The Michael Knowles Show - Choosing Life： A journalistic survey of the debate - Alexandra Desanctis

00:00:00.000 I think that women would be much better off in a society that totally rejected abortion. 0.98

00:00:07.260 It creates an anti-woman culture. 1.00

00:00:09.320 When you say that a solution to women's problems is an act that pits her against her own child,

00:00:15.140 that creates a societal understanding that women are kind of expected to, at the very 1.00

00:00:20.040 least, be open to the possibility of killing their child in order to sort of advance themselves.

00:00:24.500 Whether that's, you know, women can only make it to the corner office if they have access 1.00

00:00:27.780 to abortion or women can only, you know, achieve the educational goals they have if they have 1.00

00:00:32.120 access to this act of violence, that does not create a pro-woman society. 1.00

00:00:35.940 A pro-woman society would say everything about women is good and ought to be embraced and 0.93

00:00:40.640 accepted, including their ability to become pregnant.

00:00:43.200 And we should support that by requiring men to support women when they're pregnant, by 0.99

00:00:48.040 encouraging marriage and family formation, by helping women who are unexpectedly pregnant

00:00:53.220 carry their pregnancies to term, you know, retain job opportunities if that's what they

00:00:57.120 want while being a mother, as opposed to kind of rejecting pregnancy and motherhood and 0.98

00:01:01.220 pretending we can get rid of them by killing unborn children. 0.99

00:01:07.300 Abortion is an essential aspect of women's health care, without which thousands of women 1.00

00:01:12.380 would be killed each year by the inhuman clumps of cells in their wombs.

00:01:16.760 Right?

00:01:17.600 That's the story we've heard from the pro-abortion movement and its mouthpieces in the establishment

00:01:22.400 media for 50 years.

00:01:24.520 The only problem is that none of those things are true, as Alexandra DeSanctis has been showing

00:01:29.520 in her prolific and influential writings on the foundational lies of the pro-abortion movement.

00:01:35.540 In this episode, she gives a thorough summary of the history of the pro-abortion movement

00:01:39.660 and dissects the most common arguments in favor of abortion.

00:01:43.760 Right now, I would strongly recommend you go to hallo.com slash choose life,

00:02:11.900 because today's world is a scary one.

00:02:15.000 Too many people don't seem to care about the truth, and I would suggest that that's all

00:02:19.760 rooted in people becoming less, or really, just anti-religious.

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00:02:58.760 Download the app for free at hallo.com slash choose life.

00:03:03.640 That is hallo.com slash choose life.

00:03:08.660 Here's Alexandra. 0.95

00:03:13.460 My name is Alexandra DeSanctis.

00:03:15.300 I'm a staff writer at National Review and a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy

00:03:18.480 Center.

00:03:19.040 And in both of those roles, I write a lot about abortion policy, the pro-life movement.

00:03:23.240 I've been writing for National Review since 2016 when I graduated from college.

00:03:27.600 And shortly after coming on board, I just got really interested in covering abortion.

00:03:31.300 I've always been pro-life.

00:03:32.180 But this issue is a big issue in politics, always has been, at least since I've been alive

00:03:37.220 and before that.

00:03:38.640 And so I just kind of decided to become as much of an expert as I could.

00:03:41.480 I've covered it in the elections context, in the culture context, politics.

00:03:46.640 And now I'm writing a book that'll be out this summer on the topic with Ryan Anderson.

00:03:51.180 And why do you care about this topic?

00:03:52.780 I think it's the human rights abuse of our time, the human rights issue of our time that

00:03:57.020 we're killing, you know, hundreds of thousands of human beings every year in abortion.

00:04:01.440 And not only that, but this harms all of us.

00:04:03.680 It's, you know, the fundamental harm of abortion is that it kills an innocent human being.

00:04:07.620 But how could our society be better off for allowing that to happen?

00:04:10.980 I think we're all worse off because of it.

00:04:12.940 Can you kind of give us a little bit of an intro?

00:04:16.640 You know, who was Bernard Nathanson?

00:04:18.920 What was he known for?

00:04:20.900 You know, what kind of change did he undergo, you know, over the course of his career?

00:04:25.040 And kind of give us that background.

00:04:26.360 He's a fascinating character and a sad person, but a redemptive storyline for sure.

00:04:30.740 He performed, I think, by his own accounting, something like 60,000 abortions.

00:04:34.640 When he was an abortionist, shortly after becoming a doctor, he kind of turned to abortion.

00:04:39.280 Even before it was legal at the national level, he lived in New York where abortion was legal

00:04:44.500 and performed abortions there. 0.98

00:04:45.900 One of the abortions he did was on his own child.

00:04:48.160 So he has a very sad backstory.

00:04:50.200 And during that period of his life, he helped co-found NARAL, which is still today one of

00:04:55.540 the most pro-abortion lobbying groups in the country.

00:04:59.060 And he was one of the major kind of pro-abortion activists behind pushing the Supreme Court to

00:05:03.540 legalize abortion in Roe v. Wade.

00:05:05.280 So definitely a very prominent abortion rights activist around the time of Roe.

00:05:09.800 So after Nathanson stopped performing abortions, one of the major things he talked about became

00:05:13.480 a pro-life activist, was a major leader in the pro-life movement.

00:05:16.760 And he spent a lot of his time in that activism talking about the lies that he and his colleagues

00:05:21.180 had used back when he was pro-abortion to try and convince the court to legalize abortion.

00:05:25.560 And what were those lies?

00:05:26.840 Among them were the idea that thousands of women were dying as a result of abortion not

00:05:31.740 being legal, you know, the claim that if we legalize this, it would make it more safe

00:05:35.640 for women or women could get abortions in a way where their kind of life and health would 1.00

00:05:39.960 be better off and that it was going to happen anyway.

00:05:43.200 You know, that abortion was going to happen by the thousands, whether or not it was legal,

00:05:45.760 it was just a matter of whether women were going to die in the process, essentially. 0.99

00:05:49.280 And he later, you know, admitted those facts were totally made up.

00:05:52.780 We just came up with those statistics out of nowhere, essentially, to try and prove a point

00:05:57.580 that we wanted to make and get a result that we wanted.

00:06:00.680 So after Dr. Nathanson became a pro-life advocate and started talking about their tactics, what

00:06:06.860 were some of the things that he revealed?

00:06:10.060 So some of the main lies that they told as pro-abortion advocates were the idea that abortion

00:06:14.940 is a medical issue, not a moral one.

00:06:17.100 The idea that women would die by the thousands if abortion were not made legal.

00:06:21.340 The idea that the pro-life movement was made up of essentially religious zealots who wanted

00:06:25.060 to push their views on other people, and the idea that abortion was some kind of solution

00:06:29.480 to poverty or social problems.

00:06:33.780 You know, is that accusation that pro-lifers are just religious zealots who want to control

00:06:39.120 women's bodies, is that a fair critique? 1.00

00:06:41.780 No, this is a total falsehood.

00:06:43.240 And this is something we hear all the time.

00:06:44.980 And I think the first thing we need to remember is that there are a huge number of people who

00:06:48.460 describe themselves as pro-life or anti-abortion who are not religious at all.

00:06:51.800 Some of the most pro-life people I know are actually avowed atheists.

00:06:55.060 So you can absolutely be opposed to abortion without being religious. 0.63

00:06:58.120 The second thing we want to remember is that our laws impose, every law we have imposes

00:07:02.720 some kind of moral value.

00:07:03.940 And sometimes it accords with one religion or another.

00:07:05.940 And the fact that religious people might agree with it or religious beliefs might line

00:07:09.440 up with a particular law does not mean that we shouldn't impose it on people.

00:07:12.820 All laws impose some version of morality.

00:07:18.240 Pro-choicers often call the pro-life movement anti-woman.

00:07:22.960 Can you respond to that?

00:07:23.920 Yeah, this is a very common claim.

00:07:25.660 I think this is probably the most common argument you hear from people who support abortion.

00:07:28.720 They don't want to talk about whether it's a human life at all.

00:07:30.960 They just want to talk about how pro-lifers hate women. 1.00

00:07:33.220 And this kind of goes back to one of the major lies that Nathanson and his pro-abortion colleagues

00:07:37.520 told, which was that legal abortion is good for women.

00:07:40.920 Abortion is a solution to women's problems. 1.00

00:07:43.160 Women will be safer. 1.00

00:07:44.100 Their health will be better if they can access abortion. 0.97

00:07:46.500 This is simply not true.

00:07:47.520 There are serious risks of abortion to women.

00:07:49.340 And even in cases where there aren't kind of health side effects, psychological side

00:07:53.520 effects, long-term consequences, women are actually not better off if their best solution 1.00

00:07:58.060 is to kill their child, right? 0.99

00:08:00.100 It pits women against their own children. 1.00

00:08:01.880 It turns that most vulnerable human relationship into an antagonistic relationship between enemies.

00:08:07.540 And women are not better off as a result of that. 1.00

00:08:09.560 What are some of the biggest claims that the pro-choice lobby uses to kind of attack pro-lifers?

00:08:19.040 So the pro-choice movement, the pro-abortion movement often claims that the pro-life movement

00:08:23.460 is only made up of white Christian conservatives who are trying to impose their religious values

00:08:27.820 on others.

00:08:28.460 They claim that the pro-life movement is anti-science.

00:08:31.000 Their, you know, our claims or our beliefs are not based in scientific fact.

00:08:34.720 Uh, they claim that the pro-life movement is just kind of old white men trying to control

00:08:39.460 women's bodies. 1.00

00:08:40.680 Uh, calling the pro-life movement anti-woman is probably the most common accusation from

00:08:45.260 pro-abortion activists towards the pro-life movement.

00:08:48.440 And is that fair?

00:08:49.360 I think that's completely unfair.

00:08:51.360 Yeah.

00:08:51.760 And how do you respond to the accusation that pro-lifers are anti-science?

00:08:57.780 Uh, typically when, when the pro-abortion movement claims that pro-lifers are anti-science,

00:09:01.420 they don't actually have anything to back up that claim.

00:09:03.640 They don't point to any evidence.

00:09:04.840 They don't really take the argument further, uh, especially if you respond and say, well,

00:09:08.500 actually, you know, science shows us that the unborn child is a human being.

00:09:12.060 Uh, this is a distinct person kind of in, in their mother's womb, his or her mother's 0.95

00:09:15.800 womb.

00:09:16.280 Uh, they just don't want to talk about it anymore.

00:09:18.120 So as soon as they kind of the scientific discussion goes on to terms where it's clear

00:09:22.220 that the pro-life case is true, uh, they just kind of drop that line of attack because

00:09:25.420 it's, it's not really based in reality at all.

00:09:27.740 And, you know, what, you know, playing devil's advocate, what is the pro-choice movement?

00:09:33.440 And I mean, so like, you know, cause we don't want to do the same thing to the pro-choice

00:09:39.020 movement that they often do to the pro-life movement.

00:09:41.600 So giving them the benefit of the doubt, what is their strongest argument and how do you

00:09:45.660 respond to that?

00:09:46.220 I think the strongest argument of the pro-abortion movement is that, uh, life is difficult and

00:09:51.080 women in particular face a lot of very difficult situations that make pregnancy, childbearing, 0.83

00:09:55.700 uh, becoming a mother hard.

00:09:57.180 Um, chief among them, the fact that men abandon women, uh, men often try to engage in sex without

00:10:02.260 consequences.

00:10:02.820 They walk away and they leave women if they become pregnant with their child. 0.60

00:10:06.220 Uh, and they often get away with that.

00:10:07.820 And so I think the argument for abortion that, that women need this is it can be compelling 0.98

00:10:12.660 because women are in hard situations. 1.00

00:10:14.780 Uh, but the response is simply, if you tell a woman that if she's in a difficult situation,

00:10:19.100 it will be improved by an act of violence, right?

00:10:21.380 She's participating in an act of violence, not just against another human being, but against

00:10:25.420 her own child.

00:10:26.620 Uh, you're not actually helping her at all.

00:10:28.420 Women in hard situations need real solutions, not an act of violence. 1.00

00:10:32.120 If science and if scientists and doctors all agree at this point that, you know, it's really

00:10:41.840 a human life.

00:10:42.580 And, and I think the science has changed quite a bit since Roe v. Wade, um, was passed.

00:10:48.720 And, you know, at the time it was like, oh, well, you know, when does life begin?

00:10:51.520 And, you know, all that debate, you almost never hear that debate anymore.

00:10:55.460 Um, so if doctors and scientists all, you know, all agree, and I think it's like 85 or 90%

00:11:01.940 of doctors, regardless of their view on abortion, agree that life begins at conception, uh, that

00:11:07.200 human life begins at conception, um, then what is the debate about now?

00:11:12.560 There is a scientific and medical consensus that human life begins at conception.

00:11:17.340 This is not disputable.

00:11:19.180 Uh, it's just a fact that there's another human being at stake in abortion.

00:11:22.420 And that's why I think the pro-abortion movement doesn't want to talk about that.

00:11:25.780 They don't want to debate on those terms.

00:11:27.100 When I do debates on abortion, my opponents don't want to discuss whether or not human life

00:11:31.160 begins at conception or whether there's a human life that's being taken.

00:11:34.380 They want to talk about whether women need this.

00:11:36.960 I think that's why the pro-abortion movement typically shifts to the language of pro-lifers

00:11:41.220 are anti-women or pro-lifers are trying to impose their, their moral beliefs or their

00:11:45.740 religious values because they want to avoid the central question, which is what happens

00:11:49.820 in an abortion procedure?

00:11:50.980 And is that acceptable?

00:11:52.560 And what does happen in an abortion procedure?

00:11:54.640 A human being's life is intentionally ended.

00:11:56.460 Do you think most Americans really think about or are really cognizant of what abortion actually

00:12:06.980 and literally means?

00:12:08.300 I don't think that most Americans think about what abortion is.

00:12:11.620 Obviously, on both sides, kind of the far ends of the spectrum of this debate, you have

00:12:14.960 really committed pro-lifers, really committed abortion supporters who are really invested

00:12:19.540 in the debate.

00:12:20.100 But I think in the middle, you have a lot of people who would prefer not to think about

00:12:23.280 it.

00:12:23.580 And I think that's understandable, right?

00:12:25.060 Because abortion, we kind of all know on a gut level that this is not a good thing.

00:12:28.920 At the very least, if people support it, they kind of know maybe they think it's a necessary

00:12:32.600 evil or something we kind of have to live with because life is hard or something like

00:12:36.580 that.

00:12:37.040 But nobody really wants to celebrate this.

00:12:38.880 Nobody thinks it's a good thing.

00:12:40.080 And so I think most people try to avoid the question.

00:12:42.340 They try to avoid thinking about what it is.

00:12:44.340 And they're helped in doing that by, in my opinion, a kind of set of major media outlets

00:12:49.960 who avoid the question of what abortion is, like the plague.

00:12:53.320 They hate talking about it.

00:12:54.580 You never see politicians who support abortion get asked, what is an abortion and why do you

00:12:58.780 think it's OK?

00:12:59.480 I don't think I've ever seen anyone ask that question.

00:13:01.880 And that is the central question in the debate.

00:13:06.520 If people were presented an accurate picture of abortion, what do you think would happen societally?

00:13:12.900 I think that if most people were confronted with the simple fact of what happens in an

00:13:17.600 abortion procedure, it would revolutionize the abortion debate because it would expose 1.00

00:13:22.140 the fact that every abortion is an act of violence against a human being.

00:13:26.560 And not only is that unacceptable, not only is a society deeply unhealthy if we promote

00:13:31.140 this as any kind of solution that ought to be legal, but it's not actually good for anybody

00:13:35.780 else.

00:13:36.320 If you look kind of objectively at abortion, its impacts, and then the two sides debating

00:13:45.440 it, is there one side that lines up more with the idea of women's rights and kind of

00:13:53.360 the core ideas of feminism and increasing women's opportunity and success in society? 0.50

00:14:01.120 I think the abortion rights movement thinks that it has a monopoly on women's rights language. 0.99

00:14:05.980 They often even use the euphemism reproductive rights or women's rights when they're actually 0.66

00:14:10.340 talking about abortion.

00:14:11.700 Their whole narrative is it's good for women if they have access to legal abortion.

00:14:16.120 But the fact is that women have achieved a huge amount of advancement since Roe v. 1.00

00:14:20.020 Wade, independent of an increase in the abortion rate.

00:14:22.140 So since 1990, we've seen an almost steady decrease every single year in the abortion rate.

00:14:27.200 And over those same decades, women's educational advancement, professional advancement has skyrocketed 0.97

00:14:32.340 even relative to men.

00:14:33.320 So the idea that abortion is the reason why women are able to succeed is ludicrous.

00:14:37.820 Women don't actually need violence in order to be successful. 1.00

00:14:41.500 And if you look at the impacts that abortion has on women, is there even more than kind of

00:14:49.280 maybe it being a wash?

00:14:52.000 Is there any argument that could be made that the pro-life movement is actually more pro-woman

00:14:57.660 than the pro-choice movement?

00:14:59.460 The pro-life movement is absolutely more pro-woman than the abortion rights movement because first 1.00

00:15:03.980 and foremost, on kind of a fundamental level, the pro-life movement says to women who perhaps

00:15:08.080 become pregnant unexpectedly or, you know, are not being supported by their husband or their

00:15:13.280 partner or their family in their pregnancy, they come alongside those women.

00:15:17.240 They support them.

00:15:17.960 They say, you know, there are solutions.

00:15:19.620 We can help you.

00:15:20.400 There's a community around you who can help you carry this life.

00:15:23.600 And whether you choose to give it up for adoption, you choose to, you know, become a mother,

00:15:27.520 I suppose you already are a mother, whether you choose to carry this life to term, we'll

00:15:30.580 be there with you.

00:15:31.280 That is a fundamentally pro-woman argument.

00:15:33.840 But even aside from that, abortion actually is actively harmful to women. 0.98

00:15:37.800 In some number of cases, it's physically harmful.

00:15:40.300 It's often psychologically harmful.

00:15:42.260 There are long-term consequences or there can be in future pregnancies.

00:15:45.600 And the pro-abortion movement does not want to acknowledge those things.

00:15:48.240 And when we try to talk about them and bring them up, it's almost always the abortion rights 0.99

00:15:51.620 movement that tries to silence that data, dismiss that data, you know, claim that abortion is

00:15:55.980 almost always safe, even though that's simply not true.

00:15:59.080 In addition to the negative, you know, kind of anti-women impacts that the pro-choice movement

00:16:06.120 has today, in what way did the pro-abortion lobby back at the time of Roe use, you know,

00:16:16.000 a woman, specifically Norma McCorvey, almost as this kind of prop, you know, to push through 0.99

00:16:23.500 their agenda, when in fact, she ended up never even having an abortion.

00:16:27.340 She ended up having, I think, three children, correct?

00:16:30.180 So maybe, can you like weave for us a little bit of that story, you know, in what ways

00:16:34.320 does the rhetoric of being pro-woman not match kind of the historic actions of pro-abortion

00:16:41.260 advocates who are happy to just use women who don't even want an abortion to be kind

00:16:46.960 of the face of their movements?

00:16:48.900 I think what's so interesting about the backstory of Roe v. Wade and the decision itself is how

00:16:53.320 rather than focusing on women or women's health or what they needed, it was actually very much

00:16:58.340 focused on doctors and the kind of right or freedom of doctors to perform abortions.

00:17:03.340 And so at the time, you know, the kind of language around promoting abortion was that women were dying,

00:17:08.200 women needed this in order to be safe, in order to be healthy. 0.98

00:17:10.340 They would die in illegal abortions otherwise and were dying by the thousands, which is

00:17:14.480 simply not true.

00:17:15.700 But the people most aggressively pushing legal abortion were actually doctors who at the

00:17:20.280 time were the ones being punished, right?

00:17:21.780 If a state had laws against abortion, the person punished was the doctor who performed the

00:17:26.560 abortion, not the woman. 0.65

00:17:27.940 And so these doctors wanted to have the freedom essentially to, if it was, you know, they thought

00:17:32.200 it was the right thing or they wanted to make money off it, whatever the reason might

00:17:35.260 be, they wanted to be able to perform abortion without legal consequences. 0.89

00:17:38.660 And you can see that kind of lobbying from that angle show up in the decision.

00:17:43.360 If you read the Roe v. Wade opinion, it's not about women's rights or equality or liberty

00:17:47.840 or freedom.

00:17:48.560 It's about doctors and trusting the medical judgment of doctors to be the ones deciding

00:17:52.660 whether or not women need an abortion. 0.78

00:17:55.920 Can you tell audiences a little bit of the backstory of, you know, Norma McCorvey and, you know, what's

00:18:02.280 her story?

00:18:02.720 Yeah, so Norma McCorvey is the, you know, Jane Roe of the Roe v. Wade decision.

00:18:07.260 She was a woman in Texas who was seeking an abortion and pro-abortion lawyers and activists 0.52

00:18:12.560 essentially got to her, found her, and realized that her story and her case could be the way

00:18:18.660 to legalize abortion if not, you know, it was in Texas.

00:18:21.620 So if not only in Texas, then perhaps for the entire country.

00:18:24.220 I don't know that they ever thought the court was going to do exactly what it did in that

00:18:27.140 ruling.

00:18:27.380 But they certainly were ambitious and were hoping that this would be kind of a sympathetic

00:18:31.440 way of getting the public to support at least some form of legal abortion.

00:18:36.660 And what ended up happening to Norma McCorvey?

00:18:39.120 She had kind of a long and difficult life.

00:18:41.240 She converted to Roman Catholicism much later in life.

00:18:44.100 She had a kind of several decade, I believe, stint as a pro-life activist.

00:18:49.260 There have been some reports later in life that she may have said she wasn't actually pro-life

00:18:54.220 or was kind of used by the movement.

00:18:55.460 So it's not totally clear what was true.

00:18:56.920 It's quite complicated.

00:18:58.480 But at the very least, she was not this kind of lifelong abortion cheerleader.

00:19:04.020 Is there a sense to which the pro-abortion lobby used, you know, a woman who was confused

00:19:10.840 and in pain and made her this kind of centerpiece to push their agenda?

00:19:17.840 I think it's very clear that pro-abortion activists used Norma McCorvey and her difficult

00:19:21.840 life situation and story to make their kind of political ends and their legal ends more 0.94

00:19:26.560 sympathetic and palatable.

00:19:28.940 And is that happening today?

00:19:30.700 It happens all the time.

00:19:31.820 And you can see this when abortion kind of advocates or clinics go to court and they sue

00:19:38.000 states that have pro-life laws.

00:19:39.780 They go to court and they say, we're doing this on behalf of women.

00:19:42.820 But very rarely do you see an actual woman sue a state and say, I couldn't get an abortion

00:19:48.380 because of this particular, you know, health and safety law that you put in place.

00:19:51.660 It's always abortion clinics showing up in court and saying, we're here representing women

00:19:55.520 when there's very obviously a conflict of interest between the abortion provider and

00:19:59.060 women. 0.81

00:19:59.680 That wasn't just happening back in 1973 with Norma McCorvey.

00:20:02.540 It happens all the time now.

00:20:03.920 It's been the pro-abortion movement has been using this strategy for decades, using women 1.00

00:20:08.460 who are in difficult situations as a means of getting what they want.

00:20:12.580 And what do you think it is that the pro-choice movement ultimately wants?

00:20:18.420 I think there are a lot of people who consider themselves pro-choice who sincerely believe that

00:20:22.580 this is a good thing for women, that women at least need to have this kind of option in 1.00

00:20:27.080 their back pocket if they're in a difficult situation.

00:20:29.440 But I think kind of the loudest abortion rights voices, most of them are financially entangled,

00:20:35.940 right?

00:20:36.200 Planned Parenthood makes just buckets and boatloads of money off of abortion.

00:20:40.860 They make federal money off of abortion.

00:20:42.800 These abortion lobbying groups, this is their business model.

00:20:45.500 And so they have a financial stake in preserving legal abortion.

00:20:49.600 To what extent does the sexual revolution in the 60s play into kind of the history of the

00:20:58.080 abortion movement?

00:20:58.720 I think the sexual revolution was kind of the necessary first step in legalizing abortion 0.99

00:21:03.880 because the aim of feminists at the time, second wave feminists was, at least the most 1.00

00:21:08.560 radical among them, was to break down the nuclear family, right?

00:21:11.080 And that kind of started with the legalization of contraception, but it culminated in abortion,

00:21:16.040 which says basically even if you do conceive a child you don't want, you have to be able

00:21:20.500 to even kill that child to get rid of it because kind of free sex or kind of the abolition 0.99

00:21:24.900 of the family is the ultimate goal. 1.00

00:21:26.640 And maybe give audiences like a 30,000-foot view.

00:21:32.900 What was the sexual revolution?

00:21:34.900 You know, kind of define it for us.

00:21:36.660 What are kind of the general years, you know, that this is happening?

00:21:40.600 And kind of just describe the tenor of the country and the movement itself.

00:21:44.580 So the sexual revolution was a period in the 1960s and 1970s when mostly kind of radical

00:21:50.640 feminists were the main drivers behind it. 1.00

00:21:52.960 But there was this whole free love movement was the idea where you should be able to have

00:21:56.520 consequence-free sex with whomever whenever you want to. 0.54

00:21:59.220 And consequence-free is the key.

00:22:01.020 The goal of the movement was to achieve kind of policy and legal changes that would enable

00:22:05.920 this lifestyle.

00:22:06.740 So whether that was contraception so you could have sex without getting pregnant or abortion 0.74

00:22:10.860 ultimately so that you could get rid of what the consequences were.

00:22:14.040 You know, a child, they wanted these to kind of bolster the ideological idea that sex ought

00:22:20.020 to be outside the context of marriage, outside the context of family, just kind of for fun.

00:22:24.260 And what, you know, what's going on, you know, while the sexual revolution is happening, what's

00:22:32.220 going on in terms of, you know, medical advancements in terms of, you know, FDA approval of the

00:22:38.420 pill, Planned Parenthood's kind of growth, you know, what are, you know, abortion advocates

00:22:45.500 arguing?

00:22:46.320 How does that tie into kind of like the lies that kind of frame this whole story?

00:22:50.640 So at the time, as a sexual revolution was unfolding as sort of an ideological matter,

00:22:55.620 you had Planned Parenthood and other groups that today we know as pro-abortion, who initially

00:23:00.660 started out as actually pro-birth control groups.

00:23:02.680 Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood to distribute birth control.

00:23:05.680 And so they kind of started with that policy goal of let's at least have contraception legalized

00:23:10.280 so that we can control sex in this way, basically, or just have this kind of free sex mentality.

00:23:15.240 And then it evolved after that into being support for abortion as kind of the next step in the

00:23:21.220 agenda.

00:23:23.040 And was it at this time that, you know, those kind of big lies start to really be perpetrated?

00:23:29.840 It was around this time that doctors mainly, but pro-abortion activists began to come up

00:23:34.720 with their political strategy, their messaging strategy for promoting abortion, which included

00:23:38.900 trying to pitch abortion as a medical issue.

00:23:41.960 So you had kind of medical organizations start to pivot from only sanctioning abortions when

00:23:47.220 it was strictly medically necessary to saying, well, we should trust doctors' judgment.

00:23:50.800 They should be able to do this at any point, essentially, if they think it's medically

00:23:53.900 necessary, which was expanded to cover a whole number of abortions that were not at all medically

00:23:58.740 necessary and, you know, pushing the lie that women somehow needed legal abortion. 0.53

00:24:02.980 And, you know, let's dig into that argument that, you know, without legal abortion, thousands

00:24:13.860 of women will die a year, because that's an argument that Planned Parenthood is still 1.00

00:24:18.540 making.

00:24:19.000 They made it back during Roe. 0.99

00:24:21.120 They are still making it today.

00:24:24.620 Is there any validity to that statement?

00:24:26.860 Where did that, you know, statement come from?

00:24:28.820 And what kind of pushback have they received even from, you know, mainstream media?

00:24:33.660 Yeah.

00:24:33.840 So abortion rights activists have been pushing the claim that thousands of women will die 0.73

00:24:39.280 every year in illegal, in unsafe abortions if abortion is illegal.

00:24:43.620 They did it at the time of Roe.

00:24:44.980 This was one of the key claims that they made to try and convince the court to legalize abortion.

00:24:49.080 And this is something they still say today.

00:24:50.940 Planned Parenthood has claimed as recently as 2018 or 2019 that thousands of women were dying

00:24:56.060 prior to Roe v. Wade, you know, implying that if abortion were illegal again, this is what

00:24:59.880 would happen.

00:25:00.700 But the fact of the matter is thousands of women were not dying in abortions.

00:25:04.200 The best data we have suggests that in the five or so years before abortion, fewer than

00:25:08.500 150 women were dying every year as a result of abortion.

00:25:12.900 And the Washington Post even specifically did a fact check on that where they had multiple

00:25:19.040 fact checkers look into this, right?

00:25:20.500 Yeah.

00:25:20.640 So a couple of years ago, the then president of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Lina Nguyen, kind

00:25:26.140 of parroted this claim that thousands of women were dying in illegal abortions before Roe.

00:25:30.560 And this claim was so egregiously false that even the Washington Post had to admit it was

00:25:35.120 untrue.

00:25:35.580 And fact checked the claim and gave, not only gave Planned Parenthood four Pinocchios for

00:25:40.160 it, but listed it as one of the top lies of the year.

00:25:43.140 And it's kind of rank, it's annual ranking.

00:25:45.060 Um, what did Planned Parenthood have to gain from, uh, kind of the, the, you know, the free

00:25:55.500 sex movement, the, you know, increased usage of the pill, um, because so the pill, I think

00:26:02.740 approved by the FDA in May, 1960 sexual revolution really is like kicking off full steam ahead.

00:26:08.960 You know, so all the, all these things are happening and, you know, what did, what did

00:26:14.200 Planned Parenthood have to gain from all of these, you know, changes occurring?

00:26:20.640 Planned Parenthood was actually founded by Margaret Sanger in the early 20th century because, uh,

00:26:25.460 she wanted to promote legalized birth control. 1.00

00:26:27.380 And the reason for this was not that she thought free sex was great, but she actually was part

00:26:31.200 of the eugenics movement.

00:26:32.380 Uh, and so she and her kind of fellow eugenicists wanted to promote birth control as a means of 1.00

00:26:37.120 limiting what they viewed as undesirable population.

00:26:39.820 So this would be people like non-white Americans, uh, low-income Americans, disabled people, people 0.91

00:26:44.820 they thought were mentally unfit.

00:26:46.640 Um, and they thought that if they could disseminate birth control, these people would have fewer

00:26:50.160 children and America would be a Yankee stock, as they put it, more made up of, of the kind 1.00

00:26:54.300 of people they wanted to see.

00:26:55.920 Um, and so as kind of time went on and this argument began to fall more out of favor, though

00:27:00.640 it still exists, um, Planned Parenthood pivoted to pushing birth control as kind of the

00:27:05.360 linchpin of the sexual revolution, because you can't have a free sex or free love movement 0.50

00:27:09.600 without contraception or birth control.

00:27:11.420 You can't have free sex if there's a possible consequence of pregnancy. 0.59

00:27:14.360 Um, and so around the time that, that abortion was then legalized, it was kind of preceded by

00:27:19.740 the legalization of contraception and the widespread, uh, growing widespread acceptance of its use.

00:27:25.840 When did, when did abortion really become a contentious topic in the United States?

00:27:29.460 Um, honestly, abortion, the abortion debate was just beginning to kind of were into motion

00:27:35.400 at the time that the Supreme Court legalized abortion. 0.69

00:27:37.680 And that's what, one of the things that's so bad about the ruling, there are many things

00:27:40.980 that are bad about it.

00:27:41.740 But one of the chief ones is that America never actually really got to have an abortion

00:27:45.800 debate.

00:27:46.540 Um, at the time that, that Roe legalized abortion across the entire country, uh, about 30 states

00:27:51.280 had laws protecting unborn children on the books.

00:27:54.100 Um, maybe five or so, a handful of states had legalized abortion, at least at some points.

00:27:58.240 Um, but Americans were just kind of starting to develop their opinions.

00:28:02.280 It was starting to become clear that this was a human life.

00:28:05.140 Uh, you were starting to hear arguments that women might need abortion in order to be free

00:28:08.340 and equal.

00:28:09.200 Um, but that whole argument was short circuited by the fact that the Supreme Court stepped in

00:28:14.400 and said, actually, this is going to be the law of the land for everybody.

00:28:18.300 And when did, when did the kind of majority of Americans or America in general kind of, you

00:28:25.020 know, decide, oh, you know, well.

00:28:28.240 You know, whatever, abortion is, you know, is here now.

00:28:30.940 I guess we accept it.

00:28:32.120 You know, when did, when did America kind of accept abortion or has it accepted abortion?

00:28:36.980 I don't think America has actually accepted abortion.

00:28:39.620 And I think that's why we see abortion laws go back to court every single year.

00:28:44.260 That's why we see, uh, you know, 50 years after Roe v. Wade, 30 years after Planned Parenthood

00:28:48.560 v. Casey.

00:28:49.020 There's another abortion case pending at the Supreme Court where they once again have to 1.00

00:28:52.960 explain why we have the abortion laws that we have handed down by the Supreme Court because

00:28:57.200 Americans did not accept it.

00:28:58.960 And the justices in Roe v. Wade decided the way they did because they thought they were

00:29:02.640 going to settle the question.

00:29:03.580 They thought they were going to end the abortion debate, just kind of get rid of the controversy

00:29:07.040 by legalizing it at the federal level through the court.

00:29:10.360 Uh, and instead they created a 50 year battle that I think is more contentious today than it

00:29:14.440 was back in 1973.

00:29:16.540 Why is it becoming more contentious?

00:29:18.700 I think abortion is more contentious today than it was in 1973, uh, because more Americans 0.98

00:29:24.240 realize that this is a human life in the womb.

00:29:26.380 We have, you know, 40 ultrasounds, for example.

00:29:28.580 You can very clearly see a baby's face.

00:29:30.640 Um, early on we know facts about when the heartbeat develops, we can hear it.

00:29:34.480 Uh, we know about fingernail, the baby's fingernails. 1.00

00:29:37.040 We know all sorts of things we didn't know as well, or we couldn't see as clearly back

00:29:40.900 when Roe was decided.

00:29:41.700 Uh, but I think another big part of it is more Americans are frustrated that they don't

00:29:45.880 have a voice in the abortion debate, right?

00:29:47.700 No matter what they think, no matter what their state lawmakers try to put in place.

00:29:51.840 Um, if they're pro-life, that law is going to get struck down.

00:29:54.580 They can't have their voice, um, kind of put into action in their laws because of what the

00:30:00.060 Supreme Court has done.

00:30:01.120 And so I think pro-lifers in particular are not going to go away until this issue is settled.

00:30:05.980 Will, do you think this debate will ever be settled?

00:30:09.460 My hope is that someday we will look back at abortion and our history of allowing it, 1.00

00:30:16.240 um, the way we look back at slavery.

00:30:18.940 I think we will wonder, maybe it won't be in my lifetime, but future Americans will wonder

00:30:23.140 how we ever let this happen.

00:30:27.320 Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, big tech is working overtime to stop the truth

00:30:32.800 about abortion from getting out.

00:30:34.260 Far-left abortion extremists are not content with dehumanizing the pre-born.

00:30:40.040 They are seeking to shut down any voice that tells the truth about the horrors of abortion.

00:30:45.980 Google, Facebook, and TikTok have already engaged in mass censorship and deplatforming of pro-life

00:30:52.640 groups online.

00:30:53.880 And nobody knows just how far this censorship will go.

00:30:57.300 That's why live action has been working tirelessly to find ways to spread the truth about abortion

00:31:03.060 and share resources with those who need it most without relying on big tech.

00:31:08.160 If you want to stay up to date on the fight for life, text pro-life to 47581

00:31:14.300 and opt in to receive updates from live action about their ongoing work to end abortion.

00:31:20.140 Texting pro-life to 47581 means you won't be at the mercy of the big tech censors in the

00:31:27.140 ongoing fight for life.

00:31:29.060 Text P-R-O-L-I-F-E to 47581.

00:31:33.940 Why is a discussion about the history of abortion and the reality of abortion something that

00:31:49.620 people should engage in, regardless of whether they're watching this in pre-Dobb's ruling

00:31:56.520 world or a post-Dobb's ruling world?

00:31:58.160 The history of the abortion debate and the just basic reality of what abortion is,

00:32:03.940 is always going to be important.

00:32:06.240 Even if someday we reach a world or a society where we know that abortion is deeply unjust, 0.61

00:32:11.900 we always have to remember, I think, kind of the horror of what we let happen.

00:32:17.020 And especially because even if the Supreme Court does overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned

00:32:21.480 Parenthood v. Casey in Dobbs, that's most likely going to just return the fight to the state level.

00:32:27.420 And so every American has to be prepared to know what they think about abortion,

00:32:30.480 why they think it, the truth of what it is, the history behind how it came to be legal.

00:32:35.940 These are essential pieces of information and kind of fighting for the pro-life future that we want.

00:32:41.340 In what sense is it important to remember the history of abortion,

00:32:45.980 similarly to remembering the history of wars or human rights abuses in our country or others?

00:32:51.980 I hope that someday we will look back on abortion as a horrific thing and wonder how we ever let this happen.

00:33:00.100 But I think even if we do reach that time when all of us are willing to recognize that this was deeply unjust

00:33:05.420 and that it should never have happened, we'll have to remember the history of it.

00:33:09.140 We can't forget why this happened and we shouldn't let it happen again.

00:33:12.400 It's a horrible atrocity against vulnerable members of our community.

00:33:16.260 And who knows who could be next?

00:33:19.960 I think those who, what's the famous quote, those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

00:33:25.060 And I don't know, you know, if abortion becomes illegal, we all know it's unjust someday.

00:33:28.820 Who knows if we'd go back to being a pro-abortion society. 0.57

00:33:31.240 But kind of the pro-abortion mindset of exterminating the vulnerable or, you know,

00:33:35.860 turning on some human beings because they're inconvenient,

00:33:38.340 that could very well lead to other kinds of atrocities in the future if we aren't careful.

00:33:41.740 I'm sure you've seen this, but I've seen Planned Parenthood on their website say,

00:33:48.200 oh, well, abortion has been, I mean, just a common part of American life as far back as the 1600s.

00:33:54.240 It's only somewhere in the middle of the 20th century that Americans really became these prudes 0.69

00:33:59.320 who, you know, want to deny women rights to their own bodies. 0.98

00:34:04.680 Have you seen that argument kind of picking up steam over the last few years?

00:34:08.820 Yeah, I think the pro-abortion movement has turned to this argument that abortion was just always totally normal throughout history

00:34:15.200 and only suddenly became something that pro-lifers were fixated on in the middle of the 20th century.

00:34:20.320 That's simply not true, actually.

00:34:21.800 The common law tradition has always been anti-abortion.

00:34:25.000 And there was, you know, kind of before the science was clear,

00:34:27.520 there were differing opinions on when human life actually begins.

00:34:30.300 But there was always a fundamental sense, both in Great Britain and then in the United States,

00:34:35.300 where we kind of carried on that legal tradition, that once there is a human life, abortion is wrong.

00:34:39.840 And that was always the practice in our law, even, you know, up until Rome.

00:34:44.480 And I think Planned Parenthood would respond.

00:34:47.380 And I, you know, I've read articles that they've said,

00:34:49.580 oh, well, back in, you know, the, you know, 1800s or, you know, in the 1700s,

00:34:55.220 you know, before quickening, everyone was like,

00:34:58.740 oh, it's, yeah, it's fine to have an abortion or get rid of the child because the child isn't a human being until quickening.

00:35:06.060 Do you think that that's a valid argument?

00:35:08.340 And if not, what's it, what's it missing?

00:35:11.320 So it is true that there have been points in history where people thought abortion was acceptable

00:35:16.440 before what they called quickening, which is when you could first feel the child move.

00:35:20.360 But that was not because they thought it was okay to kill human beings.

00:35:23.080 It was because based on their kind of limited scientific and medical knowledge,

00:35:27.220 they thought that there wasn't actually a human being there until you could feel it moving.

00:35:30.980 So they were still at that time, you know, kind of operating out of the best scientific medical information that they had.

00:35:36.300 They were still kind of operating from the belief that all human life deserves to be protected from the moment that it exists.

00:35:42.240 So there's just kind of a difference in information they had access to and whether or not this was a human life.

00:35:47.180 But there was no consensus that there is a human being until quickening and you can kill it up to that point.

00:35:52.460 The idea was just that they didn't know there was a human life.

00:35:55.180 Their belief was human life didn't start until quickening.

00:35:57.500 And after that point, they knew that killing it was immoral.

00:36:00.360 But kind of as it became more and more clear that there was always a human being there from the moment of conception,

00:36:05.460 sort of how reproduction takes place, from that point, you know, abortion has always been thought to be wrong from the moment of conception.

00:36:13.280 Is Planned Parenthood and is the abortion movement ignorant or are they doing something else?

00:36:21.060 It seems to me that Planned Parenthood and abortion supporters who use this argument about abortion being okay up to quickening are intentionally misconstruing the facts.

00:36:31.260 They're pretending like we always had the science that we had about human life way back into the 1600s.

00:36:36.400 And people back then just thought abortion was moral up until you could feel the baby move.

00:36:40.520 But the fact is they didn't know that.

00:36:43.040 And I think Planned Parenthood is well aware that that's the reality.

00:36:45.220 What would you say to a person who's like, oh, well, you know, I read, you know, I read on Planned Parenthood that, you know, abortion has always been accepted.

00:36:57.460 You know, what would you tell a person who's confused and kind of looking for the truth?

00:37:01.480 You know, how would you like help someone kind of navigate those waters?

00:37:04.720 Yeah, the historical record on kind of abortion throughout history can be kind of shoddy.

00:37:10.420 But the best information we have suggests that factually speaking, in previous kind of generations, we didn't know when human life began.

00:37:19.580 And there was a very common consensus that when you could feel the baby move, this was when human life began.

00:37:24.600 And after that point, most people believed the kind of legal consensus especially was that abortion was immoral after that point because it's always wrong to take innocent human life.

00:37:34.080 And the common law tradition reflects that understanding.

00:37:37.400 And if you kind of look back to their scientific and medical understanding, too, you know they didn't realize how conception takes place.

00:37:43.940 They didn't realize how implantation takes place.

00:37:46.100 They didn't realize there was a human being there until you could feel it.

00:37:48.460 But, you know, now that everyone knows when life does begin, are abortion advocates today just saying, look, we know that it's a human being and we think that a woman should have the right to kill another human being?

00:38:05.260 Abortion advocates typically avoid addressing the question of when human life begins or whether a human life is at stake in abortion.

00:38:11.580 They usually kind of gloss over that question or don't talk about it at all and they skip right to, well, it's necessary for women or, you know, this is women will be better off or more equal or more free if they can have abortions.

00:38:25.140 But they kind of imply that there's no human life at stake.

00:38:27.800 I think they try to pretend that there's not because it's a very ugly thing to say, actually, it's okay to kill human beings sometimes.

00:38:34.220 They don't want to make that argument.

00:38:35.320 So they often say things like, you know, abortion is health care or this is a basic medical decision between a woman and her doctor.

00:38:41.260 This is something we've been hearing since back before Roe v. Wade, the idea that this is health care.

00:38:46.040 And I think they use that as a way of kind of avoiding the question of what's actually going on in an abortion, which is it kills a human being.

00:38:52.720 And, you know, is there any corollary besides abortion where, you know, you know, people in our society think it's acceptable to say, oh, well, whether to kill that other, you know, human being is just a decision between that person and, you know, their doctor or that person.

00:39:09.980 And, like, their best friend or, you know, what have you.

00:39:12.880 Abortion is the only context in which anybody would argue that sometimes it could be a medical or health care decision whether or not you're going to kill another human being.

00:39:21.440 And they make this argument because they're trying to avoid admitting that abortion kills a human being.

00:39:25.780 But, you know, if you tried to pretend that it was health care to kill your mom because she was annoying you, obviously everybody would think that was insane.

00:39:32.300 But they use this language about the unborn because they can get away with it and they don't want to talk about what abortion is.

00:39:38.980 What are some of the claims of the pro-abortion lobby in relation to poverty and fighting poverty and, you know, helping women out of bad circumstances?

00:39:48.360 Abortion supporters often argue that abortion is especially necessary for women in difficult situations, whether that's women in abusive relationships or women who are maybe in a low-income situation and need a better job or whatever it might be.

00:40:03.760 They argue that abortion is a solution for these women. 1.00

00:40:06.300 First of all, I think that's a very ugly claim, right?

00:40:08.180 If you're saying that these women are badly off in some way and so the best thing we have to offer them, our best solution is an act of violence against their own child, you're telling these women that their solution is to treat their child like their enemy and somehow that's going to help them out of a difficult situation.

00:40:23.700 That's crazy.

00:40:24.980 But as a society, we don't do this with anything else, right?

00:40:28.060 If we went into kind of a struggling nation where people were starving and we killed a bunch of impoverished people, would we have made the country better off? 1.00

00:40:36.880 They have more food to go around.

00:40:38.320 They have more resources.

00:40:39.240 We don't actually solve problems by killing other human beings to make our resources more available.

00:40:45.440 What about the claim, you know, oh, well, you're giving a woman autonomy over her own body. 0.67

00:40:50.360 You know, we're the pro-feminist, pro-woman faction.

00:40:54.760 Is that true or does abortion really just put another undue burden on the woman and just let men off the hook? 1.00

00:41:03.520 Pro-abortion, abortion rights supporters often argue that abortion is necessary for women's autonomy over their own bodies.

00:41:12.700 The most important point to remember in this regard is that there's actually two bodies involved in an abortion.

00:41:17.020 There's the woman's body and the body of her child. 0.98

00:41:19.280 So it's not as simple as deciding what to do with her own body.

00:41:22.420 But there's a second question at stake here, which is, are women actually more free and more equal because of abortion? 0.60

00:41:27.720 And even just kind of tabling for a moment the question of the violence against the child, women are actually not better off as a result of abortion.

00:41:35.360 Oftentimes, abortion enables men to abandon women when they don't want her to be the mother of their child, right? 0.54

00:41:41.300 If a man gets a woman pregnant and says, you know, go get an abortion or you're on your own, is she actually better off? 0.98

00:41:46.860 What if she wants to keep the baby? 1.00

00:41:47.960 What if she wants to be with the father of her child? 0.92

00:41:50.120 She doesn't have that option because abortion says, well, you can go take care of it, right? 1.00

00:41:53.780 And a woman's way of kind of walking away from sex when she's pregnant is an act of violence. 1.00

00:41:59.820 And, you know, what should our society be advocating for, you know, if we truly believed in kind of the tenets of feminism, the tenets of women's rights, you know, what should our society be advocating for?

00:42:15.140 And what should our society be expecting of both men and women?

00:42:17.820 I think that women are would be much better off in a society that totally rejected abortion. 0.97

00:42:23.460 It's a fundamental lie that kind of it creates an anti-woman culture. 1.00

00:42:27.380 When you say that a solution to women's problems is an act that pits her against her own child, that creates a societal understanding that women are kind of expected to, at the very least, be open to the possibility of killing their child in order to sort of advance themselves.

00:42:43.680 Whether that's, you know, women can only make it to the corner office if they have access to abortion or women can only, you know, achieve the educational goals they have if they have access to this act of violence. 0.99

00:42:53.040 That does not create a pro-woman society. 0.99

00:42:55.100 A pro-woman society would say everything about women is good and ought to be embraced and accepted, including their ability to become pregnant. 0.60

00:43:02.260 And we should support that by requiring men to support women when they're pregnant, by encouraging marriage and family formation, by helping women who are unexpectedly pregnant carry their pregnancies to term, you know, retain their educational opportunities while being a mother, retain job opportunities if that's what they want while being a mother, as opposed to kind of rejecting pregnancy and motherhood and pretending we can get rid of them by killing unborn children. 0.54

00:43:26.900 And, you know, what about the argument that, you know, oh, well, millions of babies would flood orphanages or, you know, if adoption, you know, is the, you know, only way for a woman to not keep her child, you know, you know, millions of kids will enter the foster care system, you know, what do you respond to that?

00:43:45.780 I think we would find in kind of a more pro-life society that many more women than we would expect would actually want to be mothers, especially if they were supported by the father of their child or by their families or communities. 1.00

00:43:58.580 I think we'd find a lot of women who actually want to be mothers. 1.00

00:44:01.400 And many women say they have fewer children than they want. 1.00

00:44:03.880 I think there's kind of a, we've created this societal structure in which women feel like they don't actually have the freedom or the option to be mothers and to be supported in that choice.

00:44:12.500 And so I think if we had a truly pro-life society, you wouldn't actually have very many children flooding foster care or kind of orphanages because either they'd be adopted by loving families, you know, many of which are waiting and have no options for adoption.

00:44:28.860 And many women would actually choose to parent. 1.00

00:44:31.600 And even if there are some unexpected consequences of, you know, a pro-life society, would any of them outweigh the saving of human life?

00:44:43.120 It's certainly possible that there would be downstream effects.

00:44:46.040 Of course, there will be downstream effects of making abortion illegal.

00:44:50.120 But the question is, is that a good enough reason to keep abortion?

00:44:53.760 And the answer is no, right?

00:44:55.100 Even if we have more children who need loving homes, even if we have more parents who need more societal support to raise their children or, you know, other kind of societal decisions or changes we have to make in order to support life, it's going to be worth it every time because we're getting rid of a procedure that, again, kills innocent human beings.

00:45:15.680 How many children have been killed since Roe v. Wade?

00:45:18.460 Somewhere in the realm of 65 million unborn children have been killed since abortion was legalized.

00:45:23.420 And with the change of technology, change of medical, you know, knowledge since Roe v. Wade, do most doctors acknowledge that from conception it's a human being?

00:45:38.440 Somewhere in the realm of 95% of biologists affirm that life begins at conception.

00:45:42.900 And is abortion antithetical to the kind of values of inclusion and equality defending, you know, the underprivileged in society?

00:45:56.220 Abortion is antithetical to the kinds of values we hear a lot about from progressives, whether that's inclusion, protection of the vulnerable, lifting up the underprivileged.

00:46:04.640 But it's also antithetical to America's founding values, you know, equal rights, human dignity, the protection of the right to life.

00:46:10.700 This is what our government was founded to do, and we're just blatantly, you know, contradicting that when we allow abortion. 0.93

00:46:15.780 The abortion industry uses women for their own profit. 0.99

00:46:29.860 These lies are pervasive.

00:46:32.740 They're not difficult to refute, but it can be difficult to penetrate that culture of lies, to get the truth out there.

00:46:41.340 We have to do it.

00:46:44.080 We have to do it because it's right.

00:46:46.640 We have to do it for the victims of abortion.

00:46:49.360 We have to do it for the women who are taken in by this industry, who are used for dollars, even to their own detriment. 1.00

00:46:59.240 If you enjoyed this conversation with Alexandra DeSanctis, you'll want to check out our Daily Wire original documentary,

00:47:05.700 Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe. 0.71

00:47:07.860 In it, we take a wrecking ball to the four fallacies keeping the abortion industry alive. 0.94

00:47:13.640 To watch it right now, go to dailywireplus.com.

00:47:19.040 Today, if you join, you will see not only this full movie, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe,

00:47:24.560 but you will have access to The Daily Wire's entire catalog of content,

00:47:28.900 which we can only produce and distribute because of you, with your support.

00:47:35.140 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:47:36.180 This is The Choosing Life Podcast.

00:47:39.140 We'll see you next time.

00:47:44.800 The Choosing Life Podcast is a Daily Wire production produced in association with Outer Limits.

00:47:50.440 Our technical and support team includes Ian Reed, Jesse Eastman, Ryan Moore, Mariah Cormier, and Jim Wirt.

00:47:57.560 Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

00:48:00.120 Thanks for listening.

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The Michael Knowles Show - September 17, 2022

Choosing Life： A journalistic survey of the debate - Alexandra Desanctis

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