The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 14 - The Absolute Worst Pro-Abortion Argument

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the show, the CarCast, as I call it now. Everybody, thanks for listening.

00:00:04.540 Now, I want to talk today about the worst, the worst pro-abortion argument.

00:00:11.720 And there are a great many to choose from, so this is a difficult, it's pretty difficult to decide.

00:00:16.340 There's a whole buffet, a just smorgasbord of terrible, awful, illogical, anti-science arguments

00:00:26.500 because every pro-abortion argument is bad, not just bad morally, but also just logically

00:00:32.840 unsound. But the worst one, in my view, is, well, it's the one that you've heard a million times,

00:00:38.440 you hear all the time, that the baby isn't a baby, it's a fetus, it's a clump of cells,

00:00:42.380 and it's not a real person. It is rather a potential person. The baby is a potential person.

00:00:49.120 Now, you're not surprised, of course, that I would cite this as the worst argument because it's so

00:00:53.220 common. But you may not expect why it is, in my mind, the worst argument. There's one thing in

00:01:02.580 particular that makes this line of reasoning really, really stupid. And I want to explain what

00:01:08.860 that is. But first of all, we know and we should establish, again, that it's a bad argument,

00:01:15.040 first and foremost, because it just isn't true. That's not what makes it the worst argument,

00:01:19.600 because, of course, every pro-abortion argument isn't true. But still, we should stipulate that

00:01:25.400 it isn't at all true. There's no such thing as a merely potential human. Either you're a human or

00:01:35.080 you're not. Okay? Either you're a person or you're not. A human is a human. A person is a person.

00:01:40.700 An unborn child has the same inherent value as a born child, because it must.

00:01:50.680 Logically, scientifically, philosophically, it must have the same value. Do you know why?

00:01:56.140 Because inherent value is inherent. And inherent means belonging to a thing by its nature,

00:02:03.340 which means that value, if our value is inherent as human beings, which is what most of us believe,

00:02:08.600 it's what our country is built on. The doctrine of human rights is built on the notion that human

00:02:15.420 rights are inherent, belonging to a thing by its nature, which means that if something has inherent

00:02:22.160 value, its value cannot be lost. It cannot be gained. You cannot acquire it over time by degrees.

00:02:32.440 It cannot be reliant on circumstances. It cannot be conditional. Either you have inherent value or

00:02:41.600 you don't. If our value is conditional, which is to say our value is conditional on how useful our life

00:02:49.540 is to those around us, how desirable our life is to those around us, whether it's our mother or whoever

00:02:55.820 else. If that's the case, then human, then that means that human value is acquired over time by

00:03:01.500 degrees. It's very conditional. It's dependent on how useful you are. And so then there's nothing

00:03:06.700 necessarily wrong with slavery or genocide or anything else. The only real argument against

00:03:13.600 those atrocities is that human beings have inherent dignity. If they don't, well, then, okay.

00:03:20.680 enslave away, I guess. Let the strong survive. Dog-eat-dog world. If humans do not by nature possess an

00:03:31.360 infinite inherent value, then it's reasonable to claim that certain human beings, even of the born

00:03:37.880 variety, have less accrued value than others. That would mean, for instance, if I'm stronger and

00:03:47.060 smarter than you, I'm more valuable. And it would be more of an injustice to kill me than to kill you.

00:03:54.180 And probably I should have the right to kill you if I want, because I'm the person with more value.

00:04:00.500 And if I decided that your existence was inconvenient to me, well, then as the person with more value,

00:04:05.240 I should be able to kill you. Also, you know, to say that you have more value now

00:04:14.000 than you had in the womb is to say that you are, in essence, is to say that you are you now.

00:04:22.900 But you were not you in the womb, even though you were you. Now, if that's the case, when did you start

00:04:30.400 being you? If you did not start being you at the moment you came into physical existence?

00:04:36.740 If you, if your you-ness did not appear the same moment that you appeared physically, then when did it

00:04:45.340 appear? And what were you before you were you? This is how I try to explain it to people. This is, you

00:04:53.260 know, kind of the image. I say, okay, so just take yourself in your current form, okay?

00:04:59.780 Imagine yourself as you are right now. Now, rewind the tape back to yesterday. Was that still you?

00:05:11.000 Did you still have value? Okay. Now, a year ago. Now, go back 10 years. Now, go back 15. Go back to

00:05:19.800 kindergarten. Go back to when you were, you know, to your first birthday. Go back to when you were six

00:05:25.340 months old. Keep following your own timeline all the way back, back, back, back, back. Rewind the tape

00:05:33.340 and then stop there, just right there, at the moment when you first emerged from the womb into the world,

00:05:41.620 at that moment. Now, that's still you, right? That's you. Okay. Now, just rewind it one more second.

00:05:49.580 Just one more second. Is it still you? If that's not you and you didn't have value then,

00:05:58.160 what happened? Now, fast forward a second. Just keep, rewind a second, fast forward.

00:06:04.400 What's going on here in this one second time? What happened that gave you value and you-ness?

00:06:11.520 Yes. But of course, it had to be you, even a second before. A second before you emerged.

00:06:19.960 It couldn't have been anyone else, right? You were you and therefore you had value

00:06:26.600 from the moment that you first physically existed.

00:06:30.620 And if you did not have value at that first moment of existence,

00:06:38.100 then you don't have value now. Again, that's how inherent value works.

00:06:46.060 It must always belong to a thing in order for it to be inherent value.

00:06:52.020 You didn't have it then. You don't have it now. But so we see that by removing value from an unborn child,

00:07:00.560 we remove it from all humanity. Because all of us were at one time an unborn human.

00:07:09.360 So we think that we've taken it from everyone, just from the babies. We have taken it from ourselves

00:07:14.220 at the same time. But let's just, okay, so that's, um, that's why the argument is wrong.

00:07:23.160 But that's not even the point. Or it's not the only point. Because here's the thing,

00:07:28.240 here's the really incredible thing. Even if I agreed that the fetus is merely a potential human,

00:07:37.760 which I most definitely, emphatically, irreversibly do not agree. But let's just say,

00:07:42.140 for the sake of argument, let's just say I did. Let's just say I gave you that. Let's just say

00:07:46.460 I gave you the pro-abort. What if I just said, okay, fine. They're not people. They're not,

00:07:50.800 they're just potential people. They're not fully people. Fine. Just for a moment. Let's just run

00:07:56.440 with that train of thought just for a second. Okay. Southern, it's not a person. It's a potential

00:08:02.320 person. Wouldn't you still treat this potential person like it's the most valuable thing on the

00:08:10.240 planet? Wouldn't it still be a great injustice and travesty to kill this life or this potential

00:08:16.860 life? However you want to put it. See the pro-abortion position, in order to get to the

00:08:22.480 pro-abortion position, you have to make two giant, impossible, fantastic leaps. And the first leap

00:08:31.340 is to declare that an unborn person is not a person. That is an impossible leap to make.

00:08:36.680 Scientifically, the science doesn't support it. But even if I gave you a trampoline and

00:08:41.040 I said, fine, go ahead and make the jump, I'll set up like a zip line so you can somehow

00:08:45.840 make that massive logical jump. Even if I did, when you land on the next platform, you're going

00:08:53.180 to find you have a whole new jump to make. Because now you have to get from here, from it's

00:09:00.180 not a person, to let's kill it. The two do not follow each other logically. They don't

00:09:07.420 come hand in hand. Just because I agree, just for the moment, that it's not a person, doesn't

00:09:14.640 mean I agree we should kill it. So that's, you've made it there, but you haven't made it

00:09:23.040 all the way. Even by proving that an unborn baby is not a baby, which you can't prove because it 0.75

00:09:29.360 is a baby. But even in some science fiction world where you did prove it, you still haven't proven

00:09:36.540 that abortion is okay. Here's an analogy. It's kind of a crude analogy. It doesn't work on every 0.80

00:09:41.980 level, but it works on one level, at least when we're dealing with this issue of potential.

00:09:45.480 So what if you won $50 million in the lottery? And you had your $50 million lottery ticket.

00:09:56.000 Let's pretend, here's my dry cleaning receipt. Okay. This is my, this is your $50 million lottery

00:10:05.080 ticket. And by the way, can you believe how expensive dry cleaning is these days? I hadn't

00:10:11.220 been to a dry cleaner in a long time. I just usually iron my own clothes. I didn't feel like

00:10:14.520 it was like 50 bucks for just a few. Anyway. So you have your $50 million lottery ticket

00:10:21.060 and you're, you're on your way to the lottery office to cash it in. And imagine that on the way

00:10:28.660 I run in and I snatch the lottery ticket from you. And then I just like eat it or I set it on fire

00:10:35.600 right in front of you. Okay. Like the Joker and the dark night, I'm just burning it right in front of

00:10:40.840 you. Now that ticket was not $50 million. It's just a piece of paper. It's just a receipt.

00:10:49.600 There's a million of them like this out there. That's all it is. It was moments away from being

00:10:54.920 converted into $50 million. But at the moment, it's just a piece of paper. But how would you react?

00:11:01.840 Would you react as though you just lost a piece of paper? Would you react like I'd react if you stole

00:11:08.420 this from me? It'd be kind of inconvenient. I'd have to, you know, I'd need to go and give him my

00:11:13.220 name to pick up my dry cleaning. But still, would you react like, like, like someone just took a piece

00:11:18.560 of paper? Or would you react as though you had just lost $50 million? I think we know. You would

00:11:27.640 mourn the loss of that ticket, not as a ticket, but as $50 million. Because you see, whether the

00:11:34.540 ticket is $50 million or is merely the potentiality of $50 million, that's basically irrelevant.

00:11:40.700 The value is still the same. And it would be the same to you if you had the ticket. It would be the

00:11:49.180 same in the eyes of the law, I imagine. Or imagine if, imagine I gave you some like magical bean or

00:11:56.380 something. Because that's, that's basically how pro-aborts view unborn life. They see it as a

00:12:01.240 magical bean, like jack in a beanstalk, this magical thing that just upon emerging from the birth canal

00:12:07.260 turns mysteriously into a human. So imagine that I actually gave you a magical bean. And I said,

00:12:13.460 okay, hold on to this. And water it once a day. And in nine months, it will turn into a magic dragon

00:12:20.920 that will grant wishes. Now, how would you treat that bean? Would you treat it as just any old kidney

00:12:26.880 bean? Throw it in a pot of chili? Have it for lunch? Or would you treat it like a magic dragon that

00:12:34.280 could grant wishes? See, this is the incredible thing about the pro-abortion argument. It fails

00:12:39.240 even on its own terms. Even if I agreed with how they frame the argument, which I don't, but even if

00:12:44.560 I did, I would still see it as an act of just unspeakable wickedness to murder this potential

00:12:52.040 human. Because even a potential child is still worth more than every animal on earth. And it's more

00:12:57.760 valuable than every object in the physical universe. And I don't even need to use analogies of lottery

00:13:06.380 tickets and magical beans. How about this instead? Think about a bald eagle egg or an endangered sea

00:13:15.620 turtle egg. Now, those are both protected by the law. It's illegal to do any harm to an eagle egg or a

00:13:24.200 sea turtle egg. Although in the scientific mind of a leftist, that eagle egg is not really an eagle.

00:13:32.240 It's just a potential eagle. A sea turtle egg, not really a sea turtle, just a sea turtle,

00:13:36.960 just a potential sea turtle. Yet, if a pro-abortion person stumbled upon me, you know, if they were

00:13:43.900 walking down the beach and they came upon me and I'm just like stomping a whole mound of endangered sea

00:13:52.220 turtle eggs, or if they came into my kitchen and I said, hey, I'm just cooking up some bald eagle

00:13:58.920 omelets, you want one? They would faint with just rage. And then when they woke up, they'd probably stone 1.00

00:14:04.740 me to death. And then they'd call the police and I'd be arrested while dead for doing this horrible

00:14:11.460 thing. So in the case of a sea turtle or an eagle, they have no problem seeing how even a potential sea

00:14:20.320 turtle is worth as much as a sea turtle or a potential eagle as much as an eagle. Yet with a

00:14:28.260 potential human, they say it's worthless, it's trash, throw it out. Doesn't make any sense. Even

00:14:34.820 on their own illogical terms, it is still illogical. So there you go. All right, we'll leave it there.

00:14:41.720 Thanks for watching, everybody. I'll talk to you next time.

The Matt Walsh Show - April 20, 2018

Ep. 14 - The Absolute Worst Pro-Abortion Argument

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