelosi and other top Democrats complaining about this, they weren't complaining about the leak.

00:09:37.800 They weren't complaining about upending our democracy or our democratic norms or

00:09:42.600 violating our institutional norms. They were talking about the possibility of Roe v. Wade being

00:09:47.700 overturned. That was their concern. For all of the concern, and I saw you point this out in one way

00:09:53.380 on Twitter, for all of their talk over the past few years of Trump being the one that is the threat

00:09:59.360 to democratic norms. Of course, we see this over and over again with them when they're talking about

00:10:03.180 ending the filibuster and trying to reconfigure the Senate and getting rid of the Electoral College

00:10:08.580 and packing the Supreme Court. This is just another example of when they say violating democratic norms

00:10:14.600 or Republicans violating democratic norms, they're just talking about upholding a democracy in a way

00:10:20.580 that they don't like. They don't actually care about democratic norms because they are willing to

00:10:25.260 break and bend every single rule to do what they want to do that ends justify the means. Some of the most

00:10:30.860 disturbing but unsurprising at this point reactions that I saw from blue checkmark journalists, I'm not 1.00

00:10:37.340 just nutpicking here, when I mentioned, you know, the person who leaked this knew that there would be

00:10:42.000 threats to the lives of the conservative justices and their families. The reaction that I got from a lot

00:10:47.400 of people on the left was good, good. Their lives should be threatened. And so the ends seem to always

00:10:52.400 justify the means when it comes to the left. And I just think we're about to see weeping and gnashing

00:10:57.360 teeth like we've never seen. Yeah, no, look, I mean, I think what we learned last night is that when

00:11:03.420 the left talks about kind of tearing asunder democratic norms, what they have in mind is

00:11:08.460 capital D democratic norms, not right, right, right, because the latter they have now is now beyond

00:11:14.440 obvious. They don't particularly care about that. Look, I mean, I have been searching in vain for a

00:11:20.180 single elected Democratic Party official, a single kind of left leaning check talking head type person

00:11:26.240 who has condemned what happened here. I am literally still trying to find that. Yeah,

00:11:31.100 you know, maybe you could you could search in there and find like a former kind of liberal

00:11:35.140 Supreme Court clerk from from a different generation. But this is not your grandfather's

00:11:39.140 Democratic Party. Obviously, this is a Democratic Party that views abortion as their foremost pagan

00:11:43.820 sacrament. That is the phrase that I have used kind of over and over again. And that's exactly how

00:11:47.920 they view it. And, you know, it reminds me of a tweet this out briefly last night. There was a good

00:11:52.280 opinion that Sixth Circuit Judge Amulthapar wrote, I think it was the end of last September,

00:11:56.840 maybe last early October. I wrote a column about it. And he used the phrase in a Sixth Circuit opinion,

00:12:02.520 abortion exceptionalism, referring to kind of the idea that when it gets down to kind of the various

00:12:08.400 procedures and rules pertaining to litigation in the federal judiciary, the left and Democrat

00:12:13.020 nominated judges and Supreme Court justices so prioritize the abortion, quote unquote, right,

00:12:18.860 that there really are two sets of rules. There are the rules for every other case that does not

00:12:23.220 involve abortion. And then there are the rules for abortion. And that's what you saw here,

00:12:27.140 obviously, that the entire rulebook, the entire semblance of anything pertaining to kind of the

00:12:32.520 health institutional integrity of the Supreme Court institution was just totally thrown out the

00:12:37.100 window for the short term game of preserving the ability to, you know, wantonly slaughter an entire

00:12:45.500 subclass of human beings. So it's obviously reprehensible. I mean, at this point, Ali, 1.00

00:12:50.820 it's happened, it's done. I am just hoping that this investigation concludes rapidly and we can have

00:12:56.380 some sense of justice for the leaker. Yeah, Chief Justice Roberts, obviously, we knew that he was

00:13:02.520 going to be very angry about this. As you said, this is unprecedented. And Chief Justice Roberts says,

00:13:07.540 I'm sure all justices are, but it seems like in particular, Roberts is so concerned about the

00:13:11.680 integrity of the court. I just can't imagine his reaction when he found this out. And of course,

00:13:16.760 he is going to conduct a leak investigation. I think your prediction is right, that whoever

00:13:21.360 did do the leaking will find themselves with some kind of fancy contributorship. They will be hailed

00:13:26.480 some kind of hero from the left. You're seeing plenty of blue check marks on the left

00:13:31.000 say things like that already, you know, congratulating this person on their heroism.

00:13:37.760 Um, I do want to hear you kind of articulate or at least highlight some of the arguments that Alito

00:13:46.320 made. Now, this is a drafted decision. Roberts has also said this is not going to this is not the

00:13:51.520 final version. CNN actually came out and said, Oh, no, Roberts is not trying to overturn Roe v.

00:13:57.440 Wade entirely. I'm not really sure what to believe just so many, so many opinions and reports and leaks

00:14:03.560 at this point. But, um, so we know that this is not the final version, but tell us a little bit of

00:14:08.920 what Alito argued in this draft. Yeah. So before we get to that, I do want to say one thing about

00:14:15.360 Chief Justice Roberts, and I'm happy you mentioned him because we all know any kind of cursory observer

00:14:19.820 of the court knows that the chief cares preeminently first and foremost about the alleged institutional

00:14:24.620 integrity of the court. That seems to kind of guide the way he moves even more so than his

00:14:29.040 substantive consideration of jurisprudence, which suffice to say is not how a justice should go about his or her

00:14:33.240 responsibilities, but that is what has motivated him. But, you know, my friend Josh Blackman, who is a law

00:14:37.980 professor in Houston, Texas, had a fantastic blog post last night where he basically said that the fact that

00:14:43.300 this happened shows the fallacy in John Roberts' entire long game of being able to kind of be a neutral

00:14:49.480 arbiter and kind of a steward of the court's integrity. The fact that the very fact that this happened

00:14:54.180 showed that one man or one woman obviously does not have the ability to control of that nature. So I thought that

00:14:59.320 was a very insightful point that Professor Blackman made. But to your question, Ali, look, the opinion,

00:15:04.780 you know, I've read through most of it. I'm still kind of getting through some of the details.

00:15:08.560 It's very good. Justice Alito does not pull any punches in this opinion. He says what I think a lot

00:15:14.000 of us in kind of the pro-life community and the conservative community wanted this opinion to read

00:15:18.040 like. I will be honest with you, after Dobbs' oral argument happened back on December 1st, I was honestly

00:15:23.280 not personally optimistic that we would get kind of a forceful opinion of this nature. I think my final

00:15:28.840 prediction was that it would be kind of a murky 3-3-3 split, not kind of a 5-just-as-clean overrule.

00:15:35.420 Specifically, I kind of thought there's a possibility that there might be like a 4-3-2 situation where Roberts

00:15:40.460 could peel away either Kavanaugh or Barrett. It seems like, you know, that still could happen, to be clear.

00:15:45.720 I mean, Roberts still could potentially peel away Kavanaugh or Barrett, in which case we would get a very narrow

00:15:51.000 controlling plurality opinion. The chief, like the chief always does, is clearly trying to kind of

00:15:55.040 split the baby here. That's a terrible pun in this situation, obviously. But what he's literally

00:15:59.240 trying to do is to find, like, a very narrow way to uphold the Mississippi statute, the 15-week ban,

00:16:05.300 but, you know, preserve Roe and Casey. The problem, of course, is that that's intellectually

00:16:08.780 indefensible. There is no actual principal way whatsoever to do that. All he would be doing is

00:16:13.460 kicking the can down the road for this case to kind of come up through the judiciary yet again

00:16:16.880 three, four, five years from now. So I obviously hope and pray that he does not do that, that he's

00:16:22.240 unsuccessful in those efforts. But my reading of his statements that came out just this morning is that

00:16:26.500 he is still trying to do exactly that. He's still trying to peel away Kavanaugh or Barrett.

00:16:30.500 So at this point, you know, I think what conservatives have to be doing, obviously, is pray

00:16:34.020 that Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett have the backbone to not fall prey to the chief justice's

00:16:40.140 delusions. And I do think, though, that this leaker, whoever he or she is,

00:16:44.640 has inadvertently made a huge mistake. I do think that having done this will probably stiffen the

00:16:50.520 spines of Kavanaugh and Barrett. So at this point, yeah, I do. I do. So at this point,

00:16:55.460 my prediction is that we is that it is kind of a five justice clean over rule of Roe and Casey.

00:17:00.020 I could be wrong about that, but that is my prediction.

00:17:06.200 I think that's that's the fear that someone like Kavanaugh would kowtow to public pressure.

00:17:12.080 And I'm guessing that was the motivation of this leaker. I'm hopeful like you. I'm optimistic that

00:17:17.300 that's not going to be the conclusion because now they also if they do go back, if they do kind of

00:17:24.460 change their mind, of course, we don't know exactly what their arguments were, but everyone's going to

00:17:30.760 know it's because of political pressure. It's because of the leak, which would cause its own

00:17:35.220 problems. But I'm guessing the motivation and I just want to hear your opinion on that and leaking

00:17:39.900 this was for that public pressure, was to try to help Roberts possibly peel away someone like

00:17:46.360 Kavanaugh or Barrett. Is that what you think? Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, my two best

00:17:50.300 guesses as to what's going on here. One is, again, we're probably talking about a Sotomayor

00:17:55.780 chambers operation here, whether it's the justice or one of her clerks. Again, I'd have no way of

00:17:59.680 knowing just my best guess. But assuming that is the case, we're talking here about a far left

00:18:04.060 chambers, right? So I think it is totally not crazy that, assuming that it was a Sotomayor clerk

00:18:09.840 who did this, that he or she was actively hoping to basically sick Antifa thugs outside the personal

00:18:17.100 residence of a Brett Kavanaugh or an Amy Coney Barrett. I really do not think that when it comes

00:18:22.140 to the left's foremost pagan sacrament abortion, that something like that is too low. The other

00:18:26.660 thing happening here, though, is that, you know, we have midterm elections this fall. Congress is about

00:18:30.620 to go to recess this August. So I think what they're probably trying to telegraph is try to

00:18:35.280 try to send a message to Chuck Schumer, who seems to have received this message immediately, as his

00:18:39.780 statement Nancy Pelosi indicated last night, the message that they have to, or, you know, from their

00:18:44.860 perspective, they should at least nuke the filibuster and statutorily codify Roe versus Wade into law,

00:18:50.800 right? So I think that's the other thing going on there. That's not going to happen, obviously,

00:18:54.380 right? Because Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, they will not nuke the filibuster. Even Lisa Murkowski or Susan

00:19:00.200 Collins, who obviously are not exactly solid on the abortion issue, to put it mildly, they still

00:19:04.360 care about the filibuster as far as kind of a norm of the Senate. I have a question on that. Even if

00:19:09.120 they codified Roe into law, if that is found unconstitutional, would you not have to pass a

00:19:15.500 constitutional amendment that said that abortion is a right? So how exactly would that work? Would a law

00:19:20.960 like that be upheld if they did try to say that abortion is now, access to abortion is now the law of

00:19:27.300 the land federally? So what they could do is, so the court, the Alito opinion says that abortion is

00:19:34.460 not a 14th amendment substantive due process, right? Which is what Roe v. Wade ruled back in 1973.

00:19:39.100 That's what Roe v. Wade ruled. Right, exactly. That there is no constitutional right to abort an

00:19:43.420 unborn child. But you obviously can have a statutory right in place of a constitutional right. So that's

00:19:48.960 kind of what the Democrats have been talking about when they talk about, I think Kamala Harris back in

00:19:52.860 the primary back in 2020 was big on this issue, right? Kind of Congress passing a statutory right

00:19:57.880 to Roe v. Wade. Now the remedy for that, if God forbid they pass that, and again, I do not think

00:20:02.620 they will, but the remedy for that would be either constitutional amendments to codify the right to

00:20:07.180 life, as you mentioned, or alternatively, this kind of alternative equal protection clause,

00:20:12.860 14th amendment approach jurisprudentially that I've advanced, Professor John Finnis has advanced,

00:20:17.720 my friend Josh Craddock has advanced, which basically argues that the 14th amendment, contrary to what

00:20:22.860 originalists and conservatives have said, is actually not silent on the issue of abortion.

00:20:27.420 But if you actually read the words of equal protection clause seriously, that clause speaks

00:20:31.580 of protecting all persons equally. And if you go back and look at the writings of the time,

00:20:36.540 I think it was actually understood that persons encompass both born and unborn persons, thereby

00:20:42.620 making an equal protection clause violation for a state to protect born life under homicide laws,

00:20:48.540 but not unborn life. So that's an argument that I personally made. The Alito opinion obviously does

00:20:53.420 not go there to be clear. I'm not even sure we have a single vote on the current court for that

00:20:57.740 proposition, but Congress could also under his 14th amendment, section five enforcement power

00:21:02.780 could actually legislate that into law as well. So this is a thing that really conservatives don't

00:21:07.820 talk about very often, Ali, literally tomorrow, literally tomorrow, Josh Hawley, Tom Codd and Ted

00:21:13.420 Cruz, one of our pro-life stalwarts could literally introduce a bill that says that the US Congress

00:21:20.140 under its 14th amendment, section five power to enforce section one of the 14th amendment is declaring

00:21:25.980 abortion illegal nationally. They could do that tomorrow. They just haven't done so.

00:21:30.620 Why do you think that is?

00:21:33.260 A lot of reasons. One is that the specific legal argument I'm making on the equal protection clause

00:21:38.540 is admittedly somewhat of an outlier. It's not crazy. I mean, John Fennett had a cover in First

00:21:44.380 Things Magazine a year ago, kind of making this argument. Robbie George, actually the Princeton

00:21:48.140 professor, maybe one of the most esteemed social conservative intellectuals in the country,

00:21:51.580 his amicus brief in the Dobbs case advanced this argument. So it's not crazy. It's definitely

00:21:56.460 not crazy, but it's not popular. So what Congress would have to do to do that would be to kind of

00:22:02.620 seize onto that argument as step one, and then step two, actually rally around a bill to then

00:22:09.980 actually act on it using their section five power. The other problem there is that Congress does not

00:22:13.660 frequently act on its 14th amendment section five enforcement power to kind of get in the legal weeds

00:22:18.140 a little bit. There's a 1997 case out of Texas called City of Bernie, which kind of impinged upon

00:22:24.300 Congress's 14th amendment section five enforcement power a little bit. It's kind of a very mealy-mouthed

00:22:29.100 Anthony Kennedy opinion, not a particularly good one in my estimation. So there are some kind of

00:22:33.100 presidential bars to that as well. But you know, I personally have been hoping that like Josh Hawley,

00:22:38.860 of all people, would actually introduce that bill. So maybe he will. I'm not sure.

00:22:41.820 Yeah, let's hope so. I do see some people who call themselves, I don't know, maybe libertarians,

00:22:47.340 or maybe they consider themselves on the right saying, oh, this is going to put the midterms in jeopardy.

00:22:52.220 Of course, that's not really what this is about. I think that's kind of an inappropriate observation,

00:22:57.100 although it may be. I'm not so sure that I predict that. I think all of the people that

00:23:03.100 were going to vote Democrat because of abortion are still going to vote Democrat. I don't think

00:23:07.580 any people in the middle are necessarily going to vote Democrat because of this. Although I do think

00:23:13.500 that Democrats obviously have a pattern. If you think back just two years to May, they have a pattern of

00:23:18.860 trying to stir up chaos and anger and even rioting and violence to push radical legislation and to

00:23:25.340 try to influence the outcomes of elections. We saw that a couple of years ago with a crisis and

00:23:31.020 we're probably going to see that now. It's going to be an interesting and a little bit of a frightening

00:23:38.220 summer because of that. But what I'm hopeful is that people will see, people who are in the middle,

00:23:44.060 especially Christians who, gosh, consider themselves pro-life but don't vote against abortion.

00:23:49.260 I'm hopeful that they will actually see that the people screaming like banshees, that as you said,

00:23:55.100 this really is their pagan sacrament, that they really worship abortion. They worship the so-called 0.92

00:24:01.740 right to kill an unborn child and that they will actually be horrified at what they see as far as

00:24:08.220 what I think is demonic activity coming from the supporters of abortion and that it is not going

00:24:14.140 to lead to these people in the middle suddenly voting Democrat because of the abortion issue.

00:24:19.580 I just don't think it's going to go that direction.

00:24:22.940 Yeah. No, look, I mean, the Democrats, to say that they have gone off the deep end when it comes

00:24:28.300 to the abortion issue, we'll be putting it mildly. You know, I saw David Harsany of National Review

00:24:32.300 just this morning tweet out, apparently back in 1982, when he was a relatively young US senator

00:24:37.580 from Delaware, Joe Biden, who at the time, I think, was still a self-proclaimed pro-life Catholic

00:24:42.700 senator, obviously, in Delaware. At the time, he introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn

00:24:47.340 Roe versus Wade and return it to the states. Wow.

00:24:49.820 You know, I think, I think the late Ted Kennedy, I think, I mean, earlier in his career, certainly,

00:24:54.460 he was, you know, he was also of the opinion that Roe versus Wade was incorrectly decided,

00:24:57.900 should be overturned. The Democratic Party for years and years, which obviously was kind of like a

00:25:02.060 pro-labor union kind of working class, you know, Rust Belt Catholic Party, they were not crazy

00:25:08.140 on the abortion issue. This is a relatively recent phenomenon, obviously. I mean, famously,

00:25:11.980 Bill Clinton, of course, over and over again, referred to abortion as safe, legal and rare.

00:25:16.700 Look, I mean, I remember my second year of law school, I guess this would have been at this point

00:25:19.980 kind of seven years ago or so. I remember going to this book talk that the pro-abortion student group

00:25:25.500 was holding about some book that at the time was relatively new called Shout Your Abortion,

00:25:30.140 you know, basically saying that this is that is no different from clipping a toenail. It's the same

00:25:33.580 thing. So in a roughly 20 year period from the mid 90s to the middle of the last decade,

00:25:38.780 we went from the Clintonian formulation of safe, legal and rare to Shout Your Abortion. I can't

00:25:43.980 pinpoint exactly when that inflection point happened. I think the Obama presidency obviously was kind of

00:25:49.660 a major kind of shift to the left in many ways, the abortion issue. Yes. Yeah. The abortion issue

00:25:55.180 included. But this obviously is very, very, very fertile ground for Republicans. The interesting

00:26:00.700 thing, I think, assuming assuming the court holds through, obviously, OK, assuming that the court does

00:26:06.300 this and, you know, thank God we get back to kind of a pre-Rogue constitutional regime. The real question

00:26:11.500 then is what is going to happen in the red states? What is going to happen in Texas, Florida, Tennessee,

00:26:17.740 your kind of big red states? Are they going to lead the way? I honestly am not confident predicting

00:26:23.660 that more than five to 10 Republican states will actually fully ban abortion. I think we'll start

00:26:28.540 There are trigger laws in some states, correct? There definitely are. But a lot of them are kind

00:26:33.660 of like eight to 12 week bans. You know, some are heartbeat measures, which these are good laws,

00:26:39.100 to be clear. But, you know, Oklahoma, Utah, Wyoming, there are some very red states that I think will

00:26:45.180 truly ban it from conception. But we'll see. I mean, that assuming that this actually takes place,

00:26:49.900 that is where the pro-life fight moves. It moves to the moves to the 50 state legislatures.

00:26:53.660 Yep, absolutely. And just to end this, if you could kind of summarize, you've already touched

00:26:58.220 on it. But if you could kind of summarize why Roe v. Wade was not constitutional, because one thing,

00:27:04.460 the one thing that you will not see in all of the reactions from the left, or I'll say most,

00:27:08.220 I'll leave kind of the exception out there as a possibility in the reactions from the reporters or

00:27:12.700 activists or whoever they are on the left, you won't hear an argument about why Alito is wrong,

00:27:19.340 about why Alito logically or constitutionally gets his argument wrong. They're not really

00:27:24.620 interested in that at all. They're just interested in whether or not they can easily access abortion.

00:27:29.900 Doesn't matter if it's constitutional or not. But if you're making a decision like Alito has

00:27:36.220 articulated a decision about why Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, what would you say?

00:27:42.940 So look, I mean, having gone to a pretty good law school, I had a lot of liberal classmates.

00:27:47.500 There are very few smart liberals. I'm trying to choose my words carefully here. But there are very

00:27:53.820 few smart, like constitutionally literate liberals who are willing to give like a fulsome,

00:28:00.460 full spectrum defense of the purported constitutional law that underlaid the Roe v. Wade decision.

00:28:07.660 As John Hart Eli, the late constitutional law scholar and a Harvard Law professor and himself

00:28:12.300 a personal proponent on a policy level of abortion rights, he famously said that Roe v. Wade, quote,

00:28:17.980 was not constitutional law and did not even pretend to be. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, obviously, 0.99

00:28:22.940 the leading ACLU attorney, the feminist trailblazer. She over and over again, at least kind of earlier 0.98

00:28:29.980 in her career, said that Roe v. Wade was probably wrong because it did not lay on a solid constitutional

00:28:35.260 law foundation. And also as a pragmatic level, it foreclosed debate on this very contentious issue.

00:28:40.860 It only inflamed tensions. It didn't do anything to kind of calm tensions. So there were very few

00:28:45.740 people willing to actually defend Roe v. Wade, to be honest with you. The basic argument against Roe,

00:28:50.620 the strong form version of the argument against Roe is what I just said, that the protection clause

00:28:54.620 actually, if you read it properly, actually bans abortion. The weaker form version, which I think

00:28:59.260 is kind of the more mainstream version that has existed for the past, you know, four decades or

00:29:03.340 so since the founding of the federal society and kind of beginning of the modern conservative

00:29:07.020 legal movement that I'm very much a part of, the more mainstream argument would be that 14th

00:29:11.660 amendment section one, whether it's a due process clause or the equal protection clause,

00:29:15.420 says nothing whatsoever about abortion, specifically the due process clause. Liberals love this doctrine 0.97

00:29:21.260 of so-called substantive due process, where the due process clause in their minds speaks not only of

00:29:26.780 process, but actually has kind of substantive unenumerated liberties embedded therein. But if you,

00:29:33.420 there is really very, very, very little, historically speaking, to kind of ground that claim.

00:29:38.780 Specifically in Roe, what the court did, Roe was 1973. It built upon the case Griswold versus

00:29:43.660 Connecticut eight years prior, which was a case out of Connecticut, obviously, where the court first

00:29:48.300 kind of promulgated a so-called right to privacy. The problem with the so-called right to privacy as a

00:29:53.660 constitutional right was that it's just, it's not in there. I mean, they literally said they found it

00:29:58.380 in the emanations of the penumbras of the ninth amendment. Most people don't even know what that means.

00:30:03.180 Exactly. It was the most ludicrous legalese you could ever think of. It was total, total nonsense. 0.95

00:30:09.500 So Roe versus Wade took this totally fabricated, quote unquote, right from Griswold and then extended

00:30:14.780 it to the willful and wanton slaughter of an entire subclass between beings. I mean, it's beyond

00:30:19.340 indefensible. And, you know, just thank God that as of now, it looks like the court is finally going

00:30:23.980 to do the right thing. Yeah. Thank God we still have a ways to go. It looks like we still have some

00:30:28.540 prayers to pray. I'm very thankful for your voice and for your insight on all of this.

00:30:32.860 Thank you so much for always arguing so persuasively and speaking so clearly.

00:30:37.660 You bet, Ali. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

00:30:44.060 All right. Now that we've had Josh kind of tackle the legal side of this, I want to talk a little

00:30:48.780 bit about the reaction to this. As I mentioned, number one, you are not seeing any arguments that

00:30:55.740 I have seen from the left about why Alito was wrong. Articulate to me why, how abortion is 0.99

00:31:02.620 constitutional right? Like, let's make it as clear and as coherent as possible. Let me hear

00:31:08.300 really your argument. Of course, we know that there is no moral or logical or scientific argument.

00:31:13.020 How many times have we been through every single argument that tries to defend abortion, whether

00:31:18.460 it's bodily autonomy, whether it's that the child isn't developed enough or the child is too small or

00:31:23.660 the child isn't sentient? All of those arguments are not only immoral, but they are entirely inconsistent

00:31:29.820 with someone who believes that murder should be illegal outside of the womb. Why do all of the

00:31:34.940 principles that leftists say or pro-choice, pro-abortioners say justify abortion of someone

00:31:40.620 inside the womb, murder of someone inside the womb? Why can't you apply that to people outside of 0.99

00:31:44.540 the womb? It's entirely inconsistent unless you have some superstitious idea that the birth canal

00:31:51.900 transfers rights into a person. Otherwise, when does a person have rights if not at conception? How

00:31:57.980 old do they have to be? How developed do they have to be? What kind of abilities do they have to have

00:32:04.220 for you to say that that person has a right not to be murdered? Is it outside of the womb? Okay,

00:32:10.220 well, there are babies outside of the womb who are born premature at 23 weeks, and then there are

00:32:15.420 babies who are still inside of the womb at 23 weeks. The only difference between those two babies

00:32:19.900 is location. So you are arguing that abortion, murder, is something that is justified by mere location.

00:32:27.340 Does that apply to people outside of the womb? Are people who are smaller, who are less developed, 0.90

00:32:32.220 who have fewer abilities, they have more disabilities, who are poor, who are abused, who might grow up to 0.92

00:32:38.940 live some kind of hard life, or any of those justifications for murdering people outside of

00:32:43.740 the womb? If not, which I would say the vast majority of people would say no, you shouldn't

00:32:50.620 be able to murder someone outside of the womb because they're poor, or they're young, or they're

00:32:54.140 small, or they're less developed than an adult, or because they don't have the ability to speak for

00:32:59.100 themselves, or because they're inconvenient to their parents, or because their parents are financially

00:33:03.260 burdened, or they decided they don't want kids anymore, or this child isn't wanted in general.

00:33:09.020 You wouldn't use any of those reasons to justify the murder of a child or a person outside of

00:33:13.580 the womb. So again, you need to be able to explain why those are reasons to murder someone inside the

00:33:19.500 womb. And the only reason is because you're able to get away with it. There's no moral, or logical,

00:33:25.180 or legally consistent, or coherent argument for abortion. As I've said before, I testified before

00:33:30.780 Congress, and I expected to hear some more sophisticated arguments from the Democrats who support the

00:33:37.180 ability to legally access the slaughter of unborn children. I expected some kind of intellectual

00:33:47.260 response to what I had to say about abortion from these Democrats, and I didn't hear it. I heard

00:33:52.860 nothing more sophisticated, nothing more interesting, nothing more intellectual from these Democrats in

00:33:57.900 Congress than I've heard from your average Twitter troll. I have never, ever heard a good argument for

00:34:03.620 abortion. That's what you're going to be hearing over the next few weeks, over the next few months,

00:34:07.300 certainly up until the midterms. You are going to be hearing all of these sob stories from women who 0.96

00:34:13.060 say that they had to get an abortion. They had to get an abortion because of their career. They had

00:34:17.300 to get an abortion because they were in a bad situation. And this is violating a woman's rights. 1.00

00:34:22.020 This is violating a woman's bodily autonomy. This is going to set women back. What the left 1.00

00:34:28.660 conveniently leaves out is what an abortion is. What are we talking about when you're talking about

00:34:34.180 a woman's right? What are we talking about when you're talking about reproductive justice? What are 0.96

00:34:38.580 you talking about when you are saying something like forced birth? What are you talking about when

00:34:43.780 you're using these euphemisms? As I've said before, if you have to use euphemisms to make your side of

00:34:49.780 an argument palatable, in other words, if you have to lie to make your side of the argument palatable,

00:34:54.820 you're on the wrong side. Whereas when it comes to abortion, all we have to do, all the anti-abortioners

00:35:00.840 have to do is tell the truth. What we're talking about, and I think it's so important, I always bring

00:35:05.180 us back to this, what we're talking about is the murder of babies. That's what we're talking about.

00:35:10.520 We're talking about the murder of babies. We are talking about poisoning a baby with pills.

00:35:15.500 We're talking about dismembering a baby inside the womb with forceps. We're talking about in second

00:35:21.980 trimester abortions, taking a needle that is filled with the same combination of chemicals that is used 0.96

00:35:27.500 in lethal injections of murderers on death row, inserting that needle with that poisonous chemical

00:35:34.160 into a woman's womb, into her uterus, and if the baby isn't wiggling too much, into the baby's heart,

00:35:40.300 and inserting the poison into the baby's heart to cause a fatal heart attack until that baby dies

00:35:46.480 and can be removed from the mother's womb. That's what we're talking about. And of course, 0.79

00:35:50.720 there are even more, if you can imagine it, grotesque forms of abortion that are being performed.

00:35:55.860 We talked about a couple weeks ago with Lila Rose, these five second, third trimester babies,

00:36:02.500 their bodies were disposed. They were found outside of a Washington abortion clinic.

00:36:07.020 They were being thrown away as waste. And we saw pictures of these little babies. And

00:36:11.860 one little baby girl, she was probably close to 30 weeks gestation. So we're talking third

00:36:17.640 trimester here. Her skull was crushed. Her brain had been sucked out. Now, technically,

00:36:22.320 that form of abortion is illegal. That's considered a partial birth abortion, where the doctor, 1.00

00:36:28.020 the abortionist actually induces birth, takes the child's head, the living child's head out of the 1.00

00:36:34.580 birth canal, inserts a tube into the back of the child's skull, and sucks the brain out until the

00:36:39.960 skull collapses. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about abortion. So when you see

00:36:45.360 these people screeching, when you see the people on the left talking about, oh, this is going to set

00:36:49.960 women back. Oh, we're talking about women's rights here. Oh, this is so unjust that our right to abortion 1.00

00:36:55.340 is being taken away. That's what they're screeching about. This is not about left versus right.

00:37:00.700 This is not about Democrat versus Republican. This is about light versus dark and right versus wrong.

00:37:06.460 I didn't know yesterday when I talked about Tim Keller's soft, morally relativistic, and just

00:37:11.620 intellectually inept attitude and argument about abortion yesterday that we would be talking about 0.53

00:37:19.220 this today. And I'm not surprised at all that Big Eva and the sophisticated intellectual evangelicals 0.88

00:37:24.480 that are always chastising us Christians on the conservative side for being too into the culture

00:37:31.400 wars. I'm not seeing a whole lot of reaction from them. Karen Swallow Pryor, who I would consider kind

00:37:36.340 of in that group, she is a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

00:37:45.300 She, I'm hoping that I misunderstand. I'm hoping that I misunderstand. She does vote Democrat. 0.91

00:37:51.320 Of course, she was very anti-Trump. She said she tweeted yesterday. Someone tweeted at her and said

00:37:58.760 that someone tweeted at her and said that that if it weren't for or she can't really talk about this,

00:38:07.740 what's going on, because she basically voted against this because she voted for the party that

00:38:12.440 is pro-abortion. And she responded by saying, yep, I was for the slow, right way of doing things.

00:38:17.660 That's why I said 50 years, meaning that we're responding to an earlier tweet, meaning that in 50

00:38:25.140 years, abortion will be unthinkable. She said, I'm not big on shortcuts. So I'm hoping I'm 0.99

00:38:30.540 misunderstanding what she's saying, but it sounds like she is saying this Supreme Court decision,

00:38:35.540 if it is upheld, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, that that's a shortcut and that it should take another

00:38:42.240 50 years for abortion to be unthinkable. Is that the holistically pro-life decision? Is that the pro-life 0.54

00:38:47.300 for pro-life evangelicals for Biden position that we need a hundred years of unfettered slaughter of

00:38:53.180 unborn children before we do something about it? Is that the way to win the culture war? Like, is that 0.70

00:38:59.720 what godly biblical justice looks like? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what she is saying. I somehow don't think so

00:39:05.700 because she is openly advocated on behalf of Democrats who are the pro-abortion party. They're

00:39:12.680 the pro-abortion party. So all the nuance that these sophisticated intellectual evangelicals try

00:39:18.940 to strike, all the tension that they say exists that, oh, we don't know, as Tim Keller said, which

00:39:23.860 side of the aisle has the better solutions for ending abortion. This is not a debate on the left and

00:39:28.600 right about how to end abortion. As you see, and I'm about to play some, as you see in the reactions

00:39:34.280 to the news that Roe v. Wade might be overturned, which just means it'll go back to the states. It

00:39:41.080 doesn't mean that you're not going to be able to access abortion, unfortunately. You'll see that this

00:39:45.940 is not a debate about whether or not abortion is evil. The debate, or it's not a debate about whether

00:39:52.560 or not Republican or Democrat policies and abortion. It is a debate about whether or not abortion is good

00:40:00.660 or whether or not abortion is evil. The left, by and large, thinks abortion is good, that it's morally

00:40:06.060 right, not just that it's a necessary evil, but the platform, the main agenda, the sacrament of the left

00:40:12.920 and of the current Democratic Party that is different from the Democratic Party of just 10 years ago, as you

00:40:17.460 heard Josh say, is that abortion must be accessible, available through nine months without apology and

00:40:26.540 free and totally subsidized by the taxpayer. That is the current Democratic position. If you want to

00:40:32.220 debate which policy, whether it's restricting abortion or making abortion totally free and

00:40:36.680 accessible, is going to end or decrease abortion, I think the answer is obvious. But that's not really

00:40:41.560 the question on the table. The question on the table is whether or not you think slaughtering and

00:40:45.560 dismembering and sucking the brains out of babies is right. Do you think the Constitution speaks to 1.00

00:40:51.340 that? Do you think the Constitution speaks to that being okay? And if you as a Christian thinks that 0.98

00:40:55.860 maybe we should just have a slow crawl for the next 50 years to try to make that unthinkable, that

00:41:02.240 the law shouldn't speak at all to the dignity and the right of an unborn child not to be brutally

00:41:07.100 murdered, then you're on the wrong side. You know nothing of justice. You know nothing of the God who

00:41:11.820 created justice, might I add. As R.C. Sproul said when he was alive, if he knows anything about

00:41:18.480 God, the God that he studied for his many years in ministry, if he knows anything about the God of

00:41:24.460 Scripture, the God who created the heavens and the earth, the God who established justice, who alone

00:41:28.840 is the arbiter of right and wrong and the creator of truth, if he knows anything about that God, he knows

00:41:33.520 that he hates abortion. Now, that does not mean that he hates women who have had abortions. There is

00:41:40.520 abundant grace for women who have had abortions. There's abundant compassion. We, the church, should

00:41:45.140 be the first ones to show up, both for women who are struggling with shame and guilt and the after

00:41:50.620 effects of abortion and women who have an unplanned pregnancy. And I'll get more into that in a second,

00:41:56.740 but I just wanted to make sure that I at least give you that, that God hates abortion. There's grace for

00:42:02.560 women who have had abortions, but let us not, because we want to show grace, shy away from the truth that

00:42:08.500 God hates abortion. We should be celebrating the fact that Roe v. Wade might be overturned. That is the 0.99

00:42:15.520 right side. That's the right side. How you can judge if you're on the right side of this issue is how

00:42:22.840 happy you are to hear that it might be harder to slaughter an unborn child. If that makes you sad or scared

00:42:27.800 it all, then I would do some serious soul searching. And I pray that God would soften your heart and

00:42:33.160 change your mind. I genuinely mean that. I don't mean that in a condescending way. That's what I'm

00:42:37.260 praying, that your heart would be changed, that your mind would be changed, that you would see that

00:42:41.220 this is the greatest moral atrocity of our time. That yes, it is exactly akin to slavery, because what

00:42:48.060 you are doing is you are deciding that an entire class of human beings that is scientifically what they

00:42:52.740 are, you can say that they shouldn't have rights if you want to make that argument, but they are human

00:42:57.120 beings. So you need to explain why some human beings shouldn't have rights and some should.

00:43:01.440 What you are saying is that a class of human beings, because they are not politically useful,

00:43:06.160 because they don't have a voice, because they can't physically fight back, that they are subhuman

00:43:11.160 or that they shouldn't have personhood rights. That is exactly the justification for every single 1.00

00:43:18.760 human rights atrocity that has ever existed throughout history. Only ruthless tyrants and barbarians 0.61

00:43:26.580 and evil, wicked dictators take away the personhood status of a group of people to justify killing that 0.98

00:43:36.600 group of people. When you're talking about people who justified slavery by saying that black people 0.95

00:43:43.420 aren't fully human, when you're talking about people who have justified all forms of genocide,

00:43:49.580 when you're talking about the Holocaust. I know people get really touchy when you make those

00:43:54.380 comparisons, but it is the exact same logic. You decided completely arbitrarily that one group of

00:44:00.940 people doesn't have a right to life. And no matter how much you kick and scream and yell in front of 1.00

00:44:07.720 the Supreme Court, you're not going to be able to come up with a morally or legally or logical,

00:44:13.700 coherent defense of that. You're just not. The only coherent and consistent argument that you can make,

00:44:21.480 it's not even coherent, consistent, but at least it's honest. If you just say that it's okay,

00:44:27.520 that you believe that some, that killing some people is okay, if society decides that they're

00:44:32.060 not useful, just know that that principle is going to then apply to lots of people outside

00:44:36.560 the womb and you are going to have been a part of that. So here are some reactions from people.

00:44:45.440 Here are some reactions from people who, like, I wish I could say that they're demons. Like,

00:44:51.680 honestly, that would be a better explanation for what's going on. But they're human beings.

00:44:56.640 They're human beings. They're made in the image of God. And here is their reaction in front of the

00:45:00.520 Supreme Court to the fact to, that they might not be able to access abortion quite as easily.

00:45:06.440 All right. So there were hundreds of people, if not more than that, in front of the Supreme

00:45:36.220 Court, there were back and forths between pro-lifers and pro-abortioners about this. And again,

00:45:44.200 just the dichotomy here of light versus darkness is so obvious. And then Libs of TikTok, who always

00:45:50.060 comes through for us in showing just the most inane reactions from the left when it comes to things

00:45:55.100 like this. Here is a montage that they put together of some, I guess, feminists on TikTok reacting.

00:46:06.220 This abortion law goes beyond a woman's issue. And it goes beyond anything you could ever imagine. 0.94

00:46:21.420 The societal implications of this are going to be insane. The amount of, uh, just pain and damages

00:46:28.300 is going to cause. And the full ability to tell a woman what she can and can't do with her body. 0.98

00:46:33.100 And we're going back into a handmaid's tale society here.

00:46:36.500 All of you women who sat home, all of you young girls, adults over 18 years old, who did not go out 0.92

00:46:48.800 and vote, who did not think that you need to protect your womb. We're now back in the dark ages.

00:46:58.440 Um, brace yourselves, ladies. I'm with you. My heart is just broken. I don't understand why this country

00:47:09.460 hates women so much. I just don't understand it. We'll get through this. We'll figure out a way.

00:47:19.360 No more joking about it being a handmaid's tale. It will be. 0.90

00:47:31.220 Oh my gosh. All right. Let us remind ourselves again, again, that we're not talking about

00:47:42.960 women's bodies. No one's trying to regulate your body. There is a choice. You have a choice of 1.00

00:47:50.280 whether or not you get pregnant. Yes, there are situations, unfortunately, tragically,

00:47:54.540 and which women get raped. That accounts for less than 1% of all abortions, of all reasons for

00:48:01.240 abortion. And if you asked a leftist, by the way, are you okay with restricting abortion just to the

00:48:09.020 cases of where someone gets raped? Of course, they'll say no. So they bring up, well, this is

00:48:13.760 about women's bodies because they're not always making a choice to get pregnant because some women 0.99

00:48:18.220 are raped. Rape is very serious. It shouldn't just be a political talking point, by the way,

00:48:22.180 but they just bring it up because it's a talking point. They don't actually mean that abortion

00:48:26.160 should only be available in cases of rape. They just bring it up because they're trying to morally

00:48:30.620 extort you into saying, well, maybe in that case, but not even in that case. Because look,

00:48:35.660 someone's conception, the circumstances surrounding someone's conception does not justify murdering

00:48:40.940 them. Again, does that justify murdering someone outside of the womb if they were conceived in rape?

00:48:45.320 Of course not. Then why does that justify murdering them inside the womb? So just remember that when

00:48:50.540 you're seeing all of these tears, when you're seeing all of these arguments being made, just

00:48:54.620 bring it back to what abortion is and ask the person that you're talking to, why do you think

00:48:59.740 abortion is right? Do you know what an abortion is? What do you think about this? Do you apply the

00:49:04.780 same principle to people outside the womb? Get them to define their terms and really try to explain 0.98

00:49:10.060 their defense of it. And then as we've talked about this argument for, oh, well, this is just going to

00:49:15.260 make abortion less safe. And so we don't need to get the law involved in it. That's just silly. Then 0.68

00:49:22.540 you could apply that to anything. Like, do you believe that murder of people outside of the womb

00:49:27.240 shouldn't be illegal because it might make it less safe? That's not why we pass laws. It's not just

00:49:32.620 about that. It's not just about decreasing the number of crimes that might be part of it. But it is

00:49:36.700 because you want to legally recognize a human being's right not to be murdered. A human being's

00:49:43.420 humanity, a human being's personhood. And so that's what this is about. That's what this is

00:49:50.060 about. And for this argument that you hear, once again, that, oh, well, y'all are just pro-birth.

00:49:57.140 Y'all are just pro-birth. You just want to force women to give birth. Again, no one forced her to 1.00

00:50:02.200 become pregnant in 99% of these situations. Everyone knows what leads to pregnancy, all right? 0.52

00:50:08.520 Everyone knows what leads to pregnancy. And yes, consent to sex is consent to pregnancy. 0.80

00:50:12.700 Like people say, I just have to pause. People say, well, consent to sex is not the same thing

00:50:17.160 as consent to pregnancy. And so it's like you're getting pregnant. It's violating your consent, 0.88

00:50:22.860 which is just wild. That is like saying that eating food is not consent to digestion. Like you

00:50:29.920 understand that one leads to the other. That's how human biology works. And I understand the left is

00:50:34.340 very confused about human biology because they deny the existence of male versus female. But

00:50:38.680 that is how it works. That's how we're all here because of male versus female and the anatomy and 0.98

00:50:44.600 the parts that play together to create a pregnancy. And so yes, consent to sex is consent to pregnancy.

00:50:50.460 And so you absolutely have a choice. You have autonomy over those choices. You have autonomy over

00:50:55.140 your body. And if anyone violates that through something like sexual assault or rape, I think that

00:50:59.340 person should go to prison for the rest of their lives. So like we're on the same page with how wrong

00:51:03.720 that is. I just don't think you should murder someone because of a choice you made or because

00:51:08.460 of any circumstance surrounding conception. We're talking about killing babies. I believe that

00:51:12.920 killing any innocent human is wrong. If you are pro-choice or you are pro-abortion, even if you 0.52

00:51:18.600 consider yourself personally pro-life but politically pro-choice, which again is logically inconsistent,

00:51:24.560 then you believe that killing some innocent human beings is okay. I don't. You believe that killing

00:51:29.660 some innocent people is fine and acceptable and should be legal. I simply don't. And I think

00:51:36.220 that's really clear cut about who is on the right side there. We are about to see so much darkness

00:51:43.480 and so much demonic activity, so much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Like if you want to know

00:51:48.580 what hell sounds like, if you want to know what hell looks like, look at the vitriol and the screeching

00:51:55.020 like banshees from people who are crying about the right, who are screaming about the right, who are

00:51:59.400 threatening death toward people who don't believe in the right to slaughter unborn children. I mean,

00:52:05.640 you can look at some of the quote tweets. When I tweeted last night that the person who leaked this

00:52:10.880 knew that Kavanaugh and Barrett and the other conservative justices and their families were

00:52:16.160 going to get threatened with death. I had blue check journalists from left-wing outlets like 0.95

00:52:23.600 the nation and other left-wing activists and people on Twitter saying, good, that's a good thing.

00:52:31.000 So they actually, these people, they actually believe that they're on the right side. They

00:52:34.800 actually believe that it is worth threatening the lives. I mean, Kony Barrett has young children.

00:52:39.780 Kavanaugh has young children. They're saying that it's okay. They would actually, I guess,

00:52:44.840 be okay with what they're saying is these people on Twitter would be okay with Kavanaugh and his

00:52:50.020 family, Kony Barrett and her seven children being murdered because they don't believe that there's

00:52:57.760 a constitutional right to killing a baby. Just think that you're sharing the side with that people 1.00

00:53:03.760 if you believe that abortion should be legal. It's a demonic side. It's really clear cut. It is light 0.82

00:53:10.380 versus dark. And look, we absolutely care about these babies and their mothers and their fathers

00:53:17.500 long after birth. That is the majority of pro-life anti-abortion work, as I have said so many times.

00:53:24.820 If you doubt that, then why don't you go to your pro-life pregnancy center and volunteer there?

00:53:29.480 Like if you care so much about what happens to women and their children after birth, then are you

00:53:35.680 volunteering at your local pro-life pregnancy center, at your local pregnancy resource center? I mean,

00:53:40.880 these people are offering free sonograms, free STD checks. They are offering free parenting classes.

00:53:47.780 They are offering free help with education, even the immigration process, even the welfare process.

00:53:53.340 They are helping these people, these women get housing. They are helping these women get jobs. They

00:53:57.960 are helping these women with all sorts of things that actually help them get on their feet and take

00:54:03.660 care of their family. They let those women know that they are not alone. They provide those women with

00:54:07.880 resources and with community that is far more than Planned Parenthood or any abortion facility could

00:54:12.620 ever say. And so before you say that we are just pro-birth, why don't you go to your local pregnancy

00:54:17.860 resource center? And then you can come back to us and tell us if that's true. There's so much time,

00:54:22.720 so much energy, so much prayer, so much money that goes into this, that goes into helping these families

00:54:29.720 so that they are not alone, so that they are not in crisis. The legal work that we do and pushing for

00:54:35.480 good legislation that restricts abortion, that's really important. But that's just one piece of

00:54:40.580 the pie. What we understand as Christians, guys, what we understand as Christians is that this is

00:54:45.900 really the start of a new phase of the pro-life fight. This is really the start of it. And like,

00:54:53.920 I just want to end on some encouragement here. What you do and what you say over a long period of time

00:55:02.260 matters. Man, this is the greatest example of what we, of two of the things that we say. Politics

00:55:08.080 matter because policy matters because people matter. Politics affects policy. Policy affects

00:55:12.260 people. Who you vote for matters. Let's just be honest, without Donald Trump, without Mitch McConnell,

00:55:17.900 whatever you think about them, we would not have this potential decision that could be monumental in

00:55:23.220 saving the lives of thousands and maybe even millions of babies. And so for all the people who

00:55:28.860 talked about Donald Trump being such a wrecking ball for all the people, John Piper, who I like,

00:55:34.780 by the way, in so many ways and appreciate in so many ways, he wrote an article before the election

00:55:39.900 saying that the pride of Donald Trump is just as deadly as the pro-abortion position of the left,

00:55:46.280 of Joe Biden. I'm wondering if he still believes that. I'm wondering what a lot of people who I would

00:55:52.060 consider in big evil. What do they think about all this? Who you vote for matters. And yeah, Donald

00:55:58.000 Trump, imperfect person. I think we would say Mitch McConnell from a conservative perspective. He

00:56:03.040 doesn't always say and do the things that we like to do. But man, this was consequential. And in this

00:56:08.540 case, voting for a Republican can have an amazing generational positive impact and preserving the lives of

00:56:15.500 people and the dignity and the rights of our most vulnerable and most marginalized class of people in this

00:56:21.760 country and in the world. Number one cause of death, by the way, in the world, if you didn't already know

00:56:25.840 that. What you do politically matters. What you care about matters. What you speak up about absolutely

00:56:31.840 matters. And look, this was a long game. It's been 50 years of this unconstitutional, abhorrent

00:56:37.580 decision. It's been 50 years of unfettered, basically slaughter of unborn children. This has been a generational

00:56:45.200 torch passing of advocates and activists speaking up on behalf of unborn children. This has been a long

00:56:52.720 game. And only now, half a century later, are we possibly seeing Roe v. Wade overturned? Let us keep 0.98

00:57:00.200 that in mind as we are looking at the darkness that's in our world, as we are looking at all of the other

00:57:04.820 political issues, which, as I say so often for Christians, they're really theological issues, whether it

00:57:11.220 comes to the gender indoctrination of children, all kinds of confusion and chaos and darkness that we 0.97

00:57:16.340 see in this world. We're playing a long game. And God is in charge of the timeline. God is in charge of

00:57:22.260 the justice that he is going to dole out. Man, we are deserving of so much wrath because of this as a

00:57:30.800 country. There have been many injustices perpetuated by all kinds of countries, including America, over our

00:57:36.240 history. This possibly being the foremost right up there with chattel slavery. I mean, we deserve so 0.99

00:57:43.520 much wrath for allowing this to endure for there being people and organizations of political parties

00:57:49.520 that celebrate the slaughter of unborn children. And if this is overturned, it will be an act of

00:57:54.420 incredible mercy. So, gosh, we need to be praying. We need to be on our knees praying that these

00:58:01.540 justices would stay courageous, that justice would be doled out, that unborn children would be protected.

00:58:08.360 It is good that the law could change in many states. But as I said, that means our work begins.

00:58:14.700 We want hearts and minds to be changed. We want hearts and minds to be changed. I want especially

00:58:20.020 for the church to wake up, for people who profess to be Christians, who have been wishy-washy on this,

00:58:24.820 who have been on the wrong side of this. I want you to be so clear. I want you to be so wise. I want you to be

00:58:29.680 so bold and so brave and realize that the God who made us intricately and purposely in our mother's

00:58:35.980 wombs hates abortion and we should too. Even as we love those who have had abortions or who are 1.00

00:58:41.720 considering abortions, we speak the truth in love, realizing that truth in love, that holiness in

00:58:47.060 love, that righteousness in love are inextricably intertwined. And that is how we move forward in

00:58:51.440 faith. And so we pray for the courage to speak up about this. We pray for the justices to stay

00:58:57.160 and to stand firm in this. This is our moment. This has been the long game. We keep pushing

00:59:04.160 forward like never before, even if and when it is overturned. We keep on doing the work of helping

00:59:09.840 mothers and their babies and changing hearts and minds. That is what the gospel does. That is what

00:59:14.680 the truth does. And that is our role. Let's pray for the protection of the justices. Let's pray for the

00:59:20.080 protection of anti-abortion activists. Let's pray for people to see light versus dark, right versus wrong.

00:59:26.160 That's what I think is going to happen in all of this. And gosh, God is sovereign. God is sovereign

00:59:32.780 and he is good and he is faithful that no matter what happens with this, justice will come once and

00:59:41.620 for all when Jesus comes back and every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is

00:59:46.720 Lord. When you see the darkness that's articulated and expressed from the other side, the pro-abortion

00:59:51.500 side, read Romans 1, you'll know that this is not new. That child sacrifice, unfortunately it happened

00:59:57.280 in the Old Testament. God demanded the death penalty for it when people in Israel were sacrificing

01:00:06.180 their children to Malak. God hates child sacrifice. There has always been child sacrifice. It is just in a 0.98

01:00:13.780 new kind of sterile and celebrated in different form today through abortion. And so God promises 0.71

01:00:23.440 one day that justice will absolutely come, that he will rule in perfect peace, that evildoers, that

01:00:30.940 those who do wicked and perpetrate this kind of injustice will be no more, as Psalm 37 says. So even

01:00:37.780 if politically, legally, we don't get what we want and what we pray for, which I'm hopeful that we do,

01:00:45.000 we still trust in heaven and we trust in God's justice and we trust in his sovereignty over this.

01:00:51.940 Man, we have so many reasons to rejoice. We have so many reasons to be bold and to be courageous and

01:00:57.700 to be clear right now and so many reasons to pray and so many reasons no matter what to trust

01:01:03.260 in the God who's got this, who knows exactly what's going to happen and who promises that the gates of

01:01:10.500 hell will not prevail against his church and that the church has the same role that it always has to

01:01:16.480 make sure that God's will is done here on earth as it is in heaven. So let's go forth with that kind

01:01:21.840 of courage. Just FYI, I am on Megyn Kelly's podcast today talking about this. I am also on,

01:01:29.740 I don't know if by the time this comes out, if you'll be able to catch it, but I'll be on Martha

01:01:32.800 McCallum's show on Fox News talking about this. I am speaking tomorrow to a church talking about this

01:01:41.060 and I'm so thankful to God for the opportunity to get to talk about this so much. I'm obviously

01:01:45.340 very passionate about it. Thank you to all of you who have been so clear and so courageous. Oh,

01:01:50.220 the second phrase that this all speaks to, as I said, politics matter, policy matters, people matter.

01:01:55.480 I'm wearing my shirt today that of course you can get online. We'll link it. Raise a respectful

01:02:00.040 ruckus. This is 50 years, 50 years of people raising a respectful ruckus may conclude, hopefully

01:02:08.100 include in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And we'll keep on raising a respectful ruckus because these

01:02:12.440 babies are worth it. All right. We will be back here tomorrow with a really fascinating interview.

01:02:16.680 I know that you guys are going to love it. It's going to be about how wokeness and progressivism has

01:02:21.680 infiltrated and destroyed the therapy and the really the medical industry in general. You're

01:02:28.880 going to love it. I'll see you guys then.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 03, 2022

Ep 610 ｜ If Roe Ends, the Fight Over Abortion Just Begins ｜ Guest： Josh Hammer

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