The Matt Walsh Show - May 09, 2018


Ep. 26 - How To Destroy The ＂Best＂ Pro-Abortion Argument


Episode Stats

Length

26 minutes

Words per Minute

152.8032

Word Count

4,061

Sentence Count

257

Misogynist Sentences

11

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Let's talk about bodily autonomy, okay?
00:00:04.480 This is really the number one pro-abortion argument.
00:00:09.660 This is the pro-abortion argument that pro-aborts think is irrefutable.
00:00:14.160 They're very proud of this argument because they think it is the argument that cannot be refuted.
00:00:20.720 That's how good it is.
00:00:22.840 And it's the argument now that upon which they've based their entire pro-abortion position,
00:00:28.900 many pro-aborts have at this point really basically conceded or at least decided to move beyond the personhood debate.
00:00:40.640 So for a lot of pro-abortion people, they're not going to argue with you about when does personhood begin?
00:00:47.680 When does life begin?
00:00:49.240 Is the fetus a human life?
00:00:51.040 Is it a person?
00:00:52.340 A lot of pro-abortion people will say, well, that doesn't matter.
00:00:55.640 Call the fetus whatever you want to call it.
00:00:57.220 Life, not a life, person, not a person, doesn't matter.
00:01:01.580 It doesn't matter what the fetus is.
00:01:03.560 All that matters is my autonomy, my right over my own body.
00:01:09.420 What you'll hear these days is that personhood begins whenever the mother decides.
00:01:16.400 That is now the scientific position of pro-aborts.
00:01:21.380 That personhood, life begins whenever the mother wants it to because she has autonomy and this autonomy gives her the really supernatural ability to grant or rescind humanity to and from her child depending on what she wants.
00:01:38.380 So if she wants the baby to be a human being at 20 weeks, it's a human being at 20 weeks.
00:01:42.420 If she wants it to be a human at the moment of conception, it's a human at conception.
00:01:46.240 If she wants it to be a human right at the moment of birth, then that's what it's a human.
00:01:52.180 If she never wants it to be a human, then it's never a human.
00:01:54.720 Listen, this is the godlike supernatural power that pro-aborts will say a mother has.
00:02:02.980 This is what the bodily autonomy position necessitates.
00:02:07.480 It necessitates either that the humanity and personhood of the child depends on the mother's wishes because of her autonomy,
00:02:14.920 or the humanity and personhood just don't matter at all.
00:02:19.800 It's an irrelevant question because the mother has her body and she can do what she wants with it.
00:02:25.780 So I'd like to take this, what is considered to be this great, brilliant pro-abortion argument,
00:02:33.520 the pro-abortion argument that nobody could possibly argue against.
00:02:37.800 I'd like to prove that it is actually completely, totally, utterly ridiculous.
00:02:44.920 Now, I did this in my book, The Unholy Trinity, which came out last year.
00:02:49.760 I kind of deconstructed the bodily autonomy argument.
00:02:52.640 I think it's worth reiterating because, as I said, this really now is the pro-abortion position.
00:02:58.420 This is their entire, really, this is their entire position now.
00:03:01.700 So now I'm going to explain why bodily autonomy is a bad argument, okay?
00:03:06.380 Number one, the most obvious problem and the first problem that most pro-lifers will mention
00:03:10.760 is that it's not your body.
00:03:13.380 Your body is not the body at issue here.
00:03:16.600 The issue is the child's body, not yours.
00:03:19.640 So your body is A, the child's body is B, A and B are not the same.
00:03:24.660 They are distinct, separate entities.
00:03:28.520 This, I'm afraid, is a scientific fact.
00:03:31.840 You're not going to find any scientist with more than two brain cells in his head
00:03:34.600 who will argue that B actually is A.
00:03:38.120 You're not going to find any scientist who will actually say that the child is the mother's body
00:03:46.400 because that would be insanity.
00:03:50.840 So not your body.
00:03:52.880 Child's body, your body, not the same.
00:03:55.840 But okay, you say, fine.
00:03:57.680 The child's body is not the same as my body.
00:04:00.740 However, the child's body is dependent upon mine, and I have the right to withdraw my support
00:04:08.320 from this dependent entity.
00:04:11.020 I have the right to remove my body from this other body, which has attached itself to me,
00:04:17.740 like some alien parasite, right?
00:04:20.420 And this is how I exercise my autonomy, by I should have the right to say to this tyrannical
00:04:27.960 dictator in my womb, I should have the right to say to it, I am not going to serve you anymore,
00:04:33.560 okay?
00:04:33.780 I'm not going to be your slave.
00:04:35.740 I'm not going to be your handmaid.
00:04:37.680 And here you'll probably also give me some variation of the Judith Jarvis Thompson analogy
00:04:42.460 of a person who, you've heard this analogy before, or some version of it,
00:04:46.420 of a person who wakes up in a hospital attached by wires to some other person, some stranger.
00:04:52.940 And the wires are keeping him alive.
00:04:55.220 And a pro-abort will claim that this is what pregnancy is.
00:04:57.800 It's like waking up in a hospital one day and looking over and seeing there are all these weird
00:05:02.140 wires coming off of you, and they're attached to some unconscious person over there.
00:05:06.560 And then the nurse comes in and says, oh, you know what?
00:05:08.720 We're going to need you to stay like this for the next nine months in order to keep that
00:05:12.120 person alive.
00:05:12.700 But that's what, that apparently is supposed to be an accurate representation of pregnancy,
00:05:19.560 right?
00:05:20.540 And then the person who makes the analogy will say, well, what if that happened to you?
00:05:24.680 Would you not have the right to detach yourself from this other person?
00:05:29.760 Yes, I would have the right.
00:05:31.520 However, you should not have that right.
00:05:34.660 And I'll tell you why.
00:05:35.420 Number two, because abortion is not the act of merely detaching yourself from this other
00:05:43.300 body.
00:05:44.300 Abortion is not simply unplugging, okay?
00:05:48.500 Abortion is not, that's not what abortion is.
00:05:53.460 Abortion is not withdrawing from the baby.
00:05:57.720 Abortion is rather the active, purposeful, direct killing of another human life.
00:06:05.960 You see, even if I completely agreed with the bodily autonomy argument, which I don't, but
00:06:12.420 even if I did, I still would oppose abortion.
00:06:16.900 Bodily autonomy argument doesn't get you all the way to abortion.
00:06:20.600 Because if the idea is that a woman has the right to detach herself from her baby, to extricate
00:06:28.640 herself from the situation, to remove herself from this dependent life form, that would mean,
00:06:34.380 yes, okay, we have to take the other life form out of her, right?
00:06:39.200 It would not mean that we have to kill it before we take it out.
00:06:44.960 That's what abortion is.
00:06:46.320 Abortion is killing the baby directly.
00:06:49.260 Somehow, somehow this gets lost in the abortion debate.
00:06:52.940 Somehow, abortion itself gets lost in the debate about abortion.
00:06:58.220 And we talk about abortion as if it is simply just unplugging or separating these two individuals.
00:07:05.860 No, abortion is killing one of the individuals on purpose, directly.
00:07:11.840 Babies are, quote, viable at 22 weeks now, I think.
00:07:15.440 So, and that number is getting lower and lower, which means that the baby can survive outside
00:07:20.000 of the womb at 22 weeks.
00:07:21.840 Now, yet, the pro-aborts who make the bodily autonomy argument, they are, in almost every
00:07:27.720 case that I've ever encountered, they are not in favor of abortion restrictions at viability.
00:07:32.660 They, the bodily autonomy pro-aborts, they're in favor of abortion from conception all the
00:07:37.900 way up to the very moment before birth.
00:07:40.140 But if a woman decides to exercise her autonomy at 22 weeks or 23 or any time thereafter, well,
00:07:48.960 that means, okay, yes, the baby has to come out one way or another.
00:07:53.540 But why must the baby be stabbed with poison first?
00:07:58.700 Why must he be de-limbed?
00:08:00.460 Why must he be ripped out limb from limb?
00:08:02.440 Why must his skull be crushed?
00:08:03.900 I'm sorry to be graphic, but this is what abortion is in the, in the, in the later terms.
00:08:09.460 In abortion, the abortionist is saying, okay, we got to get this baby out.
00:08:13.560 And so his method of taking the baby out is to rip it out with forceps, one limb at a
00:08:19.140 time.
00:08:20.600 Another way to take a baby out is to just take the entire baby out whole and still alive,
00:08:26.580 and then to take it away from the mother, bring it up to the NICU, and then, um, and then,
00:08:32.320 uh, hope that, uh, someone will come and adopt the child.
00:08:35.240 Now what, so if we're talking about bodily autonomy, wouldn't bodily autonomy simply necessitate
00:08:43.420 the delivery of the child to actively kill the child in the process is a step, a rather
00:08:50.900 large step, a significant step beyond autonomy.
00:08:54.580 You've gone beyond autonomy.
00:08:56.480 All the only place that autonomy gets you, if I were to agree that you have autonomy,
00:09:00.660 which you don't, we'll get to that in a minute, but that only gets you as far as, okay, get
00:09:05.180 this baby out.
00:09:06.960 Kill the baby is another step.
00:09:09.320 And it's got nothing to do with autonomy whatsoever.
00:09:13.460 Killing the baby is just pure murder.
00:09:15.760 And that's all it is.
00:09:17.500 This is also, by the way, why the, the life of the mother arguments for abortion are completely
00:09:26.100 bunk.
00:09:27.660 We're told that sometimes it's necessary to get an abortion to save a mother's life.
00:09:31.860 It is never necessary.
00:09:34.340 Never.
00:09:34.820 It is never, ever, ever necessary to kill a child in order to save a mother.
00:09:42.320 Never.
00:09:43.720 I say, have I said never enough?
00:09:45.680 It's never.
00:09:46.500 Anytime someone says life of the mother, please remind them that has never happened ever.
00:09:53.280 There has never been a life saving abortion ever committed ever.
00:09:58.140 Now, it could be the case sometimes that something catastrophically, you know, some catastrophic
00:10:05.980 thing happens in the course of a pregnancy.
00:10:09.260 And now the baby has to come out in order to save the mother's life and maybe even to
00:10:14.800 save the baby's life.
00:10:15.620 That does happen.
00:10:17.660 And so what do you do?
00:10:18.680 You take the baby out.
00:10:21.280 But the extra step of killing the baby before you take it out, that doesn't do anything for
00:10:27.720 the mother, that only puts the mother more at risk.
00:10:31.520 That extra step of killing the baby first is an extra step.
00:10:35.060 It's a dangerous extra step.
00:10:36.840 The safest thing would just be to take the baby out.
00:10:39.640 There's no reason.
00:10:40.380 There's no medical reason why the baby has to die first.
00:10:45.360 Number three, bodily autonomy arguments, especially when argued using the attached to a stranger
00:10:53.220 by wires analogy.
00:10:54.460 These arguments completely disregard the relationship involved here.
00:11:02.180 It's no coincidence that when someone does the whole, well, what if you're attached by
00:11:07.980 wires to someone in the hospital?
00:11:10.140 The person you're attached to in that analogy is always a stranger.
00:11:14.480 Have you noticed that?
00:11:15.720 Always a stranger.
00:11:16.600 But the relationship that we're dealing with here in pregnancy is that of a mother and child.
00:11:23.060 The child is not a stranger.
00:11:25.140 He's not some alien species which has attached itself to you.
00:11:29.360 That's your child.
00:11:31.860 To claim autonomy is to claim that your status as the child's mother has no significance whatsoever
00:11:38.020 and carries with it no special responsibilities at all.
00:11:42.480 But we all know that's not true.
00:11:44.800 Nobody actually believes that.
00:11:49.160 Nobody.
00:11:50.980 Society couldn't function if we all actually believe that.
00:11:56.180 Do we not require, okay, require by law that parents make all sorts of sacrifices, do all sorts
00:12:06.340 of things for their kids that they're not required to do for strangers?
00:12:10.260 We say to parents, you must feed your child, clothe your child, educate your child, discipline
00:12:16.220 your child, shelter your child.
00:12:19.340 All of this is very taxing for the parent.
00:12:22.140 It is a claim on the parent's autonomy.
00:12:25.440 All of it is.
00:12:26.460 It involves the parent's heart, mind, body, soul, bank account.
00:12:32.140 What the law says to parents of born children is that, yes, you must invest your entire being
00:12:41.960 into this person.
00:12:43.800 Your autonomy is gone because you have a responsibility to this person.
00:12:49.060 You are not autonomous as a parent.
00:12:51.880 That's what the law says.
00:12:53.280 And that's what everybody in society actually believes.
00:12:57.320 Now, if you decide, if you have a child and you decide you're going to neglect your child,
00:13:03.420 you're not going to feed it.
00:13:05.520 You're not going to provide clothes.
00:13:07.640 You're going to make your child sleep outside in a doghouse rather than inside your home.
00:13:13.120 Or you're just going to outright abort your child and kill your child.
00:13:16.500 You wouldn't be able to go before the judge and say, well, how would you like it if some
00:13:21.860 stranger moved into your house and demanded food?
00:13:25.960 Well, I wouldn't like it at all.
00:13:27.820 I admit that.
00:13:29.180 If some stranger barged into my home and said, give me food, I wouldn't be a fan of that.
00:13:33.940 But that's not a stranger.
00:13:35.540 That's your child.
00:13:36.300 You have a responsibility to him.
00:13:39.860 You have a responsibility to him that nobody else has.
00:13:44.780 You have a special and unique responsibility to your own children.
00:13:51.260 Sorry if you don't like it, but that's just the fact of the matter.
00:13:56.140 So I ask you, if we require by law that parents care for their children, provide for their children,
00:14:03.480 see to their children's every need, or else at least make arrangements for someone else
00:14:08.060 to do all that, what happens at birth that suddenly creates this duty?
00:14:15.040 And why does it not exist a second beforehand?
00:14:18.060 All I'm saying is, again, we all agree that parents of born children are not autonomous, and they have all kinds of responsibilities to their children.
00:14:29.820 And if they don't want to fulfill those responsibilities, they have to find someone who will fulfill them.
00:14:37.080 And they certainly can't just kill their child, no matter how stressed out they are, and no matter how draining it is to be a parent.
00:14:45.380 And we say that to the parent because you're the parent.
00:14:50.900 That's your child.
00:14:51.980 You are responsible to it.
00:14:53.020 That's what it means to be living in a civilized society.
00:14:56.580 So all I'm saying is, logically, we should take that principle and apply it to the womb as well, because it's the same child.
00:15:05.800 Nothing changes.
00:15:06.660 It's the same person.
00:15:07.620 And so, and your relationship is the same, and therefore, the responsibilities should be the same.
00:15:13.420 Number four, if abortion prohibitions are a violation of bodily autonomy, then who is the one violating the woman's autonomy?
00:15:23.860 Well, it would have to be the baby.
00:15:26.520 I mean, that's who's violating you, right?
00:15:28.820 If you're saying, I'm violated by being forced to keep this baby in my womb or this fetus,
00:15:35.580 well, who really is the guilty party here?
00:15:41.500 You say that being forced to carry a baby is a violation of autonomy.
00:15:45.900 Well, that means that the baby is the one violating you.
00:15:49.980 And those who make abortion illegal in this equation are merely forcing you to endure that violation,
00:15:56.020 but the guilty party here is the baby, which I guess is why he gets capital punishment.
00:16:01.640 But wait a second.
00:16:03.080 Here's the problem.
00:16:03.880 The baby is in the only place he can be.
00:16:09.160 The baby is in the place that nature has decreed.
00:16:13.320 He is in his natural environment.
00:16:16.240 He is following natural order.
00:16:20.220 So a baby in the womb, that is a part of natural order, okay?
00:16:25.680 Someone being attached to a stranger by wires in the hospital, that is not really a part of the natural order.
00:16:31.840 That is something extraordinary and beyond nature.
00:16:37.120 But a baby in the womb, that's just nature.
00:16:40.540 It's not a corruption of nature.
00:16:42.120 Okay, so you can't say, well, cancer is part of nature, too.
00:16:44.980 Are you saying I can't get cancer treated?
00:16:47.800 Cancer is a corruption of nature.
00:16:50.120 It's nature gone wrong.
00:16:53.540 A baby in the womb is just, that's nature working exactly as nature has to work in order for the species to be propagated.
00:17:02.520 So the baby really is not the one violating you.
00:17:06.980 I guess nature is violating you here.
00:17:08.960 But how can nature violate your rights when rights themselves, if they exist at all, are natural?
00:17:20.060 We talk about natural rights.
00:17:22.380 Our country is, the Constitution is founded on the basis of natural human rights.
00:17:28.780 So if you're claiming that you have a right to abortion, which is, which somehow is in the Constitution, right?
00:17:35.420 Even though I, it must be written in an invisible ink because I've never seen it.
00:17:38.220 But if it's in there, then that means it's based on natural rights.
00:17:43.400 Rights from nature, from the natural order, which is to say from God.
00:17:47.100 But for the sake of this argument, if you want to call it nature, fine.
00:17:49.780 So nature has decided that all human beings must be born this way.
00:17:55.120 And yet nature has also decided that it's a violation of your rights when humans are born this way.
00:18:02.680 How does it?
00:18:04.060 I don't understand.
00:18:05.440 How could you have a natural right to usurp and destroy this natural and good and healthy process?
00:18:14.100 How could those, both of those things be from nature?
00:18:16.920 And if you're saying that nature is your oppressor, if you're saying that pregnancy itself is an oppressive thing that I should not be subjected to,
00:18:25.800 well, nature is at fault, and fine, nature is your oppressor.
00:18:29.460 But then don't appeal to nature, that is, to natural rights, when fighting against this oppression.
00:18:37.460 Don't appeal to the very thing that is oppressing you, apparently.
00:18:40.400 Now, if you admit that your right to abortion is not natural, and it's not from nature, but it is just the arbitrary decree of man and governments,
00:18:51.180 then I would say that the arbitrary decree is arbitrary and thus should be overturned.
00:18:57.340 And if you believe that rights do not come from nature, and as we've already said, for abortion to work,
00:19:01.920 for the bottomly autonomy argument to work,
00:19:03.600 you have to admit that this right is not from nature, because pregnancy is from nature.
00:19:09.440 So where does the right come from?
00:19:11.500 Well, it comes from the government then, I guess, in that case.
00:19:13.900 But then you couldn't very well complain when the government overturns that right or restricts abortion, can you?
00:19:20.920 Iowa just passed very restrictive abortion laws.
00:19:23.780 You can't complain about that if you think that rights come from government,
00:19:27.340 because then that means the government can change its mind, and then the rights are gone.
00:19:31.280 It doesn't make any sense to say, oh, the government is infringing on my rights, if the rights come from government.
00:19:36.340 If you say that the government is infringing on your rights, then you are appealing to some higher order above the government.
00:19:42.720 But we've already explained that you can't do that because it's that higher order which has decided that you should have this baby and carry it in your womb.
00:19:51.820 Number five.
00:19:53.420 Last point.
00:19:55.380 It really all comes back to this.
00:19:58.340 Complete bodily autonomy does not exist.
00:20:03.780 So I've just spent the last four points explaining all these problems with autonomy and everything.
00:20:09.300 What it really comes down to is autonomy does not exist.
00:20:13.620 It's not a real thing.
00:20:15.420 It doesn't exist.
00:20:17.160 You are not autonomous.
00:20:19.700 And you never will be.
00:20:22.960 Human beings are not autonomous creatures.
00:20:24.940 We are not these entirely sovereign, independent entities with no duty or responsibility at all to our fellow man or our families.
00:20:33.640 But that's what complete autonomy would have to mean.
00:20:38.640 It means you are entirely sovereign and to yourself.
00:20:42.540 And if we talk about an entirely sovereign, autonomous country, what we're saying is this is a country that can make its own laws, do its own thing, and it has no, you know, it cannot be controlled to an extent by any other country.
00:20:56.180 And so if you're a completely autonomous individual, it means that you have no responsibilities at all whatsoever to anyone.
00:21:04.640 And you would not be able to say, well, okay, but we have autonomy, but we only have autonomy up until the point when we harm someone else.
00:21:15.220 So if you're pro-abortion, you cannot make the argument that, well, we have the right to do whatever we want as long as we're not harming anybody else.
00:21:23.220 Abortion is most certainly harming someone else.
00:21:26.500 There's no dispute about that.
00:21:27.780 So what you're actually proposing here, think about this, you're proposing an autonomy that does allow you to harm other people.
00:21:37.840 You're proposing an autonomy that allows even for murder, which is you're proposing anarchy, okay?
00:21:45.780 You're proposing that we are so autonomous, so sovereign, so free from any social responsibilities at all, that we could even kill other people.
00:21:59.400 And we can justify it based on the fact that this is me doing what I want to do.
00:22:04.920 Why did I kill my neighbor?
00:22:06.620 Because I wanted to kill my neighbor.
00:22:08.360 Hey, you don't want to kill neighbors?
00:22:09.880 Don't kill neighbors.
00:22:10.740 Don't like neighbor killing?
00:22:11.980 Don't kill neighbors.
00:22:12.900 I wanted to kill my neighbor, so I did.
00:22:15.780 That's why I did it.
00:22:16.860 I'm autonomous.
00:22:17.720 I used my autonomous, sovereign entity of a body to kill my neighbor, right?
00:22:23.420 That's what autonomy means.
00:22:25.060 So then you have to say, okay, well, this right to a violent, murderous autonomy only extends to those who are dependent upon us.
00:22:35.240 Well, I would say that's a rather arbitrary designation, and you've already done away with complete autonomy.
00:22:41.760 By making that designation, now complete autonomy is out the window.
00:22:45.480 It's gone.
00:22:46.900 But fine.
00:22:47.900 In that case, well, that means certainly, as I've already covered, parents with children of any age up until 18 can do as they please to their children.
00:22:56.620 They can decline to feed them, clothe them, shelter them, and they can even murder them.
00:23:00.500 If the principle established in the womb holds, which it must for autonomy.
00:23:07.720 And then what about those who are dependent on the system?
00:23:10.420 What about those who are dependent on me?
00:23:12.920 My children are dependent on me.
00:23:14.380 There are people who are dependent on me as taxpayers.
00:23:17.720 What about welfare recipients?
00:23:20.420 Well, again, complete autonomy would mean that I can certainly withdraw my money from them anytime I want because I'm autonomous.
00:23:28.640 I have no—I mean, if I don't even have responsibility to my child, how could I possibly have responsibility to this person who I don't even know?
00:23:36.420 So I should have the right, by the logic of autonomy, to withdraw my money, and even if I wish to eradicate them because they are dependent at some level on me.
00:23:50.540 So if the logic in the womb holds, it means I should be able to kill them.
00:23:56.120 So we see that bodily autonomy gives us the right to do whatever we want to anyone.
00:24:00.640 Partial bodily autonomy gives us the right to at least murder children up until the age of 18, plus welfare recipients and Social Security recipients and so on.
00:24:10.800 Now, partial, partial autonomy may preclude the mass murder of those on entitlements, but it still very clearly gives me the abortive authority over any dependent child of mine at any age.
00:24:23.200 So what sort of autonomy is the kind of autonomy where you're forced to provide for folks on welfare and food stamps and Social Security, and you're forced to provide for your own kids up until the age of 18, but you can still murder them in the womb?
00:24:42.340 What is that?
00:24:44.240 I mean, that ain't complete autonomy.
00:24:46.120 That's not even anywhere close to complete autonomy.
00:24:48.060 That is partial, partial, partial, partial autonomy.
00:24:53.200 Which is a far cry from complete autonomy, which is what pro boards claim we have.
00:24:58.320 And when you get to the point where you're claiming partial, partial, partial, partial, conditional, temporary autonomy, which during this period of time gives you the right to do whatever you want to this specific other person up to and including crushing their skulls and killing them.
00:25:15.980 When we're talking about autonomy, when we're talking about autonomy, it becomes clear that, well, actually, autonomy doesn't exist.
00:25:23.400 That's not autonomy at all.
00:25:24.940 I don't know what that is.
00:25:26.260 I do know what it is.
00:25:27.360 It's murder.
00:25:28.000 That's all that is.
00:25:29.040 That's not autonomy.
00:25:29.960 It's got nothing to do with autonomy.
00:25:31.700 The logic of autonomy is not involved here whatsoever.
00:25:36.040 It starts to seem that you're just using autonomy as an excuse.
00:25:43.720 Hmm.
00:25:45.120 Funny how that works.
00:25:47.500 So that's the five-step process for deconstructing the autonomy argument.
00:25:51.620 And that's it.
00:25:54.800 So now everyone can stop using it.
00:25:58.140 If only it really worked that way.
00:26:01.440 All right.
00:26:01.900 I'll leave it there.
00:26:02.600 Thanks, everybody, for listening.
00:26:03.680 And Godspeed.
00:26:04.620 Thank you.