Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - August 04, 2022


Ep 655 ｜ The Truth About Miscarriages & Ectopic Care in Post-Roe America ｜ Guest： Alexandra DeSanctis


Episode Stats

Length

37 minutes

Words per Minute

188.25456

Word Count

7,048

Sentence Count

400

Misogynist Sentences

23

Hate Speech Sentences

17


Summary

Alexandra DeSantis has a new book, Tearing us apart, and she wrote a piece debunking the myth that pro-life laws are preventing doctors from providing care for women who are having miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Almost made it through the week. Today we are
00:00:05.280 debunking this myth that you are seeing over and over again on social media, that the pro-life
00:00:12.440 laws in various states are inhibiting miscarriage care and care for ectopic pregnancies. We are
00:00:20.140 going to talk to a journalist from National Review, Alexandra DeSanctis. She also just came out with
00:00:26.820 a pro-life book called Tearing Us Apart. And she wrote a 4,500 word piece about every pro-life law
00:00:38.340 and all of the exceptions that are included in these pro-life laws to make the point that the
00:00:44.700 laws are not the problem. The laws are not causing doctors to stop caring for the women who are
00:00:52.760 suffering from miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. So we're going to get into all of that today. I
00:00:59.060 know this is going to be a very equipping episode for you. As always, this episode is brought to you
00:01:04.300 by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com slash Allie. That's GoodRanchers.com slash Allie.
00:01:11.000 All right. Before we get into that conversation, I have yet another follow-up of the things that we
00:01:25.240 have been talking about this week. So on Monday, we talked about how Moms for Liberty was temporarily
00:01:31.100 suspended from Twitter for criticizing the California bill, revoking parents' rights of
00:01:36.760 kids who want to gender transition. We also talked about how PayPal suspended their funds so they
00:01:44.260 couldn't get the donations that people were sending them through PayPal out. And then we followed up
00:01:51.160 yesterday by announcing that Ron DeSantis, after saying, hey, we're going to put an end to that kind of
00:01:57.940 thing. We're going to make sure that these woke corporations can't punish their conservative
00:02:02.620 customers and PayPal unfroze their account. And we basically said, look, that's how you do it.
00:02:08.360 That's how you play this game. That's how you push back. That's the kind of fighter that people want
00:02:15.180 right now. And I know that this is just kind of turning into like a Governor DeSantis fan show.
00:02:21.700 But I want to give you another example of how Republican leaders should be pushing back
00:02:28.420 on all of this madness. Here he is. They talk about these very young kids getting
00:02:33.600 gender affirming care. But they don't tell you what that is, is they're actually giving very young
00:02:38.920 girls double mastectomies. They want to castrate these young boys. That's wrong. And so we've stood up
00:02:45.320 and said, both from the health and children well-being perspective, you know, you don't disfigure
00:02:51.040 10, 12, 13 year old kids based on gender dysphoria. 80% of it resolves anyways by the time
00:02:59.080 they get older. So why would you be doing this? I think these doctors need to get sued for what's
00:03:04.020 happening. Now, what I appreciate about that is that he is clearly saying what's going on rather than
00:03:12.940 using the left wing euphemisms for gender affirmation surgery or gender transition. He is
00:03:21.300 saying explicitly what's really going on. And then he is following it up with an action saying,
00:03:28.360 hey, these doctors should be sued. Now, I would say that these doctors need to go to prison. I mean,
00:03:33.980 this is genital mutilation of children. Children cannot consent because they don't have the capacity
00:03:40.320 to consent. All every other Republican governor and politician needs to do, though, is just to
00:03:47.500 follow Ron DeSantis' lead in talking about these so-called culture war, which are really moral war
00:03:54.120 issues in this way. People want clarity. People want courage. People want strength. In the midst of all of
00:04:01.300 the chaos and the confusion and the passivity and the weakness of our current age, we are waiting for
00:04:08.320 people to stand up, not to be our savior and not to save the day because we know that the only savior
00:04:15.400 that we have is Christ, but someone with a little backbone to stand up and say what is true and to
00:04:21.660 do something about what is good. Do something for what is good and do something in opposition to the
00:04:30.380 evil that we are seeing perpetuated by progressivism in so many different ways. So, once again,
00:04:36.260 good for Governor DeSantis and also good for Moms for Liberty for continuing to stand up. I've got a
00:04:42.920 piece out today with World Magazine talking about not just Moms for Liberty, but really the whole
00:04:48.340 movement that that organization represents and why these left-wing activists and the media and the
00:04:55.440 teachers unions and the public education system is so scared of involved parents, parents who care,
00:05:02.800 parents who show up, parents who push back. We will be the determining force for the future of the
00:05:09.580 country. So, keep going and stand firm. Alexandra, thanks so much for joining us again. I want to talk to you
00:05:27.580 about the messages, the propaganda that a lot of us pro-lifers are seeing in regard to the consequences
00:05:36.020 or the purported consequences of the pro-life laws in red states. We are hearing that it's inhibiting
00:05:43.360 miscarriage care. We've heard horror stories of women whose ectopic pregnancies, their fallopian tube
00:05:48.980 has had to rupture before doctors are allowed to intervene. And we're told that all of these terrible
00:05:54.480 tales of woe, and I mean that seriously, are caused by these pro-life laws. So, tell us,
00:06:02.520 you're reporting on this. What have you found? Are these laws leading to this terrible care women are
00:06:09.680 receiving? Yeah. So, we've been hearing this now for the month plus since Rose overturned that pro-life
00:06:16.560 laws are going to lead to disastrous health consequences for women. And as you mentioned,
00:06:20.780 there are these stories kind of trickling out here and there about truly horrible things happening to
00:06:26.120 women. And the claim from abortion supporters is this is because of pro-life laws. So, I decided to
00:06:31.160 just read the pro-life laws since they apparently were declining to do so. There was no coverage of what
00:06:36.700 the text of the laws actually said. So, I went through every state law, and I should say that the
00:06:41.720 Charlotte Lozier Institute also has a great report doing the same thing, going through the state laws
00:06:46.820 one by one, pointing out the text where it allows for doctors to exercise their best medical judgment
00:06:52.820 in cases of emergency, where many of these laws explicitly say ectopic pregnancy is not the same
00:06:59.240 thing as a direct abortion. Treatment for post-miscarriage care has nothing to do with abortion.
00:07:04.900 And even in cases where states don't say this explicitly, the definition of abortion is
00:07:09.780 different from care for an ectopic pregnancy or care for a woman after she's suffered a miscarriage.
00:07:14.960 So, what I found was essentially none of these laws have anything to do with what's happening to
00:07:20.400 women, allegedly. If women are suffering in these types of situations, it's because of a doctor or
00:07:26.020 an attorney or a hospital misreading the laws or misapplying them or acting, you know, using poor
00:07:31.880 medical judgment. In other words, it's not the fault of the way the laws are written.
00:07:35.840 So, what I'm hearing, even from people who call themselves pro-life, is, well, the laws are vague.
00:07:42.160 The law doesn't explicitly carve out an exception for the life of the mother or whatever it is.
00:07:47.580 And it is the vagueness of these laws that is actually causing the confusion that is preventing
00:07:53.460 care for these women. Is that what you found when you read the text of these laws and bills?
00:07:58.600 No, that's simply untrue. Every single, I looked at the laws in 23 states, which are any state that has
00:08:03.960 anything from a 15-week protection for unborn children or anything from, you know, a heartbeat bill
00:08:09.080 or a total or almost total ban on abortion, every single one has language saying that if a mother's
00:08:14.800 life is at risk or she's at risk of substantial impairment, a doctor can exercise his or her best
00:08:19.820 medical judgment to save both the life of the mother and the baby. And that's kind of the crucial
00:08:24.600 point, I think, right, that a baby's life matters too. Both the mother's life and the baby's life
00:08:29.160 matter. And there's no medical situation in which a doctor needs to directly kill an unborn child to
00:08:35.100 save a mother's life. He's always able to perform necessary health care treatments that might have
00:08:39.800 a side effect of harming the baby or leading to the baby dying. But that's not the same thing as
00:08:44.620 an elective direct abortion. Right. And even some of these states have like pretty, pretty big leeway.
00:08:51.640 Like if you're looking at the state of Ohio, which of course was the center of that scandalous story
00:08:56.140 about the 10-year-old who apparently had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion after she was
00:09:02.340 raped. If you look at the Ohio abortion law that is currently on the books, it leaves an exception
00:09:07.640 for the doctor to perform an abortion, not just if the physical life of the mother is at risk,
00:09:13.840 but even if her health is at risk. So that's a pretty big exception that a lot of these even
00:09:20.580 red states have. So again, it just doesn't really seem to be adding up to me.
00:09:26.080 No, that's right. And there really is no reason if you look at the text of these laws to think that
00:09:30.380 the laws are the reason why, if these situations are happening here or there, why the laws are at
00:09:35.440 fault. And what I found so interesting when I wrote this big piece kind of cataloging and pulling the
00:09:39.600 text from every law, putting it together, the response I got from abortion supporters was the
00:09:44.220 text doesn't matter. Even though they've now spent a month saying it's the fault of the text of these
00:09:48.820 laws and they're written too vaguely. Then when they saw the text and realized the text actually is
00:09:53.000 not vague at all, it's extremely clear. The response was, well, it's a chilling effect or various other
00:09:58.640 things about how it's not actually about the text. It's just about how there's this general fear among
00:10:02.660 doctors because of abortion laws. And to me, it's very clear. All they're trying to do is undermine
00:10:07.200 any pro-life law whatsoever. There's no pro-life law that would be written in a way that these
00:10:12.560 people would accept because the goal is not for them to protect women. It's to enable abortion.
00:10:17.020 So what do you think is going on here? If all of these stories are true, or even if some of the
00:10:22.400 stories are true of women in states like Texas and elsewhere, they're going apparently to the
00:10:28.320 emergency room and they have a miscarriage or some kind of emergent situation and apparently they are
00:10:35.960 being told, sorry, we have to wait until you are basically dying on the table before we can remove
00:10:42.860 this child, before we can treat you, before we can remove the ectopic pregnancy because of the pro-life
00:10:49.120 law. I'm hearing that it could be because of lawyers, that it could be because of insurance
00:10:53.380 companies. But I'm really curious, what is actually going on since we know that it's not the fault of
00:10:59.360 the law? Yeah, I mean, it could be any number of things. I think one thing we have to keep in mind
00:11:03.400 is a lot of these stories, at least many of the ones I've seen, are very poorly sourced, not that
00:11:08.200 clear. It isn't super obvious whether these things have actually happened or not. Now, that's not to say
00:11:13.000 it doesn't ever happen, but it's not as though there's evidence of a massive trend across the entire
00:11:17.720 country. So I think we need to keep that in mind. Secondly, to my mind, there's two other
00:11:22.380 possibilities. One is that you just have bad doctors and it's certainly possible, right? We know there
00:11:27.440 are a lot of bad doctors who don't know what they're doing. And if a doctor really thinks that he can't
00:11:32.420 save a woman's life because of an abortion law, he is mistaken. And either an attorney is telling him
00:11:37.000 that he can't do it or, you know, he himself thinks that he can't save a mother's life because it's an
00:11:42.960 abortion. And that leads me to the third possibility, which is that abortion supporters are the ones who
00:11:47.660 have caused this confusion, right? Because pro-lifers have been saying since long before
00:11:51.680 Roe was overturned, that it's always morally permissible to save a mother's life, even if the
00:11:56.260 healthcare procedure required would have the indirect effect or the foreseen consequence of the baby being
00:12:02.100 harmed. And of course, that's not ideal. We wouldn't hope that that would happen. We would hope that a
00:12:06.200 doctor would always try to save both of them. But a mother's life is of equal value to her child.
00:12:11.400 And pro-lifers have always said that. That's why these laws are written this way. That's why pro-lifers are
00:12:15.400 trying to clarify them if that's necessary. That's always been the pro-life position. It's the other
00:12:19.940 side of this debate that's trying to pretend that treatment for an ectopic pregnancy or treatment after
00:12:25.280 a miscarriage is the same thing as an abortion, because they don't want to defend their position
00:12:29.360 on abortion. They want to just talk about these rare, heartbreaking cases. And I think that leads
00:12:34.020 to confusion, right? They're the ones causing confusion. And so if there are doctors out there who
00:12:38.380 sincerely don't know the difference between treatment for an ectopic pregnancy and a direct abortion,
00:12:42.940 that confusion was caused by abortion supporters, not by the pro-life movement.
00:12:47.480 Yes. And something that I have said is that these doctors have always had to navigate some kind of
00:12:54.880 regulation around abortion and miscarriage care. It's not like all of the sudden they are having to
00:13:03.840 deal with the law. They've always had to deal with some kind of restriction, some kind of parameter.
00:13:08.740 And they've been able to, I guess, successfully navigate that thus far. So you're telling me that
00:13:15.300 only now, right after Roe was overturned, right before the midterms, only now they're confused about
00:13:23.540 how to do their job legally and keep women alive who are suffering ectopics or miscarriages? I just have
00:13:30.900 a hard time believing that. And that doesn't mean that all of these stories are false. But as we like to
00:13:37.340 say in the South, there seems to be a fly in the buttermilk. I don't want to go to the most
00:13:41.760 nefarious, I think, option, which is the possibility that there are bad actors trying to cause this pain
00:13:49.020 and cause this chaos for political purposes that are actually allowing the suffering of women so they
00:13:56.480 can run to the media and say, see, this is what's happening because of these pro-life laws. I don't
00:14:01.440 know. Yeah. I mean, I would really hope that's not the case. I don't think there's enough evidence
00:14:05.680 to assume that that's happening everywhere. But I do think we have to keep in mind,
00:14:09.280 we're talking about a movement that does not put women first, right? This is a movement that
00:14:13.520 pretends that abortion is healthcare, that pretends that women are better off if they have access to
00:14:18.600 abortion, which is an act that kills their own child that is not medically necessary. This is not a
00:14:23.520 movement that has shown a great deal of care for women's health. Think about the risks posed by
00:14:27.360 abortion, by telemedicine, chemical abortion. This is a movement that sues states that try to impose
00:14:32.940 informed consent laws on abortion clinics. And one point I've raised is Catholic hospitals haven't
00:14:38.120 been performing elective abortions forever, right? Catholics won't do that. And yet somehow in
00:14:42.500 Catholic hospitals, doctors are perfectly able to treat women with ectopic pregnancies, to care for
00:14:47.120 women after miscarriages, because they know the difference. Pro-life doctors, pro-life people know
00:14:51.660 the difference between directly killing an unborn child and trying to save a mother's life. And so the
00:14:56.380 idea that other doctors can't figure it out, I think is just kind of ridiculous.
00:15:11.180 I've seen a lot of talk on Instagram that, well, miscarriage is also an abortion. And therefore,
00:15:22.440 that is why the insurance companies won't cover miscarriage care, or that is why doctors are now
00:15:28.540 confused because it's an abortion. Of course, that is manipulative. Doctors know the difference between
00:15:33.640 what is called sometimes a spontaneous abortion, a miscarriage, and an induced abortion. But it seems
00:15:38.960 like some of them, activists, are pretending that we don't know the difference and that there's not a
00:15:43.900 difference. Yeah, I think there's some, you know, sincere confusion from people who have heard that
00:15:49.520 these are labeled the same way medically, which, as you point out, it is true. One's called
00:15:53.000 spontaneous abortion. The other one's induced abortion. So that might lead to some actual
00:15:57.100 confusion among people who just haven't done the research and don't know any better. But I think
00:16:00.660 there's a serious attempt to conflate these things. I mean, there was an op-ed just a couple days ago,
00:16:05.000 maybe yesterday, in the New York Times that asked, why do we treat miscarriage and abortion
00:16:09.960 differently? And well, it's obvious, right? A miscarriage is an unintended, spontaneous loss of a
00:16:14.840 child's life. And an abortion is an active choice to kill that child. And the idea that these are the
00:16:19.260 same thing is, first of all, wrong, but deeply offensive, I think, to women, to couples who have
00:16:24.020 suffered from a miscarriage and who know this is completely different from an act that chooses to
00:16:28.500 kill that child. Yes. And actually, that is a good question. She is asking it from the wrong end.
00:16:34.520 The question that we also ask as pro-lifers, why do we treat abortion differently than a miscarriage?
00:16:39.680 So in a miscarriage, it's a baby. It's a valuable life. It's something that's mourned. And then abortion,
00:16:45.440 at least on the activist side of it, is just a clump of cells. It's something that's removed. It's
00:16:50.560 something that's empowering. So that's a legitimate question. Why are we treating abortion differently
00:16:55.560 than miscarriage? Why do we react to it differently? But the question really is, why do we disregard the
00:17:01.960 humanity? And why do we disregard the value of that life when the abortion is induced rather than
00:17:08.940 spontaneous? They believe that we should, I guess, dehumanize the baby in both cases? It's a good
00:17:14.820 question. They just simply have the wrong answer for it. Tell us what happened in Kansas. Why are
00:17:21.640 pro-lifers kind of mourning what happened there? What went on? Yeah. So a couple of days ago, there was a
00:17:28.580 vote on a ballot measure, which would have essentially undone a state Supreme Court ruling in Kansas that had
00:17:34.880 found a right to abortion in the state constitution. So it was essentially a state version of Roe v. Wade
00:17:39.760 that happened in 2019. And so since then, pro-lifers have been working to put some kind of ballot measure
00:17:45.780 out for voters to kind of to reverse the Supreme Court ruling and to say, actually, our state
00:17:50.960 constitution does not protect a right to abortion. And the ballot measure failed pretty significantly by a
00:17:56.700 pretty significant margin. So I think a lot of people are trying to cast this as evidence that
00:18:01.220 Americans at large are very pro-abortion or that there's not an appetite for pro-life policy.
00:18:06.940 But I think what we have to keep in mind is it was kind of a confusing situation, right? The amendment
00:18:10.560 was not on any particular pro-life policy. It wasn't super clear what laws were going to be put in place
00:18:15.560 after the amendment, if the amendment succeeded. And the other side really got away with framing it as,
00:18:21.220 you know, if this amendment passes, it's going to be a total abortion ban in Kansas, which of course
00:18:25.120 was not, factually speaking, not true. It would have just gone back to abortion neutrality.
00:18:29.280 But I think a lot of people probably, you know, bought that line and voted on that basis.
00:18:35.840 Yeah. And it's so strange how many professing pro-lifers and even Christians kind of buy that,
00:18:41.620 that, okay, well, I don't like abortion or I want abortion to maybe be restricted in some cases,
00:18:48.220 but they believe that either overturning Roe or something like this would have banned abortion.
00:18:53.460 And they kind of buy this idea. Well, that's unempathetic. That's not nuanced enough. I've seen this
00:18:59.060 a lot among evangelicals after the Dobbs decision was published that it's so nuanced that we can't
00:19:05.800 possibly support any restriction on abortion. What do you make of that reaction and position?
00:19:13.020 Yeah. I mean, I think this is a really common, this is probably where most Americans come down.
00:19:16.360 There's kind of a small segment on one side that wants totally unlimited abortion on demand.
00:19:20.500 The other kind of small segment on the other side, like, like you and me, I assume who want
00:19:24.600 unborn children to be protected at all stages of life. But in the middle, you have this big group
00:19:29.540 of people who kind of feel like, yeah, it's probably a baby. We should probably protect them most of the
00:19:33.340 time. But what about women? And what about women who are suffering? What about women who need abortion?
00:19:38.360 And I think a lot of people have unfortunately bought the lie that abortion actually is some kind
00:19:43.220 of solution, that women are better off if they have this option, that the fact that women suffer or
00:19:47.820 are abandoned by men or are in a difficult position means that sometimes they might need
00:19:53.040 abortion as a necessary evil. And so for me, and that's something Ryan and I talk about in our book
00:19:57.400 at great length, the idea that abortion is a solution for women is a total lie. Women are not
00:20:02.140 better off because of abortion. No woman is better off if the solution we offer her is to kill her child.
00:20:07.300 And unfortunately, I think too many Americans believe that. So that's really, to me, a huge goal of the
00:20:12.680 pro-life movement is to convince people that that's not true.
00:20:15.080 Yeah. Tell us about the Biden administration's reaction to the pro-life legislation that has
00:20:22.380 gone into place. I believe I just read that they are now suing the state of Idaho for restricting
00:20:27.480 abortion. Yeah. So I think the Biden administration is in kind of a tough position. Obviously, Biden
00:20:32.600 tried to bill himself as this pro-abortion champion. He flip-flopped on the Hyde Amendment and now
00:20:37.180 supports forcing taxpayers to fund abortion. But in their immediate response to the Dobbs ruling,
00:20:43.060 they barely said anything. It took two weeks for there to be any kind of full statement.
00:20:47.120 And when he actually released it in an executive order, it was very wishy-washy. It was kind of,
00:20:51.120 you know, vocally very supportive of abortion, but there wasn't anything actionable in it.
00:20:55.560 And so I think really the administration realizes that if they try to do very much policy-wise,
00:21:00.860 it's probably going to get struck down. There are courts that are not going to allow them
00:21:04.360 to overstep the executive role here. And so really, all they can do is be responsive. So like you point
00:21:09.520 out, if a law goes in place somewhere, the DOJ might try to go in and block it and say that it's
00:21:14.140 unacceptable. But they can't do very much, or I guess they've decided they don't want to risk
00:21:18.960 trying to leverage executive authority too much to advance pro-abortion policy.
00:21:24.600 And how big of a factor do you think the abortion issue actually will be in the midterms?
00:21:30.580 I don't think it'll be much of a factor at all. I think that the number of people who vote with
00:21:35.640 abortion as one of their top line issues is very small. We've seen that in polls, even after Roe
00:21:40.140 was overturned. Most Americans still say the economy, you know, gas prices, inflation,
00:21:44.800 these types of things are much more at the top of their mind than abortion is. And in the past,
00:21:48.920 even among people who vote with abortion as a top priority, pro-lifers typically have an edge.
00:21:54.120 And so that might be a little bit different this year because Roe was overturned. But my sense is
00:21:58.320 there are not going to be very many swing voters who are motivated by the Democrats' stance on abortion.
00:22:03.100 Most Americans, most Democrats even, don't actually support what Democrats want on abortion. And so
00:22:08.800 while they might want a more moderate abortion policy than you or I, I don't think they're at
00:22:14.100 all going to be motivated to go to the polls to vote for abortion on demand.
00:22:18.120 Yeah. Beto O'Rourke is running on this in the governor's race in Texas. And he has kind of a,
00:22:25.220 it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek ad, I don't know if you've seen it, of the woman. I don't think we have
00:22:30.120 it to play, but it's a woman and she's told by her doctor, hey, your baby has a fetal anomaly and
00:22:37.920 is going to die. And there's only one person who can decide what to do. And it's Greg Abbott.
00:22:44.660 And so basically saying, you know, women are put in this terrible position of having to basically go
00:22:51.320 to these male politicians in Texas to make these very intimate choices. They've put out some other
00:22:57.980 kind of fear-mongering ads in the same way, in the same vein. And I'm just wondering if you think
00:23:04.800 on the conservative side that Republicans are doing a good enough job of showing the other side
00:23:14.140 of the moral question or the other side of this debate, which is that it's a human being, it's a
00:23:19.340 child. And that pulls out our heartstrings too. I'm not sure that I'm seeing it quite as much on the
00:23:24.460 Republican side, but I'm curious what you think about the messaging.
00:23:28.000 No, I have always had a problem with Republican messaging on this issue. And I don't think that
00:23:32.240 it's gotten any better lately. If anything, I think it's gotten worse. Now, of course,
00:23:35.380 there are great pro-life groups who really kind of advertise on behalf of Republicans who highlight
00:23:40.900 this issue. But Republicans themselves, I think for the most part, really don't want to touch it.
00:23:45.780 And I'm afraid that something like the result in Kansas the other night is going to send the wrong
00:23:49.740 message, which is the pro-life issue is toxic. I don't think that's true. I think the pro-life
00:23:53.640 position, by and large, is far more popular than Democrats. And Democrats don't have the luxury of
00:23:59.300 being incrementalists, right? Their only position is abortion on demand. And if they start trying to
00:24:03.420 draw lines, they're in kind of an ethical and logical dilemma, right? How do you draw a line at
00:24:08.160 20 weeks? But for Republicans, they can say, look, I would prefer to protect all unborn children and
00:24:13.460 their mothers, but I can vote for a 20-week ban if that's all we can get right now. I can vote for a 15-week
00:24:18.100 ban. And so I think we have a luxury as pro-lifers and Republican politicians of kind of
00:24:22.740 meeting Americans where they are and kind of trying to convince them that only a total protection would
00:24:27.860 be just, but really meeting them where they are. And I really hope that Republican politicians become
00:24:32.360 more comfortable doing that because the truth is on our side on this one.
00:24:35.460 I'm not sure if Republicans realize how effective it can be just to highlight the atrocity of abortion.
00:24:52.900 And as you talk about so much, and as you talk about in your book, the atrocity of abortion for
00:24:57.740 women, not just the child. There's this story that I'll get your reaction to. It just came out the other
00:25:02.520 day from live action. Minnesota report reveals five babies born alive after abortion in 2021.
00:25:10.920 And so these babies were born alive and they were denied medical care and they all died. I mean,
00:25:16.160 who knows how painful, how gruesome that death was. Of course, abortion is always painful and gruesome,
00:25:22.380 but we're talking about slow death after the baby has exited the womb. They were probably
00:25:29.360 somewhere in the second trimester. And when Ben Sasse tried to pass a few years ago, I think it was
00:25:36.340 2019, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, all Democrats, including our current vice president,
00:25:43.460 voted against it. Do you think stories like this can kind of show people the reality of the abortion
00:25:50.760 industry? And I guess just what's your reaction to this? Yeah, I mean, it's an absolutely horrifying
00:25:55.860 reality. This does happen. And abortion supporters claim that it never does. But we have documented
00:26:00.760 evidence of people, you know, human beings walking around who survived after being born alive in a
00:26:06.420 botched abortion. So it does happen. We know this for a fact. And I mean, I'm glad you raised this,
00:26:11.080 because to my mind, the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act that Ben Sasse sponsored
00:26:15.600 was the biggest pro-life success story, just legislatively speaking, over the last couple of years. Now,
00:26:21.180 of course, the bill didn't pass because we didn't have the numbers. But I think it was an
00:26:24.980 extremely effective bill because it forced Democrats either to be consistent on abortion
00:26:30.060 or to vote for something heinous, right? Their options were to say, yes, because this baby was
00:26:34.780 supposed to be aborted, you can leave it to die. Or no, actually, once it's born, we should protect
00:26:39.520 it. But five seconds before, it's still OK to kill it. And so either way, they're kind of caught in this
00:26:44.460 very difficult position. And both votes or both positions really expose what abortion is. And the bill
00:26:50.300 itself exposes what abortion is, because we all know that baby is not a different entity
00:26:54.780 two seconds later, you know, after coming out of the birth canal. So if we can leave it to die,
00:26:59.500 then, you know, how what kind of position do we have if we're supporting abortion to say that you
00:27:03.980 can then leave it to die because it was supposed to have been killed in the womb? It's just the whole
00:27:07.880 thing is grotesque. Yes, yes. And it did reveal that. But of course, it didn't get the kind of
00:27:13.500 media attention that it should have. The bill did not restrict abortion at all. And yet every single
00:27:20.960 Democrat voted against it. Also, the story that came out of Washington, D.C., that live action also
00:27:29.940 had a part of reporting, but I think it was actually a progressive anti-abortion activist group
00:27:34.600 that originally reported on the five babies that I don't think they were born alive after an abortion,
00:27:41.180 but they were late term abortions and they could have been illegal abortions. Again, the people who
00:27:45.780 say that we are the ones who are only pro-birth, that we are the ones who don't care about babies
00:27:50.460 after they exit the room or the womb. I didn't see any reporting or any outrage about that. So they
00:27:56.660 really do kind of tell on themselves that this is kind of an anti-life movement more than a pro-abortion
00:28:03.400 movement. No, that's exactly right. I mean, the fear about that story and the desire not to talk
00:28:08.840 about it, I think, is so telling about the pro-abortion movement, right? If you think abortion
00:28:14.260 is okay, it should be legal, it's a great thing for women, why not just say, well, who cares,
00:28:19.080 right? This is fine. What are you so upset about? But they didn't even want to talk about it because
00:28:22.300 we all know that that's morally heinous. And when you see a tiny baby with its skull crushed or whatever
00:28:27.620 it is, we all know that that is evil and disgusting and not good for women and immoral,
00:28:32.680 not good for our society. And no one wants to look at it. That's how the abortion movement
00:28:36.920 succeeds. That's why we are where we are, because abortion is painful to look at and too many people
00:28:41.620 look away. And I think that's why the other side has spent the past month talking about things like
00:28:46.120 ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage, because talking about abortion is gross and painful and everyone knows
00:28:51.760 that it's a horrible act. And so they just try to talk about anything other than what happens in an
00:28:56.220 abortion. Yeah. And we talked about it at the time and just those images of the baby, there was one
00:29:01.920 like baby girl. And as you said, like the back of her skull was crushed from the abortion and her eye
00:29:08.220 was still open, just like peering into the camera and how anyone could face that reality and still
00:29:14.020 justify this as something that should be legal, much less acceptable and celebrated. I mean, it's just
00:29:19.420 beyond me. But that's exactly why, as you said, people don't want to look at it. And as you said earlier,
00:29:24.260 the truth is on our side. That's a really good way to know if you're on the right or wrong side.
00:29:29.140 Does the truth help you or does it hurt you? Do you have to rely on euphemisms and propaganda?
00:29:33.960 Or can you just tell the truth? Which you have done, especially in this, I think you said it was
00:29:39.900 a 4,500 word piece about the laws and their actual effects on what is happening in these red states.
00:29:48.960 What has been the reaction from the pro-abortion side?
00:29:53.260 To the piece? I mean, everyone was very unhappy with me. Yeah. I mean, I had spent a lot of time,
00:29:58.580 I had written multiple shorter pieces, just kind of explaining the difference between treatment
00:30:03.240 for an ectopic pregnancy or treatment after a miscarriage and a direct abortion. But it didn't
00:30:08.180 really seem to be getting through. And so I said to myself, you know, I'm just going to put it all in
00:30:11.540 one place, collect all the laws. So there's nothing to debate anymore. And kind of like I said before,
00:30:16.560 nobody cared about the text, right? The same people who had been attacking my earlier pieces
00:30:21.260 or kind of responding to me online personally about it didn't care. Their response was the text
00:30:27.080 doesn't matter. And it's still the fault of the laws. And essentially what they were saying was,
00:30:31.000 no matter how you write these laws, we're not going to support them. And to me, I'm glad I wrote
00:30:35.680 the piece, even though it doesn't seem to have changed people's opinions if they were already inclined
00:30:40.000 to disagree or to be making this argument. But it really exposed, I think, that the other side
00:30:44.560 doesn't care about the language of the laws. It's actually not about whether we word it carefully
00:30:49.240 enough. There is no way to word a pro-life medical exception or a pro-life ectopic pregnancy
00:30:55.040 definition or whatever it might be to satisfy these people, because all they're doing is trying
00:30:59.700 to distract from the abortion debate. Ectopic pregnancy miscarriage have nothing to do with
00:31:04.160 the debate over whether abortion should be legal. And pro-lifers know that, right? The other side
00:31:08.320 doesn't want to talk about what's in the laws even. They just want to talk about anything other than
00:31:13.080 abortion. Well, your piece is helpful in equipping pro-lifers, because I know that you said that
00:31:18.740 pro-lifers know that, but actually my inbox is filled on a daily basis and has been from the past
00:31:24.980 month. How do I answer this? How do I answer this? I'm pro-life, but I had one person reach out to me
00:31:30.740 and said, oh, I've got a friend's daughter. I'm in Indiana. And she went to, she tried to get
00:31:38.740 care for a miscarriage and she wasn't able to. She was denied until she almost died. And I told
00:31:44.640 this person, well, look, there's no new restriction on abortion in Indiana. They haven't passed any
00:31:50.020 restriction on abortion. And this person said, well, I'm just telling you what I know. So that's
00:31:55.420 kind of, I think, the reaction and the confusing place that people are in, that they're not,
00:31:59.640 a lot of times even pro-lifers aren't even asking the question, but what does the law say?
00:32:03.500 What is the truth? They just don't want to be seen as someone who is anti-woman or they think,
00:32:09.280 okay, well, I'm pro-life, but if these laws are leading to the inhibition of miscarriage care,
00:32:14.600 then I can't be for it. So your piece actually, I mean, it does a lot. It does a lot to equip people
00:32:20.080 and make them feel prepared to have these conversations because it's rough out there
00:32:24.960 in a liberal woman Instagram, unfortunately. It really is. I have not been enjoying my time on
00:32:30.580 Instagram for the past month. And I will say, kind of like you mentioned, the lies, the euphemisms,
00:32:35.220 the propaganda, this chaos is the point, right? The other side has created this chaos on purpose
00:32:39.860 because it's easier to do that than to defend their preferred abortion policy, which is deeply
00:32:44.200 unpopular, deeply grotesque. And that's really what they want. They're trying to create confusion
00:32:49.220 on purpose. And so that's why I wrote the piece. That's why I wrote my book with Ryan. We really want
00:32:53.640 pro-lifers to have access to the best information so that we can very confidently say,
00:32:58.100 this chaos, this confusion is good for nobody. And here's the truth.
00:33:02.620 Yeah. Tell us more about this book, Tearing Us Apart.
00:33:05.980 Yeah. So the idea, we started working on it last fall, actually, in the hopes that it would come
00:33:10.300 out in a post-Roe America. There you go.
00:33:13.040 Yeah. Very grateful, of course, and joyful that I did. Three days after the court overturned
00:33:17.360 Roe, the book came out. And our thesis is basically, look, pro-lifers are great at explaining how
00:33:22.780 abortion harms the unborn child. And that is the fundamental grave moral evil of abortion. Of
00:33:28.020 course, we have to be able to articulate that. But if it's true that this is a grave moral evil and
00:33:33.160 that hundreds of thousands of unborn babies are killed every year in this country, how could it
00:33:38.100 be that this doesn't harm everything else? And so we go through and catalog all the ways in which
00:33:43.300 almost 50 years of legal abortion have harmed women, torn apart families, harmed our medical system,
00:33:48.660 harmed communities who are already vulnerable, you know, the disabled, the poor, minority
00:33:53.680 communities. We talk about how it's harmed our politics, our law, the Democratic Party in
00:33:59.200 particular, just kind of the corruption there, and our culture. And so we really try, you know,
00:34:03.880 along the way, we assemble about 30 pages of footnotes because we really want readers to be
00:34:08.360 able to trace all of our arguments, to read for themselves, to do their own digging. And while we
00:34:13.420 would hope abortion supporters could read it and kind of at least see where we're coming from,
00:34:17.140 it's a very reasonable case, we really do want to equip pro-lifers for the future of the post-Roe
00:34:22.540 country. Yes. Well, thank you so much. I encourage everyone to go get it. They can get it on Amazon.
00:34:28.560 I'm guessing they can pick it up at their local bookstore too. Yes, they can get it wherever books
00:34:33.160 are sold. Awesome. And they can follow you and they can follow your work at National Review.
00:34:38.600 Thank you so much, Alexandra, for taking the time to come on. Thank you. Great to be with you.
00:34:47.140 All right, guys, we've got lots of good stuff coming down the pipeline. We've got a fun video,
00:34:59.260 a skit that will be coming out soon, maybe this weekend, maybe next week. Don't know. Keep you
00:35:03.000 on your toes. We've got an amazing interview coming out on Monday. As always, please send your feedback.
00:35:08.920 What topics do you want to see? What things do you want to see broken down? What guests do you want
00:35:13.320 back? What segment ideas that you have? We are always open to the ideas of you guys who are,
00:35:18.720 as I've said before, officially my executive producers, executive, executive producers.
00:35:24.500 We, your wish is our command. Also, also, we've got a lot of good merch that you guys can check out.
00:35:34.120 I do want to tell you specifically about Blaze Sock. So I've got my own relatable merch. You can check
00:35:39.440 that out. We'll link it. But also, we have Blaze Socks and they've got a special deal going on
00:35:46.540 right now. They've got different kinds of patriotic socks. They've got DeSantis socks. They've got
00:35:50.340 some MAGA socks. They've also got like making fun of the world economic socks. They're all American
00:35:56.060 made. They're really awesome. You can go to blazesocks.com. You can use promo code Allie Socks
00:36:01.420 for a discount. That's blazesocks.com and you can check out that merch. So there is one more thing
00:36:07.060 that I wanted to say that I meant to say at the beginning of the episode. I just want to send
00:36:14.140 my condolences to the families of the Indiana Congresswoman, Jackie Walorski and her two staffers
00:36:22.220 who died in a car wreck yesterday. Actually, our previous producer was very good friends with the
00:36:30.340 young woman who died, Emma Thompson. Emma Thompson, she was only 28. And then Zachary
00:36:36.940 Potts was the other staffer, age 27. They all three died in a car wreck yesterday. They were
00:36:44.920 driving to an event. Someone coming the opposite direction accidentally veered over head-on collision
00:36:51.920 and everyone involved died. I just cannot imagine what the families are experiencing right now,
00:36:58.080 especially the parents of these two young adults who lost their lives too early. So I just wanted to
00:37:04.620 make sure that we put a word out about that and that you could be praying for their families,
00:37:12.300 of course, that they would be comforted, that they would be given peace, and also that somehow God would
00:37:16.520 be glorified through this awful tragedy. All right, that's all that we have time for today. I hope you
00:37:22.700 guys have a wonderful weekend. We will be back here on Monday.