They Arrested And Strip Searched Me... - Lois McLatchie Miller
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 17 minutes
Words per minute
193.3012
Harmful content
Misogyny
70
sentences flagged
Toxicity
24
sentences flagged
Hate speech
32
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, we speak to a man who is fighting for the rights of trans children in the UK. He talks about his experience of being arrested for his views on child sex trafficking, and how he uses his experience to bring awareness to the issue.
Transcript
00:00:00.800
I was arrested for holding one of the most basic fundamental truths that we've known forever.
00:00:09.200
Their immediate instinct was to call us fascists.
00:00:12.100
And Chris asked, well, what about our free speech?
00:00:13.760
We have a right to freedom of speech here, don't we?
00:00:15.760
And the police said, it doesn't work like that here.
00:00:17.600
And we were arrested, strip searched, put in cells for a few hours.
00:00:24.740
If I get criminal charges, it will change my life quite substantially.
00:00:54.220
A wrestler to face a robot, that will have to happen.
0.96
00:00:57.180
So whatever you think is going to happen in the future, you can invest in it at Wealthsimple.
00:01:05.520
When you let aero truffle bubbles melt, everything takes on a creamy, delicious, chocolatey glow.
00:01:24.280
We wanted to have you on for a while, but particularly more recently because of an incident you were involved in.
00:01:29.800
So you're someone who campaigns on a number of issues, one of them being trans ideology.
00:01:36.140
It's an issue we haven't talked about for quite some time, really, because initially in the journey of trigonometry,
00:01:42.920
we were just investigating it and kind of going, like, you know, trans women are real women.
00:01:50.220
And then I think it's fair to say over time we came to what we thought was a pretty reasonable position on that.
00:01:55.540
And over time the country came to, Britain at least, came to what is a pretty reasonable position on that.
00:02:00.240
You know, outlawing puberty blockers, defining what a woman is.
1.00
00:02:08.720
And now we don't really talk very much about it because we sort of feel that it's been dealt with.
00:02:13.600
But you had an incident recently which shows how much more there is going on around that and speech and so on.
00:02:21.680
Yeah, well, I was arrested for holding one of the most basic fundamental truths that we've known forever.
00:02:31.280
And it's one of the most important messages of our day.
00:02:34.120
And you're right to say that the UK has come a really long way legally and politically on this issue.
00:02:39.720
But I think sometimes we can just look at the news stories or our own Twitter feed and think that we have won and not realise what's going on up in the streets.
00:02:48.620
And so my friend, Billboard Chris, who has been working on this for a long time, his methodology is to go out, to take the conversation outside and to meet people in their daily lives and to have a conversation about what's going on when it comes to the horrors of child transition and what we can do to keep children safe.
00:03:10.380
And I joined him in Brussels about six weeks ago.
00:03:16.500
We did it in Melbourne, Australia, one of the most famously woke cities of all.
00:03:21.660
Typically, even in these places, it's about nine to one support.
00:03:25.240
You wouldn't know it, but a lot of people, they walk past, at least they give you a thumbs up or normally it's a dad, the kind of middle-aged dads really kind of get on board with what we're saying.
00:03:34.680
And either stop to give us our support vocally or at least just make it known to you.
00:03:40.320
But Brussels was the first time, and it was the first time for Chris also, that he'd actually be four to one against.
00:03:46.500
It was as if we'd gone into this vortex where, and if you think about Brussels, obviously, a lot of people who go to Brussels go there because they want to be part of the EU.
00:03:54.920
So it's a city of activists, a city of people with an agenda.
00:03:58.080
And it was about four to one against this message.
00:04:02.680
I got the impression a lot of people had never even seen such a message.
00:04:05.400
I think we're very lucky in the Anglosphere that we get quite a balanced media spectrum on this issue.
00:04:13.560
If you look from the Telegraph to the Guardian, there's quite a range of opinion on things like purity blockers.
00:04:18.660
But I got the impression that out there in Brussels, in the European media, they just had not been exposed to this kind of thinking before.
00:04:27.720
And their immediate instinct was to call us fascists and to yell at us and to describe us as Nazis and the most horrible people in the world just because we wanted to keep children safe from puberty blockers.
00:04:41.820
So we started to get kind of a little bit of a crowd around us.
0.95
00:04:45.500
A lot of them were shouting kind of shame on you, being very aggressive, saying, you know, I have a trans daughter and what you're doing is, you know, going to murder lots of people.
00:04:54.080
And we're saying, no, we're actually here to keep children safe.
00:04:59.820
Let's talk about how we can compassionately care for kids who have confusion.
00:05:03.740
As the crowd grew, there was two men particularly who were being very aggressive to me.
00:05:07.160
And they were middle-aged dads, kind of, you know, as a stereotype, but I don't know if they had children.
00:05:12.380
But that was their, normally they were for us, but they started kind of getting in my face, trying to take me away from Chris, trying to mess with the equipment, yelling at me.
00:05:22.740
And I didn't understand it all because it was in Dutch, but I got the impression, given some of the English swear words that were coming out, that it probably wasn't the nicest thing that they were saying.
00:05:30.520
And so eventually we had to call the police for our own safety.
00:05:33.640
And when the police arrived, they took a look at this scene with two people with signs and the recording equipment and this gathering mob shouting and yelling.
00:05:43.500
And their instinct was, of course, to arrest the two peaceful people and not the crowd who were yelling abuse.
00:05:51.800
It was quite an interesting little 20, 30 minutes we had with the police explaining what was going on.
00:05:59.560
They were just talking to people, having conversations.
00:06:01.780
And they're like, oh, you need a permit to protest.
00:06:05.380
We would have bought 50 people if we were protesting.
00:06:07.860
Here's the workers on Twitter, doing, you know, showing him examples.
00:06:12.080
And I said, you wouldn't need a permit to have a conversation about the environment or about Israel and Gaza or any of these controversial issues.
00:06:22.420
And Chris asked, well, what about our free speech?
00:06:24.180
We have a right to freedom of speech here, don't we?
00:06:25.700
And the police said, it doesn't work like that here, which was, I want to think that he didn't speak English well enough to express that point.
00:06:34.520
But it was quite chilling to hear, oh, it doesn't work like that here in the heart of democracy, in the home of the EU, in Brussels, of all places.
00:06:44.620
They tried to take our camera equipment away, said that we weren't allowed to film.
00:06:49.460
And eventually they gave us an ultimatum, either take down our signs and obey the mob that was shouting at us, or keep our signs on, keep upholding this true message, and we would have to go down to the police station.
00:07:03.620
We went to the police station, we were arrested, strip searched, put in cells for a few hours.
00:07:15.200
I didn't, I've never been arrested before, and so when they took us to be searched, I didn't question that this was an abnormal.
00:07:23.120
It seems kind of excessive, given the nature of the alleged offence.
00:07:29.180
And yeah, I have quite a few questions about things that happened, the way the police acted that day.
00:07:34.220
I do believe they did go to foreign and several fronts, but the strip searching especially, I think, was unnecessary.
00:07:42.140
So they take you to the police station, and what were you arrested for?
00:07:48.000
When we were outside, we were told that this was an administrative matter, that we might get fined, that it was about not having permits.
00:07:55.640
And we didn't think that that was right, and we thought it was challenging.
00:07:57.720
We challenged it, but ultimately, it wasn't a criminal charge.
00:08:01.960
When we went to the police station, we were then told that it would be a criminal charge, that we were being charged with disturbing the peace, which they really should have told us beforehand.
00:08:11.680
At that point, I kind of mentally remember accepting that, okay, if I get criminal charges, okay, it's going to make travel difficult, it's going to make work difficult, it will change my life quite substantially.
00:08:29.660
I actually became a different person for those few hours.
00:08:34.820
I'm not, you know, calm by nature, but I think, I don't know, God was with me, or I just kind of got this kind of attitude, knowing that I was right, knowing that the police were wrong in this situation.
00:08:49.060
I thought through the cost, and I was like, okay, I suppose that is the cost of what it is.
00:08:53.060
Fortunately, over the next few hours, that got bumped down again to the administrative fund, and at the end, we left with nothing.
00:08:59.700
So they can still decide to fine us within the next six months, but I doubt they will, and it won't be a criminal charge.
00:09:05.460
The thing that I found really interesting about the case is these men were behaving in a very physically aggressive manner.
00:09:10.880
You're obviously a woman, but nothing happened to them.
00:09:16.160
Actually, when they were being very threatening, there was one man in particular, he was trying to walk me back.
00:09:24.500
And I remember looking around and looking for other men who were watching, because there were a lot of people watching.
00:09:32.960
And even these grown men that were watching said, they kept, I mean, some of them were just filming.
00:09:39.180
And they just shook their heads, and they didn't help.
00:09:41.480
And I thought that was very unprogressive for such a progressive society.
00:09:48.220
Just the visuals of it worked in my favor in that sense.
00:09:53.360
But I guess because I had this message on that changed the calculation of who was a victim, who was a victor.
00:10:01.040
It must have been a profoundly shocking event to happen to you.
00:10:04.420
Because when you went out to essentially record social media content, I think the last thing that you would have expected, look, let's be honest, it's a contentious issue even now.
00:10:20.660
I think this speaks to a larger trend across Europe.
00:10:23.520
And we do get kind of confident in our message when it's on the gender issue because we've had so many wins in the UK.
00:10:29.880
But when you look across the continent, in Finland, we have a case.
00:10:34.500
I work for a legal organization called ADF International.
00:10:37.140
We've had a case there for the last five years where a politician is on criminal charges charged under war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Finnish criminal code.
00:10:45.280
Because in 2019, she tweeted a question as to whether her church should really be sponsoring the pride parade.
00:10:51.860
That has led to five years on criminal charges going up to the Supreme Court.
00:10:57.580
I mean, across the continent, we see that there is still this censorship on this issue, particularly when it comes to kids.
00:11:05.380
And there is, I think, especially on the continent, still a feeling of two camps without nuance.
00:11:11.620
In the UK, we kind of have managed to pull out some of the more sensitive issues from this.
00:11:16.960
Some people would say, well, you know, it's different if there's adults, but if it's children, they shouldn't be able to make these decisions at such a young age.
00:11:23.360
Or we have a little bit more of a color to the debate.
00:11:25.360
Whereas I think in Europe, it's still very polarized as to who's right, who's wrong.
00:11:30.500
And if you're not on my team, then you're on the other team and you're a bad person.
00:11:33.680
When I was reading about your case, it kind of reminded me about a lot of countries on the continent's reaction to COVID in that they are far more authoritarian.
00:11:48.000
Because when you look at the French's reaction and the Belgians and all the rest of it, and then when I saw the police's reaction to you and Chris, that is very authoritarian.
00:11:57.820
Yeah, it was. Yeah. I actually lived in Austria during the COVID pandemic, and they made it a criminal offense not to get vaccinated, and they treated those who disagreed very poorly.
00:12:09.220
You would get thrown out of shops and things if you didn't have the right papers to show that you had, you know, had second or third shots, etc.
00:12:22.560
That's where the papes are supposed to be.
0.66
00:12:27.780
So yeah, I think that that culture still has such a presence there.
00:12:33.360
And it was ironic that we were being called fascists and Nazis when we were there, you know, as dissidents, really, to this cultural lie that children can make these horrific decisions
00:12:51.760
They just need love and affirmation to, you know, love the skin that they're in and to flourish and thrive as the kids that they're meant to be.
00:13:00.120
Whereas, you know, there's this cultural lie that they should be taking puberty blockers and hormone therapies and even going through surgeries to maim their bodies in order to be right, to be correct.
00:13:10.420
And so, like, the irony of us being told that we are the fascists was really troubling.
00:13:15.740
But I think one little ray of hope in the whole experience for me was when there was, when we were really surrounded at the maximum and there was, I don't know, a crowd, I had terrible estimate numbers, maybe 40 people around us.
00:13:26.740
And they were all, a lot of them were dressed in black.
00:13:30.380
But there was this one older lady that was in the crowd.
1.00
00:13:33.220
And no one else saw it, but she just gave me a wink and a thumbs up.
0.97
00:13:36.860
And I think I knew in the back of my mind that when this was all over, I would have support from, like, the free speech community and things like that.
00:13:47.000
And just having that one person gave us a little, like, reminder that we're not crazy, that a lot of people do support us.
00:13:53.940
It really gave us, like, encouragement and strength to go on.
00:13:56.640
And also, as well, there was another sinister element to it, which Billboard Chris, they kept the signs.
00:14:03.660
So that, and these signs are, they're not that cheap.
00:14:05.860
I think they kept about 250 pounds worth of our property and sent them to destruction, which is hopefully something else that can be challenged.
00:14:14.120
But, yeah, I mean, literally stealing the truth and burning it, there's something very symbolic and bitter about that.
00:14:25.580
They just said, no, this is the way that it has to be.
00:14:28.240
I got the sense that, I mean, there was about 15 police officers came for us, four policemen.
00:14:34.400
And some of them, one particular man was very aggressive and hostile.
00:14:38.360
But some of them were not, and they were just following orders.
00:14:43.660
And I actually don't think that they thought that we were particularly bad people.
00:14:46.560
But you could see that they were just told to do these things, and they didn't really question why.
00:14:54.520
The ones who were, you know, aggressive and hostile are the ones who just didn't speak up and question what was happening.
00:14:58.920
Well, this idea, it's a very sinister framework that we have.
00:15:03.300
We've seen this in the UK as well, where effectively, if you are opposing something or making a statement about something, which other people choose to respond to by being violent or aggressive, the person who is simply there making a view known about trans issues or Israel or Palestine or whatever, they are then accused of being the ones that are breaching the peace because it's easier for the police to arrest one person than to break up a mob of violent people.
00:15:34.140
And I think we even see across different issues, sometimes it's the police want to just diffuse a situation.
00:15:40.000
And you can almost kind of have some sympathy for them in that they haven't maybe had the free speech training that they need in order to know how to respond to that situation.
00:15:47.240
But other times, it does seem just purely ideological.
00:15:50.940
I think for me, the most concerning examples of censorship that we've seen in the West lately are those who've been criminalized, prosecuted, and even convicted for praying silently in their heads near abortion facilities.
00:16:05.440
And, you know, the first one, probably the most famous, Isabel von Spruce.
00:16:10.040
She was, you know, arrested in this iconic viral video.
00:16:15.640
In fact, that first day that she went out to pray and she was arrested, the abortion clinic was closed.
00:16:21.200
So there was nobody around even to be, you know, offended or to be hostile to her.
00:16:26.620
She was just standing there with a thought in her head, a pro-life thought, a thought that went against the authorities of the day.
00:16:34.340
And it wasn't just once she was arrested twice.
00:16:37.160
We saw Adam Smith-Connor, the army veteran down in Bournemouth, who was later mentioned by J.D. Vance in his iconic speech in Munich.
00:16:44.380
He was arrested and criminalized and found guilty for three minutes of silent prayer near an abortion facility.
00:16:52.160
Nobody actually took hostility or complained about this.
00:16:55.260
It was the police, it was the authorities that didn't want someone to just have this opinion.
00:17:00.520
I think that is when censorship is at its most concerning, is when it's not even responding to a potential flare-up.
00:17:10.720
If you're watching this interview, chances are you already know how important it is to think for yourself.
00:17:19.220
The same events are framed completely differently depending on who's telling the story.
00:17:22.940
In many ways, it's become as much of a battle of narratives as it is a battle on the ground.
00:17:28.500
Which is why Ground News is invaluable right now.
00:17:31.880
Ground News lets you step outside the echo chamber.
00:17:34.880
It shows you how the same story is framed differently across the political spectrum,
00:17:38.900
so you can compare headlines and decide for yourself.
00:17:44.240
Follow along at ground.news slash trigonometry.
00:17:48.900
Israeli army prepares to relocate Palestinians to southern Gaza.
00:17:53.640
Straight away, I can quickly see the story is being covered by outlets across the board.
00:17:59.300
However, scrolling down the page, Ground News allows me to easily compare the headlines.
00:18:10.520
to forcibly move Palestinians in their headlines.
00:18:14.360
Conversely, right-leaning outlets use terms like relocation
00:18:19.260
and several outlets focus on defeating Hamas in their headlines for this story.
00:18:25.440
I can then easily click into any of these articles to read more.
00:18:29.180
If you care about getting to the truth by seeing things from all angles as we do,
00:18:36.260
Go to ground.news slash trigonometry and get 40% off their unlimited advantage plan.
00:18:53.340
All electric and thoughtfully designed to elevate your modern lifestyle.
00:18:57.300
The Volkswagen ID.4 is fun to drive with instant acceleration
00:19:03.480
Plus a refined interior with innovative technology always at your fingertips.
00:19:16.820
Lois, I want to give you a chance to address what I think will be a natural inclination
00:19:20.640
for a lot of people to say, look, people will always say something like this.
00:19:24.500
Well, I don't agree with you being arrested, but why are you going out there with these signs?
00:19:29.820
Why are you standing outside of an abortion clinic praying?
00:19:42.980
You can pray or think a thought or express a view on any square mile in Britain or the West.
00:19:49.220
That is something that we fought for, we died for.
00:19:51.300
And it's the most fundamental principle of a democracy.
00:19:54.540
When you give up on that and say it's too much trouble to speak the truth, to have a conversation
00:20:00.140
that's merely meaningful, then you've given up on the entire idea and they may as well just censor
00:20:04.840
illegally because you've censored yourself anyway.
00:20:08.280
I mean, there's very practical reasons for why I went out, for why Isabel or Adam pray.
00:20:12.740
I mean, pro-life people for generations have stood near clinics to offer help and support
00:20:18.820
and alternatives to women who would like to seek other support than to have an abortion.
00:20:23.280
And that, unfortunately, is no longer possible under the current laws.
00:20:26.020
Although it should, of course, be possible at least to stand silently, at least to think
00:20:30.820
So there's practical reasons, but there's also just the fundamental need to preserve your
00:20:39.900
And it might be the issue that you don't like today.
00:20:43.620
Maybe it doesn't bother you about, you know, kids being related through transgender surgeries.
00:20:47.900
But if these causes at the kind of, you know, the first line of defense fall, then it will be your cause
00:20:55.220
very soon that is censored on the grounds, you know, in areas of Britain.
00:20:59.000
So we have to all stand together or fall together.
00:21:01.380
I'm getting at something slightly different, though, which is a lot of people might even somewhat
00:21:07.500
agreeing with what you're putting forward, just feel like you're making trouble on purpose.
00:21:17.660
I'm not saying I agree with this point of view, but I do.
00:21:24.520
It's like you go out and into the public and say something that you know is controversial,
00:21:32.680
You are naturally then going to produce an angry response.
00:21:35.780
And isn't it, some people might say, the police's job to kind of deal with that and prevent you from being hurt?
00:21:42.460
I mean, arresting you, this argument falls apart pretty quickly, but I'm trying my best to steal money.
00:21:49.300
Well, I guess that when an issue is particularly important, and you can think of different issues throughout history
00:21:54.800
that have been overturned through conversations, through advocacy, you know, we can think of slavery.
00:21:59.520
It was so normal, you know, back in the day, it was what society was built on.
00:22:03.660
But it was through conversations, it was through speaking up, that things like that fell.
00:22:08.340
And now we are faced with controversial issues of our day.
00:22:12.260
Often because they involve an element of right and wrong.
00:22:15.700
And if we cannot grapple with those ideas amongst ourselves in the public square,
00:22:23.140
then we're just going to leave it to what politicians?
00:22:27.600
If we cannot get these messages of truth out, then we can never challenge things that are wrong.
00:22:33.660
To tell a kid that they're born in the wrong body.
00:22:35.720
I think it's wrong to entice them along a path that will give them permanent bodily damage
00:22:41.840
and lead them into something that is often, you know, linked to serious mental health consequences as well.
00:22:51.340
I think it's so wrong to fish kids along that path.
00:22:54.380
We cannot have those conversations one-to-one in public.
00:23:00.600
So you're bringing the conversation, you're forcing the conversation about these issues into the public debate,
00:23:09.220
The thing about the wrong body, I did an interview with a big Russian YouTuber,
1.00
00:23:13.500
and he challenged me on this because he turned out not to agree with my view on it.
00:23:22.600
The phraseology, because of the way Russian works, it has to be someone else's body.
0.77
00:23:27.540
And when I heard him say it in Russian, I was like, this makes even less sense than it does in English.
00:23:31.620
Ironically, he cut out that whole discussion from the interview.
00:23:36.160
But look, why do you think people are so angry about you making this statement in public?
00:23:42.980
Like, I mean, people might disagree, but why does it make them violently angry, do you think?
00:23:48.740
I think when it comes to something as harmful, as potentially damaging, if I am right, if the science is right, if my message is true,
00:23:58.560
then it means that a lot of people have participated in something that has actually been extremely harmful for either their kids
00:24:04.200
or they've supported it for other people's children, and that's really hard to reconcile with.
00:24:07.960
And I can totally understand that that's a very sensitive issue, but we can't therefore, because it has been done,
00:24:15.680
just perpetuate this on forever because we don't want to reckon with what has gone wrong.
00:24:19.820
And I understand that a lot of people have acted under false information or false understandings of what the right thing to do is.
00:24:26.420
But if we're not open to being challenged about having potentially done the wrong thing,
00:24:32.000
we'll never be able to stop that for someone else's child happening.
00:24:34.480
So there was somebody who came who was aggressive to us.
00:24:38.360
Who was, who said I had a, her kind of refrain was, I have a trans daughter.
00:24:43.120
And so obviously she's committed to that worldview.
00:24:45.600
And if she got it wrong, if I'm right, then she has caused harm to her child.
00:24:52.000
So it's difficult. It's sensitive. It can make people angry, I think, because of that.
00:24:56.200
But that's not a reason not to have the conversation. That's not a reason to suppress the truth.
00:25:00.260
I agree. I think also the thing is as well, I think people have realised,
00:25:05.640
looking back on social justice movements, you know, gay rights, etc, etc.
00:25:11.500
You know, we got a lot of stuff wrong. We got a lot of stuff wrong.
00:25:15.080
And so I think people overcorrected on this particular issue and they see it as a moral crusade
00:25:20.880
without actually looking at the facts of what is actually going on.
00:25:24.860
Yeah. Yeah. We're often blind to our own. We kind of, a lot of people, and, you know,
00:25:30.880
we're all guilty of this, will come up with our ideology first and find the facts to sit in the narrative.
00:25:34.940
But I think with, and we've been so privileged in the UK to see the evidence that's come out of the Tavistock Clinic,
00:25:41.820
the link between children who think they're transgender and who have autism.
00:25:45.720
I think it was 90, according to Hannah Barnes's book, 97.5% of kids at the Tavistock Clinic
00:25:51.740
had some other situation going on, like bullying, anxiety, depression, etc.
00:25:57.320
And over a third of them had autism, whereas only less than 2% of kids in the country have autism.
00:26:12.520
But, yeah, so we've seen this evidence in bulk.
00:26:16.820
We've seen how that's had a result at the Supreme Court.
00:26:20.340
We don't really have an excuse not to know the facts and the science anymore.
00:26:24.780
And I can't remember exactly what your question was.
00:26:29.860
It's essentially, when we look at previous social justice movements, civil rights,
00:26:34.600
we look back and go, oh, we kind of made a few mistakes on this one.
00:26:38.980
So this is an overcompensation, I think, as well, Frances.
00:26:42.080
So, yeah, so we're scared to challenge dominant thinking.
00:26:46.880
We're scared to challenge the kind of wave of if you can identify as this and that.
00:26:58.840
I think what Frances is saying is something else, which is a lot of people are aware that
00:27:03.220
they might feel that they ended up on, you might be a little young to feel like this,
00:27:09.420
but a lot of people might feel that there were periods in the past when the majority of society,
00:27:15.620
the dominant worldview was insufficiently compassionate and understanding and willing to incorporate
00:27:27.380
And there's a fear of making those mistakes again, which is, I think, where maybe some
00:27:34.980
And I think there is, amongst the kind of boomer generation, more of a propensity to that
00:27:42.600
You see a lot of support, I guess, amongst that generation for being on the right side
00:27:47.760
of history and not questioning whether this really is the right side of history if we
00:27:54.640
There's got to be a point which kind of liberalism kind of hits the buffers and we see the harms.
00:28:00.040
And it's OK to course correct and to say that, you know, if, yeah, to course correct and
00:28:10.480
Let's see, you know, if we can bend back a little bit into something that's safer.
00:28:14.000
I'm actually genuinely proud of, because I think Britain has actually led the world in
00:28:22.400
And look, there's, of course, there's toxic elements to it.
00:28:24.680
But the fact that you had brave people on the left like J.K.
00:28:27.720
Rowling, female Labour MPs or former Labour MPs, and I like Rosie Duffield, showed that it
00:28:42.240
The problem, I think, comes when people classify it as a left or right issue.
00:28:54.180
And yeah, we've been so lucky to have these immense spokespersons on both sides.
00:28:58.580
But I think a lot of the people that were in Brussels that day accused us of being American,
00:29:02.540
and actually neither of us are, although we both sound American.
00:29:07.780
But the initial reaction was like, oh, you're American fascist.
00:29:10.860
And they obviously have only ever seen this debate through the prism of the kind of extremes
00:29:15.160
or the more American polarized version of it, which when reported on in Europe is reported
00:29:22.960
on as good and evil, with the Democrats being the side of the good in a lot of European media.
00:29:28.020
And so that kind of narrative shape has infected a lot of the thinking and reduced willingness
00:29:34.040
to look at the actual science and evidence and to come up with people's own opinions.
00:29:38.380
And do you know what the EU's approach to this is?
00:29:43.560
So I think the EU itself doesn't have competence on this area.
00:29:46.560
It's a nationwide, it's a national issue, which ultimately is good,
00:29:50.960
allowing countries to make their own mind up on it.
00:29:54.260
And I mean, the EU can obviously show some ideological favoritism when it comes to,
00:30:02.700
I believe, there was just a few weeks before we went to Brussels.
00:30:05.060
In fact, I'd actually, Chris had tweeted about this scene coming out for me,
00:30:10.160
I think it's Ursula von der Leyen's Twitter with trans pride flags.
00:30:14.960
And that had actually sparked us into thinking, oh, it might be worth going to Europe
00:30:18.660
to have some of these conversations on the street and to meet with some European politicians
00:30:24.440
So clearly there is a kind of ideological bias within the institution.
00:30:27.540
But thankfully, that doesn't set policy at the moment within nations.
00:30:31.620
And I also think as well, I mean, Europe is coming to its own reckoning with a lot of progressive policies,
00:30:37.840
for instance, mass immigration, which is proven, unfortunately, to create a lot of social problems.
00:30:44.920
I think more and more people are starting to wake up and realize just because something sounds good
00:30:49.920
doesn't mean it actually is good or has positive real world implications.
00:30:58.420
It's tough because we have to bend back a lot of the kind of journey to extreme liberalism that brought us here.
00:31:04.540
I think there was, this might be a bit controversial, but in the kind of 60s, in the sexual revolution,
00:31:12.600
we had this kind of birth of feminism or this spurt of feminism, let's say,
1.00
00:31:17.660
which said women are just as good as men, if not better.
0.99
00:31:23.440
A woman can be a CEO and a boss and behave like a man and have, you know,
1.00
00:31:27.800
like a certain commitment like a man would do in a stereotypical situation
00:31:32.060
and be this kind of Carrie Bradshaw, sex in the city, male-dominant lifestyle.
1.00
00:31:37.820
And that kind of thinking of women and men are just interchangeable, we can act like a man,
00:31:43.960
has kind of led us on this path to now say, I mean, if a woman can have everything a man can have,
0.73
00:31:49.700
a woman can be a man, why can't a man just literally be a woman?
1.00
00:31:52.760
Why can't a woman just literally be a man?
1.00
00:31:56.120
And I know a lot of the people who have championed this cause are feminists,
0.92
00:32:01.280
But I think we have disintegrated so much what it means positively to be a woman,
00:32:07.800
what it means positively to be a man, and celebrate the differences between them,
00:32:10.800
the kind of complementary differences, that we struggle to unpick socially
00:32:23.900
Give me one minute to tell you about Senolytics and why they're being called the biggest discovery
00:32:29.800
of our time for promoting healthy aging and enhancing your physical prime.
00:32:35.500
As a middle-aged man, middle-aged man, who wrote this script?
00:32:40.120
Look, we all have big goals, but let's be honest,
00:32:42.960
the aging process isn't our friend when it comes to endless energy and productivity.
00:32:50.120
As we age, everyone accumulates senescent cells, also known as zombie cells.
00:32:55.420
These old, worn-out cells cause symptoms of aging like aches, slow recovery, and sluggish energy.
00:33:01.080
They take up space and nutrients from healthy cells.
00:33:06.880
Qualiocenolytic removes these senescent cells, allowing healthy cells to thrive,
00:33:18.000
and designed to maximize the combined effects of its ingredients.
00:33:21.720
Plus, it comes with a 100-day money-back guarantee.
00:33:30.000
and my girlfriend tells me I'm now somewhat mostly bearable.
00:33:35.860
Plus, those middle-aged aches and pains, virtually gone.
00:33:40.640
Resist aging at the cellular level and try Qualiocenolytic.
00:33:45.080
Go to qualiolife.com slash trig for up to 50% off
00:33:49.800
and use code TRIGG at checkout for an additional 15% off.
00:33:54.840
That's Q-U-A-L-I-A-Life.com slash trig for an extra 15% off your purchase.
00:34:04.400
Thanks to Qualiocenolytic for sponsoring today's episode.
00:34:24.380
but I'm only asking because it doesn't make much sense.
00:34:27.260
I don't understand the logic of we told women they could be everything that a man is
0.98
00:34:33.300
to then some people thinking, well, you can actually become a man.
00:34:37.800
That doesn't make sense to me because one is about, well, look at you.
00:34:43.380
You're out there working just as much as your husband is, right?
00:34:47.780
But I don't understand the leap from that to, well, suddenly I want to cut my breasts off.
0.99
00:34:53.640
No, I mean, and there's incredible, like, I'm very grateful for the opportunities I have, absolutely.
00:35:01.060
and has disintegrated the things that women used to celebrate being a woman for.
1.00
00:35:05.760
So you very seldom hear motherhood being celebrated today,
00:35:09.280
or even though motherhood is an intrinsic part of being a woman
00:35:13.280
That doesn't mean that every woman has to be a mother,
0.80
00:35:14.940
but it is a wonderful part of being a mom and to be involved in family life.
00:35:19.660
These things are kind of seen as second-class women now,
1.00
00:35:23.160
whereas the first-class women are seen as the ones who are out there being CEOs and boss babes.
1.00
00:35:27.680
And again, there's nothing morally wrong with either of these things,
00:35:29.860
but I think we've just disintegrated the celebration of the uniqueness of being a woman
00:35:37.860
And there's things that men can do that women can't do.
0.66
00:35:40.820
There's strengths that men have physically, but also, you know, in different areas of life
00:35:50.340
A woman will be much more the nurturing parent to the small newborn,
0.98
00:35:54.620
and the dad is the one that's more likely to be throwing them up,
00:35:58.420
So men and women are different, and that's a good thing,
1.00
00:36:02.780
By erasing that, by saying they're just the same, they're just...
00:36:12.460
And I think that has led us on a path, you know, over many decades now,
00:36:16.180
to have this ideology of, like, well, if we now have the technology
00:36:21.800
instead of saying this woman is a great, has great leadership skills,
00:36:26.900
she said, well, she has a great leadership skill, so she should be a man,
00:36:29.340
and therefore make the technological leap to be a man.
00:36:32.280
And so, yeah, we've kind of ended up with this confusion of gender,
00:36:34.980
this wreck of what it means to have kind of a human difference in biological sex
00:36:50.940
But to me, look, the women's rights aspect of this conversation
0.93
00:36:56.980
You know, talking about feminism, very interesting.
0.95
00:37:00.420
But to me, the most important thing about this conversation is the kids.
00:37:04.820
And what is happening to the kids, because as somebody who worked with children
00:37:09.920
for 12 years, this idea that a child can identify as another gender
00:37:16.280
and suddenly they're able to consent to all these medical interventions,
00:37:21.120
to surgeries, to me was quite frankly demented.
00:37:27.100
And in the UK, although we've gotten rid of puberty blockers for now,
00:37:31.660
we still have this upcoming drug study, drug trial, which will allow,
00:37:37.680
it's capless and allows basically, it's a gateway to allow any children
00:37:42.620
who want to experiment with puberty blockers to join this drug trial
00:37:45.700
and have access to them and still have this bodily harm done to them.
00:37:49.820
Even the puberty blockers, they can cause, you know, bone density damage,
00:37:52.860
heart problems, as well as the psychological effects
00:37:55.860
and the long-term pathway to harmful surgeries.
00:37:59.220
Just to stop, what about the sterilisation aspect of it?
00:38:04.220
Yeah, if it goes on long enough, and obviously, of course,
00:38:06.660
one thing leads to another, which will take it, but sterilisation can, yeah,
00:38:13.460
So what you're effectively saying is, I thought that we'd put this conversation
00:38:17.700
to bed and actually kids and puberty blockers, that is never going to happen again
00:38:23.700
Unfortunately not. I mean, it is, it was great to see the Labour government come in
00:38:29.080
and put in that puberty plan and Hamza Yusuf from Scotland, also, you know,
00:38:34.820
He banded up in Scotland under his leadership as well.
00:38:39.280
But with this drug trial coming in in the UK, that will allow this to continue.
00:38:43.860
And so I have a concern that we're not quite at the victory moment that we think we're at yet.
00:38:49.400
We still have a lot of work to do. We still have to, I would like to see this drug trial cancelled.
00:38:55.460
But I'd like to see this conversation continue so that nobody forgets about this damage that can happen,
00:39:01.320
you know, this sterilisation of kids, the harm to their bodies, the harm to their psychology,
00:39:05.200
and just that fundamental lie that they're not who they're meant to be.
00:39:09.020
But I don't understand, right? There was, a report came in,
00:39:13.760
it advised that puberty blockers should be banned.
00:39:15.700
And this is by one of the most prestigious paediatricians in the country.
00:39:22.560
I thought we'd won. What do you mean that there's a drug trial now?
00:39:29.620
And so maybe it hasn't had the scrutiny that it deserves.
00:39:37.980
We then, only a few months ago, had an American version of the same,
00:39:42.420
And we've had the same evidence come out of Sweden, Finland,
00:39:46.580
across many of the kind of northern European countries.
00:39:49.360
They've produced these reports as well that show that it can be harmful to have these drugs.
00:39:54.960
And yet somewhere underneath, there's still a push.
00:39:57.240
There's still a movement to try and liberalise this law for kids.
00:40:08.100
We have to keep talking about the harms that this can endure
00:40:10.780
and talk about how perfect and beautiful kids are in their own bodies
00:40:14.200
in order to prevent this coming and prevent us turning back the clock.
00:40:27.020
Surely every right-thinking person now looks at this and goes,
00:40:31.120
I think there's still, I mean, a lot of the PR kind of battle has been won on this issue.
00:40:37.440
But I think there's still a lot of people within places of power
00:40:40.560
who withhold a different view that are maybe just biding their time.
00:40:44.760
Winning the PR battle is so strong, but it isn't everything.
00:40:48.980
I mean, that is, look, the work that has been done on this by lots of different people,
00:40:55.320
gender-critical feminists and paediatricians and everybody,
0.67
00:41:00.280
But it's slightly disheartening to hear that it's continuing
00:41:04.640
and that there are these people in positions of power
00:41:10.920
It's very disheartening because it seems so obviously true, right?
00:41:14.280
It seems like the most important message of our generation
00:41:19.020
children shouldn't be having these harmful drugs.
00:41:21.600
And the point of this trial is to establish whether it's harmful or not?
00:41:25.280
Yeah, the CAST report actually unfortunately left the door open for this.
00:41:28.640
It said that there can be studies carried out to test further
00:41:34.500
Now, the U.S. study from the Department of Health and Human Services
00:41:39.800
They said that this stuff was so dangerous and so immoral
00:41:44.180
This is like human experiments really, isn't it?
00:41:52.400
And so we've been left in this difficult situation in the U.K.
00:41:55.000
So we need, you know, someone firmer and stronger to come in and say no,
00:41:59.800
to look at this evidence and say we don't even want to test this.
00:42:06.600
They can't consent to being infertile at 30 years old.
00:42:09.840
You know, when I was in Australia talking to Melbourne students
00:42:12.820
who were very woke, they, you know, at 18 were like,
00:42:16.660
I don't care, I don't want to have kids anyway.
00:42:21.760
they're saying give me kids or give me a divorce.
00:42:26.400
It's at 18 to 35, you're almost a different person
00:42:32.880
And especially if you're taking these drugs at a younger age than 18,
00:42:40.700
It's unfair to put that responsibility on a child.
00:42:42.880
And that's why all these drug studies must end.
00:42:45.280
And especially, you know, we have to not only continue this in the U.K.,
00:42:48.460
but around the world, we want to see puberty blockers
00:42:55.960
So, I mean, it's not begun yet, but once started,
00:42:59.800
there's currently no cap on how many children can take part.
00:43:02.800
So potentially hundreds of kids can take it and...
00:43:06.280
But there is still time for it to be prevented from going ahead.
00:43:10.560
Well, I hope people are listening to that and learning about that.
00:43:14.920
Lois, the other part of your work that we wanted to talk about,
00:43:18.080
and look, we've had, for full disclosure, on the subject of abortion,
00:43:23.040
we had Anne Furedi, who is very supportive of that being available
00:43:28.720
And we've had your husband, Callum Miller, on the show to talk about
00:43:32.000
the pro-life position or anti-abortion position,
00:43:36.620
And I can't say that either Francis or I came away from those two discussions
00:43:41.740
with, like, a position firmly in one camp or the other.
00:43:50.040
But at the same time, you know, my view has always been that
00:43:54.420
kind of where we were in Britain was a very unpleasant and messy,
00:43:59.660
unfortunate compromise that was probably broadly reflective
00:44:05.460
And while, you know, people who are very pro-life like you would not like it,
00:44:09.240
there were also very kind of firm pro-abortion campaigners
00:44:13.320
It was kind of a settled issue in this country.
00:44:16.560
You might not think that's a good thing, but you get what I'm saying, right?
00:44:20.060
And now, what we've got now, the Labour government is just basically
00:44:29.480
And I'm someone who really doesn't want to be talking about this issue.
00:44:32.520
You know, it's not an issue I'm particularly keen to get involved in.
0.99
00:44:52.440
So, I mean, I think a lot of people have reacted like you reacted
00:44:55.480
because we had, as you say, an abortion lot, 24 weeks.
00:44:58.560
Most people in the country didn't actually know when it was.
00:45:01.600
I mean, they knew it was somewhere in the middle.
00:45:03.020
24 weeks is actually quite high for the average person.
00:45:05.480
According to polling, when finding out it's 24 weeks, which is double the EU average,
00:45:10.960
most EU countries are at 12 to 15 weeks, 70% of women actually wanted to see that lowered
00:45:17.500
There's a lot of characteristics which people would want to protect.
00:45:20.040
And so, actually, the majority of people wanted it lowered and only 1% of women actually wanted
1.00
00:45:28.400
And yet, now we have this situation which was catalyzed during COVID because they introduced
00:45:36.320
So this was a scheme where within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, you could call up an abortion
00:45:41.680
provider, say, in less than 10 weeks, and you would receive pills to do your own abortion
00:45:45.940
in your own bathroom, which actually seems to me like one of the reasons that we brought
00:45:50.620
in abortion in the first place was to avoid women doing it to themselves, by themselves.
00:45:56.560
In fact, there was a lot of investigations to show that it increased the likelihood of people
00:46:00.620
needing an ambulance, needing medical care after.
00:46:05.100
Unfortunately, it's both easy to mistake how far you want in a pregnancy.
00:46:11.880
It's also quite easy to lie about how far you are on in a pregnancy.
00:46:16.160
And so, there were some cases of women who would call up at 33, 35 weeks, really near the
00:46:22.940
end of pregnancy, say that they're less than 10 weeks after a short conversation, receive
00:46:27.100
these pills, and carry out an abortion on a viable, healthy baby in a very horrific circumstance.
00:46:33.120
Of course, you need to birth that child after you've taken those pills.
00:46:37.300
There was a very famous case called Carla Foster, who birthed her dead baby.
00:46:42.980
She talked about the traumatic experience it was.
00:46:44.960
And she did face prosecution for what she had done to this child, because an abortion at 33 to 35 weeks
0.97
00:46:51.400
Instead, my response to the tragedy of what happened to Carla and her baby, and for the few others
00:46:58.720
that it affected, in terms of other women engaging in this illegal action, was, my goodness,
0.98
00:47:07.900
So, to protect women, the law is there not to criminalize, but also to protect.
0.99
00:47:12.720
To protect women from being in this situation, no one should be delivering their dead child
1.00
00:47:19.140
And no child should have to face, at that stage, very pain-capable, very sentient, would
00:47:24.200
have faced a horrific death as a baby at 35 weeks as well.
00:47:33.440
Other people thought, well, let's get rid of the law so that women who do this at this
1.00
00:47:40.280
And so, what we will likely see now is, instead of this affecting a small percentage of women
00:47:45.380
who take this action towards the end of their pregnancy, it's now not criminalized.
00:47:49.740
There's no law to deter women from engaging in this.
1.00
00:47:53.680
So, it could be that we see an increase now in these babies being lost at this very late
00:48:02.420
And I know people who've had the miscarriage fairly early on in the pregnancy, for whom
00:48:07.660
that and the process, I won't go into details, but very, very physically challenging, sometimes
00:48:18.640
Even if you think abortion should be available to whatever point, I don't think you'd want
0.89
00:48:23.620
to encourage people to do it themselves without medical support in this way, where there's
00:48:29.320
also, as you say, no verification of the age of the baby.
00:48:38.440
And so, now we're in this ridiculous scenario where you can do it to yourself at the latest
00:48:42.440
and most dangerous stage of pregnancy, but a doctor can't help you.
00:48:45.560
And so, obviously, the next step for that movement is going to say, well, we must legalize
00:48:50.380
And therefore, we just have no abortion law left in this country.
00:48:55.280
Which actually is very much out of step with the majority of polling.
00:48:58.800
Very few people think it should be for any reason at all.
00:49:01.420
Very, very few people think it should be up to birth.
00:49:04.240
You know, if you think about, if you've seen a newborn baby, it doesn't look very different
00:49:08.140
It's just in a geographically different place than its mother's womb.
00:49:10.380
But to say, you know, on that day, a baby in that morning waking up could be killed or
00:49:16.660
could be born, you know, on one day, it's, I think it's actually good for us as a nation
00:49:22.320
to be face to face with the level of evil this is, the level of depravity this is, that
00:49:29.120
we've allowed ourselves to kill babies at this stage.
00:49:34.600
And maybe now we can kind of reconsider, is this really what we want?
00:49:39.140
Look, I think it's very important to distinguish between legalizing abortion, which is not what's
00:49:48.340
But nonetheless, I can't imagine the majority of people in Britain or even a significant
00:49:53.280
minority of people in Britain want women to be getting a pill through the post that they
00:49:59.820
And even if the baby is almost ready to be born, do you want to prosecute women for it?
0.99
00:50:08.840
You probably should just not allow people to do have an abortion by post.
00:50:12.660
That's probably what you actually should deal with.
00:50:15.640
But I just, I don't understand how this has happened.
00:50:23.980
I mean, at that stage in pregnancy, you have to give birth to the child anyway.
00:50:27.520
People kind of think that abortion is like a magic pill that just disappears the child.
00:50:35.240
If you don't, if you're in a situation where you cannot take care of that child, can you
00:50:38.860
not allow them to live and find, you know, adoption is an option?
00:50:44.200
Do we have to kill the child at that stage?
0.99
00:50:56.000
Look, starting a business is exciting, but it isn't easy.
00:51:02.880
It's late nights, awkward first sales and wondering if your bank balance is going to
00:51:08.320
That's why having the right tools from day one makes all the difference.
00:51:13.600
Shopify powers millions of businesses around the world, from big names like Mattel and
00:51:18.840
Gymshark to people just getting started on their kitchen table.
00:51:22.920
It gives you hundreds of beautiful website templates, built-in marketing tools, even AI
00:51:28.120
that will help you write product descriptions, which, let's face it, we could have used for
00:51:35.220
Plus, did I mention that iconic purple ShopPay button used by millions of businesses around
00:51:41.600
It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet.
00:51:47.440
Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side.
00:51:52.580
Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.co.uk slash trigger.
00:52:08.340
You know, for a society that is obsessed with mental health and constantly bangs on about
00:52:17.320
mental health to the point where everybody is now sick of it, you go, do you not worry
00:52:23.340
about the mental health of a mother who is maybe weeks or even days away from having a
00:52:32.660
If that's not a cry for help, I don't actually know what is.
00:52:36.120
In fact, a pro-choice scholar, David Ferguson from Australia, he's one of the leading pro-choice
00:52:42.260
But he did research on mental health and abortion and showed that actually abortion can increase
00:52:48.600
someone's risk to suicidality by 70 percent and drug abuse by almost 300 percent.
00:52:53.460
You know, it's an incredible, it was an incredibly traumatic event to go through.
00:52:58.560
I think in our kind of propaganda and our rhetoric today, we minimize this as just, oh, it's
00:53:06.840
You know, it's just like getting a tooth pulled is what I've been told multiple times.
00:53:10.760
It's a incredibly traumatic life event which ends the life of one of the people involved.
00:53:15.820
And I think because we don't take it seriously, we've allowed ourselves to get to the situation
00:53:20.660
because if it's not a life, if it's not a life, then it wouldn't matter, right?
00:53:25.500
If it's not a life, then it doesn't matter if it's 24 weeks or 40 weeks.
00:53:30.100
But if it is, then this is the most serious and grave situation that we find ourselves in.
00:53:36.180
And I think we have to reckon with that as a nation and think, do we want this?
00:53:41.420
Do we think that babies do not count because they are smaller or weaker or more dependent
00:53:46.740
Is that the kind of human rights framework that we subscribe to?
00:53:50.100
Or do we want to have to give people a bit more value just based on the fact that they're
00:53:55.000
human, just based on the fact that they are, you know, a member of our species, a member
00:53:59.180
Can we protect them and find better for those babies and for their mothers instead?
00:54:03.780
But, and I take the point about the baby, but I think my point was something else,
00:54:07.800
which is, if, look, having a child, and I've seen friends go through it, and it's profoundly
00:54:14.060
stressful, particularly for the mother, you know, postpartum depression, hormones all
00:54:21.300
There should be a mental health intervention if a woman is saying with a matter of weeks
1.00
00:54:30.440
There is something very serious happening mentally.
1.00
00:54:32.860
That woman needs support, not here's some pills and go into a bathroom and kill your
1.00
00:54:39.340
And I think because abortion has become so trivialised, I think, you know, even this is
00:54:43.760
the most extreme case of it, but I think all along the journey with abortion is often seen
00:54:48.120
as just a, oh, you're in trouble or you're distressed, you're worried about this pregnancy,
00:54:53.000
You know, it's seen as just a really quick reliever, a really quick solution.
00:54:56.260
And that, you know, that can be a cry for help early in pregnancy as well, but especially
00:55:03.460
If they have carried this child for 35 weeks and they want to just take a pill to end their
0.98
00:55:11.560
And we should have much more serious mental health safeguarding within this kind of area
00:55:17.080
or this kind of industry, this abortion industry.
0.85
00:55:19.260
But I think because, like, ideologically, it has been reduced so much to just a woman's
00:55:27.000
rights issue, it has been reduced to, you know, it's my body, my choice, it's just a pill,
00:55:32.180
Because it has become, you know, such a, been diminished so much, they don't have those mental
00:55:37.580
health safeguards in place, don't have those physical health safeguards in place, or those
00:55:41.260
legal safeguards to protect women from going through this experience.
00:55:44.080
And it also says something, I mean, horrifically antenatal about our culture.
0.98
00:55:49.260
The fact that this is deemed acceptable is, it's quite frankly, disgusting.
00:55:56.160
So I guess putting out the message that this is better than becoming a mother.
00:55:59.700
And I think, you know, we really lack a lot of support for mums and for babies in those
00:56:06.000
There's a lot more that we can be doing in our society, in our community to help mothers,
00:56:11.200
you know, be in community with each other, be meeting other mums, be, you know, not stressed
00:56:16.680
about having to go back to work straight away, but instead of be supported to take the time
00:56:21.000
There's so much more we can be doing to help and support mothers and babies.
00:56:24.040
But instead, what we often just offer is, you know, is your body your choice, so it's
00:56:28.720
Like, you want to have this baby, you're on your own, or you just take an abortion pill.
0.70
00:56:31.640
We don't have that support that would be so much better.
00:56:34.240
And do you think this is a case of just people trying to solve a legal problem so they make
00:56:41.760
Or is there kind of an extreme ideological bent to all of this?
00:56:46.860
I think it's clear that on the kind of pro-abortion lobby side, there can't be anything wrong with
0.88
00:56:54.560
abortion because then if one thing is wrong with abortion, then everything is wrong.
00:56:59.480
But that's a very extreme framing of it, Lois, surely, because I think, and the polling
00:57:05.400
to which you refer probably shows all of this, probably, you tell me if I'm wrong, but I
00:57:09.600
imagine most people in this country support abortion being available at some point.
00:57:15.160
And most people recognize that it is a women's rights issue to some extent.
00:57:19.700
Because it affects women in a very profound way, right?
00:57:22.660
But on the other hand, the woman is not the only person involved.
00:57:25.920
And so what you're trying to do is find some sort of compromise, right, which is where
00:57:39.240
And so I'm just trying to understand, is it because they were like, well, look, actually,
00:57:44.620
well, you know, even when I think about it, do I want this woman who's probably in a really
1.00
00:57:49.320
terrible state of mind, who's made a bad decision, a terrible decision for her that's going
00:57:54.240
to affect her for the rest of her life, do I want her to then also go to prison for it?
1.00
00:58:03.400
What I'd rather is she, if you're going to have an abortion, you have medical support,
1.00
00:58:08.760
you have counseling around that, you have all the things there to make sure that you,
00:58:13.820
you know, physically, medically, in other ways, you're supported.
00:58:18.260
So do you think they just hadn't considered this aspect of it, or is the Labour government
0.99
00:58:23.360
really kind of like, oh, let's just, you know, allow women to kill babies?
1.00
00:58:27.220
Well, no, we agree more than you think, because I also think this isn't the average person's
0.97
00:58:31.440
I don't think the average person was working on this.
00:58:33.520
But I think that there is a pro-abortion lobby that would take a more extreme view.
00:58:38.880
And you think they've influenced this decision?
00:58:40.580
Yeah, I think, to me, it seems like a clear pathway to go from pills by post to legalizing
00:58:48.100
abortion, or sorry, decriminalizing abortion for women at the end of pregnancy, and then
00:59:09.420
I literally haven't, this is completely unacceptable.
00:59:14.300
So, do you sense that there's a potential for any kind of amendments to this going forward?
00:59:20.780
Is this being looked at, or is this now, you know, they've decided and this is where
00:59:24.420
Well, I've been encouraged, as you said at the start, a lot of people who have never really
00:59:30.140
engaged in this issue suddenly have kind of formed an opinion in the last few weeks
00:59:36.200
I don't know if I'm speaking that, and I include politicians in that from different
00:59:41.280
And I think, you know, it's, I don't think the matter is settled.
00:59:45.200
I think it's going to be something that's discussed in upcoming elections.
00:59:48.720
I think parties will be thinking right now how they want to respond to this in their
00:59:52.460
manifesto, for example, because it had, I think they won the political battle, but I
01:00:00.240
I don't think they won the nation over to this idea that it should be all the way up to
01:00:04.040
I tell you, Lo, you know, someone who understands public communication a little bit, if you
01:00:08.880
get normal people to recognize what's happened here and to fully understand it, whoever passed
01:00:16.100
This is not going to be popular with the public when they get what's happened.
01:00:19.340
The ordinary British person isn't going to be on board with this.
01:00:24.780
Again, you know, polling shows only 1% of women actually support abortion up to birth,
01:00:29.140
which is, I mean, obvious when you think about it.
01:00:33.500
So I think they did push their luck on going this far.
01:00:37.960
24 weeks was already one of the most liberal in the world.
01:00:43.440
And I think this opens the conversation again for where do we want to put this?
01:00:48.660
But it's also recklessly irresponsible because you're just going to dish out these pills to
01:00:54.680
women who are, let's say, eight months pregnant.
0.98
01:00:57.880
You don't know what the psychological state of this woman is.
1.00
01:01:02.700
Maybe she's so depressed, which happens to a lot of women.
0.97
01:01:06.100
Maybe she's in a position where she simply can't consent for whatever reason to be taking
01:01:18.180
Well, I mean, what about, you know, this is the case at the start, you know, even if they
01:01:22.080
aren't at the end of their pregnancy, if they're calling up for pills at any stage, how do you
01:01:26.520
know that that's not an 18-year-old sitting with her 45-year-old boyfriend across the
01:01:32.800
And the abortion fighter says, is this all because, is this all your own idea?
01:01:40.120
So when we brought in this way to get an abortion pill with such little safeguarding, with such
01:01:47.380
little care or prevention of, you know, abuses, it used to be that if you would go in to get
01:01:53.740
your abortion pill, you'd have a bit of counselling and they'd be able to ask you on your own,
01:02:01.780
But at least it's a little bit more than, you know, a quick phone call with someone you've
01:02:05.520
never met just, you know, when you're just trying to get a hold of these pills.
01:02:08.920
So when we reduced abortion pills, just to, you know, getting, it's almost like getting
01:02:14.160
a paracetamol through the post, you know, it's...
0.97
01:02:15.820
Look, during COVID, all kinds of crazy shit happened.
0.97
01:02:18.440
It was, a lot of it was completely unacceptable.
0.98
01:02:20.180
But you kind of go, it was COVID, you know, there's lots of arguments about a woman stuck
0.99
01:02:29.780
And now we should be repealing the things that were extremely...
01:02:34.000
But instead, politicians doubled down and they made this permanent.
01:02:40.980
So like, if you think about every time, let's say a woman's eight months pregnant, she wants
1.00
01:02:51.780
It's actually far cheaper for them not to have to go to a GP and a GP will talk to this
01:02:58.740
Well, she can't go to a doctor if the baby is eight months, right?
01:03:04.680
She wouldn't be able to get a doctor after 24 weeks to...
1.00
01:03:08.140
Well, there's some situations, but they're rare.
01:03:11.360
But you just go, nothing about this makes sense.
01:03:15.820
People are going to get upset about this, but I just imagine if you're the father of that
01:03:21.580
And then you find out that your eight-month-old baby has effectively been killed.
01:03:37.360
I think abortion culture has really impacted men and fatherhood as well.
01:03:42.440
Just something that just doesn't come up as often.
01:03:48.880
The idea that it should be prominent and normal, like that Lily Allen laughing about
01:03:54.440
having her five abortions is just a regular occurrence, that it's your body, your choice,
01:04:01.040
The cultural presumption that abortion is okay and even good kind of backfired on both men
01:04:09.600
and women, because it used to be that, and this is obviously, you know, an ideal scenario
1.00
01:04:13.360
and it didn't always work out like this, but it used to be that if you got a girl pregnant,
0.94
01:04:17.460
you would probably marry her, you would take responsibility, you'd become parents, mother
01:04:21.540
With the advent of my body, my choice, it really became your body, your choice, your issue,
01:04:30.840
And so that allowed the disintegration of that fatherhood responsibility.
01:04:35.860
It allows men to abandon their responsibility, is what you're really saying.
0.67
01:04:39.080
It allows men to abandon, and it also now kind of enforces that abandonment,
01:04:43.720
because men have no say whether their child is aborted.
01:04:48.620
And, you know, it's a sense to them on, and I can understand, you know,
01:04:52.860
I understand that they have carried the hardship of the pregnancy.
01:04:56.100
But in disintegrating this idea that it was meant to be together,
01:05:00.860
It's actually atomized and isolated both parts, which makes it much harder on both.
01:05:06.480
And I just feel that this is a part of the conversation that's not being talked about,
01:05:11.260
because particularly for men, if eight months old and the baby is killed,
01:05:16.800
that's, and then there's, what are you left with?
01:05:20.060
There's no recourse to any type of justice or anything.
01:05:24.740
You're just left with the knowledge that your baby has been killed.
01:05:28.240
You just get up and go to work the next day and carry on as if nothing has happened?
01:05:32.100
That's a profound grief that's going to be impacted upon you.
01:05:35.720
And there's a kind of psychological dissonance as well.
01:05:38.120
I know at least in Scotland, maybe in England as well,
01:05:40.320
you can now get a kind of death certificate if you have a miscarriage in your pregnancy,
01:05:50.940
to acknowledge that there was a child that was there and now there isn't.
01:05:57.280
Our society, our government grants this recognition to some children,
01:06:01.620
but others, because of a decision that was made,
01:06:06.060
Our human dignity or human worth can't just depend on whether we are wanted.
01:06:09.620
It's got to depend on something more than that.
01:06:12.740
I've never thought about this, but you kind of,
01:06:16.960
I never thought about it this way, but people might not know this about me.
01:06:26.720
They met at university, probably had a one-night stand or whatever.
01:06:29.540
And, you know, they could have had a different option in my case.
01:06:39.000
My parents' marriage, you know, not necessarily the best one.
01:06:43.260
But nonetheless, four children, all in the, you know,
01:06:55.940
Yeah, well, a lot of people would be happy about that.
01:07:00.040
No, but, like, I think that's a very profound point, actually.
01:07:05.300
And I've always felt, it's not that I was ever likely to be in that position,
01:07:08.840
but I'd always nonetheless felt that if I was in a position
01:07:11.540
where a child was coming into the world because of me,
01:07:17.340
I think it's a very unhealthy society that doesn't teach men that.
01:07:21.620
It doesn't expect that of them, but also does not create the conditions
01:07:24.720
for that to also then be reciprocated with, as you say,
01:07:28.240
them having some input into that decision being made as well.
01:07:32.060
Now, I would hope, nonetheless, and maybe you can tell us, Lois,
01:07:35.240
that in most situations, nonetheless, it is the two potential parents
01:07:44.260
There's no way to gather data on that kind of thing.
01:07:47.300
So, you know, whether it's together or a lot of girls will,
0.92
01:07:50.480
I mean, because it's so diminished and demeaned,
01:07:53.020
a lot of girls will just do it by themselves.
1.00
01:07:56.660
I've got a good friend who had an abortion at 19,
01:08:02.900
And that was, you know, one of the most profound regrets of her life.
01:08:06.380
And so, yeah, when you were talking, Constantine,
01:08:08.360
I was thinking as well that it's just kind of baked into society
01:08:11.900
from a young age because instead of having that,
01:08:21.020
We don't have, we get told consistently how to avoid pregnancy,
01:08:27.220
You're telling people the stable family with the mom and the dad
01:08:39.180
But also there is a typical way of doing this thing that works.
01:08:44.440
And that also ought to be communicated somehow, it seems to me.
01:08:53.080
where these things were kind of, you know, made manifest to me.
01:08:59.900
in a society where technologically everything is now so easy
01:09:17.320
And I think you're right in terms of the, you know,
01:09:19.420
we're scared to speak about a mom and a dad being best for a child.
01:09:23.980
But, again, it's kind of prioritizing adult wants and desires
01:09:29.660
and needs above what's good and healthy and right
01:09:34.400
You know, like having a father in the picture in the home
01:09:37.480
is going to prevent that child by many hundreds of percentage points
01:09:40.740
from committing crime, from failing out at school.
01:09:44.380
It's going to have a much better chance of going into university,
01:09:49.820
You know, like the statistics are just so clear and obvious.
01:09:52.220
The data is there about good fathers and good mothers.
01:09:54.760
And I appreciate that there'll be situations, of course,
01:09:57.140
that a woman will have no choice but to go alone
0.95
01:09:59.980
and we should give her all the support that she needs.
01:10:01.600
And there'll be situations where dads are cut out of the picture
01:10:03.920
without their, and that's really tough as well.
01:10:06.180
But I think we should at least talk about how we can promote
01:10:14.960
And by the way, just to, sorry, Francis, just on, I want,
01:10:23.680
because I certainly don't want to say, you know,
01:10:26.760
these types of couples can't raise a child properly.
01:10:32.340
But at the same time, there's got to be room to say
01:10:34.500
that the typical way of this, the way that this is done,
01:10:39.280
And that's something that we might want to tell children
01:10:43.300
We might also tell them that, you know, in some occasions,
01:10:48.120
But broadly speaking, we should also be communicating that.
01:11:04.620
but this thing also happens, and we are aware of that
01:11:14.120
to the point where we're just excluding the norm
01:11:17.100
and celebrating only the non-typical way of being.
01:11:22.580
I mean, Katie Faust is one of the best writers out there on this.
01:11:29.480
And she now does a lot of work challenging the...
01:11:40.240
Are there intrinsic desires in adults to have children?
01:11:56.400
for a newborn baby to be taken away from a mother,
01:12:01.540
to fulfill the well-meaning desires of another couple.
01:12:05.440
I think that's something that we have to challenge
01:12:11.200
you'd think that that was the average situation
01:12:12.780
and that the children with a mom and dad are not normal.
01:12:19.220
and people are very scared, and it's difficult.
01:12:24.580
Oh, look, this is a very uncomfortable conversation
01:12:28.780
What we don't teach women is about their fertility.
1.00
01:12:35.380
when it becomes very unlikely, then impossible.
01:12:47.760
And sometimes a woman has an abortion early on.
1.00