The Michael Knowles Show - Choosing Life： Welcome to the Choosing Life Podcast - Interview with the Director

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00:00:30.000 The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.

00:00:39.480 Roe and Casey are overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.

00:00:47.480 That's what the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on June 24, 2022. 0.56

00:00:54.520 It's the decision that the pro-life movement had been waiting to read since 1973, when the Supreme Court invented, out of whole cloth, a supposed constitutional right to abortion.

00:01:07.700 Since that time, defenders of abortion tried to paper over Roe's weak, frankly non-existent, legal reasoning with euphemisms and slogans.

00:01:20.260 The right to choose.

00:01:22.060 Women's health care.

00:01:23.900 Clump of cells.

00:01:24.840 At The Daily Wire, we're committed to cutting through these sorts of cheap slogans and getting to the heart of what matters in our politics and culture.

00:01:34.820 On this podcast, we'll be getting to the heart of the abortion debate.

00:01:41.300 We recently released an investigative documentary called Choosing Death, which shined a light on the four foundational lies of the pro-abortion movement.

00:01:49.920 Conversations with abortionists, Planned Parenthood workers, pro-life advocates, even abortion survivors.

00:01:59.020 They are the first-hand accounts of the people who know abortion best.

00:02:04.040 Now more than ever, we must show people the gruesome reality that lies beneath the euphemisms, beneath the lies of the abortion lobby.

00:02:15.100 Then, and only then, will we grow a culture of life.

00:02:19.920 I'm Michael Knowles, and this is the Choosing Life Podcast.

00:02:34.020 Right now, I would strongly recommend you go to hallo.com slash choose life, because today's world is a scary one.

00:02:43.340 Too many people don't seem to care about the truth.

00:02:45.760 And I would suggest that that's all rooted in people becoming less, or really, just anti-religious.

00:02:53.420 That's why it's more important than ever to keep our relationship with God strong.

00:02:58.640 Hallow is the number one Christian prayer app in the United States.

00:03:01.860 It's like Calm or Headspace, but rooted in Catholic faith.

00:03:05.640 It is the perfect resource to deepen your relationship with God and find peace through audio-guided prayer and meditation.

00:03:12.220 Several of Hallow's meditations encourage you to choose life, and to pray for others to choose life, such as their Litany for Life with Lila Rose.

00:03:20.420 Hallow is free to download.

00:03:22.400 It will help you find peace and calm throughout your day.

00:03:25.560 So do it. Do it right now.

00:03:27.120 Download the app for free at hallo.com slash choose life.

00:03:32.260 That is hallo.com slash choose life.

00:03:35.560 The last few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind.

00:03:41.920 This documentary comes out, Choosing Death, the Legacy of Roe.

00:03:46.400 And then just a couple of weeks later, the Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.

00:03:56.920 This is the most important Supreme Court decision probably of the last 50 years, if not longer.

00:04:03.420 The timing, absolutely incredible.

00:04:06.720 And we are joined now by Ian Reid, the filmmaker, the documentarian behind Choosing Death, and the founder of Outer Limits, a film studio dedicated to stories that heal, move, and inspire.

00:04:18.880 Ian, thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:04:20.880 My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

00:04:22.160 The movie is marvelous.

00:04:24.340 The timing is impeccable.

00:04:25.960 I feel I can say this because though I appear in the movie a little bit to present it, I had nothing to do with making the movie.

00:04:34.320 This is really your project.

00:04:36.380 You got these interviews.

00:04:38.200 And now people will hear your side of the conversation in these very, very long-form interviews and in this podcast.

00:04:45.400 So I guess my first question would just be a little bit about you and how you found yourself in the pro-life movement.

00:04:51.940 Yeah, well, you know, it's really been a topic that I've just found to be incredibly important through the majority of my adult life.

00:04:59.440 You know, as I arrived at voting age, I started analyzing the issues and what was important to me as a voter and as a citizen.

00:05:05.360 And really one issue rose to the fore above everything else for me, and that was this issue of life.

00:05:12.360 I can't think of a topic that deserves our attention more.

00:05:15.280 I mean, if you look at the political landscape, what other topic in our country today has so much controversy surrounding it that it has become a single issue that dictates entire elections?

00:05:26.280 And that's why the Dobbs decision is so ground shaking in the impact that it's going to have on our country moving forward and why we have to have a response to those who disagree with us for why the pro-life movement is the right movement going forward.

00:05:42.180 And so when The Daily Wire started talking to me and my team about what might a film, a documentary about the issue of abortion and its history look like, as we started diving into the lies behind the abortion movement and the facts surrounding the Roe v. Wade verdict back in 1973,

00:06:02.080 the rationale for the majority opinion in that case. What we discovered as a team was that the lies really haven't changed since 1973.

00:06:13.900 The same lies that the justices used to make their decision in Roe v. Wade are the same lies that are used today, albeit the language is slightly changed.

00:06:23.760 The way that the lies are presented are, you know, more catchy and almost weirdly lighthearted in the way that they're talked about by the pro-choice movement now.

00:06:35.080 But the lies are at their core the exact same lies that were used to get Roe v. Wade passed into the social and moral mainstream.

00:06:43.480 I love that you're using that verb passed because that's not the common language that you would hear about a court decision.

00:06:50.860 That is the kind of language you would hear about a piece of legislation.

00:06:55.000 And frankly, the court's decision in Roe was much closer to a piece of legislation, albeit from the bench, than it was a court decision.

00:07:03.660 And so I think you're totally right.

00:07:06.560 The arguments behind Roe were specious.

00:07:10.880 They were simply not persuasive.

00:07:13.900 Even defenders of Roe v. Wade, even Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for goodness sakes, would mock the legal reasoning or lack thereof.

00:07:24.140 And then when Roe was upheld, partially upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Casey decision overruled parts of Roe because it just – from a legal perspective, it didn't make a lot of sense.

00:07:35.460 And I think that we get a sense of Roe v. Wade being something that was passed rather than something that was decided upon, even in conversations in this series.

00:07:46.640 You know, we'll hear from the law professor at the University of Notre Dame, Carter Sneed.

00:07:50.180 And he talks about how the arguments used by the court in the majority opinion aren't the typical types of legal argumentation that you would expect from the highest court in the United States.

00:08:01.720 What you get is you get arguments that are pulled from obscure legal briefs that weren't even heard in the argumentation before the court.

00:08:09.800 Many of those facts were pulled from shoddy research that was done by pro-choice advocates and pro-choice organizations who wanted to prove a point rather than get to the actual truth of the facts that the court should be considering.

00:08:23.620 And something I love about your documentary is it's not merely about the legal nitty-gritty.

00:08:28.920 Frankly, that's only a very small part of it.

00:08:32.280 I've always been fascinated with the abstract legal arguments around – especially around a case as preposterous as Roe.

00:08:38.640 But the more damaging lies would seem to me or the more shocking lies or the lies that really pull at your heartstrings are the lies that the pro-abortion movement has told about the babies themselves.

00:08:52.800 And I think you do a marvelous job in your interviews of exposing those.

00:08:57.460 We're not just talking about how to misread some statutes.

00:09:00.440 We're talking about living little human beings.

00:09:03.880 Yeah.

00:09:04.280 I think one of the most painful truths through this entire film, and it's something that we've seen a lot of response from audiences as well,

00:09:13.140 is that the pro-choice advocates, the pro-abortion movement, have successfully convinced the culture to talk about the unborn and human beings in the womb as if the science somehow wasn't conclusive that these are actual human beings who should have the rights of personhood.

00:09:34.480 And they somehow code over the entire fact that all scientists and doctors – in fact, if you look at recent studies, something like 95% or 90% of doctors and scientists who study life in the womb agree that it's conclusive that it's a human being in the womb from the moment of conception.

00:09:54.020 Are the other 5% just total flunkies? 0.99

00:09:57.840 What kind of an idiot can look at – do they think the baby is a giraffe or a duck-billed platypus or something? 1.00

00:10:03.680 The baby has all the characteristics of life. 1.00

00:10:06.500 The baby is obviously a human.

00:10:09.000 It's not some other kind of animal.

00:10:10.740 Frankly, I'm shocked the number is so low as 95%.

00:10:13.020 Well, and you have to ask, you know, is the answer that they gave somehow dictated not by the science but by some sort of other core beliefs that are, in their opinion, more foundational to the way they live their lives and do their research than the science itself?

00:10:31.860 Of course. It's just a way to paper over reality.

00:10:37.220 I mean this is a recurring theme in your film is these euphemisms, these slogans, the up is down and left is right and black is white kind of illogic that you see suffusing the pro-abortion movement.

00:10:52.140 Yeah, and what's really painful is – and what has become really clear to me as we've been working on this film is just how widespread the groupthink has become.

00:11:01.860 You see on social media, you know, look, I'm a filmmaker, I have a lot of friends who are not conservative, you know, the majority of the film industry leans pretty far left.

00:11:12.000 And seeing just the talking points and the total lack of research that's spread in fun little memes and catchy one-liners that actually have no basis in either the science or in good legal decision-making from the court, you know, is shocking and a little bit frightening when you think about how these catchy one-liners from the pro-abortion movement have taken hold of people who haven't put any thought into the issue themselves.

00:11:39.820 You'll sometimes hear people refer to an unwanted child or, you know, a product of conception.

00:11:47.940 That's another euphemism and it's this very dehumanizing kind of language.

00:11:54.140 You never think about these people as people.

00:11:56.840 You say, oh, it's just someone who's unwanted, okay.

00:11:59.400 In your movie, you sit down with a woman who survived an abortion.

00:12:05.240 So this is a woman who not only was once spoken of as a clump of cells, a product of conception, an unwanted child, but she was – there was an attempt to assassinate her.

00:12:17.040 There was an attempt to kill her when she was in the womb and she managed to survive, albeit with some injury.

00:12:22.440 And I just wonder now that we're decades on, this is a fully grown woman now, if the same sort of pro-abortion advocate who uses that kind of language could look that woman in the eyes and say, oh, you, you're unwanted. 0.96

00:12:37.320 You're just a clump of cells.

00:12:38.640 You're a product of conception. 1.00

00:12:39.780 The world would be better off if you had died.

00:12:43.080 Yeah, I think there are really two types of people in the pro-choice movement.

00:12:48.060 I think one group of people in the pro-choice movement are people who just don't know, the people who don't know the reality of what's happening in abortion, don't know the reality of how developed children are in the womb when the majority of abortions are committed on them, and people who have seen the catchy phrases and talking points and are like, oh, yeah, I want what's best for women.

00:13:09.880 And those people in their, I hate to say naivete or ignorance, but they're well-meaning people, a lot of them, I think, they just don't know how gruesome and what a violation of basic fundamental human rights abortion actually is.

00:13:24.640 And so I think that's one group.

00:13:25.700 And we really hoped, I hope that a lot of people in that group get a chance to see this film because we do present a lot of facts and presented in hopefully a winsome, interesting way through the stories that are told.

00:13:38.540 But facts that counterbalance the false narrative on a lot of those talking points.

00:13:44.880 But then I think there's a second side of the pro-abortion movement.

00:13:48.520 And unfortunately, those people are people who know the facts, know what's actually going on in abortion, and don't care.

00:13:57.180 They want what they want, regardless of what it does to the human beings that are affected.

00:14:03.520 And unfortunately, as we'll hear in Claire Colwell's interview, which is the first episode of this series, there are people in the pro-choice movement, the pro-abortion movement, who have said straight to her face, it would have been better if you had been killed. 0.82

00:14:16.980 It would be better if you weren't speaking publicly about this issue, and we would rather that you had been killed alongside your twin in your mother's womb.

00:14:26.040 And when you hear that, it just, it's shocking, but it also gives you a little insight into what at least a segment of the pro-abortion movement really is all about.

00:14:38.160 They don't really care about the value of the woman's life if that woman is on the, quote, wrong side of the issue from their perspective.

00:14:48.380 Of course. Of course. I like that distinction because that's true.

00:14:51.460 There are plenty of people who support abortion out of ignorance.

00:14:54.500 I supported abortion out of ignorance for my teenage years.

00:14:58.280 I lived in a liberal place. Almost all my friends were liberals.

00:15:02.440 The idea that one even could be pro-life was outlandish to me. 0.82

00:15:06.780 I assumed all the pro-lifers hated women. 1.00

00:15:08.600 I just bought everything that they said on CNN and NBC. 1.00

00:15:13.180 And I was convinced by a female bioethicist, actually, that all the arguments I was making were either stupid or extremely evil. 0.99

00:15:22.940 And so I had my mind changed. 0.97

00:15:26.220 There's an amazing interview that you have in this series where you're talking to not just a supporter of abortion,

00:15:32.860 but an abortionist himself who, while performing an abortion, goes from one category to the other.

00:15:42.620 This man had performed a lot of abortions.

00:15:44.460 And in the moment, his eyes are opened and he sees the reality of it for what it is.

00:15:49.320 Yeah, that's the story of Dr. Steve Hammond.

00:15:53.220 And I think his story was one of the most moving personally to me.

00:16:00.740 Because here you have the story of, like you said, a doctor who's trained in abortions, who's skilled at them.

00:16:08.940 And something that he points out in his story is that he gravitated to abortions because he felt like he was really good at it.

00:16:17.120 He was really efficient at them.

00:16:18.960 He could do them quickly.

00:16:20.500 He could do them cost effectively.

00:16:21.680 And he started doing them moonlighting on the side because he could make extra money doing them more efficiently than other doctors could.

00:16:31.300 And the moment that he realized that he could no longer do abortions was when a baby who was much further into term than he thought it was ended up kicking his instrument that was in the womb of the mother.

00:16:44.700 And he just froze.

00:16:47.120 And he tells the story better than anyone else could because he lived it.

00:16:50.340 And you can feel the emotion as he tells his own story.

00:16:55.060 But I think you have to hear stories like that from actual former abortionists, people who are in the room doing those procedures to actually get a sense of what goes on in real abortions, apart from the partisanship, apart from the talking points, to get a sense of what's actually happening at the hands of these abortionists.

00:17:14.700 And his story is a difficult one, but I think it's important for people to hear.

00:17:21.440 We'll hear more from our conversation with Ian in a moment.

00:17:24.340 First, though, text PRO-LIFE to 47581.

00:17:29.240 Because as the country grapples with the aftermath of overturning Roe v. Wade, the pro-life movement has come under fire from far-left pro-abortion extremists.

00:17:39.120 Not only have leftists firebombed and vandalized pro-life clinics in multiple states,

00:17:43.700 but online pro-life groups have experienced mass censorship by Google, Facebook, TikTok, you name it.

00:17:52.000 That's why Live Action has been working tirelessly to find ways to spread the truth about abortion and share resources with those who need it most without relying on biased big tech.

00:18:02.040 If you want to join Live Action's Fight for Life, text PRO-LIFE to 47581 and opt in to receive updates from Live Action about their ongoing work to end abortion.

00:18:14.020 Texting PRO-LIFE to 47581 means you won't be at the mercy of the big tech censors in the ongoing fight for life.

00:18:21.660 So what do you hope to accomplish with the movie and the series?

00:18:33.680 If the point of the movie, and I'm not sure that this was the point, but if the point of the movie was to persuade people that we ought to overrule Roe v. Wade,

00:18:41.960 when you made the movie, Roe v. Wade was the law of the land.

00:18:44.360 And, well, mission accomplished.

00:18:46.220 That happened.

00:18:47.280 We got this unbelievable decision.

00:18:50.180 I mean, it's the greatest political event of my lifetime, truly, and maybe the least expected.

00:18:54.500 So now we get this conclusion of the court.

00:18:57.780 It's not the conclusion of the pro-life movement.

00:19:00.220 So where do we go from here?

00:19:02.760 Yeah, well, you know, I would say that we definitely had a few objectives with this film.

00:19:06.380 I would also say that the first clarification I'd make is we in no way were hoping to influence the opinion of, you know,

00:19:14.300 the political process or the court with the film because, truth be told,

00:19:18.020 I believe that the facts should dictate the opinion of the court.

00:19:21.860 I think the justices made the right decision here,

00:19:24.680 but they made the right decision based on facts that were actually presented in the court,

00:19:28.780 unlike what happened in Roe.

00:19:30.480 Sure.

00:19:31.300 Though your movie, I think you're being too dismissive of your own movie.

00:19:35.420 Your movie presents these facts.

00:19:37.240 I think you put these people out there and they're just telling you how it is.

00:19:42.640 And it's a story that people probably have not been exposed to before.

00:19:47.340 Yeah, I think the real objective that we had to your point is that we wanted to present in a concise way

00:19:55.860 what are the primary lies that were at the core of the decision of Roe v. Wade

00:20:02.240 or the passage of Roe v. Wade, as you will,

00:20:05.420 that laid the foundation for the just cultural upheaval over the issue of abortion in the following 40 years.

00:20:14.700 And we want to tackle them one by one using actual facts, using actual science,

00:20:19.200 and using actual logic and analyze, are those arguments that were used to arrive at the majority opinion of Roe v. Wade,

00:20:28.400 are they good arguments?

00:20:29.580 Are they factual arguments?

00:20:31.100 And are the arguments that have existed since Roe v. Wade, used by the pro-abortion movement,

00:20:36.400 are those arguments valid as well?

00:20:38.500 And what you find is they just really weren't.

00:20:40.760 And so our objective for the film was we want to provide a little bit of a background on the issue of abortion and its history in the United States

00:20:48.880 so that audiences can decide for themselves, should this have been the decision back in 1973?

00:20:55.600 And what is my stance on abortion today?

00:20:58.380 Look, we made this film just as much for a post-Dobbs world, regardless of the decision,

00:21:04.400 as we did for a pre-Dobbs world. 0.85

00:21:06.460 We knew that there was going to be a decision sometime, you know, summer 2022.

00:21:10.160 And so our objective with the film was not to influence or guide the decision of the court on the case of Dobbs.

00:21:19.480 But what the objective was, was to provide a primer of the history of abortion in the United States

00:21:25.580 so that audiences, regardless of where they fall on the issue, had a tool set to evaluate where do we go from here?

00:21:32.220 Whether the Dobbs decision was going to be upholding Roe v. Wade

00:21:36.180 and further enshrining that, quote, right to abortion in U.S. law for who knows how many more decades,

00:21:43.460 or overturning Roe v. Wade and putting it back to the states and giving the states the authority to decide for themselves,

00:21:49.160 we wanted to give people a tool set to analyze the issue of abortion using real facts and real history

00:21:56.960 rather than this fabricated set of facts and one-liners used by the pro-abortion movement.

00:22:02.220 Right. Because the Dobbs decision is not exactly a pro-life decision.

00:22:08.580 The Dobbs decision is really about the structure of government and the proper place for making these kinds of decisions.

00:22:16.460 So all that the Dobbs decision does is sends the issue back to the people and their representatives.

00:22:21.660 So now it is incumbent on the pro-life movement to win over the hearts and minds of the people throughout the United States

00:22:29.800 to, at that point, build a culture of life.

00:22:35.420 The Dobbs decision gave us an opportunity, and now it's up to us to know what to do with that opportunity.

00:22:43.380 Right. And this is something that has come up in a lot of conversations both on our team and with friends and colleagues of mine,

00:22:49.500 which is that the work of the pro-life movement isn't over now with the Dobbs decision.

00:22:54.800 The work of the pro-life movement is really just now ramping up.

00:22:58.420 It's not time to sit on our laurels and think, oh, well, now the law is on our side or now the law is protecting the unborn.

00:23:06.380 It's really just the first step in what should be the beginning of a real groundswell of work by people who are in the pro-life movement.

00:23:15.380 And really, even if you're not in the pro-life movement, if you're a pro-life person in the United States,

00:23:19.680 now is the time to start acting in a way that brings support to women in need who works in your community and your state

00:23:29.100 to push for greater protections of the lives of the unborn.

00:23:34.420 And, you know, look, there are a lot of critics out there who say that the pro-life movement just cares about life

00:23:40.180 before the child is out of the womb and doesn't care about life once someone is born.

00:23:44.200 And while that's factually just destroyed by the data, and that's just not true, I mean, it's objectively not true.

00:23:51.080 If you look at who provides the most care for children in need, who provides the most care for women in need,

00:23:58.080 who provides the most support to families who are low-income and are struggling,

00:24:03.460 you know, whether you're talking about birthing clinics who provide diapers and milk and formula and support for mothers and families,

00:24:13.300 or whether you're talking about charities that provide support for low-income communities and low-income families,

00:24:21.660 across the board, those are almost always pro-life groups and organizations or people who are on the pro-life side of the debate.

00:24:29.340 So, factually, just totally false that the pro-life movement doesn't care about life after birth.

00:24:33.860 But this is the time for us to prove it even more so, right?

00:24:36.740 It's the time for us to, as a community, not, you know, point fingers and say, ha, we won this time.

00:24:42.620 It's now time to say, look, we know that you might be scared.

00:24:46.120 We know that as someone who's pro-choice, you don't know what your future holds,

00:24:49.740 but we're going to come alongside you, and we're going to provide the support.

00:24:53.620 We're going to provide everything that we can do to help you in a post-abortion world.

00:25:00.640 And that's really what we're all fighting for, a post-abortion world where everyone in society sees the results of valuing life even from the earliest stage.

00:25:09.400 Right. We're not going to just say, we won this time.

00:25:12.840 We want to keep winning.

00:25:14.120 We want to keep winning and growing a culture of life.

00:25:17.860 This series is a wonderful way to do it, Ian.

00:25:20.060 I'm glad we had these interviews.

00:25:21.680 I'm glad you did this because this is a great way in this post-ro world of really, really accelerating that work, 0.60

00:25:30.160 which we will get to on, of course, the next episode.

00:25:33.040 In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:25:35.180 This is the Choosing Life podcast.

00:25:37.240 Stay tuned.

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00:25:54.320 Not only can you watch the full film, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe,

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00:26:30.540 Join and watch the full film, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe.

00:26:35.080 The Choosing Life podcast is a Daily Wire production, produced in association with Outer Limits.

00:26:42.400 Our technical and support team includes Ian Reed, Jesse Eastman, Ryan Moore, Mariah Cormier, and Jim Word.

00:26:49.960 Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

00:26:52.540 Thanks for listening.

00:27:05.080 We'll see you next time.

The Michael Knowles Show - July 30, 2022

Choosing Life： Welcome to the Choosing Life Podcast - Interview with the Director

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