The Michael Knowles Show - Choosing Life： Uncovering Planned Parenthood's Lies and Abuse

00:00:00.140 A quick note before the episode begins. This conversation involves graphic discussions related to abortion and the abortion industry.

00:00:07.440 Please consider turning off the episode if children are present and continue listening with caution.

00:00:15.080 I mean, there have been so many moments in the last decade plus of both going undercover in abortion clinics myself or having teams do it and seeing just heartbreaking things.

00:00:25.860 Whether it's, you know, women vomiting in the hallway of an abortion clinic crying out in pain or it's watching a woman who's, you know, with a full belly.

00:00:35.380 You can see this is like a second, third trimester abortion walking in and you know that that child's alive and within hours that child will be dead.

00:00:44.460 Or you have one of our brave investigators who's pregnant sitting down with a late-term abortionist and they're talking casually about how they would literally leave a born-alive baby to die.

00:00:55.160 Or if you deliver the baby in the hotel room, in the toilet, then you pick it up and stuff it in a plastic bag and bring it to us.

00:01:02.420 And you're just, you're realizing, you're watching in front of your own eyes play out America's greatest horror story, which is how we butcher children in the name of choice.

00:01:13.200 The pro-life movement didn't overturn Roe v. Wade overnight.

00:01:18.980 It took years and years of constant and diligent effort, steady victories amid many setbacks.

00:01:26.460 Lots of unnoticed hard work in the background to set the stage for generational victories.

00:01:32.340 No one knows more about that than Lila Rose, who at the age of just 15 founded Live Action.

00:01:38.960 She disguised herself and went undercover as a pregnant, underage girl to expose the horrors of Planned Parenthood.

00:01:47.000 What started as a teenage effort to educate small youth groups on the reality of abortion has now become a nationwide network that reaches millions of people each month

00:01:56.140 and presents them with the facts of life and death that the pro-abortion movement doesn't want them to find out.

00:02:02.700 Right now, I would strongly recommend you go to hallo.com slash choose life because today's world is a scary one.

00:02:26.560 Too many people don't seem to care about the truth.

00:02:28.980 And I would suggest that that's all rooted in people becoming less or really just anti-religious.

00:02:36.700 That's why it's more important than ever to keep our relationship with God strong.

00:02:41.880 Hallow is the number one Christian prayer app in the United States.

00:02:45.100 It's like Calm or Headspace, but rooted in Catholic faith.

00:02:48.860 It is the perfect resource to deepen your relationship with God and find peace through audio-guided prayer and meditation.

00:02:55.720 Several of Hallow's meditations encourage you to choose life.

00:02:58.980 And to pray for others to choose life, such as their Litany for Life with Lila Rose.

00:03:03.640 Hallow is free to download.

00:03:05.620 It will help you find peace and calm throughout your day.

00:03:08.780 So do it. Do it right now.

00:03:10.340 Download the app for free at hallo.com slash choose life.

00:03:15.520 That is hallo.com slash choose life.

00:03:20.320 Let's hear from Lila.

00:03:21.360 My name is Lila Rose, and I am the president and founder of Live Action.

00:03:30.260 So we serve to educate about 15 million people every week on abortion, mostly online and mostly Generation Z and millennials.

00:03:38.160 And I'm an activist, an advocate, and a mom.

00:03:41.620 So why did you get involved in this issue?

00:03:46.600 I've been involved since I was a teenager, and that's after finding out about abortion.

00:03:51.740 It's not some dramatic story.

00:03:53.860 I was raised in a beautiful, loving family, one of eight kids, so life was always seen as precious.

00:03:58.480 And then when I was a kid, I found out about abortion by coming across this book, actually, in my parents' house that was about activism in the 1980s.

00:04:06.160 And it was called A Handbook on Abortion by Dr. and Mrs. Wilkie, and it had this, like, 1980s woman on the front hairdo.

00:04:13.200 And I remember just being interested, like, what's this about?

00:04:16.040 I loved books, so I opened it up, and I'm looking at these images.

00:04:20.560 There's this photographic insert, and there's this image of a baby, maybe 10 weeks old, tiny, that had been torn apart by a first trimester section abortion,

00:04:30.780 which at the time was the most prevalent abortion procedure in the country.

00:04:33.840 And I remember seeing the humanity of this baby on this page.

00:04:36.940 You could see arms, legs, you can see a little face.

00:04:39.560 It's a human being, but that had been torn apart by abortion.

00:04:43.360 And it just broke my heart.

00:04:45.100 It convicted me.

00:04:46.140 I started to learn more.

00:04:47.700 I found out this is happening 3,000 times on average every single day in America, and it's legal.

00:04:52.860 And there's an abortion clinic 10 miles from my childhood home that's doing this three days a week, 100 kids a week.

00:04:58.500 And I thought, this is the human rights issue of our time.

00:05:01.460 I can't look away.

00:05:02.240 I have to do something about it.

00:05:03.460 And that inspired me to start live action.

00:05:06.680 And so now that live action is in full operation and you're engaging with millions of people, what is the most common response that you hear from people?

00:05:16.920 Do they know this is going on?

00:05:18.480 Are they surprised?

00:05:19.420 Yeah.

00:05:19.920 One of the most common responses we get is, I didn't know.

00:05:23.300 And I was pro-choice, but I don't think I can do that anymore.

00:05:27.080 I'm pro-life now.

00:05:27.920 And that's because when people learn, they change.

00:05:32.080 When people learn the facts about abortion, they learn about the violence it does to a developing human being.

00:05:37.520 They learn about the harm it does to women.

00:05:39.280 They learn about fetal development and the humanity of that baby.

00:05:42.980 They change.

00:05:43.740 When people learn, they change.

00:05:44.700 And we see that every single day across our platforms when we're reaching millions of people a week.

00:05:49.320 And it's exciting.

00:05:50.740 It's why the pro-life movement keeps growing.

00:05:52.420 And is there an element of shock for a lot of people when they realize what actually happens in an abortion?

00:05:59.920 I think there's shock and there's grief when people find out the truth about abortion.

00:06:05.280 They've been – again, we grew up in a culture where our school system, our media complex, our government largely is pro-abortion.

00:06:11.740 They think abortion is synonymous with women's rights.

00:06:14.120 That's the lie we've been sold.

00:06:15.860 And so when we wake up, when we're given facts that actually, you know, abortion is an act of violence, intentional violence against an innocent human being, a child who's just developing, who's just as human as you or as me, then it is not just surprising, it's heartbreaking for people.

00:06:31.180 But to give them that opportunity to learn so that they can change, that's what we have to do.

00:06:35.920 Because, again, they're being given every single day through social media, traditional media, school system, whatever.

00:06:40.400 They're being given lies about abortion and being told that it's this medical procedure that's good for women as opposed to the fact that it's a violent destruction of a human life.

00:06:48.380 So let's talk about kind of the truth with those claims.

00:06:52.640 You know, this argument that abortion is really just a medical – you know, just another medical service, another medical offering for women and that it's not a moral issue.

00:07:03.420 It's not something people should worry about.

00:07:05.080 You know, what's the truth?

00:07:05.800 So the common lie on abortion is that this is like getting your tooth pulled.

00:07:10.920 I mean, this is a medical procedure.

00:07:12.680 The reality is medicine is designed to heal or to save lives.

00:07:16.900 Abortion is the intentional destruction of an innocent human life, a child's life.

00:07:21.560 And it's violent.

00:07:23.260 It's barbaric.

00:07:24.220 It's cruel.

00:07:25.480 It involves often dismemberment of a child with a beating heart, sometimes a lethal injection of a child with a beating heart.

00:07:33.560 It's excruciating.

00:07:34.720 And for the mother, we don't talk about this in our culture.

00:07:39.320 It's not popular to talk about, but it can be devastating.

00:07:42.680 And those are the facts.

00:07:44.320 But when people are being lied to constantly, it's hard for them to see this issue correctly because they've not actually given the truth about what abortion is.

00:07:52.380 So let's talk about those people who've been lied to in our society.

00:07:56.220 Is there any sort of common ground between, you know, people who think that they're pro-choice, maybe don't know very much about the issue, and people who are pro-life?

00:08:05.580 In terms of, you know, is there any common ground in terms of wanting to protect a human life, you know, whether that's the mother's or the child's?

00:08:12.920 Or, you know, is there a foundation that we can start a conversation from?

00:08:15.980 There definitely is a foundation that we can start a conversation on abortion with somebody who thinks they're pro-choice.

00:08:21.760 And I say think because a lot of the time they haven't really examined their own position.

00:08:25.600 And, you know, an example, in college at UCLA, one of my classmates and I were discussing it, and she became a friend.

00:08:30.820 And I said, you know, she said, oh, I support abortion, of course.

00:08:34.320 And I was like, well, you know, I'm very pro-life.

00:08:36.180 Let's talk about it.

00:08:37.300 And we talked about it from the starting point of human rights.

00:08:41.080 We both believed in human rights.

00:08:43.040 She said she believed in them.

00:08:44.200 I said I believed in them.

00:08:45.400 And I said, well, what are human rights?

00:08:47.260 Are human rights universal for all humans?

00:08:50.280 And she was like, yeah.

00:08:52.020 Like, so it doesn't matter where you are, how old you are, how young you are, your sex, your color, you know, your ethnicity, anything.

00:08:58.180 You are a human.

00:08:59.620 You get human rights, right?

00:09:00.480 And she said yes.

00:09:01.680 And I said, is life a human right?

00:09:03.260 Yes.

00:09:03.940 Well, that's why I'm pro-life, because a child in the womb is as human as you or as me.

00:09:08.800 They just need to be born, and they have the right to life just like you or I do.

00:09:13.340 And that was really – she said I'd never heard – I'd never even considered that.

00:09:17.020 I'd never thought of it that way.

00:09:18.360 And that's all it took for her to start seriously considering the pro-life position.

00:09:21.540 So when, you know, when people who are, you know, hardcore abortion advocates basically frame the issue as this, you know, you know, if you're pro-choice or pro-life, you're just diametrically opposed with other people in the country who have a differing view.

00:09:37.860 Would you say maybe it's not that we're just diametrically opposed?

00:09:41.260 Maybe it's that, you know, the people who say that they're pro-choice just don't really quite understand the full scope of what's going on?

00:09:49.200 Yeah, I think there's a lot of misunderstandings for people that take on the pro-choice label.

00:09:52.900 I mean, pro-choice sounds good.

00:09:54.380 I'm pro-human freedom.

00:09:55.700 I'm pro-choice in that sense.

00:09:56.880 I mean, God is – choice is a gift that God gave us.

00:09:59.420 So, yes, you can go out and murder someone.

00:10:01.120 You can go out and steal or rape and kill.

00:10:02.800 But that doesn't mean you have the right to do those things.

00:10:05.880 And so we need to reframe the conversation and make it about human rights.

00:10:10.300 And what are human rights?

00:10:11.160 The first human right is life.

00:10:12.960 And my right to – or my desire to not be pregnant – I think that can be – a woman says, oh, I don't want to be pregnant.

00:10:18.880 Right now doesn't give me license to kill.

00:10:21.540 And that's where there is a hierarchy to rights.

00:10:24.100 Your right to live, a child's right to live, is more important than any other desire or concern that an adult may have.

00:10:32.200 It's our responsibility actually as adults to care for children and fight for them instead of sacrificing our children.

00:10:38.640 When you look at the arguments from organizations like Planned Parenthood or other, you know, abortion facilities,

00:10:44.720 they very much present themselves as being the advocates on behalf of women, the friends of, you know, women looking out for, you know, a woman's interest.

00:10:56.940 Is that actually the case when you look at the facts about what's going on?

00:11:00.640 Planned Parenthood is the leader of the abortion industry.

00:11:03.860 It's a corporation that's making hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:11:07.280 It's a $1.7 billion corporation that's making millions of dollars off of abortion.

00:11:13.480 And they're selling abortion.

00:11:14.660 They're literally profiting off of the deaths of children and the pain, some of the most painful moments of a woman's life.

00:11:20.720 So to say that they're the friend of women is a complete lie.

00:11:24.540 It's a scam.

00:11:26.000 And it's just extremely unjust that we are funneling hundreds of millions of dollars as taxpayers into their coffers,

00:11:34.820 that they have so many friends in media, editorial boards across the country, so many friends in big tech,

00:11:41.040 so many friends in business who are propping up this vicious vision of the world to say that we need to kill our children as women to succeed.

00:11:48.800 So let's talk about that claim because that is the most prevalent claim that, you know,

00:11:53.740 if a woman doesn't have the option of killing her child, that she doesn't have equality with men,

00:11:59.860 she doesn't have the opportunity to climb economically, socially, whatever, you know,

00:12:05.000 whatever kind of station you're looking at, you know, is that argument true?

00:12:10.320 There's a lot of complexity to the pro-abortion ideology when you start to pull back the layers of the onion.

00:12:15.700 And one of them is this idea that women need to be equal to men in the sense that they shouldn't ever be pregnant

00:12:22.340 or have to be pregnant or have children or that's just something, you know,

00:12:25.720 if men can have sex and have no responsibility, then women should have the same.

00:12:29.300 And the reality is both need to take responsibility, both men and women.

00:12:33.200 And we are equal in dignity, men and women.

00:12:36.380 We should be treated equally by the law.

00:12:37.880 But women are different from men.

00:12:39.420 We can bring life into the world.

00:12:40.600 That's our superpower.

00:12:42.080 And that's something that should be respected and protected and appreciated as opposed to dismantled

00:12:48.260 and treated like it's this curse, which is how our culture seems to treat pregnancy and motherhood and childbirth.

00:12:55.800 And so it's really a cultural shift that needs to happen where, first of all, men take responsibility.

00:13:00.280 Like, sex is connected to bringing life into the world.

00:13:03.840 Even with contraception, it can bring life into the world.

00:13:05.720 Contraception fails.

00:13:06.540 So instead of penalizing the child and attacking the child for existing, we should change our view on sex

00:13:13.040 and say sex should have to do with love, commitment, responsibility.

00:13:16.940 And, yeah, people who are having sex, they should not just love each other,

00:13:20.860 but they should be ready and willing to bring a life into the world because that's what sex is designed to do.

00:13:26.560 And until we actually reconnect the pieces that sex can lead to new life

00:13:30.560 and that sex is about bonding and should be about commitment,

00:13:33.720 we're going to continue to have this all-out war on children.

00:13:35.920 Where children continually bear the consequences of the sexual expression decisions of adults.

00:13:43.920 So, you know, you mentioned men should be held accountable.

00:13:47.180 And I'd love to talk about that because I'm curious, you know, what could that practically look like?

00:13:52.080 You know, if we're, it's easy to say something, you know, like someone should be held accountable,

00:13:55.920 but, you know, what, when the rubber hits the road, what's that look like?

00:13:58.380 Yeah. Well, first of all, it's a societal expectation that we need to set,

00:14:03.340 that sleeping around is not healthy, it's not moral, it's not helpful.

00:14:09.360 It doesn't make you happy either.

00:14:11.320 That sex is about, should be about love.

00:14:13.960 Yes, it's about pleasure, it's beautiful, but it's about love, it's about commitment,

00:14:17.140 and it can create new life.

00:14:18.160 Because right now, there's this, they talk about toxic masculinity,

00:14:21.800 but there's something that's the most toxic part of masculinity is masculinity that says,

00:14:26.500 my sexual behavior shouldn't have consequences.

00:14:30.240 I'm not going to take on the consequences of my sexual behavior.

00:14:33.560 And that is literally what leads to abortion, leads to the killing of children.

00:14:37.780 Because it's men who are not ready to be fathers, who are not ready to commit,

00:14:41.660 who are creating children.

00:14:43.160 And that's what we need to change as a society, our expectation around sex and around motherhood

00:14:49.120 and fatherhood.

00:14:50.380 And so with that, you know, pro-choice movement, the pro-abortion movement claims, you know,

00:14:55.380 we're the pro-woman movement.

00:14:57.160 But in putting that decision of, you know, whether to kill a child on the woman,

00:15:02.360 which side of the debate really is more pro-woman?

00:15:06.380 Yeah, I mean, the pro-life side, one of our slogans is love them both.

00:15:10.060 A woman's, again, our superpower is to be able to bring life into the world.

00:15:15.120 Men can't do that.

00:15:15.860 We can.

00:15:16.900 And that's how we're designed.

00:15:18.200 And that doesn't mean that every woman's going to be a mother or should be a mother

00:15:20.560 in a biological sense, but we have that capability.

00:15:23.960 And that should be revered and honored in our society.

00:15:26.940 And men should revere and honor that.

00:15:28.440 It shouldn't be something that's treated as disposable or looked down on.

00:15:32.440 And so the pro-life side right now, there's thousands of pregnancy centers across the country

00:15:37.020 that are providing confidential free care for women, a lot of single moms, a lot of low-income

00:15:42.380 women.

00:15:43.180 It's pro-lifers that are adopting, that are fostering, that are working to actually care

00:15:47.980 for mothers and their children.

00:15:49.660 It's pro-lifers who are encouraging a sexual ethic that is moral, that is taking responsibility

00:15:55.340 for our actions so that we respect new life when it's brought into the world.

00:15:59.460 Those are pro-life values.

00:16:01.260 And I think deep down, a lot of people want that.

00:16:04.280 They want to be respected and valued.

00:16:06.160 They want to respect and value other people.

00:16:07.880 And that's the heart of the pro-life position.

00:16:10.860 So in short, and we've kind of touched on this, but I'd love to just get kind of a point-blank

00:16:16.520 answer.

00:16:17.100 Should the weight of the decision whether or not to abort a child or allow that child to

00:16:21.580 live, should that decision of life rest solely on the woman like it does right now?

00:16:27.540 Yeah, the big problem with the My Body, My Choice slogan, first of all, it's not just

00:16:32.960 your body because there's another child's body inside your body.

00:16:36.140 But it's also not just your choice in the sense that you should be supported by someone

00:16:43.760 else.

00:16:44.220 It's not like go deal with it, your body, your choice.

00:16:46.180 Go to the abortion if you want.

00:16:47.520 Go do something else.

00:16:48.440 No, that child has a father.

00:16:50.420 And that father needs to take responsibility and should be supporting and caring and being

00:16:55.200 there for both the mother and the child.

00:16:56.880 So it should not fall just on a woman's shoulders to deal with pregnancy.

00:17:01.320 That is a horrible burden to place on women.

00:17:05.380 And it's overwhelming.

00:17:07.480 Women deserve support.

00:17:09.200 And that's why the pro-life movement is so focused on the thousands of pregnancy centers,

00:17:12.440 helping mothers, focused on adoption and foster care and education for mothers and making

00:17:17.420 sure they're feeling encouraged and have material resources.

00:17:19.840 But men need to stand up too because it takes two to create a life.

00:17:23.240 And there are fathers out there who, if they stepped into that role of fatherhood of putting

00:17:28.380 that mother, the mother of their child first, fighting to care for their child, it'll be a lot

00:17:34.160 easier for more mothers to choose life.

00:17:36.260 So I think most people have probably heard the slogan, my body, my choice.

00:17:41.520 But, you know, for the one person out there who hasn't heard it, can you maybe give us a brief description of, you know,

00:17:46.440 what is that argument and what is the pro-abortion movement saying?

00:17:49.520 Yeah.

00:17:49.700 So the my body, my choice argument is I have to deal with pregnancy so I get to stop the

00:17:55.940 pregnancy, make it disappear at any point.

00:17:58.000 The problem with that is a pregnancy isn't just something your body is going through,

00:18:02.220 but it's actually the existence of a new human life, a new individual human life who has human

00:18:06.100 rights.

00:18:06.960 And so we have a responsibility to protect that life.

00:18:09.520 And we don't have the right ever to take that life.

00:18:11.700 So let's let's go back to kind of some of the foundational arguments here.

00:18:17.820 You know, one of the one of the arguments that has been made by Planned Parenthood specifically

00:18:23.280 for quite a while now is this idea that it's only a recent phenomenon that there's been

00:18:30.400 kind of a pro-life movement who's opposed, you know, abortion.

00:18:33.380 You know, they say, oh, look back, you know, pre 1600s, the idea of quickening before quickening.

00:18:37.620 People thought it was fine to kill a baby or, you know, look at, you know,

00:18:41.440 the laws in the United States up until the 18, you know, the late 1800s, there weren't any

00:18:45.480 anti-abortion laws in place, you know.

00:18:47.740 And so they kind of point throughout history and even up to the up to the 60s saying, oh,

00:18:52.040 well, you know, a lot of states didn't even start putting law, you know, more firm laws

00:18:56.320 in place until, you know, the mid 1900s.

00:18:59.680 Can you respond to that?

00:19:01.460 I mean, first of all, it's a myth that there were not laws against abortion.

00:19:05.520 There were certainly laws that criminalized procuring abortion or committing abortions before

00:19:11.420 1973.

00:19:13.080 Many states had pro-life statutes in the United States.

00:19:16.920 And even before, like in the 19th century and before, there were, there was criminalization

00:19:21.580 of the act of at least giving, administering abortion.

00:19:26.220 So yes, was there sometimes even confusion because we lacked all the medical technology

00:19:31.060 we have now about when human life begins and what the significance of quickening was?

00:19:35.540 A lot of that has to do with not being able to prove when human life begins and or knowing

00:19:40.760 when the pregnancy began exactly.

00:19:43.000 But the reality is there was a consistent ethic that human life has value and that we should

00:19:48.760 not be intentionally taking innocent human lives.

00:19:51.340 So do you recall when you first heard this argument from organizations like Planned Parenthood

00:19:56.180 and, you know, kind of set the framework for audiences, you know, when you first heard

00:20:01.140 this argument, what you thought and, you know.

00:20:03.860 And are you also talking about like their argument that Christians or the early church

00:20:08.320 supported abortion or things like that?

00:20:09.760 Yeah, I mean, so they.

00:20:10.580 Because I can speak to that if you want.

00:20:11.940 Yeah, so they, I think, you know, in a lot of the articles I've seen, you know, even on

00:20:16.640 the Planned Parenthood, like directly on the Planned Parenthood website, they say, you

00:20:19.800 know, that it wasn't a religious issue until like the 1960s.

00:20:24.100 Yeah, it's a complete, it's a complete lie.

00:20:26.700 You look at the Didache, the early Christian catechism for the very early church, and it

00:20:32.140 talked about prohibiting abortion drugs.

00:20:35.040 You look at the teachings of the Christian church, of the Catholic church, particularly

00:20:40.600 over the last 2,000 years, and the teachings have never changed on abortion.

00:20:43.680 They've been consistent ever since the Didache, which is that you cannot take intentionally

00:20:48.520 an innocent life.

00:20:49.300 And that's what an abortion does.

00:20:50.460 So there's a lot of attempt by abortion activists to try to bury the history or lie about the

00:20:57.200 history.

00:20:57.780 But the reality is, it's very simple.

00:21:00.100 Thou shalt not kill.

00:21:01.620 Abortion is the intentional direct taking of an innocent human life.

00:21:04.580 And that is never morally acceptable.

00:21:07.060 And do you, do you recall when you first heard that argument?

00:21:10.320 I mean, I've, over the years, I've heard all kinds of justifications for trying to normalize

00:21:16.440 abortion.

00:21:17.460 Because abortion's horrific.

00:21:18.980 It's often the dismembering or the poisoning to death of a child, of a human life with

00:21:24.900 a beating heart who's developing, who's going to be full term in just a few months.

00:21:29.440 So you kind of have to do these crazy, twist yourself into these crazy pretzels to defend

00:21:35.540 abortion.

00:21:36.240 And so they're going to try to rewrite history saying, oh, well, Christians are okay with

00:21:40.360 abortion.

00:21:40.880 Or, you know, the law has permitted abortion.

00:21:43.380 And yes, there have been laws that have permitted abortion in the past.

00:21:46.480 They do now.

00:21:47.240 But that doesn't mean they're just laws.

00:21:48.980 That doesn't mean we shouldn't be reforming them, actively work to reform them.

00:21:52.980 So going back to the, you know, the maybe uninformed pro-choice, you know, American, what should

00:22:00.320 a well-meaning pro-choice person know about abortion?

00:22:04.180 I think if for anybody who's listening, who says, you know, I'm pro-choice, but I'm open,

00:22:10.440 you know, I want to understand this issue better.

00:22:12.500 I think it comes down to the real heart of the issue is this question.

00:22:15.960 What is the life in the womb?

00:22:18.140 Is it a human being?

00:22:20.200 Is it human?

00:22:21.900 And I think the science is crystal clear.

00:22:24.280 The fetus, the embryo is a human life, a unique individual human life, a little boy or

00:22:28.780 girl who needs time and nourishment to grow.

00:22:31.000 And just a few months will be full term and then be an infant and then be a toddler and

00:22:34.220 then be an adolescent and have their whole life.

00:22:37.140 And so the heart of the question is, what is it?

00:22:39.540 It's a human life.

00:22:40.480 And then the next question is, is it ever right to intentionally take an innocent human

00:22:44.840 life?

00:22:45.880 And I think when you really ask yourself that question, you're like, no, it's actually

00:22:48.540 never right to intentionally end an innocent human life.

00:22:51.760 And so there's your answer.

00:22:53.060 That's why abortion, there's no compromise.

00:22:55.380 You can have no compromise on it because this is an innocent human life.

00:22:58.620 And every single one of those children deserve to live.

00:23:01.820 So, you know, when you look at things that seem, you know, pretty black and white when

00:23:06.480 you analyze them like what you just did, whether you look at, you know, the argument of is it

00:23:11.380 a human being or the argument of, you know, has society accepted abortion or not accepted

00:23:17.920 abortion?

00:23:19.020 You know, is this an anomaly in this time that we live?

00:23:20.880 Or kind of any of these arguments that the pro-abortion movement is making, are they

00:23:26.900 lying to people?

00:23:28.960 And if so, why?

00:23:30.260 Yeah.

00:23:31.080 There's a lot of gray in the world, but there's also black and white.

00:23:34.000 I think most people today would say, yeah, rape is always wrong.

00:23:37.280 Right?

00:23:38.040 And I think murder, taking, intentionally taking an innocent human life is always wrong.

00:23:42.740 And I think most people agree with that.

00:23:44.440 Whether they're left or right or religious or not religious, it's always wrong to intentionally

00:23:48.960 take an innocent human life.

00:23:50.480 That's what abortion is designed to do.

00:23:52.620 It intentionally ends in an innocent human life.

00:23:55.340 And we know it's human life because the science is crystal clear.

00:23:57.220 This is a unique individual human life.

00:24:00.360 And so why, you know, what is the pro-abortion movement doing then?

00:24:06.320 Are they lying?

00:24:07.440 Yeah.

00:24:07.880 The pro-abortion movement has been lying.

00:24:09.820 They're lying about the origins of human life.

00:24:11.920 They lie about human development.

00:24:13.360 They don't want to even talk about the development of the embryo.

00:24:16.500 The fact that the heart is beating at just three and a half weeks, that brain waves are

00:24:20.260 forming by just six or seven weeks, that the child has all his or her internal organs and

00:24:24.660 has arms, legs, face, fingers, toes by the end of the first trimester.

00:24:28.160 They don't want to talk about the development of the child because as soon as they even admit

00:24:33.160 or acknowledge the science, then it undercuts their entire position that this is not a human

00:24:38.540 life.

00:24:38.880 Don't look.

00:24:39.460 It's not a big deal.

00:24:40.040 It's just a medical procedure.

00:24:41.040 Abortion is just a medical procedure.

00:24:42.180 So you look at the science and it shows you this is a human being.

00:24:45.980 This is a human life.

00:24:47.180 And then all of a sudden, there's a moral question that is just screaming in your face of,

00:24:52.160 is it okay to kill?

00:24:53.260 Is it okay to kill an innocent human?

00:24:55.700 Is it ever your right as an adult who's stronger?

00:24:59.280 Even if that child is totally dependent on you, is it ever your right to kill?

00:25:03.020 The reality is we have to change our paradigm.

00:25:04.960 Instead of talking about, oh, women, do we have the right to kill or not?

00:25:07.860 It should be we have a shared responsibility to care for babies and their mothers, to help

00:25:14.300 women when they're pregnant.

00:25:15.280 Imagine if Planned Parenthood, instead of spending their $1.7 billion empire on the family planning

00:25:22.880 that leads to the destruction of life and the suppression of children, to instead supporting,

00:25:29.760 actually supporting mothers and fathers, actually supporting parenthood.

00:25:34.320 They're not planning parenthood.

00:25:35.800 They're ending parenthood.

00:25:37.900 What parents need is support.

00:25:40.140 They don't need to be handed tools or pills to kill their children.

00:25:44.040 They need to be given resources, material, emotional support, community, so that they can

00:25:49.900 raise their children.

00:25:51.840 And so I guess the question then becomes, why isn't Planned Parenthood doing that?

00:25:55.620 Because they're an abortion empire.

00:25:57.180 Their focus is selling abortions, profiting off of the pain of women.

00:26:00.380 They're part of this antiquated ideology that says that death is better than life, that it's

00:26:06.660 good to take the life of your children.

00:26:08.660 You should just have one or two kids, if that, or have no kids.

00:26:11.240 It's better to have none.

00:26:12.440 I mean, the one-child policy in China that led to forced abortions and forced sterilizations

00:26:17.020 for a whole generation of Chinese women was originally planned by Margaret Sanger.

00:26:21.440 She was the one to introduce in the United States as a public policy recommendation that

00:26:26.400 parents should be given licenses to have children and that they should be only given a license

00:26:30.100 for one or two children.

00:26:32.120 So the horrors of what the communist regime in China did to just enslave a whole generation

00:26:39.120 of Chinese women and enslave their bodies and kill their children originated with the

00:26:43.300 vicious ideology of Margaret Sanger, who's the founder of Planned Parenthood.

00:26:46.000 And that ideology is alive and well today and funded by our taxpayer dollars.

00:26:52.200 So when you look at the debate, is there an honest debate happening between, not necessarily

00:26:58.800 the average American who thinks they're pro-choice in a pro-life movement, but is there an honest

00:27:05.560 debate happening between the advocates of abortion and the advocates of the pro-life movement?

00:27:11.000 Well, first of all, there's almost no debate happening, but actually between abortion activists,

00:27:17.100 pro-abortion activists and pro-lifers, because they won't debate.

00:27:19.740 I've been in pro-life media or I've been in pro-life movement and in media for the last

00:27:24.160 decade, decade plus, ever since my late teens.

00:27:28.660 And I have multiple times been on radio shows or TV shows or, you know, we pitch to podcasts

00:27:37.320 trying to do debates with the opposition and nobody wants to debate.

00:27:42.460 In fact, Planned Parenthood had a policy and I think they still have it.

00:27:45.180 They officially have their policy that they do not debate on a pro-lifer.

00:27:48.940 They just don't do it.

00:27:50.140 I've actually been on a live radio show before where they had the Planned Parenthood director

00:27:54.300 of one of their affiliates and she actually dropped off the call because she didn't know

00:27:57.940 I would be joining and she didn't want to talk to me.

00:28:00.000 It was their policy.

00:28:00.760 And the reason they have a non-debate policy, really a non-discussion policy, is they can

00:28:06.420 only win when they lie.

00:28:08.220 And if there's someone calling out their lies, their lies about human development in

00:28:11.960 the womb, their lies about how abortions are committed, their lies about the mental

00:28:15.320 health effects of abortion on women, if they have someone who's going to call out those

00:28:18.560 lies, then that destroys their position and people are not going to buy it anymore.

00:28:22.760 And what, you know, when we talk about the facts, you know, what is the current statistic

00:28:28.080 on the number of doctors and scientists who agree with the statement that it's a human

00:28:33.520 being from conception?

00:28:34.740 Virtually all scientists agree.

00:28:39.020 If you open any biology textbook, it will tell you that human life begins at the moment

00:28:43.180 of fertilization.

00:28:44.100 And that's when you have a unique single cell embryo that comes into an existence after the

00:28:49.280 egg is fertilized by the sperm.

00:28:50.880 So this is not a question of debate.

00:28:53.280 Now, you can have a debate, and this is where they say, well, there's a debate on personhood.

00:28:57.420 Yes, this is a single, unique, individual human life, but that doesn't mean it's a person

00:29:02.700 yet.

00:29:03.560 And the pro-life position is, if you are a human, you are a person, period.

00:29:08.520 Because historically, any time we've taken a group of humans and said, you know, chopped

00:29:13.580 off their personhood and said, no, no, no, you're not persons because you're black.

00:29:16.400 You're not persons because you're women.

00:29:17.680 You're not persons because you're the wrong ethnicity in this country.

00:29:21.260 You're not persons because you're disabled.

00:29:23.460 The moment we start to do that, you open the door to egregious human rights abuse.

00:29:29.160 That's what we've actually had in this country when we've considered blacks less than, and

00:29:33.520 so they were enslaved, or women less than, and so they didn't have a right to vote or

00:29:36.780 the equal treatment under the law.

00:29:38.140 That's the door to barbaric actions that are justified in the name of whatever ideology

00:29:44.720 is prevailing.

00:29:45.980 And so we have to say, no, if you're a human, you're a person.

00:29:49.180 And that means if you're a child, you're a person.

00:29:51.260 And that means, yes, if you're before birth, you're still a person.

00:29:54.180 We have a lot more from our conversation with Lila coming up in just a moment.

00:29:59.640 But first, be sure to text PRO-LIFE to 47581.

00:30:04.760 Because as the country grapples with the aftermath of overturning Roe v. Wade, the pro-life movement

00:30:10.180 has come under fire from far-left pro-abortion extremists.

00:30:14.700 Not only have leftists firebombed and vandalized pro-life clinics in multiple states, but online

00:30:20.460 pro-life groups have experienced mass censorship by Google, Facebook, TikTok, you name it.

00:30:27.540 That's why Live Action has been working tirelessly to find ways to spread the truth about abortion

00:30:32.200 and share resources with those who need it most without relying on biased big tech.

00:30:38.200 If you want to join Live Action's Fight for Life, text PRO-LIFE to 47581 and opt in

00:30:44.720 to receive updates from Live Action about their ongoing work to end abortion.

00:30:49.000 Texting PRO-LIFE to 47581 means you won't be at the mercy of the big tech censors in the

00:30:55.660 ongoing fight for life.

00:31:06.080 So how does this argument that pro-abortion activists make that, oh, well, you know, they don't

00:31:14.080 have personhood or their rights are subjugated to the desire of the mother up until a certain

00:31:20.300 point in pregnancy?

00:31:21.700 How does that compare to the argument from, you know, those same individuals would likely

00:31:27.960 say, oh, I'm in favor of an inclusive society.

00:31:30.420 I'm in favor of you looking out for the marginalized and the disenfranchised and the poor.

00:31:34.740 How do those two mindsets live with each other?

00:31:37.880 Yeah.

00:31:38.440 I think they can't live honestly with each other.

00:31:41.840 The mindset that we need to be an inclusive society that cares about the vulnerable, that

00:31:47.440 it's for human rights, you know, the group of people that says we should ban the death

00:31:51.920 penalty, which I support.

00:31:53.620 And then to also say, but it's okay to kill, to violently destroy intentionally a child just

00:32:00.240 because they're in the womb.

00:32:01.260 They're not born yet.

00:32:01.980 They're not developed enough yet.

00:32:02.940 But that is incoherent.

00:32:05.520 It doesn't make sense because the reality is the most vulnerable human today is a child

00:32:10.120 in the womb who's completely dependent.

00:32:12.240 They should be nourished and loved.

00:32:14.300 And if their mother is struggling to care for them or the mother has issues that she's

00:32:19.180 dealing with, we should be supporting the mother.

00:32:21.420 We should not be directing, encouraging, or saying it's okay to go and kill your child then

00:32:25.820 and sending her off to a Planned Parenthood who's then going to profit hundreds of dollars

00:32:29.180 off of the death of her child.

00:32:30.340 And I think a lot of people, when they start hearing people talk about abortion, they're

00:32:36.240 like the idea that aborted children or that the issue of abortion itself is somehow a corollary

00:32:43.160 to things that have happened in the past, whether it's our history or Europe's history.

00:32:47.920 I don't think that even crosses people's minds.

00:32:50.160 Are there moments in our history, whether it's the civil rights movement or World War II when

00:32:55.600 we fought against the Nazi party, who is literally creating genocide on entire ethnic groups?

00:33:02.960 Is there any sort of corollary between what's happened under legalized abortion in the United

00:33:08.420 States and other periods of history where either people groups without certain rights or disenfranchised

00:33:16.580 groups were slaughtered as well?

00:33:19.040 Yeah, I mean, throughout the 20th century, one of the bloodiest, they say the bloodiest century

00:33:25.500 in human history, just the sheer death toll, why were those atrocities committed?

00:33:31.980 Typically, it was regimes that saw certain groups of human as less than and so violated

00:33:36.660 their human rights.

00:33:37.640 Whether it was the Nazi regime who killed off millions of the Jewish people, it was the

00:33:43.360 Soviet Union who killed off political dissidents that were seen as less than or killed off whole

00:33:47.900 groups of ethnic people because they were not, they were seen as less than, it's always because

00:33:52.680 you see a group of human beings as subhuman or less than.

00:33:56.880 And so you say they're not going to be treated equally and we have the right to kill them.

00:34:01.680 And that's what abortion is.

00:34:03.600 Abortion is family genocide.

00:34:05.880 It's saying this family member, this person is less than.

00:34:09.620 They're too little.

00:34:10.840 They're too dependent.

00:34:12.040 So it's okay for me to kill them.

00:34:14.340 And they even argue some of them, it's actually better for me to kill this family member because

00:34:18.840 it's better for them to die than to live.

00:34:21.980 But that's not our decision to make.

00:34:23.800 It's not our decision to make to take the life of another innocent human being.

00:34:27.480 And our laws need to reflect that.

00:34:29.360 They need to reflect protection for the basic human rights of all individuals and that first

00:34:33.860 right is life.

00:34:34.400 So I'd like to, I'd like to go back to your story.

00:34:40.060 You know, you, you read the book by the Wilkes.

00:34:43.920 You decide that you need to become involved in the pro-life movement.

00:34:49.080 Give us kind of a little bit of the narrative, you know, what happens from that point to when

00:34:54.820 you first start doing the undercover investigations.

00:34:57.400 Sure.

00:34:57.920 So I first find out about abortion.

00:35:00.180 I read the book, A Handbook on Abortion by Dr. and Mrs. Wilk.

00:35:03.980 I start to research.

00:35:05.640 I start to dabble in early activism, like writing up as a 13-year-old, you need to vote for life

00:35:13.100 and posting it on my supermarket walls illegally.

00:35:15.860 I think, you know, you don't think you're supposed to do that.

00:35:17.560 But just, you know, thinking, okay, this is, you know, abortion's illegal.

00:35:21.320 Thousands of children are dying a day.

00:35:23.000 People are blind.

00:35:23.840 I have to do something.

00:35:24.600 And then by the time I was starting live action, that was about 14, 15, we were looking mostly

00:35:31.500 at the church because as growing up as an evangelical Christian, and I'm Catholic now, but growing

00:35:36.000 up as an evangelical Christian, abortion was very rarely talked about.

00:35:39.880 In fact, I don't ever remember it talked about growing up in church.

00:35:43.700 And, but when I read and researched on the topic, I discovered that women who identified

00:35:48.800 as Protestant, mainline Protestant, or even Catholic or evangelical were having abortions

00:35:54.220 largely at the same rate.

00:35:55.360 These are self-admitted Christians at the same rate as the secular women in the secular

00:35:59.640 world.

00:36:00.620 And yes, when you actually dive into that research, those that are attending church every single

00:36:05.340 week, the rate does decline.

00:36:07.820 But people, largely speaking, who identify as Christian are having abortions.

00:36:11.600 So what's the church doing about that?

00:36:13.580 Is it educating people?

00:36:15.220 Is it making it a no-shame zone so that if women are pregnant, they feel they can talk

00:36:19.840 to someone and get the support they deserve?

00:36:21.660 Or do women feel shamed instead?

00:36:23.080 Is it a taboo topic?

00:36:24.720 It needs to be talked about.

00:36:26.160 This is the leading cause of death in America, abortion.

00:36:29.060 Why is it not talked about every week in church?

00:36:32.680 That not only to, not to shame people, but to help people to say, this is the truth about

00:36:37.200 it.

00:36:37.640 This is where you go if you're facing an unplanned pregnancy.

00:36:40.100 This is how we can change our mindset as Christians about sex and talk about sex and relationships

00:36:45.640 and love so that we're not finding ourselves falling into these situations where there is

00:36:50.340 so much unplanned pregnancy.

00:36:52.600 That should be a front and center issue for the church.

00:36:55.520 And so Live Action started by literally spent a year knocking on my youth pastor's door,

00:37:01.300 continually asking him to have the opportunity to speak at my youth group, to bring in some

00:37:06.240 other friends.

00:37:06.800 We had this presentation we developed that was very professional with facts about a

00:37:10.080 abortion, facts about fetal development, biblical application, the risk to abortion for women.

00:37:16.960 And we wanted to just share that with our youth group.

00:37:18.920 And eventually our youth pastor agreed.

00:37:21.060 And then after that, we started doing this in dozens of other churches and some schools

00:37:24.340 across the Bay Area.

00:37:26.060 So at what point did you become aware of the fact that Planned Parenthood was, you know,

00:37:32.440 obviously more than just performing abortions, but was actually really shady about how they

00:37:38.080 were doing?

00:37:38.420 So when I was first deep diving of the abortion industry, researching it, I came across a book

00:37:45.300 called Lime 5 by Mark Crutcher.

00:37:47.880 And Mark is like one of the OG investigators of the pro-life movement.

00:37:52.920 I mean, he's a brilliant investigative journalist and activist from Texas.

00:37:57.360 And this book was basically a compendium of all of these different cases of sexual abuse cover-up

00:38:04.140 at abortion clinics, abuse of women at abortion clinics, abortionists just committing horrible

00:38:11.860 illegal activity, unethical activity that he had painstakingly documented over a period of two

00:38:17.740 decades.

00:38:19.420 And so when I read that, I was like, wow.

00:38:21.440 You know, but it made sense.

00:38:23.000 When you're taking the life of an innocent human being, why would you respect?

00:38:28.660 If you're just to the point where you're literally profiting off of killing babies,

00:38:34.940 why would it be likely that you would be respectful and ethical in your treatment of the mother?

00:38:40.760 Or in your other business dealings?

00:38:43.920 In the practice of vice, you're not going to find virtue.

00:38:46.520 You're going to find more and more vice.

00:38:48.740 And so then I started to keep, you know, continue to research.

00:38:52.720 Mark had done a study where he actually had an actor call over 900 Planned Parenthood clinics.

00:38:58.320 And she posed as a 13-year-old girl on the phone or an underage girl on the phone

00:39:03.360 and found that in over 90% of the phone calls, the abortion clinics told her that they

00:39:09.240 basically had a don't ask, don't tell policy on child sexual abuse.

00:39:12.720 Because there's statutory rape reporting laws virtually in every state.

00:39:16.220 And if you're a health care provider or a teacher, whomever, and you suspect child sexual

00:39:21.460 abuse, the underage girl can't consent to sex.

00:39:24.840 So if she's pregnant, right there is a sign that there could be, there's likely abuse.

00:39:29.440 And so when this girl would call these abortion clinics, she'd find at Planned Parenthood

00:39:33.400 that they had this don't ask, don't tell policy and abuse.

00:39:35.360 And so I was reading this report by Mark, and that was when I started to think, can we

00:39:41.540 document this happening in Los Angeles?

00:39:43.640 Because I was a college student in LA.

00:39:46.740 Can we document this at the abortion clinics here?

00:39:48.800 Is it happening here?

00:39:49.560 And that inspired our first investigative report.

00:39:52.300 A lot of live actions investigative reporting was inspired by the groundbreaking, truly groundbreaking

00:39:57.460 work of Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics.

00:39:59.500 And that's because he spent decades, starting in the 80s, investigating the abortion industry.

00:40:05.600 And he would write these reports, and he would be putting this information out there.

00:40:10.480 It wasn't getting the attention that that kind of information can get now, because there

00:40:14.460 wasn't social media then.

00:40:16.160 There's a chokehold on media reporting by the big three networks.

00:40:20.860 The media landscape was just very different.

00:40:22.460 It was very hard for people to get reporting from anybody but the institutional media groups

00:40:27.500 that were typically pretty pro-abortion.

00:40:29.780 And so when Live Action started doing, when I started doing investigative reporting, I

00:40:33.300 wanted to test Mark's theory that he had, that abortion is, sexual abuse is covered up

00:40:38.820 in abortion clinics across the country.

00:40:41.060 So I went into two abortion clinics in Los Angeles, two Planned Parenthoods, posing as an underage

00:40:45.560 girl with a much older boyfriend.

00:40:47.260 I was working with James O'Keefe at the time, and he and I were collaborating on this, and

00:40:51.460 actually went there and said, OK, I'm 15 years old.

00:40:54.840 He's much older.

00:40:56.180 He's 23.

00:40:57.360 This is a clear case of statutory rape in California.

00:41:00.520 What do I do?

00:41:01.800 And the first Planned Parenthood clinic I walked into, one in Santa Monica, told me that they,

00:41:07.540 she didn't want to know that I should change my age on the paperwork so that it would not

00:41:13.100 trigger reporting and I could get a secret abortion.

00:41:16.440 And then the second abortion clinic I went into in Los Angeles, same thing.

00:41:20.740 They said that they were not going to report anything, despite the fact that I had this

00:41:23.820 much older boyfriend, and she sat there persuading me, it was actually the manager of that clinic,

00:41:29.160 persuading me to have an abortion.

00:41:31.100 So two for two, first time trying investigative reporting, and I saw this is an insane story

00:41:38.720 that no one's talking about, that the supposedly pro-women organization, Planned Parenthood, is

00:41:45.040 actually systematically covering up the sexual abuse of little girls.

00:41:49.640 And these girls are being taken by their abusers or sent by their abusers for secret abortions and

00:41:56.800 then sent back to their abusers.

00:41:58.520 And the one person who's supposed to intervene, a health professional, and make a report and

00:42:04.320 trigger the steps for rescuing that girl and helping her intervening, is not only not doing

00:42:10.800 their job, they're actively participating in the abuse by committing a secret abortion,

00:42:16.220 killing a child, another child, and then sending the first child, this underage girl, back into

00:42:21.560 the arms of her sexual abuser.

00:42:23.540 And this isn't just what Live Action has documented or Mark Crutcher has documented, because we

00:42:27.160 documented it in over a dozen clinics.

00:42:29.240 But this is also court cases of girls, and we've compiled this in our investigative report

00:42:37.680 on the sexual abuse cover-up at Planned Parenthood.

00:42:40.100 There are court cases of young girls, almost a dozen of them, that this is, you can find

00:42:44.300 them in public cases, where girls have actually sued Planned Parenthood or named Planned Parenthood

00:42:49.620 in their lawsuits as participating in the cover-up of the sexual abuse that they endured.

00:42:54.080 Sometimes at the hands of, you know, a soccer coach, at the hands of a stepfather, at the

00:42:58.600 hands of their biological father, and then some of them enduring repeat abortions at Planned

00:43:03.620 Parenthood, where they're taken by their father to Planned Parenthood who raped them, and Planned

00:43:08.220 Parenthood is giving them a secret abortion, not asking any questions, not reporting the abuse

00:43:12.760 like they're required to do by law, because in Planned Parenthood's ideology, an abortion is

00:43:17.240 always best.

00:43:17.820 It doesn't matter your situation, if you're poor, if you're raped, if you're abused, abortion

00:43:21.540 is your ticket, and that's our job.

00:43:24.160 We wash our hands of caring for you afterwards.

00:43:26.600 How widespread is this?

00:43:27.660 I mean, think about it this way.

00:43:29.700 Any girl who's pregnant, who's underage, that could be because of abuse.

00:43:35.360 And a girl can't consent to sex when she's 13 years old in most states.

00:43:39.120 I mean, she's a child still to herself.

00:43:41.560 And so when you look at, it's hard to know exactly statistics of how many of these pregnancies

00:43:47.220 are actually due to the abuse of men that are, you know, 5, 10, 15, or more years their

00:43:52.780 senior.

00:43:53.380 But we know that it's happening regularly.

00:43:55.380 We know from the court cases that this has happened over the last decade, many times.

00:44:00.200 And I think it's happening on a daily basis.

00:44:02.620 It's just a matter of no one's talking about it.

00:44:04.880 Planned Parenthood is continuing to participate in facilitating the abuse.

00:44:10.300 And no one's investigating.

00:44:12.200 The media groups certainly haven't investigated beyond live action.

00:44:14.920 And, you know, I remember a telling phone call with the head of, with a detective from

00:44:20.700 the LA Police Department, LAPD.

00:44:22.620 And he was working on child abuse cases, child sexual abuse cases, especially of underage

00:44:28.740 girls, teen girls.

00:44:30.000 And he said in all his years, his decades working in LAPD, he'd never gotten a phone call from

00:44:35.880 an abortion clinic.

00:44:37.200 No abortion clinic had ever reported suspected abuse.

00:44:40.400 When they're the ones dealing with pregnant girls, young girls who are involved in sexual

00:44:45.620 activity.

00:44:46.380 And instead of flagging, oh, is there an older guy involved?

00:44:48.900 What's your situation?

00:44:49.860 Is there abuse going on?

00:44:51.140 They just sell an abortion and send her on her way.

00:44:55.380 If this is widely known, especially by lawmakers and people in power, why is it allowed?

00:45:02.680 Why is Planned Parenthood allowed to continue operating?

00:45:04.640 Because if you're an abortion clinic, you get to operate beyond the law.

00:45:09.560 That's the way it is in most states right now in our country.

00:45:13.860 And that's because abortion has been, by some pro-abortion lawmakers, again, this is not

00:45:20.140 the future.

00:45:20.840 This has been the past, though.

00:45:22.640 Abortion has been seen as a sacrosanct right.

00:45:25.260 And so anything you do to regulate it, anything you do to keep murderous abortionists accountable

00:45:31.600 or ones that are not following even basic health care guidelines for their clinics, no,

00:45:38.180 that's taboo.

00:45:39.200 And that's why Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia was allowed to operate for decades before he

00:45:46.500 was finally raided by the FBI.

00:45:48.600 And they found that he had been killing born-alive infants.

00:45:51.660 He actually killed women.

00:45:52.780 He was doing all kinds of medical malpractice.

00:45:56.280 And there were reports on this.

00:45:57.840 There were tips on this being regularly given to police, to the health department, and it

00:46:03.060 was never acted on.

00:46:04.000 They looked the other way.

00:46:05.140 Why?

00:46:05.700 Because he was an abortionist.

00:46:07.200 And if you're an abortionist, you are regulated less in most states than a nail salon.

00:46:12.000 And that's what's happening in Washington, D.C. right now.

00:46:15.100 Live Action's been involved heavily in reporting the Justice for the Five case, which is the case

00:46:19.820 of brave pro-life activists who intercepted the medical waste bucket of the bodies of 115

00:46:26.520 children outside Cesare Santangelo's abortion clinic.

00:46:29.560 We've been investigating his abortion clinic for over a decade at Live Action.

00:46:33.260 And his abortion clinic, Cesare Santangelo, has admitted on undercover tape that he would

00:46:39.100 let a born-alive infant in his facility die, that he would not resuscitate, he would not

00:46:43.860 help them.

00:46:44.480 He's also known to not use a feticide, which means he doesn't do a lethal injection of

00:46:49.080 the baby first.

00:46:50.060 That means he either delivers alive and kills them, or he dismembers them alive, and that's

00:46:55.120 how he kills them.

00:46:55.940 These are sometimes almost full-term infants.

00:46:59.340 And is anyone investigating?

00:47:01.600 Have D.C.

00:47:02.280 police, when the bodies of these infants were found outside his abortion clinic, including

00:47:06.260 the bodies of five babies who look to be, some of them nearly full-term, five babies

00:47:11.660 who were between 20 to 40 weeks old, one little girl whose neck was cut and her brain removed.

00:47:18.360 It appeared to be a DNX or a partial birth abortion, which is a violation of federal law.

00:47:24.520 Another baby born in Cal in the amniotic fluid sac, so it looks like the baby also could have

00:47:29.660 been born alive, because how else would he have killed the baby before he or she was delivered?

00:47:33.600 Two babies that were viciously dismembered.

00:47:36.560 Again, babies maybe 28, 30 weeks old.

00:47:39.200 And then another little baby boy who looked to be full-term, according to some medical

00:47:42.540 experts.

00:47:43.840 No signs of apparent trauma on his body.

00:47:46.080 He'd been stuffed in a medical waste bucket in a solution.

00:47:49.200 How did he die?

00:47:50.660 How did he die?

00:47:51.860 Was he delivered alive, like Cesare Santangelo has admitted he would do, and then drowned?

00:47:57.900 Or just left to die?

00:48:00.340 These are the questions that law enforcement should be investigating.

00:48:04.980 And yet, they are not.

00:48:06.300 They're allowing butchers like Cesare Santangelo to operate his late-term abortion clinic in

00:48:11.420 D.C., just like they allowed Kermit Gosnell to operate his late-term abortion clinic in

00:48:15.280 Philadelphia, until finally they took action.

00:48:18.320 And now he's behind prison bars, because they discovered that he was killing born-alive

00:48:22.560 infants.

00:48:22.960 And that's still illegal in this country.

00:48:25.140 Can you describe, you know, just briefly, what was the most shocking thing that you experienced

00:48:29.700 during the undercover videos?

00:48:30.960 I mean, there have been so many moments in the last decade-plus of both going undercover

00:48:35.800 in abortion clinics myself, or having teams do it, and seeing just heartbreaking things.

00:48:43.540 Whether it's, you know, women vomiting in the hallway of an abortion clinic, crying out

00:48:48.040 in pain, or it's watching a woman who's, you know, with a full belly.

00:48:52.600 You can see this is like a second, third-trimester abortion, walking in, and you know that that

00:48:57.600 child's alive, and within hours that child will be dead.

00:49:00.780 Or you have one of our brave investigators who's pregnant sitting down with a late-term

00:49:04.620 abortionist, and they're talking casually about how they would literally leave a born-alive

00:49:10.740 baby to die.

00:49:11.540 Or if you deliver the baby in the hotel room, then you should, in the toilet, then you pick

00:49:16.500 it up and stuff it in a plastic bag and bring it to us.

00:49:20.020 And you're just, you're realizing, you're watching in front of your own eyes play out America's

00:49:25.200 greatest horror story, which is how we butcher children in the name of choice.

00:49:32.920 So I started doing undercover reporting in college and have continued it through my organization,

00:49:38.860 Live Action, over the last decade-plus.

00:49:40.740 And Live Action News investigates the abortion industry day in, day out, sometimes undercover,

00:49:45.220 sometimes in reports, in news stories, exposing what abortionists are doing every single day,

00:49:50.140 exposing the unethical, illegal activities happening in the abortion industry, and exposing what's

00:49:54.160 happening to our nation's children.

00:49:55.960 Has the description or dialogue about what is going on with abortions, has it been sterilized

00:50:04.060 to the point of having no impact on people?

00:50:06.320 I mean, the best thing that the abortion side can do, the pro-abortion side can do, is act

00:50:12.680 like abortion is just health care.

00:50:14.660 That's their slogan, abortion is health care.

00:50:16.280 And once you actually dig into that and say, okay, what does abortion do?

00:50:21.360 Well, it takes the life of an innocent human.

00:50:23.740 What is the pregnancy that you're ending?

00:50:27.080 What's that embryo or fetus that is, what's happening to them?

00:50:30.240 Well, their human life with a beating heart.

00:50:33.220 Sometimes their brain waves by just six or seven weeks, they're fully formed with all their

00:50:37.760 internal organs by the end of the first trimester.

00:50:39.380 That is who, it's a who, is being dismembered here, is being ripped into pieces.

00:50:45.900 It dramatically changes the conversation.

00:50:48.660 Because no longer is abortion hiding behind these euphemisms, these false words, this rhetoric

00:50:53.820 about health care.

00:50:55.560 But it's now, no, abortion is the taking of an intentional ending of an innocent human

00:50:59.840 life.

00:51:00.920 How does decoupling abortion from morality, how does it tie into a lot of the other lies

00:51:10.860 that have kind of perpetrated throughout the pro-abortion movement?

00:51:16.280 Yeah.

00:51:16.620 I mean, if abortion is just like removing a wisdom tooth, go at it.

00:51:23.160 I have no reason to oppose that.

00:51:26.040 No one should.

00:51:26.600 But abortion is anything but.

00:51:30.640 Abortion is the destruction of a life.

00:51:33.620 An ending of a pregnancy, it's also the destruction of a child's life, a boy or a girl who just needs

00:51:38.840 time and nourishment to grow.

00:51:40.920 And once you actually expose that abortion is not just some like sterile procedure, but

00:51:47.100 that it's literally designed to kill a human being, to stop a heartbeat, it changes everything.

00:51:53.180 And most people, when they're actually exposed to learning about this, they usually change

00:51:59.400 their position on it.

00:52:00.600 They say, wow, I don't know that I can support that anymore.

00:52:02.760 Now I have more questions about that.

00:52:04.280 Or I had no idea.

00:52:05.740 Now I'm pro-life.

00:52:06.520 I mean, we get those dramatic conversions regularly.

00:52:08.920 Because if you're brought up in a society where you're constantly being fed this lie that, oh,

00:52:14.120 it's empowerment to women, it's choice, it's this medical procedure.

00:52:18.200 Yeah, it's easy to go along with that.

00:52:20.260 But once you start to dig into it and find out what it really is, everything changes.

00:52:24.720 What about the argument that if abortion was made illegal, you know, thousands of women

00:52:29.020 would die in back alley abortions?

00:52:30.280 Well, first of all, women die in legal abortions.

00:52:34.640 You know, Tanya Reeves was a 24-year-old woman who was killed in a Chicago Planned Parenthood.

00:52:39.420 She literally bled to death, hemorrhaging, when they waited hours before they called an

00:52:43.500 ambulance.

00:52:44.560 So where's justice for her?

00:52:46.740 So this idea, it's a myth that to legalize abortion means that it's safe for women.

00:52:50.820 It's never safe for the child.

00:52:52.180 They always die.

00:52:53.400 And it's not safe for women either.

00:52:55.300 Not just physically, but also for their mental health.

00:52:58.100 I mean, there are studies that have been done that show dramatic mental health impacts,

00:53:03.540 negative impacts, repercussions for women who have abortions.

00:53:06.820 But, you know, this idea that we need to take killing and make it safe.

00:53:11.820 You can't make it safe.

00:53:13.640 And we need to change our construct here.

00:53:17.260 Say, listen, women, if you're pregnant, if you're experiencing need, if you're financially

00:53:22.720 struggling, whatever it is, our job should be to connect you to support, not connect you

00:53:27.300 to someone who's going to kill your child.

00:53:29.220 And that's what the pro-life movement is doing.

00:53:31.260 And as the converse to that, is the pro-choice movement providing any support like that?

00:53:36.680 I don't see abortion advocates running pregnancy centers.

00:53:39.520 They run abortion clinics.

00:53:41.200 I don't see abortion advocates heavily promoting adoption and foster care, fostering kids and

00:53:45.800 helping kids in foster care.

00:53:47.060 They're promoting abortion.

00:53:48.640 The solution from abortion advocates is abortion.

00:53:50.620 It's kill the child.

00:53:51.780 The solution of the pro-life movement is help the child and help the mother and help the

00:53:55.960 parents.

00:53:57.040 So is the claim, is it a fair claim then from the pro-choice movement that the pro-life

00:54:02.020 movement only cares about the child until they're born?

00:54:05.000 Yeah, there's this line like, oh, you're just pro-birth.

00:54:07.900 I'm like, well, first of all, I'm definitely pro-birth in the sense I'm pro-birthdays.

00:54:11.120 Like we all deserve to be born.

00:54:13.380 You know, I want to protect that right for you.

00:54:15.440 But we're pro-life.

00:54:17.660 We're pro-whole life.

00:54:19.060 And that's why pro-lifers are involved so heavily.

00:54:21.760 Most of our movement is pregnancy resource centers.

00:54:24.120 Most of our movement is supporting and encouraging adoption and helping foster care kids.

00:54:29.240 Most of our movement is supporting parents, saying we need to be there for parents, whether

00:54:33.780 it's through your churches or through non-for-profits or through better public policy that fosters

00:54:38.640 parenting and helping parents and marriages.

00:54:41.540 That's the focus of our movement.

00:54:43.180 It's a huge part of their argument that, you know, oh, well, women who don't have access

00:54:49.040 to abortion just slide further into poverty.

00:54:51.780 You know, they struggle financially.

00:54:54.720 Can you respond to that argument?

00:54:56.800 Yeah.

00:54:57.140 Well, first of all, there's a lot of resources.

00:55:01.060 There are a lot of options for women, single mothers who are abandoned by the guy maybe and

00:55:07.760 they're being pressured to abort, but they know that's not the right answer to kill my child.

00:55:11.640 There's a lot of people that want to help them.

00:55:13.820 And, you know, we have hotlines on the live action website.

00:55:17.040 We partner with a lot of organizations.

00:55:18.640 And I would say to any mom who's in that position to say, listen, there are people that do want to help you.

00:55:23.800 There's organizations that want to help you.

00:55:25.060 Explore those options.

00:55:26.120 Explore the help that's out there for you.

00:55:28.560 How are the pro-abortion movement's tactics changing?

00:55:31.740 I think the pro-abortion movement for a while relied on this old stereotype that, you know,

00:55:39.360 if you're pro-life, you're this kind of old white man that hates women, basically, or wants to control women.

00:55:45.120 And then, like, a whole diverse group of young women stood up and said, no, that's a lie.

00:55:50.760 Like, we're a lot of women and men, but a lot of backgrounds religiously, ethnically.

00:55:56.020 I mean, every kind of person can be pro-life.

00:55:59.200 And then they're like, oh, I guess that stereotype is not working anymore.

00:56:02.220 Especially because of social media and online media.

00:56:04.180 Like, you just look and you Google and you start to, like, explore the pro-life movement online.

00:56:08.180 And you're like, wow, it's very diverse.

00:56:09.560 You know, it's really compelling.

00:56:11.860 And I'm proud that live actions had a big part in playing and becoming a platform for that.

00:56:16.260 I mean, we are a platform of over 5 million people, very diverse people, all different backgrounds,

00:56:20.980 mostly young women, though.

00:56:23.420 And it's amazing to see just their voices being amplified.

00:56:28.000 So what's their new tactic?

00:56:30.080 Yeah, so how has their tactic changed?

00:56:33.080 Well, it's interesting because Planned Parenthood's new tactic now actually is a bit nonsensical.

00:56:38.320 I mean, it's always been nonsensical, but it's peculiar.

00:56:41.180 Because their new tactic now is this radical intersectionality where they say,

00:56:45.940 you have to be support abortion for the sake of our LGBTQI.

00:56:50.900 I mean, they're going the route of this kind of this typical kind of leftist speak

00:56:55.660 in order to advance abortion.

00:56:58.180 So they're not even saying, they don't like saying women more as much.

00:57:01.600 They're adopting some of the language of, like, birthing persons.

00:57:03.920 So they're, in a way, eliminating even the idea of woman from some of their talking points.

00:57:10.220 And I think they're going to, and they already are, running into major trouble

00:57:14.100 because they're kind of undoing their whole ideological foundation

00:57:17.120 that we need to make women equal to men.

00:57:20.160 And therefore, they should have to kill their children.

00:57:21.960 And this whole, it's now increasingly incoherent.

00:57:25.720 And I think there's a lot of infighting that's happening at Planned Parenthood.

00:57:29.180 There certainly has been.

00:57:30.100 I mean, especially with reckoning on racial matters, recognizing, yeah,

00:57:34.020 we were actually founded by racists.

00:57:35.840 You know, that's definitely going to be disruptive to their organization and has been.

00:57:41.100 You know, they honor Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger,

00:57:43.800 with these plaques of her and these, like, busts of her.

00:57:46.240 And they named their clinics after her.

00:57:47.740 And it's like, oh, actually, she was a racist.

00:57:49.620 Well, we have to reckon with that.

00:57:51.100 So I think they've lost, they never really had a coherent ideology to begin with.

00:57:57.040 But it's increasingly incoherent as they have to adopt sort of popular ideologies

00:58:02.940 and somehow stuff the abortion position into these new popular ideologies.

00:58:08.600 And it just doesn't fit.

00:58:09.600 And, you know, you referenced maybe 10 or 15 minutes ago the idea that the past and present

00:58:17.620 in terms of abortion law and societal views on abortion aren't necessarily the future.

00:58:22.840 What do you think the future of this debate?

00:58:25.200 What do you think the future of the pro-life movement is?

00:58:27.160 Yeah, the future of the pro-life movement is total legal protection and a cultural shift.

00:58:33.940 I mean, it's law, it's hearts and minds, and it's law.

00:58:36.520 And we have to make abortion illegal and unthinkable.

00:58:40.340 And a culture of life is one that every person, born and unborn, is seen for the dignity that

00:58:47.720 they possess, is treated with the respect that they deserve.

00:58:51.600 That goes to how we treat each other and just our friendships, our relationships, our businesses.

00:58:55.680 It goes to our families and how we see families, that children deserve mothers and fathers,

00:59:00.880 that we should support mothers and fathers, that we should love children and not reject

00:59:04.400 them.

00:59:05.560 It's a whole, in a way, becoming more sensitive and more tender as a society to one another.

00:59:12.420 And that's the world we're fighting for.

00:59:14.660 And do you think, you know, specifically that idea, not just illegal but unthinkable, as

00:59:21.120 a society, are we moving in that direction or will we?

00:59:25.700 Our society in many ways is divided.

00:59:28.500 But I think people of good conscience, when they're given facts, when they learn, they

00:59:33.220 change.

00:59:34.280 And when they learn facts about abortion and when they see this vision of human dignity

00:59:37.980 as beautiful, that we should fight for human lives no matter what life is worth fighting

00:59:42.800 for, I think it's captivating for people.

00:59:45.720 And so despite the divisiveness and, you know, all the rhetoric on both sides, I think increasingly

00:59:51.180 I'm very hopeful that we can see big shifts culturally.

00:59:55.560 I think people aren't happy with the way our society is set up.

00:59:58.780 Our culture is very negative.

01:00:01.620 People are lonely.

01:00:02.400 They don't feel belonging.

01:00:03.520 There's a lack of meaning for a lot of people.

01:00:05.220 There's a lot of suffering.

01:00:07.180 But if we just change the paradigm again and say, listen, life is about love.

01:00:11.560 Life is about serving each other.

01:00:13.100 Life is about fighting for each other.

01:00:16.260 It's about ensuring up bonds of love with each other in families and in communities.

01:00:21.660 I think that's the world people want.

01:00:23.900 And so I'm very hopeful that our pro-life message isn't just going to translate to pro-life

01:00:27.900 laws, which is happening.

01:00:29.140 And with the Supreme Court, it's definitely happening, I think.

01:00:32.300 But it's also going to translate that in our culture, translate to that in our culture.

01:00:36.300 So I'm very hopeful that our pro-life movement, as it continues to grow and it's growing,

01:00:40.980 is not only going to lead to those more sometimes quiet or loud cultural shifts of people waking

01:00:46.460 up and saying, no, I'm pro-life.

01:00:48.180 I want to see the value of human beings and treat people with love and respect.

01:00:52.340 I want to belong to – we belong to each other, as well as big legal changes.

01:00:57.140 And those are already happening at the state level with unprecedented amounts of states adopting

01:01:02.680 pro-life laws, but even at the Supreme Court, I think it's very likely that they will uphold

01:01:07.440 the 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi, which would empower states across the country to

01:01:12.700 enact pro-life laws.

01:01:13.960 So what do you say to the woman who doesn't feel like she has any support, feels pressure

01:01:20.100 from maybe family members or those around her to have an abortion, and doesn't know where

01:01:26.000 to turn?

01:01:27.440 What do you say to that woman who feels scared?

01:01:29.520 Yeah.

01:01:30.440 I mean, to anybody who is someone or knows someone who is facing unplanned pregnancy and

01:01:36.000 they think, I don't know what to do, I feel like I need to have an abortion, the first thing

01:01:39.820 I would say is there are people that want to help you.

01:01:41.880 You are not alone.

01:01:43.200 I know you may feel alone, but you're not alone.

01:01:45.660 And our website, abortionprocedures.com, has facts that you deserve to know about abortion,

01:01:50.420 but it also has a help page where there's a whole list of hotlines and resources that you

01:01:54.580 can contact for support, financial support, material support, free confidential counseling.

01:02:00.880 But that first message is you're not alone.

01:02:02.540 There are people that want to help you and help your child.

01:02:04.960 And last question, what would you like to leave audiences with?

01:02:10.420 Is there anything we haven't covered or anything that you think we should touch on?

01:02:13.260 I mean, one other, I think, issue that is kind of connected to your last question, but

01:02:17.620 I don't know if this makes sense to include, is there's this popularized mentality for women

01:02:24.060 that we are stronger and better when we're not burdened with children.

01:02:28.580 That a child is kind of this, for the man, they say the ball and chain is a woman.

01:02:34.800 It's that old trope.

01:02:36.080 Well, a ball and chain, a child is a ball and chain for a woman.

01:02:38.200 And we just have to wholeheartedly reject that because there's nothing more beautiful

01:02:43.580 in the world than a child.

01:02:45.260 And we're designed as women to love and nurture.

01:02:49.220 And I think we're most ourselves when we are being loved and loving and we're loving and

01:02:54.940 nurturing.

01:02:55.880 And I know being a mom of two kids, my life changed dramatically having kids, but in this

01:03:00.860 beautiful, beautiful way.

01:03:02.340 Because now I have this incredible purpose that I get to fight for these kids, not just

01:03:06.640 kids in general in the public movement, but my own children.

01:03:09.820 So I think there's a message to women, too, that, you know, don't be afraid of motherhood.

01:03:14.680 Don't be afraid of, like, the superpower you have as a woman to be a mother.

01:03:18.620 And yeah, I mean, you deserve a man who's going to be there for you and who's going to

01:03:22.660 marry you, who's going to love you.

01:03:23.660 I think we need to, like, reassert that that's what women deserve and demand, set that standard

01:03:27.880 for men.

01:03:28.660 But to encourage women that it's awesome.

01:03:31.080 Motherhood's a beautiful thing.

01:03:32.280 And you deserve support and love.

01:03:34.620 And your child is a tremendous gift.

01:03:45.460 The abortion industry uses women for their own profit.

01:03:51.140 These lies are pervasive.

01:03:54.020 They're not difficult to refute.

01:03:55.800 But it can be difficult to penetrate that culture of lies, to get the truth out there.

01:04:03.700 We have to do it.

01:04:05.340 We have to do it because it's right.

01:04:07.900 We have to do it for the victims of abortion.

01:04:10.600 We have to do it for the women who are taken in by this industry, who are used for dollars,

01:04:17.740 even to their own detriment.

01:04:19.040 If you enjoyed this conversation with Lila Rose, you'll want to check out our Daily Wire original

01:04:26.280 documentary, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe.

01:04:30.080 In it, we take a wrecking ball to the four fallacies keeping the abortion industry alive.

01:04:35.280 To watch it right now, go to dailywireplus.com.

01:04:38.920 Today, if you join, you will see not only this full movie, Choosing Death, The Legacy

01:04:46.160 of Roe, but you will have access to The Daily Wire's entire catalog of content, which we

01:04:51.440 can only produce and distribute because of you, with your support.

01:04:57.280 I'm Michael Knowles.

01:04:58.700 This is the Choosing Life Podcast.

01:05:01.340 We'll see you next time.

01:05:02.500 The Choosing Life Podcast is a Daily Wire production, produced in association with Outer

01:05:10.940 Limits.

01:05:11.640 Our technical and support team includes Ian Reed, Jesse Eastman, Ryan Moore, Mariah Cormier,

01:05:17.820 and Jim Wirt.

01:05:18.840 Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

01:05:21.380 Thanks for listening.

01:05:27.820 Is your home's title still in your name?

01:05:29.600 With one forged document, scammers can steal your home title and equity, but now you can

01:05:34.100 protect yourself.

01:05:35.140 Home Title Lock's $1,000,000 triple lock protection provides 24-7 title monitoring, urgent alerts

01:05:39.920 to changes, and if fraud happens, they'll spend up to $1,000,000 to fix it and restore

01:05:44.300 your title.

01:05:45.140 Use promo code dailywire at hometitlelock.com for a free title history report plus a free

01:05:49.860 14-day trial of their $1,000,000 triple lock protection.

01:05:53.220 Head over to hometitlelock.com now with promo code dailywire to ensure your title is still

01:05:57.720 in your name.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 27, 2022

Choosing Life： Uncovering Planned Parenthood's Lies and Abuse - Lila Rose

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript