The Michael Knowles Show - Choosing Life： The Long Term Perspective

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00:00:30.000 People are concerned that the issue is politically polarized.

00:00:36.640 It's an interesting thing.

00:00:37.780 The Republican Party, which I'm a member, is overwhelmingly pro-life.

00:00:43.680 The Democrats now are overwhelmingly on the other side.

00:00:47.940 I think to make a case, that's not a good thing for society,

00:00:51.800 that we don't all see our stake.

00:00:53.940 Of course, it's a bad thing that we don't all have a shared understanding

00:00:58.780 of what the value of life is and how it drives every issue.

00:01:02.860 At the same time, what I find fascinating is that it is now the defining,

00:01:07.700 the defining issue between these two vast camps in American society.

00:01:13.140 That's how important the abortion issue is.

00:01:17.180 The political alignment of the entire country is not built around war and peace.

00:01:22.120 It's not built around the size of the welfare state or tax policy.

00:01:26.280 Everybody has opinions.

00:01:27.560 But on life, it's like the Red Sea.

00:01:29.580 I think that tells us something.

00:01:31.840 We need a better answer than the one we've got now.

00:01:38.220 Conservatives are fond of saying that politics is downstream of culture.

00:01:43.020 But politics can affect culture, too,

00:01:46.000 as Chuck Donovan learned throughout his career crafting public policy

00:01:49.340 to discourage abortion and foster a culture of life.

00:01:52.900 He worked as legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee,

00:01:58.540 helped to lead the Family Research Council for nearly 20 years,

00:02:01.840 and served in government as a writer for President Reagan.

00:02:05.980 He has been in the fight for life for decades

00:02:08.960 and offers a perspective that few today can rival.

00:02:12.980 Right now, I would strongly recommend you go to hallo.com slash choose life,

00:02:41.660 because today's world is a scary one.

00:02:44.780 Too many people don't seem to care about the truth.

00:02:47.720 And I would suggest that that's all rooted in people

00:02:50.500 becoming less or really just anti-religious.

00:02:54.900 That's why it's more important than ever

00:02:56.760 to keep our relationship with God strong.

00:03:00.060 Hallow is the number one Christian prayer app in the United States.

00:03:03.300 It's like Calm or Headspace, but rooted in Catholic faith.

00:03:07.040 It is the perfect resource to deepen your relationship with God

00:03:10.400 and find peace through audio-guided prayer and meditation.

00:03:14.220 Several of Hallow's meditations encourage you to choose life

00:03:16.980 and to pray for others to choose life,

00:03:19.080 such as their Litany for Life with Lila Rose.

00:03:21.860 Hallow is free to download.

00:03:23.840 It will help you find peace and calm throughout your day.

00:03:26.980 So do it. Do it right now.

00:03:28.540 Download the app for free at hallo.com slash choose life.

00:03:33.740 That is hallo.com slash choose life.

00:03:36.960 Here's Chuck Donovan.

00:03:43.440 My name is Chuck Donovan.

00:03:45.800 I've been involved in the pro-life movement since 1971

00:03:48.920 at the University of Notre Dame.

00:03:51.460 And I've been involved with it more or less continuously since

00:03:54.780 as a writer, speaker.

00:03:56.800 I've worked in government and been the lobbyist

00:03:59.780 for National Right to Life Committee,

00:04:01.860 Executive Director of Family Research Council,

00:04:04.520 President and Founder of Charlotte Lozier Institute,

00:04:09.140 and have written a book or two

00:04:10.480 and some public policy papers along the way.

00:04:13.820 And what was it that first caught your attention about,

00:04:18.940 you know, the pro-life, pro-choice debate,

00:04:21.980 and what made you decide to become involved?

00:04:25.440 That's an interesting question.

00:04:26.640 I think of the dynamics as coming out of my family history.

00:04:31.700 I'm the third of 10 children,

00:04:33.480 which is a significant responsibility

00:04:37.060 when you've got a bunch of youngers around.

00:04:39.600 But you get used to the idea that somebody smaller than you

00:04:42.960 is worth an extra measure of care and defense.

00:04:46.360 And I think it almost grew organically out of that.

00:04:50.860 I certainly didn't know that much about the biology of the unborn child

00:04:55.000 when I was in high school in the late 60s.

00:04:59.400 But when I got to the University of Notre Dame,

00:05:01.400 I ran into a prominent pro-life family, the Wilkie family,

00:05:05.720 and they had some incredible information about what abortion really entailed.

00:05:10.780 And to me, once you see it, once you understand the direct violence of abortion,

00:05:16.600 I was sold on it as a priority worth my attention.

00:05:21.120 So is there any debate, you know,

00:05:23.840 there used to be a big debate about when does life begin,

00:05:28.320 and it seemed like at a certain point that was all anybody talked about.

00:05:32.560 Is there any debate any longer about whether it's a human life

00:05:36.620 from the moment of conception?

00:05:37.600 I don't think there was ever much of a debate about it, to be frank with you.

00:05:41.800 If you go back and read the medical dictionaries of the 1960s,

00:05:46.440 my father was a pharmaceutical salesman,

00:05:48.680 so our house was flooded with medical material.

00:05:51.880 And it was a given that a pregnancy represented a developing child.

00:05:56.420 It was a given in those textbooks that at the moment of fusion of sperm and egg,

00:06:01.920 a new human life was created.

00:06:03.580 I think what has changed is that every bit of science that's come forward

00:06:07.880 and every bit of medical care, which is something we've emphasized,

00:06:12.640 has reinforced the reality that the unborn child is not only a human being,

00:06:19.740 but can be a patient, is treated as a patient,

00:06:23.720 can be helped via surgery, via transfusions,

00:06:28.200 can be observed via fetoscopy and ultrasound.

00:06:33.360 It's all been reinforcing of what we knew all along,

00:06:36.340 that this is where human life begins.

00:06:39.080 And do you think average people on both sides of the debate,

00:06:43.020 not the people who are at the forefront of the pro-choice movement

00:06:46.420 or the people at the forefront of the pro-life movement,

00:06:48.380 but just the average American,

00:06:49.760 do you think that most people at their core kind of want the same thing

00:06:55.940 in terms of protecting a human life?

00:07:00.420 So for the pro-life movement, it's protecting the life of the baby.

00:07:03.480 For the pro-choice, the average pro-choice American,

00:07:05.820 they say we want to protect the well-being or the life of the mother.

00:07:10.220 Is there a common – before we get to the disagreements,

00:07:13.400 is there a shared agreement about some sort of value

00:07:16.160 that everybody's trying to achieve?

00:07:18.140 I wouldn't go that far.

00:07:20.240 And the reason is I think there are political purposes behind some

00:07:24.980 who have chosen to support a regime of legal abortion

00:07:29.100 and certainly the history of the population control movement.

00:07:34.200 They knew pretty much what they were about.

00:07:36.340 They felt that the fate of current generations depended on how we treat,

00:07:41.460 or in this case, I believe, mistreat future generations

00:07:45.520 in terms of the abortion issue.

00:07:48.740 So I think they don't have precisely the same values.

00:07:52.480 Having said that, I think what's encouraging is that the American people

00:07:56.120 have a durable sense that abortion is something that,

00:08:01.120 even at the political low point,

00:08:03.380 according to President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton,

00:08:08.260 abortion should be rare.

00:08:09.740 Well, you don't say that about something about which there is no political or moral concern.

00:08:15.780 So I think there's an understanding that it's wrong, that it's a bad course,

00:08:19.900 but there are some serious actors who want to promote it.

00:08:23.560 And so would you say that most Americans do agree that abortion

00:08:30.580 is something that ideally shouldn't exist?

00:08:33.740 I think they think that.

00:08:35.620 I think there's certainly a segment of Americans who think earlier in pregnancy,

00:08:39.860 it's less concerning, or put in the positive,

00:08:44.420 they need for us to show in the pro-life movement

00:08:47.660 that we can protect the unborn without undermining the well-being of women.

00:08:52.520 In fact, and I think this is our unique task now that the abortion laws may change,

00:08:58.160 is to show that we are very serious about supporting women and children.

00:09:02.800 That's been one effect that's happened for the pro-life movement

00:09:07.120 because of its own convictions,

00:09:08.880 but also driven by the other side's insistence that you cannot protect a child

00:09:15.000 until its birth and then turn your back,

00:09:18.840 because life's a complicated thing.

00:09:21.440 Right.

00:09:22.000 So I guess, you know, based on what you just said,

00:09:25.600 are the, you know, true kind of like advocates of the pro-choice movement

00:09:30.020 or the pro-choice lobby,

00:09:32.000 are they really kind of the friends of Americans that they,

00:09:36.360 that, you know, in the way that they make it out to be?

00:09:39.020 And are they really trying to protect women through pro-choice policies?

00:09:42.820 I think there are some empathetic women on the pro-choice side of the debate

00:09:49.280 in the sense that they see a society in which male responsibility

00:09:53.920 is basically dropped through the floor.

00:09:56.520 What I think they don't often see is that abortion has helped that collapse of male responsibility

00:10:03.900 by making it possible for both parties to walk away,

00:10:08.620 regardless of the cost to another human being's life,

00:10:12.380 at the cost of relationships.

00:10:14.840 By every data point that I look at in terms of relations between the sexes,

00:10:23.400 durable relationships, marriage, children being born out of wedlock,

00:10:28.540 even that phrase sounds quaint these days,

00:10:31.320 we have not made progress.

00:10:33.880 Choice has not brought us that lovely era of the perfect privilege and plan

00:10:39.580 where all children are wanted.

00:10:41.580 What we're finding is that a lot of children are not wanted by the very parents who have them.

00:10:47.840 And I think it's because we have dissolved the initial bonds of responsibilities between,

00:10:53.340 between the sexes.

00:10:54.700 And I think some in the pro-choice movement exploit that.

00:10:59.300 But I do think there are some in the pro-choice movement

00:11:02.020 who see women essentially struggling on their own,

00:11:05.100 and they see this as the better of two alternatives.

00:11:08.620 And that's where the disagreement is.

00:11:10.840 But keep in mind that even with the worst view of the data,

00:11:15.020 four out of five American women do not have abortions in their lifetimes.

00:11:20.680 It remains a minority event.

00:11:23.280 Here at Charlotte Luzier Institute,

00:11:25.940 we're looking at Medicaid data that shows that having an initial abortion

00:11:30.520 does not predict success in life.

00:11:33.480 It predicts future abortions.

00:11:35.940 It sets women on a path of multiple encounters with abortions.

00:11:41.240 So we need to pay attention to what women are actually experiencing.

00:11:45.000 And we need to do a little bit better job of reaching consensus on things

00:11:51.540 that allow both sexes to achieve their goals in life without discarding their kids.

00:11:56.380 Is it possible to solve this conflict or this debate between these two pretty polar opposite viewpoints

00:12:05.580 without agreeing on the scientific and historic facts

00:12:10.360 that have kind of preceded where we currently are in the abortion debate?

00:12:14.120 And by that I mean it seems like both sides accuse the other side of being anti-science

00:12:19.480 or being anti-woman or, you know,

00:12:23.320 and you even see, you know, organizations like Planned Parenthood saying,

00:12:26.900 oh, well, abortion has always been accepted, you know, as early as the 1600s.

00:12:30.740 You know, people aborted their kids.

00:12:31.980 So can you weave for me the importance of having a proper understanding of the science

00:12:39.160 and the history and what's preceded, you know, the current debate

00:12:43.280 in order to even adjudicate, you know, which side is correct?

00:12:46.500 Well, I think if you are on the pro-life side of the debate,

00:12:51.220 you're very encouraged by history.

00:12:53.780 You're also very encouraged by the science.

00:12:56.260 Take the history first.

00:12:57.960 When you get to more recent centuries and laws were based,

00:13:03.140 at least in the English American tradition, were based on quickening,

00:13:10.140 this is what I would call a threshold scientific evidentiary marker.

00:13:16.500 The law would have protected the unborn child in all likelihood

00:13:22.120 if there were a way to detect the child existed.

00:13:25.400 But quickening was movement, something the woman could perceive

00:13:28.400 or other family members could perceive.

00:13:31.020 So the presumption could be that there was unknown and living pregnancy.

00:13:35.860 I think people need to know that history.

00:13:37.940 It was the Protestant-led American Medical Association of the mid-1800s

00:13:43.640 in the United States that first got us a wave of pro-life statutes

00:13:48.220 that dominated the U.S. landscape.

00:13:50.960 It was not a church body springing forth with new ideas about insolument

00:13:55.640 or any other spiritual matter.

00:13:57.980 It was physical recognition that this child isn't being in the womb.

00:14:03.300 So it really, it's not, you know, it's not an issue of religious zealots saying,

00:14:09.720 oh, we want to spread our religious or moral beliefs across the rest of the population.

00:14:14.100 It was an issue of science realizing, oh, life is happening earlier

00:14:19.180 than what we previously thought.

00:14:21.240 Is that correct?

00:14:22.360 Well, I think the interaction is a little more complicated than that

00:14:26.820 in the sense that certainly the pro-life viewpoint does not depend on a religious insight.

00:14:33.300 Religious insights have to do with sacraments, the nature of the soul, salvation,

00:14:39.300 and in other religious traditions, whether it would be Stoicism or Hinduism.

00:14:46.580 It's a different set of propositions from one that says a human being exists here and now

00:14:51.680 and all human beings are worthy of protection.

00:14:54.660 I think it helps to have religious insight about the importance of human life,

00:14:59.560 and I would never say it doesn't.

00:15:01.540 But is it absolutely essential?

00:15:03.200 Is it something a civilly-minded person couldn't recognize?

00:15:07.580 I think it's exactly the opposite.

00:15:10.120 If you recognize that you can't privatize the decision about whether you or I are human beings,

00:15:19.060 that can't be a matter of individual judgment,

00:15:21.820 then that's not a religious insight.

00:15:23.580 It is as transactional as it can be.

00:15:27.320 And the pro-life movement generates momentum around the fact that we want to treat all human beings

00:15:32.720 as full possessors of the right to life.

00:15:36.420 Beautiful.

00:15:39.360 What should the average well-meaning pro-choice American,

00:15:44.980 what should they know about the debate,

00:15:47.700 and what don't they know that, you know, would kind of surprise them or shock them?

00:15:53.160 Well, one of the things, and it's been true and it's been a development

00:15:57.840 since the period prior to Roe v. Wade.

00:16:02.320 You know, you reflect a lot about this.

00:16:04.160 What happened in the case of women pregnant without benefit of marriage

00:16:09.640 or some phrase they would have used a century ago?

00:16:12.460 And it wasn't that there was no support in the United States.

00:16:15.820 There were maternity homes.

00:16:17.540 And Professor Marvin Olasky has written very compellingly about the extent of the Florence Crittenden homes,

00:16:25.040 homes run by church ministries and the like.

00:16:28.600 They existed.

00:16:29.180 But since 1972, and more likely since the early 1980s when legislative attempts to protect the unborn faltered,

00:16:40.040 there was a massive movement to create pregnancy centers.

00:16:44.620 And these are really not, you asked the question, Ian, about the American people

00:16:50.960 and their sensibility about abortion.

00:16:54.220 The American people support pregnancy help centers.

00:16:56.660 It's overwhelming.

00:16:58.660 Pro-choice women support them.

00:17:01.100 But if you read the popular press about pregnancy centers or watch a few legislatures in blue states,

00:17:08.260 for lack of a better term, they scorn pregnancy centers.

00:17:12.460 They talk about them as deceiving women and providing no real services.

00:17:17.700 Well, the list of services pregnancy centers provide compared to what a Planned Parenthood provides is immense.

00:17:24.080 It's simply factually the case.

00:17:26.640 You can get prenatal care.

00:17:28.480 You can get STD treatment.

00:17:30.640 You can get referrals for job training, child care.

00:17:34.340 These things have all developed since the early 1970s.

00:17:37.660 So what the pro-choice American needs to understand to the extent that it exists is that pro-lifers really mean it

00:17:45.620 and have proven they mean it about protecting women's interest in pursuing education and career as well as protecting their kids.

00:17:54.140 And, you know, same question but kind of going the other way, what should pro-choice Americans or people who think,

00:18:00.500 oh, yeah, I support, you know, I support a woman's right to choose, what should that person know about the pro-abortion lobby?

00:18:08.200 You know, I think that the everyday American who is pro-choice or indifferent as to whether the law changes or not,

00:18:17.660 I think they need to understand that the abortion industry really is an industry.

00:18:22.860 It's driven by different types of ideology.

00:18:25.720 And I don't think everybody on that side of the fence on the life issues thinks exactly the same.

00:18:33.020 There are those who are in it for monetary gain.

00:18:35.680 There are those who are in it because they believe that women will advance or be abandoned if they don't have the option of abortion.

00:18:45.680 But the real powers in the movement, if you look at the big foundations,

00:18:50.000 originally Rockefeller Foundation, now the Gates Foundation and others,

00:18:54.500 they're in it for very ideological purposes.

00:18:57.660 They believe there are too many people or they hold to eugenic views of human life

00:19:03.360 and they think we can improve the human race.

00:19:06.600 And I wish more of the American people would.

00:19:08.820 And it's tough to pay attention to what's going on in genetic engineering and the like.

00:19:13.680 We're very concerned about it because that's the flip side of this.

00:19:18.260 Old time eugenics was simply about getting rid of the feeble human weeds, as Margaret Sanger called them.

00:19:25.520 A newfangled eugenics is trying to create better human beings.

00:19:29.440 And I'm a little scared when I think about some of the people who think they know what a better human being looks like.

00:19:37.320 But there's huge science behind that.

00:19:40.040 It's something we all need to pay attention to because, as C.S. Lewis put it,

00:19:44.560 we're looking at the abolition of man.

00:19:46.220 Because of that, would you say that there's really an honest debate happening between the two sides?

00:19:55.000 Or would you say that the pro-choice movement is trying to obscure details

00:20:00.460 and avoid a truly honest debate of what's at play with abortion?

00:20:05.040 I think it's one of the most exciting aspects with regard to an honest debate

00:20:09.940 that a Supreme Court ruling that returns this, not to the states.

00:20:16.180 What the court will be doing if it reverses Roe versus Wade would be,

00:20:20.740 number one, it'd be getting the Constitution right.

00:20:23.600 Number two, it'd be saying to the American people,

00:20:26.420 we don't sit in some high place determining these ultimate questions.

00:20:30.480 You as Americans need to debate how things like abortion figure in your understanding of the human community.

00:20:38.800 So we're going to get debates.

00:20:41.160 And they're going to be different in New York State and New Jersey where other states

00:20:45.760 where they're now legalizing abortion until even after birth.

00:20:49.660 Then we get in other states, whether you use Texas, Florida, Ohio, whatever it may be as an example,

00:20:58.480 there'll be robust conversations about why are we seeking abortion?

00:21:02.320 What are the alternatives?

00:21:03.920 How do we deliver them without having negative results for women?

00:21:07.740 So I think we're going to have a real ground to compare.

00:21:12.060 Where do you want to live at the end of the day?

00:21:15.060 And I think Americans will gravitate toward communities, protect life, protect family,

00:21:20.300 and also elevate women in their roles in society.

00:21:24.160 So let's have it.

00:21:26.060 Does the pro-choice movement want that sort of open, honest debate?

00:21:28.720 I don't think they, I think it's for their political purposes, they are using what I would

00:21:35.080 call a cliche that was wrong from the start.

00:21:38.440 We've alluded or you've alluded as well to the idea that religious zealots drive this debate.

00:21:44.800 Well, I've known millions of pro-lifers over the years, including most of the leaders.

00:21:49.860 And they had a zeal for life, but they were not religious zealots, aiming on producing a

00:21:56.660 theocracy to rule the United States.

00:21:59.280 They were also largely women leaders.

00:22:01.860 In all my years in the fight in Washington, D.C., I've spent 65% of my time reporting to

00:22:09.520 a woman leader of the pro-life cause.

00:22:11.860 So it's been false from the start.

00:22:15.020 And I think correcting the record will be important for us going forward.

00:22:21.340 Great.

00:22:22.260 What can intellectually honest individuals on both sides of the debate agree on?

00:22:26.460 Are there any common ground agreements?

00:22:29.680 I think there might be some agreement in terms of, and how best to put this, the American people

00:22:41.800 are, seem to be less troubled by abortion earlier in pregnancy.

00:22:46.480 Right now, we're debating a 15-week limit.

00:22:50.820 On the pro-life side, I think we would make the argument there's nothing radical that happens

00:22:55.540 at 15 weeks that takes a non-human entity and converts it into a human being.

00:23:03.100 And everything we're learning from the science about fetal pain, about such commonplace things

00:23:08.320 as left-handedness or right-handedness, motion, how the baby reacts to the presence of another

00:23:16.740 baby.

00:23:17.140 In the case of twins, the babies become gentler toward each other.

00:23:22.300 I think we should be able to agree on these facts.

00:23:25.880 Where we're going to disagree is what's significant.

00:23:28.460 And I think it's incumbent on the pro-life side, not only to locate those things of significance,

00:23:37.000 like the heartbeat, but also to expound how do we deliver help and support to women?

00:23:44.940 How do we encourage men to step up and be men about the children they help create?

00:23:50.600 Those are things that everybody will benefit from.

00:23:53.080 So let's hope we can make ground on that rather than have the sexes pointing fingers at each

00:23:59.600 other, which is kind of a cycle we're stuck in now.

00:24:04.340 We kind of touched on this already, but has it ever been the case, as Planned Parenthood

00:24:08.800 is arguing pretty vocally right now, that the majority of society through history has thought

00:24:17.020 that the life of the child should be subjugated to the whims of the mother?

00:24:20.320 That goes back to their argument that as early as the 1600s, we have records of people, you

00:24:25.640 know, societally being fine with the idea of taking certain, you know, herbs or medicines

00:24:31.060 or things that caused the pregnancy to end before quickening.

00:24:36.740 Can you talk about that?

00:24:38.420 You know, is Planned Parenthood, because, you know, they don't say it in those words, but

00:24:41.660 they're basically saying that throughout history, society has been fine with, you know, the woman

00:24:45.680 making a decision for herself before a certain point.

00:24:48.860 Can you address that?

00:24:50.320 I think this is the last thing you can say is that history endorses abortion, either

00:24:56.120 in terms of practice or in the understanding of medical ethics, and the conclusive proof

00:25:01.640 of that is the Hippocratic Oath.

00:25:03.780 It's much disregarded these days by our medical schools, which take a very utilitarian view of

00:25:12.060 what ethics requires.

00:25:13.660 But the Hippocratic Oath dates to two millennia ago, and it covers every ground of current

00:25:20.500 controversy, privacy of medical records, abortion.

00:25:25.600 The language in the oath says, I will not give a woman a pessary, which would be one of the

00:25:30.560 devices or drugs or potions that might be used to induce abortion.

00:25:35.800 The Hippocratic Oath pledges the physician not to engage in assisting a suicide, which is now

00:25:43.000 obviously a worldwide phenomenon, a matter of debate.

00:25:46.920 This oath was not the creation of a traditional Western religion.

00:25:54.720 It was also something that permeated medical practice throughout the entire Western world.

00:26:00.660 And I think the evidence for the East and Asian countries is that embracing abortion is a modern

00:26:07.040 phenomenon there, too.

00:26:08.800 It was always frowned upon.

00:26:10.520 There was always a question of whether you could punish it justly, particularly when ascertaining

00:26:17.140 whether there was an actual pregnancy was an issue.

00:26:20.220 But collectively, history has seen the role of the physician as healer and helper, not destroyer.

00:26:26.380 So is the foundation of a lot of modern abortion advocacy based in essentially what are lies

00:26:35.660 fabricated for maximum kind of social change or impact?

00:26:39.880 I would call them lies.

00:26:42.240 I think that's a fair statement.

00:26:44.520 Certainly, if you look at one of the prime organizational advocates of abortion, the largest

00:26:51.280 producer of abortions in the United States is the Planned Parenthood Federation.

00:26:57.140 When you read their founding documents, they do not talk about medical ethics.

00:27:03.160 They don't talk about protecting the vulnerable.

00:27:05.960 They don't talk about protecting women.

00:27:08.200 They essentially have cast their lot with the idea of population control.

00:27:14.460 Based on Margaret Sanger's earlier writings and teachings, they thought that the government

00:27:19.600 could sterilize and abort its way out of high welfare costs.

00:27:26.040 She proposed the notion of a baby plan in 1932, published in the New York Times, in which

00:27:32.740 forcible segregation and sterilization would occur among the lower class of citizens as she

00:27:40.560 viewed it.

00:27:41.100 Obviously, she got nowhere near accomplishing that, although many of the ideas of people

00:27:46.240 around her contributed to a lax attitude toward these things in World War II.

00:27:53.360 So some of the very same figures.

00:27:55.720 So I think we have been subjected to a great deal of deception about what the aims of the

00:28:03.520 abortion industry really are.

00:28:05.080 What would you say were the main philosophical and maybe even legal justifications societally

00:28:13.280 for Roe v. Wade?

00:28:15.740 Without getting into the specific arguments given by the justices of the court at that

00:28:20.540 time, what were societally the main philosophical and legal justifications for the Roe v. Wade

00:28:26.460 decision?

00:28:27.420 And how have those justifications shifted or changed over time?

00:28:30.580 That's an interesting question.

00:28:33.440 How have justifications for abortion changed over time?

00:28:37.400 One of the most interesting things, and I was just beginning college back in the late

00:28:43.260 1960s and 70s, the momentum toward legal abortion had begun to run into real trouble.

00:28:50.400 During the 1960s, you may recall, the Sherry Finkbein case garnered international attention, and that

00:29:00.200 was spurred by a drug called thalidomide, which resulted in very serious deformities in developing

00:29:08.260 children.

00:29:09.180 And a woman named Sherry Finkbein was unable to obtain an abortion in the United States, her

00:29:14.860 home state of Colorado.

00:29:16.060 Colorado, and much of the media rallied behind her in her desire to obtain an abortion.

00:29:23.540 I think she ended up going to Europe to get one, but it also facilitated a number of states

00:29:28.920 liberalizing their law.

00:29:30.860 But most of those states had what would now be considered, even after liberalization, a

00:29:37.060 very conservative law.

00:29:38.600 The American Law Institute statute allowed abortion for rape and incest.

00:29:42.820 Life of the mother, where it was arguably already legal, and also some understanding of the

00:29:51.300 woman's health.

00:29:52.900 Most states, 33 states, didn't even pass that.

00:29:56.020 They had life of the mother statutes.

00:29:58.580 So what was the justification then at that point in time?

00:30:02.840 Probably you'd call them the hard cases.

00:30:06.380 And as that went forward, though, states began to vote on their statutes.

00:30:10.500 New York had liberalized its law pretty radically, and the state legislature in 1972 voted to

00:30:17.440 repeal that liberal law.

00:30:19.460 So pro-lifers were already rallying and winning substantial public support.

00:30:25.220 Where we are now, I think we get a whole new class of arguments that revolve around what

00:30:31.400 the lawyers call stare decisis.

00:30:34.260 In other words, we now rely on abortion on demand.

00:30:37.200 And it's so much a part of how our society works and functions that it would be too disruptive

00:30:43.280 to change it.

00:30:44.700 And I think some of the most compelling things happening on the pro-life side is that we're

00:30:49.120 really digging into, well, what has happened.

00:30:52.520 Is abortion associated with women's success?

00:30:55.880 Is it associated with better marriages?

00:30:58.120 Is it associated with stronger children?

00:31:01.500 Is it associated with pro-child and pro-family policies?

00:31:06.120 And you find the more you dig into these things is that abortion has become a substitute for

00:31:11.180 good policy.

00:31:12.480 The woman can always do away with the child.

00:31:15.280 The welfare system can always be drained of another 500,000 children who will depend on

00:31:21.800 Medicaid.

00:31:22.160 And these arguments become the arguments, it's a reliance interest, but it's being relied

00:31:28.020 on, that is abortion, by people who don't have the best interests of our society at heart.

00:31:34.660 We have more from Chuck coming up.

00:31:36.740 But first, be sure to text PRO-LIFE to 47581.

00:31:41.900 Because as the country grapples with the aftermath of overturning Roe v. Wade, the pro-life movement

00:31:47.280 has come under fire from far-left pro-abortion extremists.

00:31:51.200 Not only have leftists firebombed and vandalized pro-life clinics in multiple states, but online

00:31:57.560 pro-life groups have experienced mass censorship by Google, Facebook, TikTok, you name it.

00:32:04.620 That's why Live Action has been working tirelessly to find ways to spread the truth about abortion

00:32:09.280 and share resources with those who need it most without relying on biased big tech.

00:32:14.720 If you want to join Live Action's Fight for Life, text PRO-LIFE to 47581 and opt in to receive

00:32:22.280 updates from Live Action about their ongoing work to end abortion.

00:32:26.720 Texting PRO-LIFE to 47581 means you won't be at the mercy of the big tech censors in the

00:32:32.760 ongoing fight for life.

00:32:34.340 What does, you know, eradicating such a sizable percentage of our population, what does that

00:32:50.320 do to the future stability of our society?

00:32:53.580 Well, I think we're going to live that experience.

00:32:59.800 I gave a speech recently in which I talked about Japan, which has had the longest running,

00:33:06.500 lowest total fertility rate among advanced nations.

00:33:12.780 Japan is widely understood as an aging nation.

00:33:16.580 You read story after story about how robots tend to older Japanese couples because they

00:33:25.700 are not younger workers, health care workers to support them.

00:33:29.560 There's something called the Ikea, which in Japan is an empty house that cannot be sold

00:33:36.240 because there's no market for it.

00:33:38.340 And these dot the entire country.

00:33:40.400 One in seven homes in Japan is now an empty house.

00:33:43.500 I think what we're seeing in the United States could be the beginning of a sharper decline.

00:33:50.020 We have had a total fertility rate under replacement since the mid-1970s, and we're now at the lowest

00:33:57.060 birth rate in American history in terms of recorded birth rates.

00:34:01.780 So women are not having the family size they would like.

00:34:05.280 It's somewhere between two and three kids.

00:34:07.760 Instead, we're about one child per couple below that.

00:34:12.320 But it's going to happen in subtle ways when, in my opinion, when you find supply chain disruptions,

00:34:19.680 a lot of that has to do with the fact there are not people to do these jobs.

00:34:23.900 I recently drove across the eastern seaboard to visit family, and you see now hiring signs

00:34:31.800 everywhere.

00:34:32.900 There's a lot of bad policy from government, but there also is a lack of people to do what

00:34:38.540 societies have come to expect.

00:34:40.800 And we'll see that even more in the days ahead.

00:34:45.000 Does the my body, my choice argument, does that truly benefit women, or does it let men

00:34:54.760 off the hook?

00:34:56.020 Well, the my body, my choice argument does let men off the hook, because its corollary is

00:35:02.600 your body, your responsibility.

00:35:06.020 You can take care of this, not I.

00:35:08.540 I've helped create this child.

00:35:12.400 I'm the father of this child, but I have no instant duty to address that child's well-being

00:35:19.220 or even address what the mother might prefer.

00:35:21.300 However, I think both sides, you asked about how both sides can agree.

00:35:27.000 One of the things that both sides agree on is that the response of the father to an unexpected

00:35:32.820 pregnancy is probably the prime factor in a woman deciding to proceed with an abortion.

00:35:38.880 My boyfriend doesn't want it.

00:35:41.120 My husband doesn't want to work two jobs, which may or may not be necessary.

00:35:45.940 It would be pressure from the boyfriend.

00:35:48.160 If the boyfriend turns around and says, hey, well, not what we expected, but we'll cut

00:35:52.840 through this, the woman very often makes the decisions for life.

00:35:57.360 Pregnancy centers often try to fill in for that male role, which is a steep challenge for

00:36:02.460 them to do it.

00:36:03.880 But I've also had, I would say, a prime difficulty with the whole idea of my body, my choice, in

00:36:12.360 the sense that we all recognize individual sovereignty over a wide range of things.

00:36:18.160 That affect your mind, body, and spirit.

00:36:21.080 I think if it's applied to a tattoo in which a third party is not affected, the life of

00:36:27.780 an unborn child is not affected by whether someone chooses to wear earrings or whatever

00:36:34.400 they may have.

00:36:35.340 My body, my choice makes perfect sense.

00:36:37.880 Pro-lifers believe in a vast, particularly conservatives, believe in a vast array of my body,

00:36:44.640 my choice arguments.

00:36:46.500 But look at this situation.

00:36:48.940 The unborn child is a separate human being.

00:36:51.620 If we don't debate and settle that, we've got nothing.

00:36:54.640 And pro-lifers have nothing to offer if we don't insist on what we think is the scientific

00:36:58.780 reality.

00:37:00.020 On the other hand, though, if you believe sovereignty over the body is everything, then you have a

00:37:05.340 right, a constitutional right to approach a physician and say, you know, I would rather

00:37:10.560 be disabled, would you please remove my hand?

00:37:14.320 And there's actually, there have been some cases where people have sought disability because

00:37:18.700 of a psychological need to be in a protected classification.

00:37:23.720 But what if every physician, as they should, said, we're not going to remove a healthy hand?

00:37:31.060 Well, are they denying constitutional right on the grounds that they have a different view

00:37:35.880 of my body, my choice?

00:37:37.620 No.

00:37:38.080 They have a different view of what ethics require with respect to promoting health and

00:37:43.240 well-being.

00:37:44.100 The same thing is undoubtedly true with the unborn child.

00:37:47.300 An unborn child is largely, obviously, a healthy entity, and in addition to that, a separate

00:37:56.460 human being.

00:37:57.780 The my body, my choice argument brings you nothing as to an answer whether a physician

00:38:03.060 should agree to remove that child.

00:38:06.060 So what's the logical end to my body, my choice?

00:38:09.500 Well, the logical end of my body, my choice is that any other human being that places a significant

00:38:15.920 demand on others, whether it be a parent or on society, can be dismissed.

00:38:24.440 The right to life can be ignored.

00:38:26.940 When you look at it in terms of how much in the way of demands a child at two weeks after

00:38:32.260 birth places on a couple as opposed to the baby simply needing nutrients and relatively

00:38:40.200 healthy practices four weeks earlier in the womb, I would say the demands are much greater

00:38:45.920 later or later in that child's life.

00:38:48.260 They depend on adults for their sustenance, for their clothing, for their sleep, for their

00:38:54.820 medical care.

00:38:56.920 What we get when we privatize this idea that someone can be classified as non-human and

00:39:03.560 non-worthy of respect, we establish that principle.

00:39:07.080 And I think when we talk about spreading disrespect for life, of course, the aged and firm come into

00:39:14.660 view as perhaps an assisted suicide is the way out of this.

00:39:19.860 And we see the dynamics of that spreading to people who are mentally ill, but physically

00:39:25.700 well.

00:39:27.020 We see it with disabled children being selected for euthanasia in the Netherlands and other countries

00:39:34.180 that have had these laws for the longest period of time.

00:39:38.020 So it does spread.

00:39:40.260 It's an attitude that we don't have a fundamental right to life that can't be violated.

00:39:48.360 We have a fungible right to life that can be bargained away.

00:39:51.580 Should the weight of decisions about keeping or ending a life rest solely on the woman who's

00:40:00.680 pregnant or should men be required to, you know, have to share some of that responsibility?

00:40:06.740 And if men were required to share responsibility for that, you know, what, you know, what would

00:40:12.480 that look like as a society to put more responsibility on men?

00:40:15.120 Well, I think the fundamental question about men's responsibility for new human life starts

00:40:21.400 with education from the youngest age.

00:40:24.580 You know, it's deeply unsatisfying to talk about child support as the answer.

00:40:29.760 On the other hand, we need to recognize that the child support from the father of the child is

00:40:37.860 something that should commence immediately.

00:40:40.660 Any wherewithal he has, not something should be chased down two or three years later.

00:40:45.120 Uh, the mother in the situation of an unexpected pregnancy should be able with the support of

00:40:51.120 the law to call upon that man's help and support.

00:40:55.160 On the other hand, we need to be educating, uh, children, young, young men, boys, uh, from

00:41:01.500 the earliest stages of life that, uh, that you're responsible for your deeds.

00:41:06.080 And it transcends obviously the issue of pregnancy.

00:41:08.920 Um, we, we, we, I will not say we'd have an undisciplined society altogether, but the abortion

00:41:16.840 industry and that whole, uh, notion of the, uh, sexual irresponsibility has, has tied in

00:41:24.120 with the idea that we are not really responsible for what we do.

00:41:27.520 And I think we're seeing that, uh, in the way we're handling, uh, our prison system, for example,

00:41:33.620 right now, we have something of a, a revolving door in many of our cities.

00:41:38.560 And what's the outcome is that people feel free to commit the same crimes over and over.

00:41:43.360 How often do we read of someone who has 29 prior convictions and he's assaulting an elderly

00:41:49.980 woman in a subway?

00:41:51.760 Shouldn't happen.

00:41:52.380 And that's not a pregnancy issue, but it's a male responsibility issue.

00:41:57.340 And, uh, we have a lot of fundamental work to redo in rebuilding that responsibility from

00:42:02.860 the smallest age up.

00:42:05.500 To what, to what extent is a solution to abortion dependent on how we train our young men?

00:42:12.940 I think, I think a good 75%.

00:42:15.980 And it's one of the biggest challenges in the pregnancy center movement, which I've been

00:42:21.160 involved with for decades.

00:42:23.480 We know that the need that's presented, uh, in an unexpected pregnancy is immediate for

00:42:30.780 the mother.

00:42:31.920 She has to deal with prospective rapid and potentially radical changes in her life.

00:42:38.280 Uh, what changes for the male?

00:42:40.960 Well, with abortion, if he supports abortion, nothing really changes.

00:42:45.220 And it may not be a shock that six months or a year later, the same situation recurs.

00:42:51.660 So I believe if men were stepping up to the plate and saying, Hey, we didn't expect this

00:42:58.200 pregnancy to occur, but we're responsible for it.

00:43:02.000 This is a new human being.

00:43:03.920 I'm expected to take care of the child, whether I can personally raise the child or not.

00:43:09.060 Uh, I think we'd be a long way towards ending the abortion fight.

00:43:13.780 It really is not about women's decision-making.

00:43:16.580 I think it's a lot about the couple's decision-making backed by society that expects better.

00:43:22.980 Hmm.

00:43:23.760 Um, you know, a lot of times, especially, you know, in the pro-choice movement, uh, P you

00:43:31.260 know, people, people in that movement kind of hold up men who are pro-choice is like, Oh,

00:43:35.620 look at this like caring guy who, you know, supports women's rights.

00:43:39.880 And isn't that noble that, you know, he agrees that it's the woman's choice.

00:43:45.240 Is that really noble?

00:43:46.240 Or, you know, can you, can you juxtapose how the pro-choice movement talks about pro-choice

00:43:51.580 men versus the kind of abdication of responsibility that's really going on?

00:43:57.380 Well, obviously, uh, men who advocated to defend abortion are idolized by the pro-choice

00:44:03.940 movement, you get, uh, I guess you get the basic question.

00:44:08.420 Was it a surprise that Hugh Hefner, who was a central figure in the sexual revolution at

00:44:14.100 the, uh, grassroots level, was it a surprise that he came out and donated, uh, to the National

00:44:20.820 Abortion Rights Action League?

00:44:22.880 Did he embraced abortion?

00:44:24.480 That you could pick up a Playboy magazine and get your photos.

00:44:28.320 And next to that, you could get advocacy for ending the lives of the unborn.

00:44:33.680 To me, that's exactly where you'd expect Hugh Hefner to be.

00:44:37.640 And, uh, I would say the vast majority of men are not, uh, disciples of Hugh Hefner, but

00:44:43.780 they're all beneficiaries in a way of a culture of sexual irresponsibility.

00:44:48.540 And, uh, sadly, uh, while feminism is split on the life issue, the most radical feminists

00:44:55.780 act like Hefnerite men, which is to say, look, if I'm going to make my way in industry or corporate

00:45:05.060 life or political life, I need to be able to walk away from the children I create.

00:45:09.720 And, uh, that's the kind of cultural thing where women should not aspire to be more like

00:45:17.000 that type of a man.

00:45:18.540 And as men, we, we need to recognize that some of our fellow men are just, uh, exploiting the

00:45:25.720 moment.

00:45:26.780 Hmm.

00:45:28.860 Now that 95% of biologists, I think is the current statistic, agree that it's a human, you

00:45:35.640 know, verify this is a human life from conception.

00:45:39.280 Uh, what are the, what are the moral implications of that sort of scientific consensus?

00:45:45.680 Well, one of the ways the scientific consensus affects my thinking is that we are at a point

00:45:51.680 in human history where you cannot say, I don't know, you know, in centuries ago, uh, quickening

00:45:59.940 left authorities with, uh, a sense that they really, perhaps an abortion didn't take place

00:46:05.860 here, perhaps nothing intentional or something we can identify took place.

00:46:10.540 But now, you know, it's practically ubiquitous.

00:46:14.260 Uh, how many ads did you see, uh, during the Superbowl in past years or currently on TV

00:46:20.320 where for a second, the, the image of that unborn child on the ultrasound screen is absolutely

00:46:26.840 clear.

00:46:27.380 You know, I had, uh, four children and the first one, we had a bare outline of my daughter's

00:46:33.320 forehead and I thought, wow, this is fantastic.

00:46:35.880 But now you look at ultrasounds and you get details of, uh, the curl of a smile or an eyebrow

00:46:43.960 and parents put these on their refrigerators and children see them and every child should

00:46:49.940 see them.

00:46:50.400 Uh, museums, the Los Angeles Museum of Science now has an incredible exhibit on

00:46:57.220 pregnancy where you actually, you can experience the environment, the sounds, um, the rush of

00:47:04.300 blood, the heartbeat in, in the womb and the lighting as if you were experiencing that as,

00:47:11.180 as an individual, which of course is something we all experienced, but don't particularly remember.

00:47:17.080 But there's just so much in front of us now that's unavoidable truth.

00:47:22.080 There are 20 some, uh, children's hospitals across the country that have separate fetal

00:47:27.600 surgery units and there will be more, uh, it would be common to do surgery on the unborn

00:47:33.600 child, whether invasively or through transfusions and the like.

00:47:37.160 And eventually we'll all know someone who has operated on when they were 12 or 15 or 20 weeks.

00:47:44.320 Uh, these are human beings.

00:47:45.760 They're our brothers and sisters and the science frankly is overwhelming now.

00:47:50.660 Can, can you talk about, can you give us that juxtaposition of ultrasound technology, uh, that you

00:47:56.180 mentioned, you know, when, when your first daughter was born, you can barely make her out on the

00:48:01.800 ultrasound and what, you know, give us a kind of general timeline, you know, year or kind of like

00:48:07.280 decade and then, uh, compare that to what we can see now on ultrasounds.

00:48:12.080 Well, certainly in the 1970s, ultrasound technology was developing.

00:48:17.680 Uh, it was not in common use or wide use, but as the decade proceeded, it became standard.

00:48:23.960 Uh, the initial ultrasound machines were fairly large units and they produced something like a

00:48:30.260 Polaroid picture, at least the one I received, it was black and white.

00:48:34.000 It was a glossy, uh, I could make the out, the outline of my daughter's forehead, but not really

00:48:40.420 that many details certainly couldn't identify her face or which way she was oriented.

00:48:45.260 Well, now we have 3d and 4d ultrasound, uh, being administered practically in every pregnancy.

00:48:51.680 It's standard of care.

00:48:53.200 It should be administered even by abortion clinics, which now are refusing to do this, uh,

00:48:59.220 so that they can verify a pregnancy exists, uh, rather than proceed with a surgery or giving

00:49:05.220 away pills that cause an abortion.

00:49:07.620 But now you've got, uh, outlines of the baby's face, uh, basically real-time images rather than

00:49:15.340 sonically created images.

00:49:17.360 And, uh, there's a world of difference.

00:49:20.240 And, uh, once you've seen those, I don't think you can unsee them.

00:49:23.460 And I don't think you can go back and say, you know, this, this may look like a human

00:49:28.160 being, but it's not, it's unquestionably, as they say, one of us.

00:49:32.520 Hmm.

00:49:33.860 Can, can you weave a, uh, a little bit of a narrative of Bernard Nathanson, who he was

00:49:40.120 and, uh, his transformation from an abortionist to a pro-life advocate?

00:49:46.860 Sure.

00:49:47.540 Well, Bernard Nathanson was one of the most fascinating figures, I think, of the 20th century.

00:49:52.380 Uh, an absolutely brilliant human being, accomplished physician, very interested in science.

00:49:59.020 Uh, I'm more of a literature reader, but it was, uh, early on I found that he was devoted

00:50:05.580 to Irish literature, loved Finnegan's Wake and claimed to have read it multiple times.

00:50:11.140 Uh, not something that very physician, many physicians would claim, but absolutely brilliant.

00:50:17.280 He got involved in the abortion movement, uh, after I think his own experiences, he actually

00:50:22.360 uh, early in his career, and it's depicted in a film about him, uh, aborted his own child,

00:50:28.180 uh, which, um, I, I think was probably one of the most profoundly, uh, changing events as

00:50:36.460 he evolved.

00:50:37.400 But back in the 1960s, he was part of the National Abortion Rights Action League, uh, combined with

00:50:44.340 Lawrence Lader, who was the leader of that group's fight to make it one about religious

00:50:49.380 zealotry, particularly by Catholics.

00:50:52.040 And, uh, they worked with others like Betty Friedan in the feminist movement.

00:50:55.940 Uh, it was New York-based.

00:50:57.840 Uh, they really made the most progress legislatively lately in New York.

00:51:03.240 Um, and they were beginning to make some progress with the American people.

00:51:07.340 Uh, where the country broke was over Roe v. Wade, which I think took a quantum leap beyond

00:51:13.760 what the American people wanted or were debating.

00:51:17.940 And, uh, over time, because he was so focused on the science and what it could show him, he

00:51:24.040 had said earlier in one of his writings that, well, we might all change our views about abortion

00:51:28.700 if we had a window into the womb.

00:51:30.600 Um, because up to that time, 1973, as we've talked, that, that window was fairly opaque.

00:51:38.700 And, uh, as that changed, uh, I think his conversion, as I understood it, came about by science and

00:51:45.540 then was followed later by a religious conversion, ironically, to the very Catholic faith that he

00:51:51.100 had exploited to create legal abortion.

00:51:53.860 And, uh, he created a film called The Silent Screen, uh, that, that film depicted the unborn

00:52:02.580 child reacting to an abortion and the child's reaction is one of an open mouth, uh, startle

00:52:09.780 reflex, moving away from, uh, the abortionist tool.

00:52:14.260 Uh, it's still riveting to this day.

00:52:16.720 Uh, if you, if you view it, uh, he circulated it to the country, educated the country and

00:52:23.320 back in the day when I was working at the white house, he brought in a showing of the film

00:52:28.340 for president Reagan to see, uh, helped affect the president's thinking about the urgency of

00:52:34.060 the issue.

00:52:34.580 Uh, Bernard Nathanson was key to everything.

00:52:37.200 And the fact that he was a physician, a man who admitted to performing or presiding over

00:52:43.260 70,000 abortions in his career, uh, a man ultimately of science and literature, and he changed

00:52:49.960 his mind.

00:52:50.580 And it showed that anyone can change.

00:52:53.280 Hmm.

00:52:54.000 So at the height of Dr. Nathanson's, uh, advocacy for abortion, um, can you walk audiences through

00:53:03.540 kind of, you know, you, like a bullet list, a bullet point list of kind of the, the four

00:53:08.240 steps or the four lies that they, that they took to convince America, you know, or tried

00:53:14.820 to use to convince America to accept abortion?

00:53:17.160 Well, we've talked about the, the, the four major ways in which abortion was advanced in

00:53:25.180 the United States.

00:53:26.060 Uh, the first was to suggest that, uh, illegal abortion was claiming the lives of some 10,000

00:53:34.000 women a year.

00:53:34.780 Now that's an argument calculated to reach people who obviously passionately care about

00:53:41.360 the lives of mother, mothers, and could be persuaded that legal abortion was the way to

00:53:46.740 end, uh, the taking of those lives.

00:53:49.840 As, as, uh, Bernard Nathanson noted though, they knew the statistics were false when they

00:53:55.200 promoted them in the 1960s.

00:53:57.180 Uh, centers for disease control acknowledged later on by the Guttmacher Institute, uh, concluded

00:54:03.300 there were some 200 or so deaths per year from illegal abortion.

00:54:07.920 Uh, a number like that, any number is not negligible, but it was nothing on the scale that the abortion

00:54:14.700 industry suggested.

00:54:16.280 And there were reasons for that.

00:54:18.140 For one, uh, the high rate of death from illegal abortion earlier in the 19th, I'm sorry, in the

00:54:23.740 20th century, uh, preceded the development of penicillin and other antibiotics.

00:54:29.740 It wasn't a result of the abortion itself, but infection.

00:54:33.660 Uh, secondly, Mary Calderon, who was then medical director of, of Planned Parenthood, uh, said two

00:54:39.860 things about abortion.

00:54:40.980 She said people need to realize, uh, she didn't see the legal implications, but that 90% of the

00:54:48.020 illegal abortions being done, uh, prior to Roe of U.A. were still being done by physicians.

00:54:53.740 They were being done by the same physicians who, after Roe of U.A., put their shingles on

00:54:59.220 the front of the building rather than by word of mouth.

00:55:02.960 So, uh, illegal abortion didn't mean non-medical abortion or with not a physician.

00:55:08.080 Uh, the other thing is she asserted that abortion for reasons of the life of the mother were

00:55:14.320 practically obsolete even in 1970 because obstetrical practice advanced to the point with life support

00:55:21.000 and, um, neonatal care that the, it was seldom, seldom a choice between the mother and the

00:55:27.820 baby.

00:55:28.500 So, uh, the abortion industry posited that there was a choice between the mother and the

00:55:34.100 baby when medical science was moving in the other direction.

00:55:37.740 And Nathanson acknowledged that.

00:55:40.620 Uh, a second point they pushed was this one of women needing to have abortion to assume

00:55:47.340 their equal place in society.

00:55:50.000 And, um, that did split the feminist movement to a certain degree because feminists knew that

00:55:56.360 there are a great number of Americans who wouldn't go along with the program, uh, like for example,

00:56:02.140 the Equal Rights Amendment, uh, if, um, if abortion were, were found to be part of it.

00:56:08.520 And for that very reason, the movement for the ERA finally collapsed and it remains, uh, a dispute,

00:56:15.800 uh, with respect to passing an amendment like that and that it would lead to abortion on demand.

00:56:22.020 So, uh, that was a second point in dispute.

00:56:25.920 Uh, third major point was this idea of religious zealotry and Catholics were the particular object

00:56:32.780 of that.

00:56:33.260 Uh, and, uh, I've always found that interesting, uh, the Catholic Church is widely credited and

00:56:40.420 justly so with having held the line with respect to the abortion issue in the 1960s.

00:56:47.580 Uh, there was a fair amount of Catholic leadership at the National Right to Lift Life Committee where

00:56:53.500 I worked, uh, in the U.S. Catholic Conference, uh, Monsignor McHugh and others in that era, uh,

00:57:00.760 represented new voices and, of course, there was the Vatican, which in the 1960s had stood

00:57:06.420 by, uh, its traditional position on contraception in Humanae Vitae.

00:57:12.180 So, you, you found a split, there was a split brewing there between evangelical and Protestant

00:57:18.200 denominations and Catholics.

00:57:20.380 So, I think that became a, a fissure that was exploited by the abortion industry.

00:57:26.040 Uh, but they made it a very brutal and bitter one by, uh, attacking celibate Catholic priests

00:57:32.840 as being the only reason why we had laws against abortion.

00:57:36.400 Uh, truth being that Catholic Church had nothing to do, nothing significant to do with the 19th

00:57:42.460 century statutes that swept the country.

00:57:45.160 Texas' Roe v. Wade law at issue in Roe v. Wade was not a Catholic creation.

00:57:50.560 But be that as it may, uh, a popular prejudice against Catholics or seeing them as a very,

00:57:57.340 very conservative on these issues, uh, was exploited, uh, to advance the abortion cause.

00:58:04.240 So, why, why would Dr. Nathanson in the pro-abortion lobby have felt it necessary to take these sort

00:58:16.660 of explicit steps or, you know, tell these lies in order to try to make what, uh, and make the

00:58:23.380 acceptance of abortion more widespread?

00:58:26.380 Well, the explicit lies about abortion, if we understand all four of them, were designed

00:58:32.660 to appeal to something in the better nature of people.

00:58:36.760 The better nature of people, particularly Americans, is we don't embrace invasion of the

00:58:43.140 doctor-patient relationship.

00:58:45.460 But that was coming from the Hippocratic tradition, where there was regard for that being a substantive

00:58:50.960 thing.

00:58:52.240 Uh, the second thing is that Americans don't want women to die from illegal abortion.

00:58:57.260 In terms of an agreement, we're seeking that.

00:59:00.300 We should be able to agree that abortion, illegal or legal, is a horrible thing and is worth our

00:59:05.720 attention.

00:59:07.020 Uh, thirdly, we don't want to be ruled by a theocracy.

00:59:09.900 If the only basis for a law is that, uh, God said it, uh, the American people will question,

00:59:16.160 well, we're free people.

00:59:17.740 We have different views of God.

00:59:19.580 Uh, how do we reconcile those differences?

00:59:22.140 So Americans do want to avoid that.

00:59:24.260 They want to have, I think, morally principled secular government.

00:59:28.940 Fourthly, uh, I think this might be the basis of the appeals made by the abortion industry,

00:59:36.280 but it, it has a result of, uh, being a choice among various evils.

00:59:41.840 And where does abortion stand among those evils?

00:59:45.100 For the pro-lifer, those other things, poverty, uh, population stresses, those are genuine concerns.

00:59:51.520 But abortion is unquestionably not the answer to it.

00:59:54.960 But for many Americans, once you start to do a balancing test, they can find some good in it,

01:00:00.080 uh, even if they object to the specific way it's done.

01:00:04.560 At the time that Nathanson and the pro-abortion lobby were ramping up the use of these lies,

01:00:11.980 were Americans at the time reticent to, uh, accept abortion and, uh, agree,

01:00:20.640 you know, about living in a society where abortion is just commonly accepted?

01:00:24.680 Uh, and is that the reason why the pro-abortion lobby started, you know, rolling out these types

01:00:31.280 of arguments?

01:00:32.680 The abortion lobby needed distracting arguments because by the early 1970s, the legalization

01:00:41.000 activity that had happened in the United States in 17 states was grinding to a halt.

01:00:46.580 In Michigan and South Dakota, there were referenda on eliminating their pro-life statutes.

01:00:55.200 Uh, both of those came out with very pro-life results.

01:00:58.440 South Dakota was almost 80%.

01:01:00.260 Uh, Michigan, I think was in the high fifties.

01:01:02.960 At the same time, uh, Washington state, uh, voted to protect legal abortion.

01:01:09.080 But New York state, uh, which was the hotbed of, uh, pro-choice activism, repealed their

01:01:16.360 law legalizing abortion to 24 weeks.

01:01:19.480 Uh, then Governor Nelson Rockefeller vetoed that repeal.

01:01:23.700 So when you came to the Supreme Court decision in 1973, the states were already pulling back

01:01:29.860 from legal abortion.

01:01:31.280 Once I think the states and the people had seen, there were a lot of false arguments proceeding

01:01:36.400 here, but then the Supreme Court stepped in and put its stamp of approval on most of those

01:01:41.660 false arguments.

01:01:42.500 And so the states, the states are kind of all over the place.

01:01:46.580 Yeah.

01:01:47.320 Laws are being implemented.

01:01:49.400 They're being repealed.

01:01:50.480 Governors are vetoing it.

01:01:52.220 What's going on with the American people right now?

01:01:55.200 You know, how does America generally feel about abortion at this time?

01:02:01.740 Well, there are two ways in which classically popular opinion about abortion has been measured.

01:02:07.200 One of them is at what stage of pregnancy does the interest of the child or the reality of

01:02:13.200 the child outweigh, uh, the mother's interest in potentially having an abortion?

01:02:19.460 Uh, the second one is what are the reasons that justify having an abortion?

01:02:24.100 And interestingly, you see, even now the media focuses on the first question.

01:02:28.940 Uh, Americans are more troubled by abortion as you proceed through pregnancy.

01:02:33.040 The baby is more visible.

01:02:35.920 The attributes of the baby, they continue, they're incredibly fast in how they develop

01:02:41.680 it, but it's continually, uh, continually accumulating.

01:02:45.740 Uh, when you look, however, at the reasons that justify an abortion, Americans accept very

01:02:51.720 few of the reasons that are the reasons abortions occur.

01:02:55.560 Elective abortions are rejected on moral grounds by the American people.

01:02:59.340 Uh, that was true in 1972, uh, it's true now.

01:03:04.720 Americans are tolerant of abortion, uh, if they believe the life of the mother is at stake.

01:03:10.300 Uh, they're tolerant of in cases of rape and incest.

01:03:13.900 And, uh, although I think the baby who is disabled is increasingly protected, uh, that

01:03:19.400 one has drawn near majority support among the American people.

01:03:23.060 But those are like two or three percent of all pregnancies.

01:03:25.820 So, so much depends on how you ask the question.

01:03:29.580 And I believe the American people would embrace very pro-life laws in the majority of the states

01:03:35.200 if the Dobbs decision gives them a chance to do so.

01:03:38.880 And we have to help Americans enact their views, but also make sure that women are helped.

01:03:44.860 And can you weave us a little bit of kind of a national history, uh, looking at our society,

01:03:54.000 what's going on in, you know, our society kind of starting in the mid-50s and leading up

01:03:59.100 to 73 with, with the Roe decision?

01:04:01.880 Yeah.

01:04:02.580 Well, I think it's, uh, very difficult for us now to understand how tumultuous the 1950s

01:04:11.360 and 60s were from a social standpoint.

01:04:14.480 Uh, the secular revolution, I think, was lit by, uh, one or two other issues, including

01:04:20.620 the war in Vietnam, uh, the advance in society of widespread drug use, uh, things that, uh,

01:04:28.840 represented, uh, a youth rebellion of sorts, uh, against what the established, uh, government

01:04:35.640 at the time was asking of them.

01:04:37.820 We also had the development of the contraceptive pill, uh, in, I believe, the late 1950s.

01:04:44.740 It really got spread on the U.S. market in the 1960s.

01:04:48.000 So it became a, um, a much easier question whether you could engage in sexual activity

01:04:55.380 while avoiding pregnancy.

01:04:57.440 Um, so those things were combining together.

01:04:59.940 But you also had, this was, the 60s were the decade of assassination.

01:05:04.160 And I don't think today's, uh, Americans fully appreciate how, um, anxious and angry

01:05:12.180 a society we became.

01:05:13.820 Uh, Martin Luther King was assassinated.

01:05:16.340 John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s.

01:05:19.480 Robert F. Kennedy.

01:05:20.840 And these were figures that were advancing, for the most part, policies the American people

01:05:25.520 agreed with.

01:05:26.640 Uh, they also, their deaths also sowed great mistrust across society.

01:05:31.680 So by the end of the 1960s, you have Woodstock, the Summer of Love, uh, the music I listened

01:05:38.180 to, uh, rarely agreed with the ethics of the music I listened to, but I sure played the

01:05:42.880 stuff, uh, because that's what college students in that era, uh, listened to.

01:05:48.720 So at the end of the day, the sexual revolution was definitely a major push, uh, toward legalizing

01:05:54.980 abortion, uh, I think, I think smartly the abortion movement played itself as a wave of the future

01:06:02.500 and advocate for the young, uh, now 50 years on, we're seeing that the aftermath of those

01:06:07.600 things was not all that good.

01:06:08.860 It might be worth, you know, so Dr.

01:06:13.420 Uh, Daniel Solmacy, uh, who's a professor, you know, so he's a professor at bioethics at,

01:06:20.560 uh, Georgetown.

01:06:22.160 And he, in an article about abortion, uh, mentioned that in his view, we as a country have moved

01:06:32.140 so far into the realm of discussing everything from a data and science perspective that we're

01:06:38.880 societally incapable of discussing things from a philosophical or moral stance.

01:06:44.820 Um, do you think that's true?

01:06:46.520 And if so, you know, could you touch on, you know, touch on that idea, you know, is, is that

01:06:51.380 true first and foremost?

01:06:52.740 And secondly, if so, you know, maybe expound on that.

01:06:55.400 Um, you know, the idea that we can only debate things from a scientific point of view, um,

01:07:03.500 it's not quite compelling to me.

01:07:07.140 I think what we're facing is people, a people, the American people who would like a moral basis

01:07:16.020 for decision-making.

01:07:18.280 Uh, however, they have lost the foundations of where a moral decision-making legitimately comes

01:07:25.220 from, uh, I think for a person who is religious, for example, uh, there's a, a substrate, an

01:07:33.720 underlying system of beliefs, uh, that covers most of, of secular responsibility.

01:07:41.280 And, uh, it can be as simple as what some would call a leftist gospel of the good Samaritan.

01:07:48.980 Uh, the priest passes by, uh, the man lying beaten and robbed and near death on the side of

01:07:55.000 the road while, um, Samaritan crosses over, aids him and make sure that he's comforted.

01:08:03.760 Well, is that, did he do a religious thing?

01:08:06.560 No, but he did something that was embedded within a moral substrate about caring for your

01:08:12.220 neighbor.

01:08:13.120 So I don't think Americans are beyond them.

01:08:15.380 What they have trouble with is they might not pick up their Bible in the first place to

01:08:19.280 know the story or another source of religious teaching.

01:08:23.740 I found it fascinating that over the course of the pro-life movement, uh, I met a number

01:08:29.240 of atheists.

01:08:29.980 One of my first interns at national rights of life committee was Jewish and an atheist and

01:08:36.000 a rabid pro-lifer.

01:08:37.720 Uh, I welcomed him and, uh, we formed a friendship that's lasted for decades.

01:08:42.920 Uh, Bernard Nathanson began an atheist and I think he became more pro-life before he became

01:08:48.620 a religious person.

01:08:50.380 Uh, same was true of Nat Hentoff, the writer for The Village Voice.

01:08:53.960 Uh, people like that remind me that, uh, there is a civil way in which we can arrive at very

01:09:00.540 moral conclusions, uh, that religious people and non-religious people alike will embrace.

01:09:06.060 Are we beyond that?

01:09:07.920 No.

01:09:08.540 On the same time, does science help us?

01:09:11.060 Yes, it does.

01:09:11.760 The Atlantic Magazine ran an article two years ago in which it said that science is helping

01:09:16.580 the pro-life side.

01:09:17.900 I passionately believe that.

01:09:19.860 We're going to be able to do things to protect children in the womb, uh, ever earlier and

01:09:24.960 less invasively.

01:09:26.320 And, uh, let's get about that.

01:09:28.340 But the reason we do it has to be a moral question.

01:09:32.460 Is that our brother or sister?

01:09:34.440 Is that patient?

01:09:35.400 Is that patienthood hand in hand with personhood?

01:09:39.180 And I think it is.

01:09:40.160 And I think if patienthood helps you see personhood, so be it.

01:09:44.640 If it's a religious insight, I'll accept that too.

01:09:46.980 So one of the things that I'm, uh, that I've been thinking through is, you know, how do

01:09:53.460 you, in the course of, you know, we're, we're covering such a broad range of history and

01:09:59.480 topics and issues within this debate in a relatively short period of time with this film.

01:10:05.180 Uh, and one of the things that I've been wrestling with is just, you know, linking the various

01:10:09.920 things together.

01:10:11.540 Um, and so I'm curious is, you know, if you look at that first step of, you know, decoupling

01:10:18.680 the debate from a moral, you know, debate and just making it a science or medical debate,

01:10:23.620 uh, does decoupling the whole issue from morality somehow tie into or make, you know, make sense

01:10:30.920 that the, the very next step that they used was then to just, you know, kind of throw morality

01:10:36.040 out the window and just blatantly lie about the number of women who are going to, you know,

01:10:40.680 die if abortion wasn't legalized.

01:10:43.260 So I, I guess the point is, you know, how, you know, how, how do those things tie together

01:10:47.640 and how do you kind of get from one to the next?

01:10:50.400 Interesting question, how these various arguments tie into one another.

01:10:55.880 I think, I, I think assuming a stance of practical necessity or utilitarian ethics, uh, probably

01:11:05.180 covers you on both of those fronts or inspires you.

01:11:08.440 Uh, if you're trying to save the planet from climate change in which you've been

01:11:13.220 envisioned that a million people will die a day because of the weather, that justifies

01:11:18.800 in some thinking an awful lot of a radical activity, uh, whether it be massive expansion

01:11:26.060 of government, elimination of, of fuel that people use to heat their homes and drive their

01:11:31.540 cars and run their businesses, it becomes a practical question.

01:11:36.100 So I think the abortion industry became pretty amoral earlier on.

01:11:40.660 Uh, what we have now though, is if we're going to premise what we're saying and doing totally

01:11:45.480 on the science, uh, then the powers in the medical community right now, uh, wield much

01:11:51.780 more authority on the pro-choice side than on our side.

01:11:54.800 I think we're catching up, but I think we can have an awful lot of pro-life policymaking before

01:12:01.020 we ever convince the American college of OBGYN to be pro-life.

01:12:05.380 So let's, let's win for life, even if we haven't quite captured the scientific heights.

01:12:11.440 So what, you know, why is the, uh, the medical establishment, uh, optically predominantly pro-choice?

01:12:22.120 I'm not sure it is in a sense.

01:12:24.320 I think the, the institutional side is when I first came to Washington, uh, the board of

01:12:29.880 global ministries of the United Methodist Church, which still has a building next to the Supreme

01:12:34.860 Court, was uniformly, uh, pro-choice.

01:12:39.080 Um, but in the years since, uh, the leadership of some of those bodies has relented on that

01:12:44.280 position and embraced a more pro-life stance.

01:12:47.060 Uh, when it comes to the medical community, I would say, as in most, uh, of this debate,

01:12:53.620 most people sit on the sidelines.

01:12:55.440 Uh, if you, in fact, there was a poll of ACOG membership, uh, some decades ago, uh, which

01:13:02.800 found that, you know, majority of the physicians in ACOG are not pro-abortion per se, at least

01:13:08.440 to the extent of embracing abortion on a request.

01:13:12.240 Ninety-two percent of OBGYNs don't do abortions and won't do them.

01:13:16.220 Uh, those are very impressive numbers, but are they sidelined, fearful of speaking out?

01:13:21.840 In a cancel culture, in an abortion, the cancel culture began decades ago, uh, it takes courage

01:13:28.840 to speak out.

01:13:29.960 C.S. Lewis was definitely right about the place of courage in, in, uh, in, in moral reality.

01:13:37.740 Yeah.

01:13:37.880 You know, thinking about that second, that second lie of, you know, the number of women

01:13:43.260 who were going to die, uh, if abortion wasn't made legal, um, when you, when you have a huge,

01:13:51.860 you know, claim like that, um, in my mind, it makes it easy to then immediately start demonizing

01:13:58.020 people who, you know, don't, who don't agree with your claim.

01:14:01.860 You know, you can immediately start demonizing people as, you know, uncaring religious zealots

01:14:07.100 or, you know, uncaring people who want to control women's bodies.

01:14:11.040 How does, how does starting off, you know, with a lie give you ammunition to then start

01:14:15.980 making ad hominem attacks against people who, you know, don't share your pro-choice views?

01:14:22.040 Well, I think that we, in social debate today, we, we have an awful lot of ultimate stakes

01:14:28.820 debate going on.

01:14:30.760 In other words, are storms and, uh, destructive weather, a bad thing, uh, in most cases?

01:14:39.020 Yeah.

01:14:39.380 I have no, nobody's fond of hurricanes, uh, cold snaps, heat waves.

01:14:43.980 People do get hurt.

01:14:45.400 When you frame something in terms of the apocalypse, uh, is about to happen because of something

01:14:51.140 that you think, uh, human beings can absolutely control.

01:14:54.660 Then it's very easy to, to demonize someone who is an opponent of some or most of your

01:15:00.680 judgments on that topic.

01:15:02.680 Population control operated that way in the abortion issue.

01:15:06.960 If you read accounts of what societies practiced in India and China, I think you can come to the

01:15:13.540 conclusion that as bad as the United States has been, uh, the worst, uh, harms of abortion

01:15:19.020 and abortion favorable policy have happened in other nations.

01:15:23.980 And, uh, those were definitely the result of very apocalyptic thinking.

01:15:29.000 And that leads to, uh, moral recriminations, uh, from which it's pretty hard to recover if

01:15:35.280 you're in public debate.

01:15:36.700 So I would hope that the, one of the effects of reversing Roe versus Wade is that we not only

01:15:43.020 have debate, but we have a turn of dedication to making reasonable, non-apocalyptic arguments,

01:15:50.600 and then looking at the results.

01:15:52.460 Another way in which pro-choice and pro-lifers should be able to agree is that our data in

01:15:58.080 the United States or an advanced society is really terrible.

01:16:01.780 Uh, states don't collect data on complications of abortion in a systematic way.

01:16:07.100 The CDC doesn't collect it.

01:16:08.720 Uh, we don't have national data or data usable nationally out of California, Maryland, and

01:16:14.760 other states that do an awful lot of the U.S. abortions.

01:16:18.300 Uh, we should agree that science and data matter enough that we would collect it systematically.

01:16:24.600 And we've been pressing that point.

01:16:26.560 We'd hope the other side would agree.

01:16:29.080 So is it, is it a surprise considering the apocalyptic claims of the pro-choice movement

01:16:33.580 about the number of women who would die from illegal abortions?

01:16:36.420 Is it a surprise that, uh, they then immediately go from that into saying the other side is

01:16:43.560 just religious zealots who want to destroy women's lives?

01:16:47.000 Uh, the idea that one side of the debate is indifferent to women does flow from this, uh,

01:16:53.260 unfounded assertion that women are going to die in large numbers from making abortion against

01:16:59.640 the law.

01:17:00.640 It ignores the fact that for, uh, decades, basically, uh, religious groups have been at

01:17:07.620 the forefront of providing free healthcare, for example, or maternity homes or places where

01:17:12.880 women obtain support.

01:17:14.360 It's happening in society now.

01:17:16.460 So, uh, it won't deter.

01:17:18.540 It won't end pro-lifers from expanding pregnancy care work.

01:17:22.200 Uh, what it will do is, uh, uh, reduce public support for that, that work and, uh, deter, uh,

01:17:30.340 honest assessment of what the effect of that work is.

01:17:33.000 I think pro-lifers have to be conscientious about data, uh, means we dismiss nothing.

01:17:39.340 Uh, we don't make assertions we can't back.

01:17:42.160 Uh, I've said repeatedly, uh, do all women have mental health consequences from having an

01:17:47.620 abortion?

01:17:48.440 Probably not.

01:17:49.660 Do many do and is it not acknowledged how many do?

01:17:52.420 Yes.

01:17:53.200 And getting those numbers right is part of the, part of the puzzle of arguing how we should

01:17:58.240 approach these things.

01:17:59.780 Right.

01:18:00.580 When did, you know, semantics I think really do matter.

01:18:03.760 Uh, and I think it's a question that I haven't gotten a clear answer on and I'm curious if you

01:18:09.200 can, uh, kind of clarify this.

01:18:11.900 When did the pro-abortion movement really start claiming the term pro-choice?

01:18:16.960 Because I think saying, oh, we're pro-women's choice sounds very compelling.

01:18:21.800 Yeah.

01:18:22.080 You know, saying, oh, we're pro-death or we're pro-abortion, no one's going to want that.

01:18:25.540 Right.

01:18:25.940 So when did, when did this pro-abortion movement become the pro-choice movement?

01:18:31.340 The powerful thing about moving from, uh, previous language to the pro-choice position,

01:18:37.820 uh, was that it appealed to what I would call the broadly libertarian streak in the American

01:18:44.420 people?

01:18:45.420 Uh, we like to decide what to do with our own money, uh, with our own investments, with

01:18:50.160 our own votes.

01:18:51.540 Uh, so this fit very nicely into it.

01:18:54.220 Uh, my recollection is that there was a transition period where the slogan was, who decides?

01:19:00.980 And, uh, I had long philosophical conversations with people on our side about this question,

01:19:07.920 uh, who decides in a morally contested area?

01:19:11.180 Well, it makes sense that if there's difference of opinion, the individual.

01:19:14.860 And that, that was a bit of a precursor to the pro-choice, uh, slogan.

01:19:20.760 Uh, what, what it finessed obviously is who decides what?

01:19:25.080 You know, if, uh, if you're taking a human life, you don't ask the question of a parent

01:19:30.320 of a one-year-old who decides whether this child eats dinner tonight or not.

01:19:34.920 The obligation is to provide the meal, uh, the obligation to protect life.

01:19:39.780 So by putting something up for decision, putting up for choice, you're basically saying it's

01:19:45.180 decidable.

01:19:46.260 It's choosable.

01:19:47.540 Uh, very, very clever, a difficult finesse to deal with.

01:19:50.800 And, uh, pro-lifers have had to be nimble in responding to it.

01:19:54.880 The language of the pro-choice movement has changed depending on the degree of militancy

01:20:00.160 going on in the movement.

01:20:01.920 Back in Bernard Nathanson's day, uh, it was called National Abortion Rights Action League.

01:20:08.080 And that acronym was kept, but it was supplemented with references to choice.

01:20:14.200 A few decades later, when there was an attempt to appeal to a country that obviously wasn't

01:20:19.140 embracing abortion, but now you will see sporadic attempts to shout your abortion or de-stigmatize

01:20:26.640 abortion.

01:20:27.540 The dilemma for the pro-choice movement is that they can soften it, but they can't transfer

01:20:33.060 it into a good.

01:20:34.760 And I think we'll see further attempts to try both methods, if you will, to see if the

01:20:39.540 American people will buy into the viewpoint that abortion is something we just have to

01:20:45.260 learn to live with.

01:20:46.400 Is, is abortion, when you actually look at what it, what is happening, is it a, is it

01:20:54.960 a barbaric thing?

01:20:57.700 And if so, is that the reason why you see people like Abby Johnson and people who were

01:21:03.720 former abortionists, former people who worked at Planned Parenthood, is that the reason why

01:21:09.080 there have been, you know, relatively frequent exoduses from the abortion movement to the side

01:21:15.340 of life?

01:21:16.520 I think so.

01:21:17.620 When you read Abby Johnson's account of recognizing what she was doing on the day where she was

01:21:24.440 in the operating room, observing the ultrasound screen, I think she saw, because she could

01:21:31.000 no longer not be in the room, if it were, as it were, she saw the brutality of the act.

01:21:37.760 And that's something that cannot be eliminated.

01:21:40.080 Here's a human being clinging to life, not misplaced, but where it belongs by virtue of

01:21:46.640 its state of development.

01:21:48.340 And it's being ripped from that place and reduced to the contents of a suction tube.

01:21:56.240 I mean, imagine that.

01:21:58.380 And later, with an abortion, as we've seen recently in the District of Columbia, what it takes to

01:22:05.460 take the life of a baby.

01:22:07.280 It's a horrible thing.

01:22:09.280 Early on, Magda Dines wrote a book called In Necessity and Sorrow, where she made the argument

01:22:15.520 that abortion was terrible, but we needed it.

01:22:18.400 But the descriptions in the book are reminded that if this is what we need, then we are little

01:22:25.240 better than the most ravenous animals that roam the planet.

01:22:30.040 So I think it's something you can't get away from.

01:22:32.660 It is the core of the debate.

01:22:35.540 So what can you tell us about chemical abortion?

01:22:41.160 Chemical abortion has been with us for a while, but in the last, I would say, five to 10 years,

01:22:47.580 it has become the majority method by which abortions are done.

01:22:52.000 The abortion industry will tell you it's because of a response to pro-life statutes.

01:22:56.500 I don't think so.

01:22:57.540 I think it's a response to a number of things, including the decline in the number of physicians

01:23:03.660 willing to do abortion, the fact that abortion clinics are not welcome in many communities.

01:23:11.460 They don't exist in 95% or more of American counties.

01:23:15.620 This is the abortion industry's response to move abortion not only out of the clinic context,

01:23:21.680 but out of the medical context.

01:23:23.900 They're taking a vast gamble with women's lives.

01:23:27.320 They're experimenting with allowing these chemicals to be used later in pregnancy.

01:23:32.920 They're ignoring the risk evaluation and mitigation strategy, which suggests that women need medical

01:23:38.840 attention before they even consider taking such pills.

01:23:42.340 We are going to have women badly injured by these drugs, and right now, we're barely able

01:23:48.260 to track those injuries.

01:23:50.100 So it's a reckless move.

01:23:52.120 It's not a response to the pro-life side.

01:23:54.400 It's a response to really the decline of abortion from the medical community.

01:23:59.580 It's a way to make it a non-medical event, and it's tragic.

01:24:03.440 How much more dangerous is chemical abortion for the woman than traditional abortion procedures

01:24:15.060 with the suction tube or, you know?

01:24:19.020 And I guess specifically, I think it was in a CLI article that emergency room visits went

01:24:26.120 up something like 500%.

01:24:27.660 Is that true?

01:24:28.400 Now, yes, that is an increase in the number of women making visits to emergency rooms on

01:24:36.520 a set of Medicaid clients in 17 states, and the number has increased 508%.

01:24:42.460 Now, in terms of the relative risk between chemical and surgical abortion, it's about

01:24:49.220 a factor of four, four times more dangerous to have a chemical abortion, at least in terms

01:24:56.660 of whether a woman will visit an emergency room for care within 30 days of obtaining the

01:25:02.480 chemical abortion.

01:25:03.980 The biggest danger is from an unrecognized ectopic pregnancy because the woman hasn't had

01:25:09.540 pregnancy confirmation that the pregnancy is indeed in the womb and not in the fallopian

01:25:14.640 tube or somewhere else where an ectopic situation could occur.

01:25:19.080 So chemical abortion is designed to happen away from a clinic, often away from an emergency

01:25:25.140 room situation.

01:25:27.460 And they're being distributed to children as young as 10.

01:25:31.320 It is a horrific situation.

01:25:33.460 To me, it's a case of massive medical neglect.

01:25:36.740 And yet the FDA says it's safe and has approved use of the pill.

01:25:42.520 Can you talk about that?

01:25:44.280 Well, there are lots of Americans who have their issues with the FDA these days.

01:25:48.680 It's the most independent of federal agencies.

01:25:52.560 It does not disclose very often its processes.

01:25:57.200 It is part and parcel of the problem that's developed with opioid prescriptions in the United

01:26:04.820 States.

01:26:05.960 It is financed in part by the industry.

01:26:09.240 It is basically regulating a situation we don't readily tolerate when other industries are

01:26:15.600 involved, and it has long been a citadel for people who promote the pro-choice point of view.

01:26:24.200 The original risk evaluation strategy was barely adequate to provide women with support if they

01:26:30.240 take these chemicals.

01:26:32.020 Now we're without that completely.

01:26:33.680 I view that as an ideological judgment by a pro-choice institution.

01:26:38.540 So can you kind of give us just some sort of lead-in that links us from the risks to the

01:26:45.640 just shocking fact that the FDA has kind of put a blanket approval on them?

01:26:51.140 Sure.

01:26:51.860 Well, the risks of chemical abortion have been identified for a long time, particularly in

01:26:56.840 overseas studies, where the dramatic increase in emergency room care for women who have chemical

01:27:04.180 abortions was first identified in a finished study.

01:27:07.340 So the FDA had that information.

01:27:09.600 It's one of the reasons why it initially installed the risk evaluation management structure.

01:27:15.420 When it moved away from it, it was not because of medical news.

01:27:19.620 Medical complication tracking in the United States is poor.

01:27:23.720 Our new studies showed how dramatically more dangerous abortion pills are.

01:27:29.980 The FDA, rather than wait for that information, though we told them it was coming, acted politically.

01:27:35.540 And they did so because of the ideology of abortion that's governed abortion promotion for the last 60 years.

01:27:45.720 Regardless of what happens with future Supreme Court rulings on the issue of abortion,

01:27:50.280 why is it important for Americans to be aware of the history of abortion, the dangers, what the science and medicine, advances in medicine show about abortion?

01:28:04.880 Why is it important for us as a society to be informed and knowledgeable on this topic, regardless of what happens in the future legally?

01:28:16.560 Well, medicine is probably the most commonly shared major concern of every human being on this planet.

01:28:24.840 We can do so much more to protect human life than any previous generation.

01:28:31.840 But for millennia, thanks to the Hippocratic Oath and standards of the medical profession,

01:28:38.880 what we had first and foremost was trust between the patient and the doctor.

01:28:44.120 The essence of the Hippocratic Oath is, first, do no harm.

01:28:48.040 And if you knew your physician never meant you harm, maybe lots of things go away, including the medical malpractice challenge in the United States.

01:28:58.800 But now we're in a situation where who is the healer?

01:29:02.420 Who's the physician?

01:29:04.140 What is driving his decisions or her recommendations?

01:29:08.400 If it's something social, if it's something political, if it's some idea that the sexes no longer exist,

01:29:15.340 if it's some idea that the baby in the womb is no longer human, the baby born alive no longer has a right to life,

01:29:21.800 then what you have is no trust.

01:29:25.320 And if you have a society where there is no trust, then the entire edifice of the practice of medicine, in my view, collapses.

01:29:34.000 And we are left with so many other similar situations where the social contract,

01:29:40.780 weak as it may be sometimes, is frayed.

01:29:43.680 And it's signed by one party, but not another.

01:29:47.220 And at some point, neither party signs it.

01:29:49.780 And then how do we get along?

01:29:51.820 How do we get along if we don't know the physician means well for us, if he's not an agent of some political movement?

01:29:58.280 We saw that with psychology in the old Soviet Union.

01:30:02.580 We see it in the West with the sanctity of life.

01:30:04.900 I think everything is affected.

01:30:07.500 Mothers, babies, men, the aged, the infirm.

01:30:12.280 It becomes a battleground.

01:30:14.340 That's not what we want in our hospitals.

01:30:16.860 It's not what we want in our laws.

01:30:19.320 And it's where the abortion industry and its allies have taken us.

01:30:22.940 Is there anything else that you'd like to share or say or any final thoughts that you have before we cut?

01:30:30.860 Well, I want to thank you for doing this.

01:30:33.560 Wish you great luck with it.

01:30:35.400 Thank you.

01:30:35.740 Yeah, I mean, one of the things I would say is that people are concerned that the issue is politically polarized.

01:30:43.600 It's an interesting thing.

01:30:44.700 The Republican Party, which I'm a member, is overwhelmingly pro-life.

01:30:50.640 The Democrats now are overwhelmingly on the other side.

01:30:54.900 I think to make a case, that's not a good thing for society that we don't all see our stake.

01:31:00.340 Of course, it's a bad thing that we don't all have a shared understanding of what the value of life is and how it drives every issue.

01:31:09.900 At the same time, what I find fascinating is that it is now the defining, the defining issue between these two vast camps in American society.

01:31:20.920 That's how important the abortion issue is.

01:31:24.060 Who would have guessed 50 years ago when people were promising the courts resolved this question?

01:31:28.580 Or people now saying, oh, settled law.

01:31:32.080 But actually, the political alignment of the entire country, it's not built around war and peace.

01:31:37.320 It's not built around the size of the welfare state.

01:31:40.080 Or tax policy.

01:31:41.520 Everybody has opinions.

01:31:42.800 But on life, it's like the Red Sea.

01:31:45.560 I think that tells us something.

01:31:47.060 We need a better answer than the loan we've got now.

01:31:51.520 Hush my troubled mind and rest.

01:31:54.920 The abortion industry uses women for their own profit.

01:32:01.100 These lies are pervasive.

01:32:03.980 They're not difficult to refute.

01:32:06.220 But it can be difficult to penetrate that culture of lies to get the truth out there.

01:32:13.640 We have to do it.

01:32:15.280 We have to do it because it's right.

01:32:17.780 We have to do it for the victims of abortion.

01:32:19.980 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.

01:32:29.040 If you enjoyed this conversation with Chuck Donovan, you'll want to check out our Daily Wire original documentary, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe.

01:32:39.840 In it, we take a wrecking ball to the four fallacies keeping the abortion industry alive.

01:32:45.240 To watch it right now, go to dailywireplus.com.

01:32:48.700 Today, if you join, you will see not only this full movie, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe,

01:32:56.040 but you will have access to The Daily Wire's entire catalog of content,

01:33:00.320 which we can only produce and distribute because of you, with your support.

01:33:06.580 I'm Michael Knowles.

01:33:08.020 This is the Choosing Life Podcast.

01:33:10.640 We'll see you next time.

01:33:11.740 The Choosing Life Podcast is a Daily Wire production, produced in association with Outer Limits.

01:33:21.580 Our technical and support team includes Ian Reed, Jesse Eastman, Ryan Moore, Mariah Cormier, and Jim Wirt.

01:33:28.800 Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

01:33:31.360 Thanks for listening.

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The Michael Knowles Show - September 03, 2022

Choosing Life： The Long Term Perspective - Chuck Donovan

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