In abortion debates, the central question is whether an unborn fetus constitutes a human life with inherent moral worth. Pro-life arguments assert that human life begins at conception, as evidenced by scientific facts about genetic identity and developmental milestones (heart beating at 21 days, brain waves at 6-7 weeks), and that consciousness is not a valid criterion for moral worth since newborns have less consciousness than adults yet are universally protected. Pro-choice arguments often challenge this by questioning whether a fetus is truly human or merely a 'clump of cells,' and by emphasizing bodily autonomy and the woman's right to choose. The debate reveals fundamental disagreements about when life begins, what constitutes human worth, and whether moral rights exist independently of consciousness or development.
Lila Rose Vs 20 Year Old | Abortion Debate
Added:Laya Rose, welcome to the next generation.
>> Thanks for having me on.
>> Does a zygote and a newborn baby have equal moral worth?
>> Yes.
>> Why?
>> Because one is just younger and smaller and less developed. We all started our life as a single cell embryo, as a zygote, and over time with some nourishment, we got bigger and bigger and bigger until we were big enough to be born.
>> I want us to get into all the weeds in the abortion debate. For a Gen Z who's watching who's never even touched this topic, a common place that's a bottleneck with this disagreement is what actually makes a human. And I'm a pro-choicer. I've debated pro-lifeers before, such as yourself, your amazing friend Lois Mlache Miller.
>> I actually agree with you guys on most things. And it's a really difficult topic for me to navigate because the whole argument is bigger than abortion.
It's what makes a human. Do we have any value? Do we have a right to life? And I think it's a really good heruristic for what you think of the world as a whole.
So this is a really really helpful conversation to have especially now in 2026. Can you lay out first of all what your position is?
>> Absolutely. So and I came to this position, you know, I'm I'm somebody that is very passionate about my faith, but there was a time I didn't have faith, but I still held this position.
So, I know we were talking earlier and you're saying, "Well, I don't have a Christian faith." And some people say, "Well, if you're a Christian, then you're pro-life, but you shouldn't make other people who are not religious have the same beliefs or views on abortion."
I think this goes for anybody who agrees with this logical syllogism. And I'll present it. First of all, it's always wrong to intentionally take an innocent human life. And I found most people agree with this. If the person's innocent, it's always wrong to intentionally take their life. And the next part of this logical syllogism is that abortion intentionally takes an innocent human life. And this is what we're going to explore more, but abortion is designed to do what? End the pregnancy of a child that's alive and basically take that child's life. And then so the the conclusion of this logical syllogism is therefore abortion is always wrong because abortion intentionally takes an innocent human life. And so there's this conversation about well how do we know it's alive?
Well, we know they're alive. If they weren't alive, you wouldn't need or want an abortion. That you the pregnancy would end, right? Um, and how do we know it's a human? Well, the law of biogenesis in science tells us that if you're human parents, you have a human child. You have a human, you have human offspring. You know, we know it's human.
And that unborn entity is an entire human. It's a whole human. It's not like part of a human. He or she is a whole human complete genetic identity that's individual and unique. the blueprint is there but also the body is there even if the body is really small and only a few cells at the beginning and then it obviously grows rapidly after that. And you know the the the the foundation too is that life is precious. Human life has value. We should care about it and it's never acceptable to intentionally take an innocent human life. I've seen you debate everyone across the debate sphere with this issue and you went on surrounded and debated 25 pro-choice activists. Something that they kept on running into was this trap of trying to break down a fetus as not being human.
And there are multiple directions that argument can go in. One of them is saying that well if the baby's not conscious that doesn't make it a human.
What's wrong with that? If we start with consciousness being equivalent to giving you human worth.
>> Yes. So your you know current ability to have consciousness or your you know the development or the you know the excellence of your brain or the development of your brain doesn't determine your humanity. So you when you're born let's just talk about a newborn because I think everyone agrees yeah newborns shouldn't be killed. They should be legally protected. They are humans. The brain development of a newborn is far less than the brain development of even a toddler and certainly an adult. you know, in your 20s, you're still developing your brain, as a lot of people like to say, right, um, about Jen Z, like, you're still developing your brain. My brain's not fully developed. Um, you're developing your consciousness, too. So, a newborn has significantly less consciousness than a toddler, than certainly an adult.
And there's certain uh levels of consciousness before birth, too. We know that the nervous system starts to come into existence at just six to seven weeks. Brain waves start to form very early. That's the first trimester. Some people say around 20 weeks they detect a level of brain activity that they say denotes some kind of consciousness, but it actually hasn't really been defined.
So, this is where a lot of people who argue for choice or for abortion will kind of get in trouble because they can't actually define what is consciousness because certainly the consciousness of a baby at say 20 weeks old unborn versus a newborn versus a an adult are all very different consciousnesses. And so to say that you have to have this capacity or this level of development to determine whether or not you're going to be killed legally, right? Because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the law and whether it's acceptable to take an innocent life. And it's it's whether or not your brain has this arbitrary definition of consciousness, but you're still a human and you're still alive. I think there's not a good moral case for that. And that those human those human lives deserve to live, too. And then we get into bodily autonomy and the women's rights, which I think we're probably going to get to. But I don't think consciousness is a fair standard. It doesn't determine your humanity. You could be unconscious when you're born like asleep or in a coma and you're still a human. You still shouldn't be killed. And so it's not a good standard to determine whether someone should live or die.
>> I suppose what these activists would be gunning for is the fact that the consciousness hasn't been switched on before. So they would agree that you shouldn't kill your dad because he's having a nap on the sofa. but this baby hasn't utilized it yet.
>> I think that falls through if you actually look at what consciousness is and this is a really difficult topic to navigate. People don't really have any idea. And someone like Ian McIllchrist who's a pan psychist, he's getting to these conclusions that consciousness is fundamental and it's in the universe. So actually it's irrelevant if the baby's processing with their brain everything's conscious. Um so it kind of neuters that consciousness argument.
>> Yeah. And I think another way to look at that is like the soul. I think that as humans, we're not just bodies and we're not like the brain that we have in our bodies isn't fully the thing that also allows even us to think and reason and and and make choices. There's something mysterious going on there, too. And so, there's been a lot of near-death studies where people's brains were turned off.
They were unconscious and they still had conscious experiences. And there's been tens of thousands of these that have been documented where there's this out-of- body experience that the person has and they're maybe near death or they're having this, you know, medical event. And so their body again is like turned off in the sense of consciousness, but then they can out of out of body experience, they can see what the hospital looks like. They can see who was in the room and they can recount it later and there's no medical explanation because the brain was unconscious. So stuff like that is out there that shows that consciousness even as we understand it isn't tied to the brain in terms of human experience and our ability to even perceive and certainly to love. So there's so much mystery there which comes back to the human person. You can see from science when there's a human body. You can tell from science if that human body is alive or dead. With an unborn child that's growing, you know this is a human life.
You know that they're growing. And I think that should be enough to give you legal protection and everybody else say, "Yeah, you're a human. You're a life.
You have value. You should be protected."
>> Okay. So, mystery of consciousness probably not the best place to start in arguing for abortion. Another common argument is the baby needs to have been delivered.
>> Yes.
>> What's wrong with this?
>> I mean, it's totally arbitrary. It's a matter of the baby's location. So if you are in the womb all of a sudden it's okay to literally take your life and then you're outside of the womb and now you have full legal protection. There's no good reason for that. I mean that would be the question for you. What what would be the reason to justify taking a life based on their location? We don't do that in any other circumstance. A child who's in another country, you know, suffering genocide, right, is just as much a child in a human life as a child in a western country where they're fully secure and protected.
>> Yeah. I actually have some arguments against you for why that would be slightly different and I want get into that a little bit later so that we can pinpoint this early on >> of course >> and it might do with bodily autonomy which we can get into too like the woman's experience of carrying the baby.
>> So carrying on trying to pin down this argument of the fetus not being a human yet. What's the strongest argument you've seen that says it isn't a human?
>> I don't think there are any strong arguments. If it's a human fetus it's a human. You can't really argue it's another species. The DNA is clearly human. It's a whole DNA. It's not like a sperm cell or an egg cell that doesn't constitute a whole human body. So, the science is clear on this. It's not something that even should be up for debate. I know sometimes people debate it, but you look at any human biology textbook and it tells you when human life begins. If you're an invitro fertilization specialist working in an invitro fertilization, an IVF clinic, when you tell the couples who are paying for your services, hey, I have, you know, 12 embryos, right? You're talking about these tiny, some of them, you know, they're not single cell, they're going to be a little bigger than that, but they're very much, you know, prefetus, tiny, tiny embryos. And you say, I have individual new, I mean, they're your children basically, right? Maybe they'll say potential children because they're not fully developed yet, but these are the lives that we have now. And you can choose to implant or not. Their life has already begun. It began at a test tube and it will be now transplanted over to the mother's womb. They know those scientists as just as much as the biologist knows human life begins at fertilization at sperm egg fusion when that new single cell embryo comes into existence >> and there's a strong consensus on that.
I think it's foolish to say it's a scientific to say life starts at conception right.
>> Yes.
>> You say there's no strong arguments.
There must be a strongest argument that you've run up against in all your debates. Tallest dwarf type thing. What would you say it is for saying this isn't a human?
um to say but I I just think it's sort of like saying you know the sky isn't blue. It's like, you know, yeah, sometimes I guess the sky isn't blue, so maybe that's not the best example. But >> what do you think the clump of cells argument?
>> I mean, the clump of cells are what kind of clump of cells? I mean, I'm a clump of cells. You're a couple of cells, right?
>> What do you think people are driving at when they say that?
>> They're driving at it looks different.
It's smaller. It's less developed and dependent. And it doesn't look like a newborn baby. Therefore, it must not be a human. I think it's just because we are primed to see, I look at you, I see a man. You look at me, you see a woman.
We look at a baby, this is a baby. Uh the womb is is you know there's not a window a natural window to the womb. The womb is this very private hidden place.
So we didn't grow up with translucent rooms to say like oh this is look I can see the baby developing right? That's what a baby is supposed to look like at 7 days. We know this from science, you know, textbooks, biology textbooks. You can see it from an ultrasound. And that's amazing and exciting when we got that technology. But typically speaking, we're not really like we're not really raised with this sense of I mean, not maybe all of us, some of us might be, but raised with the sense of the unborn baby in the womb is a baby at every stage of development. Um, that being said, I think the natural instinct is to think that actually because when you get pregnant, you're like, I'm pregnant with a baby. When you throw a baby shower, I'm going to have a baby shower. or the baby's not born yet, but this is a baby.
You're, you know, gender reveal. Is the baby a boy or a girl? We do know this.
That is the natural instinct even without the window to the womb.
>> Do you feel like it's fair to call a fetus child?
>> Yes. Fetus means young one in Latin or child.
>> It's just a Latin term.
>> I feel like when people hear child, they imagine someone who has been born and is young. That's kind of the definition that I would put on it. I don't know what the actual definition would have been, but I feel like it's unhelpful to label a fetus a child. I I just don't think that's what people are talking about when they say child.
>> Well, if you one day, let's say, decide to, you know, get married, have a baby, you know, you guys find out you're pregnant, you know, I'm going to guess you will feel like this is my child and, you know, if this is something that you were preparing for, planning for, like very excited about it. Um, I think that's the natural experience for most parents. And because we know this is that the baby's life doesn't start at birth. The baby's life absolutely starts before it. There's a whole toll that takes on the woman. She's now carrying this baby. We got to like take care of her, take care of the baby. That's why we have prenatal care.
So, life does start before birth. And maybe we've been kind of brainwashed in modern society and proabortion societies. Like America is very proabortion. The UK is very proabortion.
in California where we're filming right now, abortion's legal through all nine months. So, I feel like there's a gaslighting campaign to tell us like it's not a baby, it's not a baby, it's not a baby. And maybe we're sort of thinking, yeah, maybe maybe it's not a baby because it doesn't look exactly like a newborn baby earlier in pregnancy, but it is a baby. It's a tiny little one that's dependent, that's fully human, fully alive, and needs protection.
>> And I would agree with you. I would say that it is a human life. Of course, I think that's irrefutable. And that gives me a lot of problems philosophically if I'm going to be consistent here.
>> I do just want to poke at these semantics because I feel like >> they're quite emotionally loaded calling an unborn fetus a child, especially if it's one day old or two days old. Would you call that a child still?
>> Yes.
>> What point does it move from a child into an infant?
>> Well, an infant is a child. So a child is the offspring, the son or the daughter of the parents. So if you are a parent and you have a child, that means you have offspring.
>> So I think you can emotionally load the term based on your own maybe uh beliefs about it's it's not a life that deserves protection. So that the term can feel offensive because you're like how can you humanize the unborn child as a child when they're not they're not even a child. They're somehow not human.
They're not offspring. But I think it it kind of it's um it's futile because at the end of the day, this is the offspring of a a man and a woman, a mother and a father. They're very small.
They're very undeveloped, you know, but they're not there's nothing wrong with them. You're not supposed to be developed when you're one day old, you know. You're not supposed to be fully developed when your heart just starts beating at 21 days post fertilization or brain waves start forming at just 6 to 7 weeks after fertilization. That that's the normal trajectory of your life. And I do think honestly Elliot I think if we had more normalization to talk about what happens during pregnancy, what happens in human development, if it wasn't just something you learned in science class at like I don't know the fourth grade or the sixth grade, but it was part of just everybody's education of yeah human life begins in inside of a woman's body, not at birth. And it's a very beautiful process. And at, you know, 21 days, the heart is beating. You know, you look at these milestones, it's it's kind of part of our lexicon and we all talk about it. It's normalized.
there were more babies around, you know, ultrasound was more uh normalized people. I mean, I had seven I had uh five younger siblings. I'm one of eight kids, seven siblings, five younger siblings. Ultrasound images were on the refrigerator growing up. So, that was normal in my family and we knew this is my sibling, right? But I think if you don't come from that context, it can kind of and you're being told all day long by the media, by the public school system, oh no, it's not a baby, it's not a baby, it's not a baby. Then you can feel like you're emotionally loading the term by calling it baby. when in normal society again you get pregnant you you're like I'm pregnant with my baby.
>> Yeah. It still wouldn't be inaccurate to also call that unborn baby a fetus.
>> Sure. Of course you can call it a fetus.
Yeah.
>> That kind of is preferential, right? And it's interesting to look at the potential futures that we could have where we go in a direction of actually making certain things mandatory in terms of awareness of what goes on when a woman is pregnant. Do you think there should be a minimum threshold for how much investigation women should do into what it actually means to be pregnant before they have an abortion?
>> Well, it's an interesting question you're asking. First of all, I don't think abortion should be permitted.
Killing your offspring, whether they're born or unborn, should never be permitted. So, but in terms of, you know, existing laws, like there is no conform informed consent right now in in the US anyways. And I don't believe in the UK. I'm not sure the exact law around informed consent in the UK, but I know here in California, there's no informed consent if you're going to get an abortion. You're not being told exactly the development of your baby, the risks of the abortion. You're not being told the other options that there are tons of free resources that are could be made available to you to help you choose life if you feel like you're in a financial pinch or some other uh issue that you're struggling with. I think that should be given to every woman 100%. Uh and unfortunately, in a lot of places, it's not. So, if you had to summarize it down in a statement or legislation, what would adequate informed consent look like for you with abortion?
>> Well, just to be clear again, like I wouldn't say, well, we just need informed consent, then we're good.
Because it's informed consent to do what? To end the life of an innocent baby. So, it should not be permitted.
Period. That being said, there, you know, there isn't informed consent as it stands. Like, let's just pretend abortion wasn't morally wrong for a minute. It's not a baby. It's not a human life. You're not killing an innocent life. There isn't informed consent for this procedure. Anyways, like there should there often is you know if you're going to go and get a surgery and you're signing off on papers knowing what the risks are and you know what the surgery entails.
>> So what would it look like?
>> Um I mean I certainly again in this and so in this like hypothetical somehow abortion is morally okay but now there's informed consent put on top of it. Is that the the concept?
>> Maybe not even morally okay just legal.
I just I just don't think that would be progress to say that abortion is totally morally okay or legally legally fine as long as there's informed consent.
>> But if you're saying that people aren't having informed consent at the moment, you should be able to hold a certain standard of what informed consent look like.
>> I think that every woman absolutely should know about the development of and man should know about the development of the baby in the womb. I think that we should all be made aware of the many options there are for especially if we're if if it's it feels like an unplanned pregnancy. This is more like these difficult cases or there's something wrong like there's high risk for the pregnancy or the baby has a disability or something. There should be ample resources made available about all of the amazing organizations that help women and families that have babies with disabilities to help make them feel so alone and to know how to navigate some of those challenges. or if it's a high-risisk pregnancy that they get to meet with high-risisk specialists, obes who specialize in high-risisk uh uh pregnancies because a lot of times with a high-risisk pregnancy, our medical system is more designed to say, "We'll just have an abortion." It's easier that way and there's less risk as opposed to, "Well, no, this is a life and you're a life. We want to protect both of you guys." Um, and then when it comes to human development in the womb, I do think that that should be a normal part of prenatal care is providing information about the development of the baby. In some offices, it is. Then you get like a baby app and you can see the development of the your baby. Um, live action actually created a resource called window to the womb which shows every single day of pregnancy and the development of the baby. So I think those are all great things that we should support.
>> What's live action for anyone that doesn't know?
>> Live action is the organization I started when I was 15 and we are the largest educational leader for the Prolif movement. So educating about human dignity from womb to tomb. So, not just unborn babies, all humans, but we specialize in exposing what the abortion industry has done to basically, I think, dehumanize the baby and say they're not a baby anymore and then ultimately encourage people that this is a viable option and it's going to make them happy.
>> I'm going to be really picky here and pedantic the whole I want to make the most of this time with you.
>> I still feel like you haven't gone into specifics of what informed consent would look like. You've said awareness of the baby and everything about it.
How does that manifest? At what point is it adequate in this hypothetical that these people have been given informed consent?
>> Uh for any specific graphs they should look at scans details about human anatomy. What does it look like?
>> Well, it's a little tricky because I think you're advocating for a public policy that I wouldn't advocate for.
>> So you're telling me to tell you what kind of policy I think it should look like when I don't think that's that's the solution, right?
>> And I'm not advocating. I'm asking you.
>> So yeah. So I think again like I don't think abortion should be permitted. Um and but when it comes to educational resources for people what do I think it should look like? I think fetal development and embryionic development in the womb. I think it should look like if there's issues with the pregnancy having the best access to you know the best high-risk uh obgyn who specialize in that who can help women. For an example Dr. Anthony Levatino who we've worked with he used to be an abortionist. He committed 1,200 abortions including into the second trimester. He worked at a high-risisk pregnancy um center or health clinic to work with women's only with high-risisk pregnancies. So 40,000 of them in his time that he was there. He said not a single one of them needed an abortion.
We could treat and care for both patients. And these are patients that like have that motivation. They want to protect their baby. They want to protect themselves. And he's like, "We can care for them all." So there's a myth that says you need abortion in order to deal with your health problems if you're pregnant. And he and other OBGYn who are pro-life. he became pro-life later say no we can actually care for both patients if we give you the the best health care right so I think access to that um other informed consent would be making sure that if women are like struggling financially low socioeconomic status that they have they're made aware of the resources that exist for them this one breaks my heart a lot because you know I was talking with a woman named Brenda who had an abortion in Los Angeles so not far from here she was a young woman and she was telling me that she had the abortion because she thought there was zero way she could afford board to deal with this pregnancy and this baby. And I was telling her, I was like, I wish I knew you at that time because I know several centers that provide full free prenatal care counseling that provide free resources once the baby is born to make sure you can provide for that baby, who can do career counseling, who can just this whole suite of resources so that you don't feel so alone. Those things exist.
There's thousands of pregnancy resource centers out there that exist that are there to just provide proono care to moms. And I think some of the problem today is a lot of people when they're uh facing an unplanned pregnancy, they feel frozen in fear. They're not sure what they're going to do and then they're not aware of all the people that do want to help them.
>> I think people should be faced to confront this more. And it's tough. I've seen your videos of people doing scans of 24week olds or even older and they would have been aborted later on. It's it's horrible. It's it's distressing for me to see. And again, as someone who's not anti-abortion, it puts me in a really difficult place. Would you advocate for people being shown scans and understanding what life actually looks like at 12 weeks, 9 weeks, 24 weeks in schools and institutions?
>> Yes. I mean, one of the things that live action actually has done is part of our educational efforts is getting uh human development, you know, scientifically backed, medically accurate human development information to be put into schools. So, that is one of our initiatives. I I wouldn't put that under the informed consent banner as much as it is just about education and making sure that they know about human development, about human biology. And we have a book, for example, called I'm a baby, watch me grow. You know, it's for like 5-year-olds. It's like a board book or four-year-olds. And you can just turn the pages and you see at the end there's a newborn baby, but at the beginning it's just a single cell embryo and you're like at as a single cell embryo, all my traits are decided. My whole genetic code is here. My whole body is here. like my eye color, my skin color, like it's all my my sex, it's all determined right now. And then you watch the baby girl and you know, three and a half weeks, my heart has started to be.
So, I do think those resources are really powerful because a little kid learning that, oh, this is how I came into the world. This is how I was in my mother's body when I was tiny tiny. It's harder when they're older when they're like pro-choice. No, you know, we support abortion when they're like, wait a minute, that was me when I was little.
Are you saying that I wasn't valuable then and it would have been okay to end my life?
>> Yeah, you've touched on it here. The heartbeat. That's often another argument is the first heartbeat determines life.
What's wrong with that?
>> Yes. Well, I don't think that's true because you can have you can be a human body that's alive that's developing that the heart's not beating yet, right?
Because it the first heartbeat can be detected we know is around 21 days, which is super early by the way. Some women don't even know they're pregnant yet, which is so crazy. Um, but yeah, I don't think that determines your humanity, but it's definitely a sign of it.
>> Well, let's do this.
>> Yes.
>> You're in a burning building and to your left is >> a newborn.
>> To your right is a tray of petri dishes with zygot.
>> Yes.
>> Which one are you saving? And importantly here, which one should you save?
>> Yes. So, in these scenarios, right, um, well, first of all, I'd probably run to the newborn baby because if the embryos are in this petri dish, right, they're probably in vitro babies that are being frozen, so they're in suspension. And I don't know in the fire if their lives have already been lost. It's kind of trick. This is one of the reasons, by the way, I pose IVF because you're not supposed to have babies in a petri dish.
Like, that's not normal for the baby.
It's not good for them. Uh, 93% of babies who are conceived via IVF end up dying. So, I don't think it's good period that we do that. But anyways, would I go more I I know how to care for a newborn baby. I'm not a scientist and I don't have a freezer. So, I wouldn't know how to care for those children. I wouldn't maybe even know how to find them or identify them. I think naturally I'd run to the newborn. That doesn't mean that those babies don't have value and it doesn't mean that they don't have they're not human. And I think, you know, that's with the burning, you know, burning building scenario. Like if it was my baby on the one hand over here and someone else's baby over here, who would I naturally run to? It would be terrifying, but I'd probably run to my baby. That doesn't mean my baby is more valuable than the other baby, right? So, you know, I we've talked about that scenario a lot, but yeah, that would be my answer.
>> So, which one should you save?
>> I don't know that there's a should in an emergency like that. I think you do you go often with instinct. Um I don't think it would be morally wrong to go save the newborn at all. It's not that you the other persons weren't valuable. It's just that you're in an emergency situation and you're doing the best that you can.
>> And similarly, like if it was, you know, my child here and then in the back room there were like 10 adult men and I choose to go sh save my child here, right? It doesn't mean that the 10 adult men don't have equal value, don't have equal rights to my baby. It just means that I'm in an emergency going to run to my baby.
>> So, are you saying in a stressful situation that abdicates any moral responsibility?
>> No, it's not that. It's that I think there's a big difference in this scenario. You're trying to save a life.
With abortion, you're intentionally taking a life, right? So, I think if you're trying to like use a a stressful situation where you do have moral responsibility to save as many lives as you can. I think I think it would be wrong if I had the ability to go save the baby to not and I had the ability to go save also the 10 men to not attempt to save them. Now, if my life was in major danger by attempting to save them, you could argue that then I don't actually have the responsibility to do that, right? But if I could save them, I should save them. So I guess the answer would be you should try to save both.
>> Okay. So if we really isolate this and we remove the coulds, we remove the comparisons to abortion where it's taking a human life, >> you have one choice. You get to save the newborn or the petetro dish. Yes.
>> Or petri dishes importantly.
>> Yes.
>> Which one should you save?
>> I think that it's not a matter of moral should for for that. You don't have to say you should save the newborn over the petri dishes. I think you can choose to save either one and do the best that you can in saving either one, but I don't think that determines the value of either one as one being more valuable than the other.
>> Break that down for me a bit more.
>> I don't think that who you choose to save in an emergency situation determines the value of the people that you're saving.
>> It doesn't determine the value of the people that you're saving.
>> Another example would be the Titanic, right? They chose some of them chose to put the women and the children first.
It's not that women and children have more value than men. We're equal under the law. We should be treated as equal under the law anyways. It's that in that emergency situation, they chose to put those people that seem more vulnerable in that situation first. And that was a really heroic thing for them to do.
>> Yeah. There is a morality that's detached from this situation altogether.
And you would believe in that as someone who is a Catholic. There is a moral order to the universe that God ordains.
And this is separate to time. It's atmporal. There's this deontology to humans having inherent life. That's why you would argue that our value doesn't come from what we do right in the world.
>> Yes.
>> So there is an inherent worth here that's separate towards the consequences of everything, the stress of a situation, the pressure. So I feel like we should be able to answer here.
Should you save one or the other? if we're speaking about the objective moral structure that is >> I don't agree with no I I don't think it works that way. I think you you should try to say both but I don't think that in an emergency situation certainly not the Catholic Church and I don't also just don't think a morality that you and I can arrive at using natural law and reason can tell us you should save this one versus that one.
>> I think you try to save them all and I think if you run to save the newborn baby is not a sign that the others don't have value. It's more of a sign that this is a baby that you know you can care for. They're crying, your heart goes out to them. You're running to them. But it's not to say the others don't have value or that it's legally okay to try to take their life, which would be, you know, abortion.
>> Yeah. I just look at the equation here.
I'm like, >> one newborn baby. And this is with your worldview here.
>> One newborn baby or let's say 100 unborn babies who are made in the image of God.
There's the imgo day. And you either have one or 100. To me, it would seem logically consistent for it be the right thing to do to save the petri dishes.
>> That just makes sense to me.
>> And I think if someone chose to save the petri dishes, I think that would be beautiful, too. So, I don't think that but I don't think that it is any sort of uh reflection on the the value of the lives that are saved or not saved, the choice that the person makes in that emergency situation. And I also don't think that there's a strong moral should. I think you should try to save life as best you can, but when you're making a decision of I'm going to try to save this baby and that means that this other group of people maybe passes away horribly right in this tragic fire incident. It's also not a judgment on their moral value.
>> So there are no moral shoulds in the world.
>> There's absolutely moral shoulds in the world.
>> When do they come into play?
>> All the time.
>> All the time. But there's a very clear moral should of do it is always wrong to intentionally take an innocent life. And that's the moral should that is foundational to the pro-life worldview.
>> How and when you can save lives in like horrible emergencies or accidents is a lot of I think there is a lot of gray area cuz you're just rushing to a scene.
You're trying to defend life. Um you know what moral responsibility do you and I as an example have for a child that may be in this community right now, right? Who's the victim of abuse or who is dying of hunger or something horrible, right? I think we have a moral responsibility generally to try to serve and help other people and we have a moral responsibility to love our neighbor. How do you love your neighbor when there's 10 different neighbors who all need love? It it it's it's the daily life of making the decisions and and serving and loving as best you can. But the black and whites I think come into it's always wrong to intentionally take an innocent life, >> which is why like our legal system as an example, right?
>> You are not required by law to run into a burning building and save someone's life, right? Unless it's your fire or firefighter maybe and then there's certain regulations for your job, but you and I would not be required by law to do it. Um, but we are required by law to not pull a trigger and end someone's life.
>> That makes sense.
Do these babies that get aborted, do they go to heaven?
>> I think so. Yes.
Yes. And that gives me um there's this like very famous um quote about this congressman who worked to try to stop taxpayer money from going to pay for abortions directly. It's called the Hide amendment. His name is Henry Hyde. And there's this like famous um kind of eulogy about him that when he got to heaven, he got to see all these little babies who said to him, "Thank you for fighting for me." And that was, you know, that was the reward because he was very thankless in his job. like people would fight him all day long on that on the floor of Congress. But yeah, I do believe that they go to heaven.
>> Are there any arguments that are popular, maybe even in the Christian world that would suggest they don't or they end up elsewhere?
>> There has been a debate in the Christian world about what happens to unbaptized babies, right? Cuz if you're unborn baby, you're certainly not baptized. Um, and you know this question, well, we know we need baptism to be saved, right?
That's what Jesus Christ instituted. So then are they not saved if they weren't baptized? But then there's something called the baptism of desire which by your innocence, right? Because they're totally innocent. They haven't committed any crime. That would just be a direct, you know, entry way to heaven. And I believe and the church teaches us, certainly the Catholic church, that God is more merciful than I am, that he's more merciful than you. Like God's love is so perfect and pure. So when I think about like a little baby and like of course I want them in heaven. You know, my husband and I, we just had a miscarriage and you know, it's devastating. It's like your baby and you you've lost your baby and you wonder, will I ever get to be united again? And I do believe this little one's in heaven 100%. Because God created this life and God in his love wants all of us to be with him in eternity forever.
>> Hey, sorry for the brief interruption.
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And now back to Laya Rose. Okay, so the human argument and the lack thereof humanity doesn't seem to be working here for the pro-choicer. So I think we've kind of covered that ground.
>> Yes.
>> What would you say is the next most popular argument for someone who's pro-choice?
I think the the argument that I found the most compelling for people who are pro-choice is that um and and that language by the way I would say well pro-choice what like what are you choosing >> it's about choosing whether or not a baby can live or die so in that sense I think >> you're not actually pro-choice because the baby has no choice right so I I don't typically use the language of pro-choice I'll use it when someone says that's how I identify I want to talk about it that way but I don't think it's a fair descriptor because I think first of all there should be no choice to kill And second of all, the baby certainly will have no choice in that situation of of an abortion. Um, but that being said, I think the most compelling or I think the one that's the hardest that I've noticed for people isn't so much is it a life or not. I think a lot of people are like, "Yeah, it's a human life." It is.
It's more that the woman's right to not be pregnant supersedes the baby's right to life. And that's the one that I feel um people seem to bring up the most actually. And I'd love to talk about that with you if you want to go there next.
>> Yeah. Well, Judith Jarvis Thompson, she has her classic violinist argument where you wake up in the middle of the night.
You've been kidnapped by the >> National Music Lovers Society and your kidneys been attached to this violinist.
You two share the same blood type and no one else in the world does in this hypothetical. You're the only one that can sustain this violinist and keep him alive.
>> I don't know how long she says you'll actually be attached to him. Maybe it's 9 months so that it's an analogous to abortion.
The question then becomes, do you have a right to detach yourself from this violinist who you are using um or who's using you to keep himself alive?
>> Right. Yeah. And I would say first of all, if and if the the cost to you is that you just have to deal with this violinist attacher, I would say you you should just let them live if it's going to be nine months and that nine your nine months of experiencing being attached to them. And by the way, when you're pregnant, you're like walking around typically like the vast majority of pregnancies. Yeah. you get uncomfortable in the third trimester and sometimes you have nausea in the first but you're you're walking around you're living your life you're eating you're sleeping you're doing your normal routine typically right so um if we're extrapolating that to this scenario I don't know if you want to um but I would say yeah just just give it 9 months for this person to have maybe 90 years then in addition when you're comparing this to the question of should we allow abortion right the big distinction here with the violinist argument where it falls apart is that this is the parent of the This isn't when you get pregnant. You know what I when when I get pregnant, I should say, because you you will not be getting pregnant. But if you're, you know, if your significant other gets pregnant, right?
>> I might get pregnant. We're in California. That'll be very in keeping with the times.
>> If you hang out here long enough, you'll definitely get pregnant. Um Oh, man. I love I love this state, but we have we have our issues. But anyways, um but when you get when I get pregnant, right, when a woman gets pregnant, she's getting pregnant with her child, with her own son or daughter, her offspring.
It's how we all started our life, all of us. And so this idea that it's like someone kidnapped you and they stuck you up with some random dude that is a violinist and it's your kidney. The womb is designed for the nurture and development of a baby. That's why women have the reproductive systems we have.
Your reproductive system is designed to impregnate a woman so that she can, you know, ultimately carry a child. I'm not saying this is the destiny for every person. Some people will never, you know, have a baby or carry a baby, but it is what the womb is designed for.
It's not the kidney, it's the womb. And it's designed for that. And when you're a parent, you have responsibilities to your child.
>> That's why we have child abuse and child neglect laws for born children anyways in California. If you neglect your newborn, if you don't use your body to care for your newborn, if you just let your newborn alone and it's it's starving to death, you can be criminally charged for child neglect. And you are required to use your body to care for your children and to protect your children, too. That is a requirement in pretty much every state in the country and I'm going to guess in the UK. So parents have responsibilities to their children and those responsibilities don't just begin at birth in my view.
They begin at the moment of the baby's existence when the baby is being fertilized and then implanted in the womb.
>> You talk about this special relationship that you call it of the mother and the child. And just to really spell this out for people as I need it done for me when I was investigating this, >> the kidney is not designed to support a violinist. That's not the purpose of the kidney. Whereas the purpose of the womb is to carry a child. So it's it's just a completely different analogy. And I I think >> as interesting as this paper is, and there's a bunch of interesting stuff in it, it falls apart when it's examined even for the pro-choiceer like myself.
So I I don't feel like I can hinge on that or proabortionist I should say now.
Sure.
>> Um, okay. What about >> Now I got to ask you what what's the most compelling argument for you?
Because you say you keep saying you're pro-choice.
>> So why I mean maybe you're going to get there, but I'm very curious why you're pro-choice.
>> Well, let's get into it.
>> Yeah.
>> I'm not religious.
>> I don't believe in God much as I'd actually like to. So I don't think >> Do you believe in the universe or like >> do you believe there's some sort of benevolent power that animates the world or created the world to begin with or created the first bit of the world that then evolved into the world we see today?
>> I don't know but it looks a whole lot like that when you look around especially in beautiful areas in California right and at fellow human beings I'm like how did any of this develop? How did this get here without a god? So I would say, and I often say this to people like Rous Lan, your friend who I've just interviewed, and Bryce Crawford, who are Christians, often times the atheist is much more religious and dogmatic than the Christian in the way they hold their beliefs because everything seems to point to a benevolent creator.
>> Well, it sounds like you might be, would you say, you're maybe agnostic? You're not >> you're not 100% sure there is no God because there's a lot of evidence for God, but you're not sure if there is this God, what this God is or what he looks like or he, she, or whatever it is. I'd say agnostic or atheist in the sense that I lack a theism that enlightens my world. So I I don't believe in a god. There might be one, but at least for the time being, I don't think that's the case. And therefore, to be logically consistent, I can't think that life is sacred. Sacred has a very religious loading on it. I might think that life is the most precious thing ever to be in the universe. That doesn't make it sacred. That's kind of a different leap that I can't make without God. I think therefore the killing of all human lives, innocent humans lives being wrong. Um, another can of worms that gets opened up is it depends what you mean by wrong. If there is right or wrong now with you again, do you have God to give you a philosophical grounding for right or wrong? I don't necessarily have that. So I I think right or wrong is very circumstantial.
I don't think that there's anything out in the universe that objectively gives me a case for saying abortions are wrong always.
You can make that leap and I think it's a very big leap to make from pragmatism and situational dependence to being objectively wrong. I just don't think it would actually be honest. Um, and I think I would be playing up with my emotions more than anything if I said abortions are wrong always. That doesn't make sense to me.
>> Got it. Thank you so much for explaining that. I I guess a question for you would be uh just to kind of explore your current worldview.
>> Take away.
>> Would you say that uh a newborn it would always be wrong to intentionally take the life of an of a newborn?
>> It depends what you mean by wrong. Um well what do you how what do you mean by wrong?
>> I guess and this is thanks to Alex O' Conor who I've worked closely with. So oh my ethical kind of framework to him and AJ a who developed this this ethical emotivism is what I'd subscribe to more than anything where I think that ethical claims are an expression of someone's emotions. So >> it's not the same as subjectivism where I think there is truth behind our subjective feelings. So what I feel is true is true and what you feel is true is true. I don't think that works. What I do think is me saying killing an innocent newborn is wrong which I would say is purely an expression of my emotions. It doesn't carry any truth.
>> So what is truth in your worldview then?
What is truth?
>> What is truth? You said it's not doesn't carry truth to say it's always wrong to intentionally kill an a newborn because that's more from my emotions. So what would truth be in your worldview?
>> I would say truth is something that is separate to any observer that does exist. It is something that is the case.
Right? That's what something true is.
And I believe in truth. I'm not going to sit here and say that everything's subjective man. Like you do you. I think that 1 plus 1 equals two. I do think that the sky is blue, but when it comes to ethical claims, I don't see any way to ground ethics objectively.
>> So, it sounds like you're saying there's truth in terms of what can be perceived with the eye in terms of the color of the sky or maybe your existence is this body in front of me talking right now animated, but it sounds like you're saying you don't believe in any moral truth.
>> Yes. And and to really break this down, I think that abortion is the wrong thing to do almost always. And I don't think that we should go around killing innocent newborns. That's horrible. That disgusts me. And it probably enrages me as much as it would do a Christian. Why is that is the question. I don't think that's because there's an objective truth. I think it's because my emotions are attuned to feel that way towards a newborn being killed. Because in a society where it was normalized to kill newborns, which it kind of was back in the Roman times before Christianity, right? At least to discard a baby that you didn't want.
>> And fantasicide was very normalized.
That's true.
>> Yeah. They'd be chucked on the rubbish.
Rubbish >> or or there would be sacrificed to idols.
>> Yeah. The moss and whatever of the world.
>> Real really happened. really messed up and we developed past that thanks to Christianity. I think that was a good development and I think our world is a better place now. I think that it's safer and it's more stable. I think these developments happened because it was what was best for human flourishing.
It is what was best for us to have a more stable society and to be absent of the fear of being killed for no reason when we're 3 years old. Does that mean it's objectively true? I don't think so.
I think me saying that killing a newborn baby is wrong is kind of the same as me going boo killing that baby right that there's no weight behind that that can be grounded objectively it's just an expression of my emotion that has been developed evolutionarily because otherwise the humans wouldn't be here if we didn't value life. M. So you're saying we from an evolutionary perspective, we've sort of developed a sort of disgust for murder, not because murder is wrong, but because it can prevent human flourishing. It sounds like that's what you might be saying. Or do I misunderstand?
>> I think we've developed societies that are structured the way they are because if we didn't, we would have had anarchy and chaos and we would have wiped ourselves out. So I think uh I I totally hear what you're saying. I think that the other the very idea of anarchy and chaos assumes that there's order and and rule, right? And what well so what is order and and how do we know that the order is actually order? Well, I think you can define anarchy and certainly see it as being away from order without necessarily having to have an objective thing that's pinnacle order. Um, I just think that there is apparent there are apparent amounts of flourishing right in a society. And I do think that we all feel good emotions and bad emotions. And the goal of this podcast is to in investigate difficult topics like this to try and guide Gen Z in the direction of flourishing, an absence of suffering and a promotion of abundance and virtue and happiness, right? And fulfillment more importantly because happiness is quite short term.
>> I think a move away from that is a step towards anarchy and chaos. I would not like a world that is anarchistic and full of chaos. I would like to promote flourishing. And I guess that's what kind of underpins my worldviews. It's wanting flourishing. And even though that flourishing might be subjective to people, and sorry if this is getting a little bit messy here, there is a truth out there in the universe that you feel a certain subjective way. It is true that you are subjectively feeling happier or worse because you had an abortion or didn't.
>> Yeah. So I think that human flourishing is a beautiful goal to aim at. And I do think that is the ultimate Christian goal for eternity is we want the human person to be fully alive in eternal love with God, right? And that's what Jesus Christ did when he died. He died for our sin, for the for ultimately the chaos and the disorder, right? For the dysfunction, for the suffering, for the woundedness, for the evil. And he died for that. And then he rose again. He conquered death. He conquered the disorder. He conquered the evil. And then he resurrected. And now we have an opportunity by putting our trust in him to enter into that eternal life with him and by repenting of our own disorder, disordered attachments, disordered actions are evil, right? Um in my philosophy or Christian philosophy, evil is the absence of good or it's the destruction of the good. And you could say order is good, right? But there's more than just order that's good. It's that things are not just in the order that they're meant to be, but that things exist. Existence itself is good.
Human existence itself is good. The world as it exists, the fact that we have a world, that's good. Creation in that sense is good. I mean, after seven days in the Bible, right, God says um it is it is good. He rested and he he delighted in what he had created, including humankind, right?
>> So, I I hear what you're saying. I think I think you know you can say that morality really is observing the natural order in the world that is most conducive to human flourishing because morality is designed for human flourishing. God created morality and the moral codes that we have and you know the ten commandments which I believe you can arrive at without even being given them on a tablet and stone.
Like if you think about okay what's best for our society right you can arrive at the conclusion that it's best not to kill innocent people or you can arrive at the conclusion it's best not to cheat on your spouse or it's best not to deceive and lie to other people or it's best not to steal stuff from other people right you can actually I think achieve that via reason and thinking about what would be an ideal society and how we treat each other but it's also divine revelation it's given to us at a tablet right but all of that is for human flourishing and so whether you've arrived at yeah this is a moral truth that I want to call it a truth and there's a god involved or you're more looking at it from the lens of there's human flourishing and then there's human destruction and I want to go on the side of the human flourishing.
>> I think the beautiful thing about faith is that you ultimately arrive at I want human flourishing but even my desire for human flourishing and the ability to attain human flourishing has to come from a power outside myself. Right?
Because we are going to die. We are so limited. You know we are tempted to bad things. the world even as we understand it. It couldn't just have popped into being magically, right? There had to be a first cause and that's where we get the reality of God.
>> Yeah. Lots of rabbit holes to go down there, first cause arguments and why God exists. And we can go into it a little bit, but to hone in on the point of me sat here as someone who doesn't have all of that you've just laid out, >> what do I do? How do you actually pull me towards being anti-abortion if I don't think that there's a God?
>> Yeah, I think I can totally pull you to being anti-abortion even from the worldview of I'm not sure if there's a God. And uh I think that my sort of moral code because certainly you have an operational moral code, Elliot, even though you're saying I don't know if it's an objective moral truth, but you have an operational moral code and that you believe that there should be laws that govern human behavior and and and a code that governs how we treat each other. Is this a question? Is that the case? Yeah, I mean I I think we should >> to prevent anarchy, right?
>> Yeah. I think we should have laws, but again, the should is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. And I often feel very despondent about the laws that we have >> because they're not grounded in anything objective. And that annoys me. It annoys me that a lot of the lines we draw in the sand are very arbitrary, just like it would annoy you.
>> Well, that's why I think you can have unjust laws if they're not grounded in truth. And that that has happened in human history and certainly in American history where we created laws for an example that were basically uh uh being you know rejecting people based on the color of their skin and saying that they could be enslaved or saying that they couldn't sit a certain place that someone with a different color skin could have because it violated that human person's dignity. So I would say that even if you're kind of a bit, you know, still I guess discovering what you believe to be moral truth or moral order, I would tell you I think that if you want human flourishing, if you want a society where people are maximally happy and maximally in peace with one another and able to fulfill their potential, right? then you absolutely want an abortion-free society because if those are human lives which I think objectively speaking scientifically speaking they are then they need human flourishing too and for a uh a society to be at peace with each other you should not permit the intentional destruction of anyone else's human life and that's what abortion does and you can't build a a flourishing society certainly a just society off of the destruction of innocent life and when we've allowed abortion we're obviously allowing 3,000 in the United States uh killings every single day. We don't treat human life as sacred. And I know that word is is tricky for you, but we don't even treat human life as special.
I think a lot of the time we've cheapened it. And I think abortion is part of that. Absolutely. Because if you can just discard a pregnancy, discard a baby, right? Why shouldn't you be able to discard an old person who's, you know, a burden or a person with disabilities who's a drain? It it it destroys the whole fabric of what it means to treat people with dignity and and with justice. So I think if you want a flourishing society, you you want an abortion-free society >> to go after abortion free where there are zero. If I'm honest, the way I see it, I just think so far from the totally trivial amount of investigation I've done into this compared to someone like you who's very respected. The way I see it so far is the world is very complex and there's not a yes or no to a lot of things. I think there's truth and I'm not going to be one of those annoying Gen Z subjectivists that just values their emotions over everything else.
It feels like Christians in particular with religious groundings to their arguments, they're kind of putting a convenient lid on issues that gives them this nice answer where they know they are 100% right rather than wrong. And a lot of these extremes where it is zero abortion versus some versus a lot. To get to a point where you wholeheartedly say zero is the right number. It feels like people just do that a lot of the time out of a willingness to have answers and closed loops.
>> I don't think so. I think you can say I want a rape free society. I want a murder free society. And an abortion free society is part of that. And I think that you know that's an absolutely amazing goal. And you can have public policy to help that. Then you can have public education. You can work on creating a more virtuous society so we treat each other with respect and we uh have stronger families so you're raised in a loving family so you're not raised with you know intense traumas and and those are all things to uh strive for. I mean this side of heaven are we going to eradicate rape, murder, abortion completely? I I I doubt it. I don't think so. We can try at it but I think human error and frailty this side of heaven exists. But we can reduce it by becoming more virtuous by also I believe becoming more Christian and putting our trust in a savior a a savior who loves us and gives us the grace to overcome evil because that's part of what uh belief and trust in God does and trust in Jesus Christ does. Um but you know more to kind of what you were saying a moment ago just about you believe there is truth but there's no say moral truth and you're talking about the emotion being the sort of indicator whether something might be right or wrong right uh I am curious what you would say like setting murder aside for a second or abortion aside for a second like looking at the issue of sexual um sexuality and looking at the issues of rape as an example. Well, I wanted to pull you up on this because I think this is a really useful tool.
>> The way the definition of rape is constructed, >> it is unconsensual and someone doesn't want to have that sex. That's disgusting and that's wrong. And that guy who's committing the rape or women, by the way, the statistics bear out that a lot more women than you'd expect rape men.
Um, and that's important to talk about.
They don't want it. That is wrong in my worldview. Right. And the way that the what an abortion is is constructed that baby might not I I don't like saying baby like fetus but maybe I should say baby and like >> you should I think so >> should be consistent >> it's a baby >> if they're one day old they're not going to feel anything and then comes into play the >> their soul might feel something >> you don't have any >> I don't believe in souls >> well but you don't I I think it's it's it's interesting because they used to say, well, the baby at one day old or the baby at 7 weeks old, the baby at 20 weeks old, right? They're not going to feel anything. They're not going to have any negative experience of being murdered, right? You have no evidence for that. I mean that's that's what I would say to this say to someone because I think the experience of being d like like there is we know from medical um research that's been done that human beings who are not conscious who have severe brain issues or the brain is completely unconscious can have experiences that are otherwise hard to understand scientifically based on the body. So, I do think there is a ton of scientific evidence for the soul and >> really >> yes, absolutely.
>> Have you have you looked into near-death experiences at all and all the evidence out there? What do you think about them?
>> Yeah, it's a great mystery and this is why I'm pushed in the direction of believing. But to say that a one-year-old, a one day old in the womb would feel something with my worldview that would get me to say, "No, abortion should be banned completely," rather than actually a mother who's not ready to look after this kid who's not in the right place.
>> If I do the equation there, and I hate to put this down to equations because it gets very mathematical. I don't think you can mathematize life completely.
>> To me, it still makes sense. There's more evidence that would suggest this one day old can't feel anything. They don't have the consciousness and that's not what gives them value, but it certainly plays into this equation. It would be promotional of flourishing to let that woman who's not well placed to have that kid have the abortion instead, especially if she was raped.
>> Right. I see what you're saying. And no, and I I obviously at one day old, the baby is, you know, has not developed its brain yet. That's a fact. You know, we can't test the baby feeling anything.
How could it? It's a single cell, you know, or just a few cells at this point.
Um, and so it sounds what you're saying is because it can't feel, then there is less moral issue, if any, with taking his or her life because they can't experience the taking of the life. Is that what you're saying? Especially when there's all these other challenging circumstances that mom might be going through, the woman might be experiencing.
>> And I'd be careful to say that there's no negative experience. I think that there's always an experience with everything you do. You don't do something that's detached from any morality. Like everything you do has a consequence, right? And I would probably go as far as saying abortion is maybe not wrong.
Yeah, I think it it maybe would be wrong always or at least not good. Like it's never good and anyone can agree on that pretty much.
But then the question becomes, do we want to go to these extremes where we're going to outlaw having an abortion of a one-day old fetus at 2-day old? And that's where my problem lies. When I look at all of these scans of 24 week olds, like this is disgusting. This should be banned.
>> Aborting that baby.
>> You can see it's discernible to you. It looks like a baby at that point. I mean, you you can actually see it discernible.
Looks like a baby even at like six or seven weeks. you start to see the arms and the legs growing >> and I don't know where I land with when I would ban abortion. I don't think I can come up with a hardened fast. Okay, well 5 weeks because then you go why not 5 weeks and 1 day? Why not 4 weeks and 6 days?
>> So that would be arbitrary and that's a struggle for me. But the reason why I think I feel such disgust for aborting even the 6 week old, seven-year-old, and I would if I had to give you an answer, it would be a matter of days or a week or two until abortion is banned. The reason I would give that response, I think, is just the way that my intuitions are wired and the fact that when you look at these scans of 6 week olds, 7 week olds, they have arms, they have legs, that feels more familiar to me. it feels more like a human. So then it feels wrong.
>> So wait, if you saw a a you know, we've we've interviewed and there's like Nick Voychek who's amazing, but he has no arms and legs, right? Just as an example.
>> Yeah. But you don't need to hone in on that arms and legs.
>> But just to test the intuition because I think what you're saying is your intuition tells you, your emotion tells you like you don't you can't discern, you know, arms and legs and a you know, human face when the baby is just a few cells. Like it's so tiny, right? It's so tiny you can't even pick it up on a scan, right? So therefore, like there's less moral issue with it because you can't discern, you know, that human form in the same way, right?
>> For someone without arms and legs, they're still there in front of me.
>> You still see them in front of you.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the science still tells us, especially if you're choosing you you get a positive pregnancy test and you're choosing to have an abortion, like the science is telling you there's a human life that you're now trying to end. You're actively trying to end. So, you can't you can't escape that reality. But I I mean I understand I understand what you're saying in terms of you know you might feel more emotions perhaps if you see this more developed human in front of you versus a less developed human in front of you. But I disagree with you that my emotions dictate reality in terms of moral truths or rights or wrongs. And I think that they can tell us something. They're an indicator. We should look at them. Pay attention to our emotions. They're valuable.
>> And just to be really clear, I don't think my emotions dictate reality either. The fact that I think subjectively something is good or bad does not mean it is.
>> Got it. But you it sounds like you're if I understood you, you're saying that your emotions help you uh your emotions help you discern right from wrong, but there is no right from wrong. But you you basically we have right from wrong based on our emotions. That's where your you see the origin of right from wrong as we understand it from human emotion.
>> That's where they come from. And that might not be a correct objective reading, but that's where they stem from.
>> I see. I again I think emotions can tell us a lot but I I disagree that right from wrong is ascertained through the emotion. Um and I think that right from wrong you can ascertain it through reason actually and looking at consequences. you actually mentioned that word and I think that's actually a significant one like what's the consequence of uh you know an abortion a dead person a dead human afterwards right so a dead human when they were alive before and you're the cause of the death right you can use your reason to say that's wrong I think >> if you're ignoring the other alternative having the abortion and it saves you from suffering and it saves that child from suffering so yeah isolated that would be a problem you're causing this death and I would agree with that that that's horrible, >> but we need to always keep the alternative options in mind.
>> So, I let's talk for a minute about the woman because you brought that up a few times and I I have too, but we haven't really deeply explored it quite yet. And I think first of all, this idea that abortion benefits women, I think is wrong. And, you know, we might have the the myopic view that well, she's benefited by the abortion because in her view, she like I think about this Michelle Williams person. She's an actor. She got a Golden Globe a few years ago and she was holding this trophy for her best actor award and she was saying I had the right to choose and I had an abortion basically that's why I was able to have my career. So she was like saying her abortion was the reason she became successful. And I think that's a narrative and a lie that we may tell ourselves that's fearbased. That's not true. And I know that because I know plenty of women I've gotten to interview them. There are people that are some close friends who had unplanned pregnancies or got pregnant very young or got pregnant after rape at 14 years old as an example. Right? I'm thinking about my friend Lyanna and chose life and did not have an abortion even though the doctor's like you should have an abortion because that's what you tell a rape survivor you should have an abortion and she said is abortion going to make take away the trauma of the rape and she like had the amazing like self-possession to ask that question and he said he was honest he said no and she said so why would I take out what happened to me on this baby >> and just to ground this in data as well we can use the turnaway study which has been pretty discredited >> it's very debunked But even then, debunked as a pro-choice um study, it found that I think 95% of women who didn't have abortions thought they made made the right decision. So, >> it feels like it kind of doesn't matter which way you go. If you carry the baby through, you're not going to regret it.
>> I think it depends what you I mean, listen, there are people who have children and they weren't even necessarily considering abortion, but they say, "I I wish I wasn't a parent."
And it's a very dark place to be in, right? So there's a whole like there's people who kill their born children and murder them, right? And there's these like horrible big famous cases of that, right? They drown their children in a bathtub, right? So you can't go off of just, you know, purely people's feelings, right? Or their psychotic breaks they may be undergoing or whatever it is. But what I think you can go off of, largely speaking, is data that shows that women who have abortions versus women who don't as like a a large data set are worse off. And this data is there's metaanalysis of all these different studies that show women that follow a cohort of women who have abortions versus not. And the women who have abortions are more likely to suffer from mental illness, more likely to experience suicidality, more likely to experience, you know, addiction. That is, you know, and there's a there was a study here in California done of 100,000 Medicaid patients.
>> 174,000.
>> Thank you. You know the study better than me even over, you know, almost 200,000. It was 174,000. And they found that for the cohort that had abortions, their suicide suicide attempt rate spiked dramatically versus the same cohort who are lower income women who did not have an abortion.
>> So I I think the whole argument that we're better off as women for abortion doesn't follow. And I think it's not just like an accident that doesn't follow. It's because like bad acts have bad consequences. The act of abortion, the bad consequence, the worse is there's a dead baby. But it's also something that happens to I believe the soul of the woman. It does hurt her soul. And again, we're getting into this language of the soul, which again, I know you can't like put the soul in a test tube and do experiments on it, right? You don't see it. It's not something you can empirically study in that way. But I do think like the near-death studies and consciousness studies and others show us that there is something at work that animates the human person beyond the body and that is the soul. And your soul is negatively affected by bad decisions.
>> And I think your body can be negatively affected by bad decisions too. And there, you know, there there is a toll on women who have abortions and men who encourage abortions. And you can kind of cover that up and say, "It doesn't hurt me. I'm fine." And maybe some women really don't feel like they experience any consequences for it and they don't feel hurt at all. But I think for most women, it's a different story.
>> Let me talk to you about Jamie AI. Jamie doesn't just show you what did well. It analyzes every section and questions retention so you can see precisely where listeners lean in, where they drift, and where they drop off. It learns from your entire back catalog and uses that history to inform how you structure the next episode. Instead of guessing what to research, you get databacked input for your prep themes that consistently hold attention and questions your audience actually stays for. For upcoming guests or topics, Jaime will watch up to 200 videos on them or their domain and combine that with their social media interviews and internet sentiment to surface the deepest, most interesting lines of questioning nobody else is taking. Jamie AI identifies your most effective formats, openings, and segment structures so you can repeat what reliably works and discard what doesn't. When you're cutting clips, Jaime already knows which moments are most likely to work based on real retention spikes from your audience, not intuition or guesswork. The best part is you don't have to live inside analytics dashboards. Jamie turns complex performance data into plain language takeaways and specific recommendations you can act on based on your actual data. It supports the full creative loop from planning to post-production. From research briefs and run of show outlines to segment ideas informed by how your audience has actually behaved. The result is simple. Smarter episodes, less guest work, and a tighter feedback loop between what you publish and what your audience actually cares about. If you want to build that kind of intelligence into your process, go to jamieai.com and use code elliots to get 20% off. That's jammie.com.
and use code Elliot Elot T at checkout to get 20% off. Yeah. So that study you're citing I think it was 150% increase in suicidality which >> yes >> is important to reckon with. One question would be correlation versus causation there.
>> Is there some other factor that means women who have abortions are more suicidal and it's not necessarily because of the abortion but it's other life aspects. So it would be you know it would be a correlation but not a cause.
There's also opposing studies. I mean, I've got something here about 5 years after an abortion, 95% to 99% of women reporting that the decision was right for them.
>> Usually, the regret doesn't kick in for like sometimes decades.
>> Well, can you tell me about that?
>> Yeah, I mean, just from the research that we've done working with women, there are definitely women who regret it sometimes immediately. I was just messaging with a girl who said, "I had an abortion last summer and I I'm devastated. I can't believe I did it and I think about it every day and help me, you know, what could I do?" Right? So that is real. That happens. But I've seen at least in the research we've done in interviewing people. Most of the time the people that kind of join, as an example, Silent No More, it's a campaign to help women who had abortions find their voice and speak out against abortion thousands, tens of thousands of women as part of that campaign. Most of them are older. They're talking about abortions they had sometimes like three, four decades ago. So, I do think when you're in it, when you're living your life, um the regret might not catch up to us quickly, especially in our society today, which says abortion's a thumbs up. Um but I do think it hits a lot of women eventually.
>> Well, let's talk about today's society.
>> Another thing that we haven't mentioned is the question of are we signing up for potentially having a baby when we have sex? And I know that it's inherent in the act. it is meant for reproduction.
But there's a lot of back and forth with proabortionists versus anti-abortionists on the responsibility carried. And going back to Judith Jarvis Thompson's paper on the violinist, she gives this analogy which is really interesting of these seeds that float around in the air and if they take root in your upholstery, >> they grow into something. So, what you do is you purchase the finest mesh curtains that allow you to have the windows open but stop the seeds from floating in. You spend all your money on this. You invest in it. You take every precaution possible to stop these seeds from floating in and taking root in your upholstery.
>> Yet, one of these mesh curtains has a defect. And what she's equating this to is a condom or some form of contraception having a defect. So the floating seed gets in and it takes root in your upholstery. What she asks is should you have gone further? Should you have not had any furniture in your house so that these seeds can never take root?
>> At what point >> is it your responsibility?
>> Right. Well, I think consent to sex is consent to pregnancy. That doesn't mean every time you have sex you're going to get pregnant. you know, the woman's fertile window if she is fertile because she might have health conditions that kind of hurt her fertility, but typically it's just a few days a month, right? So, and then the man might have fertility issues, but consent to sex is consent to pregnancy.
>> And we live in a society where consent to sex is I get to have my orgasm and have fun and I do not have to have any consequences afterwards. And if I get pregnant, then I get to use backup contraception, which is in my view abortion. this, you know, this is kind of the way our current system is set up.
And it's really devastating because that's why we have in the US 1 million abortions a year. It's not because of people are being sexually assaulted and then they go choose to have an abortion afterwards. People use rape as this reason why we need abortion, right?
That's less than 1% of all abortions.
It's because people are choosing to have sex and then they were not looking at sex as it's designed or going into this relationship in terms of I want to create a life project with you and you know if we have a child we're going to raise this baby together. Instead it's like no this is unplanned. This is unexpected and so now I am owed a you know an escape hatch basically which is legal abortion.
>> Yeah. I was scrolling around on the internet in preparation for this and I saw a go puff website headline that comes up on Google that just says plan B pill delivered fast as fast as 15minute delivery.
>> Crazy >> which is crazy. And >> and the abortion pill you can get via the mail like under President Biden so before Trump took office he during co he took off all the last stipulations and it's very dangerous for women abortion pill. So, one out of every 10 of them women will have severe health side effects like severe bleeding. They're going to have uh, you know, infection.
One out of every 22 of those women are going to end up in the emergency room after because of how serious the health complications are. A lot of people don't know this. They think, "Oh, it's safe.
It's just like having a period at my house." know it is a very intense and sometimes weeksl long process of ending the baby's life via the chemical starvation and then basically forcing this like very intense miscarriage and there's a lot of consequences that come with it. So anyways, but yeah, it's it's very everywhere. It's like you just order just order online, you know, not a big deal. I I saw a website saying like it's like a period pill. Take it and you don't even know if you're pregnant yet, but they basically are having an early abortion. So like psychologically you don't know if you're pregnant yet. So that that's the current that is the status quo. And in in places like California, Medicaid pays for abortions.
So the state is paying for this. And certainly in the UK, the state is paying for it.
>> Yeah. I don't think that's a good thing.
And I wonder where the responsibility lies for us Gen Zers who have normalized sex and hookup culture so much. I don't know if I would agree with you that sex and consenting to it is consenting to pregnancy.
>> Why not?
>> Well, first of all, I think you'd agree with me that if we're honing in on women who are going to carry the baby hit, >> they right now where we are in the culture are not thinking that. They're not having sex thinking I might have a baby. They have been, I think, intentionally persuaded into objectifying their bodies more.
>> Right. But do you think that's devaluing sex?
>> Right.
>> I don't think that leads to good outcomes.
>> Right. But that's it sounds like you're saying that's a negative thing. Like it's it's a problem that we've cheapened sex so much and that we think that it's just like, you know, just recreational thing that doesn't have any consequences.
>> I don't think that leads to good outcomes. I think that holding sex as sacred leads to better outcomes. And I'm someone I grew up in Brighton in the UK, which is the most atheist place in the UK. It's also one of the gay capitals of Europe. So very lass fair. They voted in. I think they they had the only member of parliament that was in the Green Party.
>> So very relaxed attitude towards sex and pride parades of We have the naked >> sounds like California.
>> Yeah, we have the naked bike ride as well. So people love it. And I was immersed in that culture growing up to the point at which I didn't value sex much. I still valued it, but not as much as someone who thinks it's sacred.
>> And and to be like super clear, I I still thought it was very special. And I tried to be very responsible with not just going on one night stands everywhere. But I didn't value it as much as I do now. I've looked at the societywide consequences of us devaluing it and it doesn't look good. It really troubles me the direction that we're heading in.
Could you steal man the other side here for why consenting to sex isn't having is isn't consenting to pregnancy?
>> Yes. Let's see if we let's try to do that. So, um like the average person today who kind of just thinks well of course it doesn't mean consent to pregnancy. And I think it's because, you know, sex is something that you can do in minutes, even potentially seconds.
Like, it's a it's not this, it's not a very complex thing. It's something that our bodies are readily designed for. It is possible to have sex with most other people. And, you know, you get two consenting adults in a room and you do this thing that can just take minutes.
Why does it mean I have to again if I get pregnant have now 18 years of child support or 18 years of raising this baby right so I can understand if you look at through that lens of how like sex is treated today like it's just like it's just an act sometimes it doesn't even come with pleasure you know depending on like how things are going for you and it can be done with pretty much anyone and your body is readily designed for it. So why have we put so why are so many eggs in this basket in terms of you know there's obviously an egg in the basket if you're getting pregnant more than that but why is it so serious and such a big deal when it can be done so easily so quickly so readily and so I understand why that kind of feels weird for people you know like wow I can be pregnant from this and this was just like a one night stand like I was drunk I didn't even you know wasn't even I was just wasn't even planning this whatsoever and I think that's the sign that steel manning of like yeah why people think it's so crazy right that they should have to be you know shackled with a baby or have a baby after you know the one night stand or whatever it is but I think that setup right now postrevolution setup posts sexual revolution setup of sex is just a few seconds act with any random consenting adult that's the weird thing that we've become so accustomed to like if you told our like great great grandmothers you know like a hundred years ago that, you know, it would be seen as normal to just have sex when you're 16 with a random guy and that you were just figuring it out for the first time and like, you know, you maybe even did it in your own parents own house and they're like, "As long as you use a condom, you're okay." Right? You're just experimenting.
>> Your your greatgrandmother like would be rolling in her grave. She's like, "Don't you know the consequences?" You know, and she's right because there are consequences because we're not designed for sex that way. We aren't. We're human beings. We're not uh you know a random like animal out in nature like human beings are different.
>> Um we are designed for pair bonding for life.
>> Well 80% of history we've been polygonous polygonous with men having multiple wives. So should we go back to that instead?
>> No, I don't think so. I don't think that's ideal for the woman or the children. And they're having a lot of issues with polygamy where there is now this question of justice owed to which wife, which child gets the inheritance or stature. And you can kind of create laws, but there's been tremendous um I mean, if you're if you read the Old Testament, if you're a Christian, you read the Old Testament like well, it used to be polygamy, all of the family dysfunction that was a consequence of polygamy because now this man is navigating multiple wives who all have a right to his love, right? and he wants their duty and their loyalty and all these children and there's so much chaos really that comes from it. It's not a good order for human flourishing. So yeah, we've done things traditionally like human you know slavery has been practiced traditionally. So you know not all traditions are good. That's why I don't call myself a traditionalist and I don't I mean I think we should study tradition. I think we can learn from tradition but some traditions are objectively bad in my view.
>> Yeah. Yeah, it's like the inverse of people who are progressives and think that all progress is good. You get the traditionalists that think that all tradition is good, which isn't true either, >> right? And I think that's why I love being Catholic, by the way. Just I mean, I was I became Catholic in college, so I wasn't raised Catholic. Um, and I feel like I'm still learning about my Catholic faith. But what is so beautiful in my view about Catholicism is that it's like ever ancient and ever new.
It's like both extremely progressive and amazingly conservative. You get the best of every world in it because it is safeguarding everything that is good, true, and beautiful.
>> And so if you like, you know, are concerned about traditions that are evil, Catholicism upended them. And if you want to protect traditions that are beautiful and true, Catholicism has like protected them passionately for 2,000 years.
>> Yeah. It's an interesting pivot that you made from evangelical Protestant to Catholic. Okay. So sticking on this consequence of sex. Did I I I don't know if I steel it well enough, but I I guess I I'm very like sympathetic and totally understand why some people feel like what the heck, you know, >> and that comes through clearly. So then the question becomes, >> is it really the right thing to do now to be pushing so hard for abortion being banned in a world where women don't have this informed consent? They're not aware of what they're doing. If what you're saying is true, >> I see you're saying women are smart. Men are smart. like we are way more capable than I think sometimes we give ourselves, you know, credit for. It's the tyranny of low expectations, right?
If you expect people to to be stupid and do dumb things, then why would they not be stupid and not do dumb things? Like, I think we can elevate the standard for all of us in a way that actually appreciates our human frailty and where we've come from, but helps us grow and become who we're meant to be. And I think that absolutely we are ripe, we could ban abortion tomorrow. It would throw a lot of people into a tizzy of like, "Oh my gosh, wait, now if I have sex and I get pregnant, I can't have an abortion. I have to, you know, I'd have to be breaking the law." I think it would change sexual dynamics and activity dramatically in a good way.
There'd be far less hookup sex. There'd be far less sex with partners that you don't actually respect and want to build a family with because now when you're going into sex, you're thinking, "Oh my gosh, this might be a co-parent with me." Right? And by the way, that's good.
You know, you should go into sex thinking this is my co-parent potentially. And that's by the way called marriage, which is why I'm a big proponent of sex belongs in marriage because sex does two things. Sex is incredibly bonding. It is it is the most intimate thing you can do with another person in my view. And it can create incredible pleasure and hormones that you know create that pleasure and that's amazing and you bond with that person and then sex can be procreative. it can bring life into the world and that's also bonding because now you have another person that you are the parent of alongside this other man or woman, right? And that you're stuck with them for life in that sense. And so because that's how sex is designed, that's the order of sex. Marriage is designed for that, those two things, lifelong love, affection, loyalty, dedication, and let's build a family together and have a family project. So it's almost like sex is sex should be marriage and marriage should be sex. They should be seen. we should put them back together again, recouple them. They were decoupled because of sexual revolutionaries in the 1960s and 70s who were like, la, let's do whatever we want and what we let's just go with our emotions and what we feel like, our lusts, our urges, and we don't like moral orders, you know, we don't like traditions that especially not these ones. So now we're going to be empowered and free by just kind of doing whatever we want sexually. And that has led to tremendous sexual chaos. Divorce rates skyrocketed. Porn use and sexual addiction skyrocketed. Mental illness is at an all-time high and suicidality. I think that's linked. Certainly abortion has skyrocketed and sexually transmitted infection has skyrocketed. Like you just get chaos. We have chaos today. And that's why your average person is like, "What the heck? If I get sex, I get pregnant. It's not fair." But we can undo that if we just start living in reality again. Like, "No, sex is sacred.
It has consequences. and let's put it back where it belongs, which is marriage.
>> Jo's, really interesting, and I promise this isn't countering what you're saying. No, please go.
>> Have you seen that divorce rates have decreased the last few years?
>> They are decreasing a little bit. Yeah.
But less people are getting married or the people that are marrying are more serious about what marriage means, which is a good thing. I would say >> this is why so few people are getting married now that the divorces are going down because the only people still getting married are the ones that were really super hardcore, which is a shame to see. But cohabitation's still happening. And the the ch the tricky thing with cohabitation is you're kind of like playing at marriage, but you're not all in.
>> And you can be cohabiting and get pregnant and have an abortion. You can be cohabiting and then break up and it's devastating. Like it the problem is like, yeah, divorce might be down a bit because people more serious about marriage or getting married as opposed to not. But if people are still cohabitating, you're still experiencing a lot of the societal consequences even if they're not technically getting divorced when they break up.
>> Yeah. I feel a bit of a rough intuition when someone calls themselves a co-parent. I'm like, >> that's not ideal, you know? That's not ideal. And I wouldn't argue against monogamy being good for Western civilization. You see the way it's played out. It's actually, if you're even looking crudely at mating dynamics, too. It's meant that there aren't these powerful men at the top with multiple wives. It leaves more people in the mating pool to have loving relationships, especially low value men.
And that avoids crime rates, rape, murder. Whereas before, what would happen is those low mate value men, which is quite quite a horrible term to use, but if we're speaking on evolutionary psychological terms here, they would be the ones that would go off and pillage and be Vikings or go to war and be expendable. So monogamy definitely good for stability. women's safety, kids safety, reducing crime rates. Um there's often a lot of cope that gets thrown around by these alphas who are like, "Yeah, well, you know, I'm just not wired that way to have one wife." And >> so iconic your mini debate within the Whatever podcast with Justin Waller that's like imprinted in my memory. I mean, could you talk to me a little bit about that for people at home? I think it's a super great example.
Yeah, I mean, God bless him. I I wish the best for him, but I think the path he's on is not going to bring him joy or freedom. And it's the path of like, yeah, I'm kind of going to play out polygamy because I can, because I'm high status. But I think a woman of I think what women really admire and desire is a man that's in full command of himself.
And you know, I think about my husband and he's loyal to me and I'm loyal to him. But when I, you know, met him and fell in love with him and everything else, this was a man in full command of himself. He was not looking at pornography. He was not sleeping around.
He didn't need multiple women or whatever. He was killing it in his career. He was strong. He was, you know, loving other people. His life was not about himself. And his selfish ambition is about I want to serve other people. I want to do well for my family, care for other people. And that's extremely attractive to a woman because it signals safety. It signals uh reliability. And it signals loyalty. And I think that's what women desire. And so you can be a man playing at like I'm going to be a man with all these ladies or whatever, but is she loyal to you because she loves you and she really um respects you or is she loyal to you because you're giving her something and it's a transaction? M >> and I think unfortunately, you know, the gentleman you mentioned on from the whatever podcast when I was talking to him and other guys, like I'm not in, you know, I don't I'm not privy to their relationships, but you know, he made it sound like these women were with him because he had money and he was successful. And it's like if the if your measure of value is your money, you're not loved for you. You're loved for your money. And a woman that is, you know, going to be a ride-or- die wife is going to love you for you, not for what you can give her, but for who you are and the kind of virtues that you have developed and worked hard at. And that includes self-control and self-comm.
>> Like a rose, there's we've gone in all different directions. I think it's been super interesting. My worldviews definitely have been unearthed and seem very messy and I'm I'm working on them and I appreciate you helping me to work on them.
>> We've ran out of time but in the next 60 seconds what do you feel we missed?
>> Oh man. Uh great job with the interview.
It was fun to talk about worldview. Um, I mean, I think we covered a lot and, you know, people can learn more about the pro-life case and kind of look at our arguments for pro-choice questions that people have and then the pro-life response that's at liveaction.org/prolife replies. And then I have a podcast where I talk about worldview stuff all day long as well. But, um, but no, it was awesome. Thank you, Elliot. Super fun.
>> Thanks for your work as well. even disagreeing on a bunch of stuff. I think it's so important and at the core of everything, I I love where your heart is as much as I can believe in a heart.
So, thank you for your work. I'm I'm a big fan and and I expose myself to it as much as possible.
>> I'll say one other quick thing. Let yourself fall in love. You mentioned that not not so much with a woman, but with truth and with beauty because that might be your path to God in the end because you're very smart. You're like reasoning and that's good, but look for the most beautiful things in the world and see what they point towards.
>> L Rose, >> thank you Elliot.
>> Make sure to leave a like and subscribe.
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