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Roe v Wade Overturned - Twitter Reactions || SLP416 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 416 of the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Thomas Thorogood, and today Paul and Glenn are having a discussion about the Twitter response to Roe versus Wade and the overturning of that.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So hope you find the episode helpful and I will catch you at the end.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, hello and welcome to the Speakeasy.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: My name is Paul Feezy, and today I'm joined by I'm Glenn Scrivener.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Paul.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, Glenn.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: You're right.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, doing very well, thank you.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: Good.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a few weeks.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: It has been for the for this combo.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: I keep mixing it up.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, whether people are away on work things or COVID has swept in and taken us out of the loop.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: We've been uh sort of divided a little bit the last few weeks, haven't we?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Nate Morganlock is not with us.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: He's been up north preaching in uh West Bromwich, and uh he'll be back this week.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: But uh yeah, hopefully joining us again next week.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Great.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so you might have seen the on the title that we're talking about the uh Roe vs.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Wade decision uh that's been made, come out of the Supreme Court was it uh week last Friday, I think it was the day 24th.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: It'd been rumoured before.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: We'd already done a discussion previously on the channel with Debbie Mountford, who is a pro-life advocate, and she talked a bit about Roe vs.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: Wade to do go back and check that out.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um but it that was kind of when it was rumoured, now it's kind of come through, and we're thinking a bit about the Twitter storm that ensued afterwards because um I don't know if any of you guys are on Twitter, but I'm on Twitter, and I would say that last weekend was probably the worst I've ever seen Twitter.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, yeah.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: Or at least in my memory.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: It was a pretty horrible place to be um altogether.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, which it can be at the best of times.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a good day.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: But then throw in throw in the topic of abortion, and uh yeah, you get all sorts of accusations hurled.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing that I've really noticed, and perhaps it will come out as we sort of respond to some of the the tweet storms, is this um pretense that I know your motivations, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Whatever position you take, I know why you take it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's because you're a fundamentally evil human being, yeah.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and and the projection of the the attribution of motive to your interlocutor, shall we call them.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the the person on the other side is just yeah and that can be on both sides.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: So it doesn't just have to be one side or the other doing that.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: It is both sides that will assume the worst.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I think what we'll see is is even within the pro-life community, the attribution of motives, um, like what one side that's like I want to abolish um abortion as of yesterday, and the more gradualist kind of side, there's the attribution of motives across those lines as well.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I think what we're seeing is is a real revelation of fault lines that exist, not just between pro-choice and pro-life.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: But now that Roe's been overturned, I think it will uncover a whole bunch of fault lines uh among Christians and among the pro-life community as well.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe we could do better um at being charitable in our own discourse with one another.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I thought one of the first things we could do would be actually have a look at a Twitter dialogue between myself and an atheist ProChoicer, um, which actually kind of went okay in the end.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: I know, and it's and it's sort of to give us a vision for sure.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be a dumpster fire, like it it literally doesn't.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and large largely this went well because of um the atheist on the other side, um Steve uh Zara.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: And uh this is going back to 2014, and this was back in the days when tweets had to be 140 characters as opposed to 280 characters, so it was even more brief, and therefore there's even more of a you know opportunity for it to be misunderstood or new lack nuance.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: And here's the worst thing about it.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: I was chiming in on somebody else's discussion on Twitter.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like it was a recipe for failure, and uh there was a there was a guy called Ian Somerville, who's a Christian, who is saying, I understand that there's a gradual change in human beings as they develop from embryonic form.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: He said, But there must be a point at which a group of cells becomes a you.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: And Steve Zara, who's the guy who I uh converse with uh on this thread, he says, Well, one of those stages is the age when memories start to be made.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: So Steve Zara kind of making a case for um, you know, when does a you become a you?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, Well, one of the stages is when memories start to be made, which is quite late in the in the in the game.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the truly adult brain isn't present until at least the mid-twenties.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so it's at this point that Glenn decides to chime in, and you think, oh, this is this is all gonna go terribly.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I say, but it's not that your right to life is in question until your late 20s, right?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: So when are you you?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh to which he said, There's a continuous chains, a chain of causality that turns a potential person into an actual one.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: I say, two-year-old me is a potential thirty-six-year-old me.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: I guess that was back when I was thirty-six.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, good days.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: Both have a right to life.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: The pro-life position consistently applies that.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, to which uh he says, I have a lot of difficulty with ideas of potential people.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't make clear philosophical sense.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I agree.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Discontinuity is called for at points.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Discontinuity is like an on or off switch, as I uh as I talk about, as opposed to a dimmer switch.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: I said, that's why pro-lifers just deal with people.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, I don't accept that, because we all agree that there is a point where a person isn't there.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: I said, yes, that's the discontinuity.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: There's an on or off switch, not a dimmer.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: When we're on, we have every right to life and protection.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: He says, no, scientifically we know it's not on or off.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: And we know conception really isn't that time.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: Far from it.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: I say, why not?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: The whole genome is fixed and in place, for example.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: He says, the whole genome is fixed and in place in every cell of your body, apart from blood cells.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: But if someone takes a skin cell sample and intends to clone you from one such cell, is that cell a person?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, that's good question.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes in Twitter you learn stuff, and so after some furious googling behind the scenes, I come back and I say, a zygote is different, egg and sperm are combined and already growing dividing from that first moment.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: He says, That's not true.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: Zygote formation is complex.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: There is no first moment, there is no single cell that is the first.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: I say, and then he says, um, there is no clear on switch during the process of conception.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Here's me googling furiously as well.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: I says, there well, there is surely a moment when the genetic information of father and mother is not combined, and a moment when it is.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then he says, uh, and then I say, plus uh the doctrine of carefulness would say, if you're not sure it's not a human, don't shoot.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: He says, you would shoot a skin cell, I would shoot a blastocyst, a few hundred cells.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: There isn't even a single brain cell there.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um then he says, you should be telling me when that single moment is, if you're basing your on-off position on when it is.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: I said, with a bit of research, I could probably give it plus or minus an hour.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: In this thread, you've gone plus or minus 25 years.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then he says, that's entirely fair.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Smiley face.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the whole thing ends.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: So uh with that stops being fired.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's the the judicious, you know, insertion of a smiley face, and all is fine.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: And there we go.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: We've got it.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: But that that we survived.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: Probably fair to say that that is it that's not sort of indicative of normal Twitter discourse in my experience.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, the fact that that went well was largely down to Steve being a great guy, um, as opposed to me like inserting myself in someone else's Twitter like spat.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: It should have gone so terribly wrong.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: But just yeah, just to say that sometimes Twitter is not a dumpster fire.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I I it was clarif clarifying for me.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: I hadn't really thought through the whole cloning of skin cell thing.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and he was pushed to think, oh, you know, I have gone plus or minus 25 years on when a person uh is really a person.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it's it's a pretty big shift there.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's quite a big shift, but um but that goes to show, yeah.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the reasons why I wanted to go to that first was just to orient the discussion about pro-life.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Don't know if you clicked on this video.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: As as Christians debate this, really, for us, it's not about controlling a woman's body, it's it's not about you know punishing people for promiscuity or anything like that.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's simply about what is the status of the unborn unborn person.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: And if that person is a person, yeah, then everything else falls out of it.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: But um, yeah, absolutely.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's our position.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um so when we're talking about abortion, then in some sense I've thought that we are by the time you end up talking about abortion, you're almost slightly too far along the path of the discussion anyway, and probably the discussion should have been being had slightly earlier.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I mean there's a bigger conversation I suppose to be had about what the part the sexual revolution has played in this um and the way that's sort of um downgraded sex in the eyes of society, um, or you know, it it it kind of both ways, hasn't it?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: That sex has been elevated to this incredible place where it's this human right almost.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: Even though no one would, you know, obviously it's not a a right, but um but it's as the kind of be all and end all for many people.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um but yet sex is also cheap because it's just a physical thing you do.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, as long as you're safe and consensual, it's all good.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: And actually here we are reaping the kind of not reaping the rewards, but reaping the consequences of that kind of revolution.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's all part of the sexual revolution, actually.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: And and all sorts of technology kind of gave rise to the sexual revolution, including contraception.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: But contraception, ironically, instead of reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, which is what you would think that the the pill would do, that's kind of what it's intended to do, it has massively exploded the number of unwanted pregnancies because it's massively exploded the amount of promiscuous sex, and and therefore abortion has come along as a backstop for contraception.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And some of some of the most prominent abortion providers will say that.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so it is a conversation that exists within a broader conversation about about sex and life.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I thought this tweet um from a couple of years ago really brought that home to me.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: It it was um it was uh brought to my attention by Louise Perry, and we've got on the channel a discussion with Louise Perry coming up soon.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh she's written a book uh called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, and um she's uh a writer for The New Statesman, but she she begins uh her um book with this poem.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's a it's a Twitter poem uh called Conversation with an Archaeologist.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: He said they'd found a brothel on the dig he did last night.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: I asked him how they know.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: He sighed.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: A pit of babies' bones.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: A pit of newborn babies' bones was how to spot a brothel.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Which is part poem, part gut punch, really.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Just absolutely stunning.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: And in the first centuries uh AD, and before that, um really brothels were a massive part of the economy and part of the moral economy.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um there are 25 different Latin words for prostitute in uh in in Latin.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: And and th there were state-sponsored brothels.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: The state thought this was a good thing, just let let the men sow their wild oats.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: And of course that means you need to go out and invade and enslave whole groups of people and press them into the sex trade.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then what happens after sex?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Babies.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so what happens with such licentiousness around sex?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: You need lots of uh babies to be to be discarded, infanticide, buried.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: And how do you spot where a brothel is if you're an archaeologist?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: You you spot where the where the babies are buried.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: The first century, therefore, when when Jesus comes and applies the truths of the Old Testament scriptures and and universalizes them to Jew and Gentile, suddenly you get this this first century sexual revolution in which um men are told to be as chaste as women always have been.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: And no, you can't go to the brothel, and um no, you can't use slaves for sex or concubines.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's one man, one one, one man, one woman for life.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that sexual revolution has absolutely built the modern world in amazing ways.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: The sexual revolution of the 1960s kind of unpicks that.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: And therefore, what do we get again?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: We get abortions, but the abortion issue is is tied, you know, it's it goes hand in hand, really, with uh with the sexual revolution.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: And what we've noticed in the Twitter conversations is the way in which people are noticing that abortion goes together with our sex lives.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and that's what many of these many of these tweets kind of reveal.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so the you've you've highlighted a tweet here, I think it's from Reddit, isn't it?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, somebody's screenshot it and from Reddit and put it on Twitter.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: So the actual tweet here is kind of posted this thing and they say, Well, this is how relationships are meant to be.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: But the picture says, uh, my male twenty-five fiance, female twenty-five, has enforced a sex ban until we're married due to Roe vs.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Wade being overturned.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, oh, there's like a connection there between sex and babies.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: And actually, like the Twitter comment to say, Well they go, Well, that's how it's meant to be.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: And there has been some responses to it going, Well, we should let's put in a place a sex ban.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_03: This is you know, if 'cause if men are trying to punish women, we will punish men by withholding sex.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's something to misread the situation because I think many people are going, well, that's fine.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: The terms are acceptable.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's okay.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, maybe maybe there because there is this link between sex and babies, maybe sex ought to be taken more seriously.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: It might maybe we shouldn't just throw it around casually.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: We should realise the consequences it has and what that means for us if we engage in it.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: And therefore, we should be a bit more careful in how we indulge in it.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a lot more careful.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: And because what does the sexual revolution do?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: It it unpicks what has been held together by the by the first century sexual revolution, which is that you know, marriage has been held together by like strong marriage laws, and then there was easy easy divorce, and then marriage is sort of meant to lead to conception, but the pill comes and stops that, and conception is meant to lead to like having a baby, but abortion gets in the way of that, and we've just kind of unpicked it all.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it's absolutely true that to um to tighten up on abortion again means to tighten up on the whole thing again.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it totally does.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the other things it means tightening up on is a man's responsibility to a woman.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because marriage is totally what what kind of you know ties a man to his woman and to the the fruits of the sexual relationship that he wants to have.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, the the this tweet about a personal responsibility act um was uh was really well taken.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Some somebody said overturning Roe requires another law to be passed that ensures men bear equal responsibility for pregnancies.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: Call it the Personal Responsibility Act.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: Using DNA as verification, paternity for every embryo should be established, and the male responsible obliged by law to support the woman and the child through the child's majority, including uh the medical costs, living costs, education, all the costs a father normally assumes for his child.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: In addition, the child should have a full share of the father's estate if and when the father dies.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: If women cannot decide whether or not to carry a child, fathers should not be able to decide whether or not to support the woman and the child.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's about time men assumed responsibility for the consequences of their pleasure.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: That was a kind of a letter to the editor um in a newspaper.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Tweeted out there, and again, your terms are acceptable.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um Yeah, yeah.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: The that change again, so some people could read that and go, Well, that that's an there's like an absurdity there that's trying to be highlighted.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure that's actually what Robert himself is trying to do necessarily, but um the reality is that those who are kind of may uh often maybe pro-life would kind of go, Yeah, that's fine.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we'd love to see that.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: The y what you're saying is, wouldn't it be great if we placed an emphasis on the family again?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so that people realize, you know, that we said children ought to be in an ideal world, raised in a family with a mother and a father.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: We know that's not always the idea you know, that's not always what happens in reality, but the ideal would be you know, and I think a lot of research probably shows that you know children raised in those kind of environments uh often uh do better generally in life.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh there are lots of kind of negatives for having uh a parent figure missing.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um but uh I think for those of us who are pro-life, we kind of go, Yeah, well, that's great, let's put more emphasis on that.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: Let's let's say yes, men ought to be responsible.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, and some people might say, Well, people are not gonna have sex with each other if they this is gonna be the case.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: You go, yeah, well, all right then.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, don't have sex with someone unless you really you think you're not ready for this.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, like there is a consequence, yeah.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if you don't think you're ready for it, don't don't do it.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um I mean Dave Dave Chappelle a few years ago did a routine.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he came out and he said, Um, I'm completely pro choice and I believe in a woman's right to choose.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: Having said that, he says, if a woman is able to have an abortion, then I believe in every man's right to abandon that child.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, my wallet, my choice.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then like, and his punchline to the whole thing is if you can abort it, I can abandon it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: And like like dreadful, what he's talking about.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like dreadful, but uh like me meaningfully so, in that he's drawing attention to the double standards, and it and it's just like, yeah, men and women ought to be in on this thing together.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: And we ought never to be hurt to say women must be held to having the child, and the man gets off scot-free.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely not.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the church really needs to rise up and and tell men to take responsibility, and you know, you are you are connected to that woman, you are connected to whatever happens reproductively with that woman.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a thing called marriage, and it's it's been it's been great.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: If only there was some arrangement that could be made, even in law that might bind you to the other person and the responsibilities that come with it.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: So dear me.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: We've thought of this, but yeah.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: What's next?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: What what what next are we seeing on Twitter?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so you saw a tweet that talked about someone was saying how abortion had saved their lives.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Glennon Doyle, uh uh, an author in the US, uh, she said the abortion Craig and I had 22 years ago allowed us the time to become sober and then to create careers and a healthy family.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Our abortion saved our lives.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's a couple of things to draw attention to there.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we'll think in a second about the fact that she says our abortion, which is not the usual way of referring to things.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: But also there's the whole yeah, uh my abortion helped me, you know, uh in my career.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: So Stevie Nicks from uh Fleetwood Mac, um she said in a uh in an interview probably a year or two ago that there would be no Fleetwood Mac without abortion.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um because it was a case of either terminate the the child or get the recording contract, and she plumped for the contract, and or Michelle Williams, um Golden Globe winner receiving the the trophy said, Well, I'm you know it's my my my right to choose has got me where I where I am.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know, it's it's it's it's kind of a it's a bellwether for what we what we really value, isn't it?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so Glenn and Doyle, she wouldn't be the writer she is, Michelle Williams, she wouldn't be the actress she is, Stevie Nix, she wouldn't be the singer she is without abortion.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I I I always flinch when pro-lifers draw the comparison to like child sacrifice, you know, it's like with Molech in the Old Testament.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: They used to sacrifice children to their gods in the Old Testament, and we're doing it again today.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: But when I when I hear stuff like this, there is there is a sacrifice of children being made for the sake of a golden thing.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: To be an idol.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, what what is what is going on, it's it's the convenience of abortion that's kind of um that's being chosen over the lives of the most vulnerable in society.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not I guess it's the that kind of argument is not something you would make with a child who was in who who had been born.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: You wouldn't say, Well, I realised when my child was two that I was never gonna get my golden globe with this kid in my life.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I just yeah, killed it, you know, or shipped it off somewhere.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean there are women and there are there are some women who I guess have been absent parents in order to pursue their career.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: Far more men have been absent fathers in order to pursue their career.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully there's a stigma about that.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: There's probably not as much of a stigma as there needs to be, because that's that's appalling to abandon your children for the sake of the career.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I I just wonder why you know abandoning a living child has some level of stigma attached to it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: But actually killing a child in a womb in some circles is like to be celebrated.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Or well done for pursuing your career instead.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: That was a brave choice.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: You wouldn't say it's a brave choice to abandon a child for the sake of your career, hopefully.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, double standard.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: But the other the other thing about this tweet is um the whole our abortion saved our lives um kind of kind of thing.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the fact that she was saying together with her husband they had had this abortion together.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: And lots of people online have been sort of um noticing that um yeah, men should talk about abortion more, and men men should sort of own the fact that they're they are one half of you know the child that that that is aborted.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um in in response to Glenn and Doyle's tweet, somebody said a good thing would be for men to also start speaking up about how many abortions they have had and how their lives would have changed irrevocably if they hadn't had that choice and free will as an option available to them and that partner.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: We are in this together, stand with us.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I I just find there's a there's a double irony with that, that men should um men should suddenly step up and talk about their abortions too.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um one of one of the ironies is it reveals that abortion primarily serves serves male interests because it props up the sexual revolution, in which men can have sex consequence-free and and get away with it a lot more, and and can abandon their children and and and run away from it, and maybe pay for the woman to have the abortion and then get off scot-free, as it were.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so like it they're not in it together.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: And abortion allows a man not to be in it together with his partner, but then legislatively, um abortion is and and sort of the rhetoric that's come around abortion in the 60s and 70s developed as it's just between a woman and her physician, just between a woman and her doctor, such that um even if uh a wife is aborting the child that she has with her husband, the husband does not have a say in that legally.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: Legally.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so to to say that, oh, abortion is we're all in it together, you're like, well, no, you you've enabled the man to get off scot-free, and legislatively you've you've kept the man out of the decision because it's just a decision between the wife and and between the woman and her doctor.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh if you if you want people to be in on marriage or children or anything like that, then abortion is not your friend.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's a very good reason why men don't talk about our abortions.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: There there are multiple reasons, and abortion doesn't just kill the unborn child, it it kills relationships, you know?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: And and I mean it's it's just stunning that that gets inserted into a marriage.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh only about 15% of abortions are the result of children born in in or children conceived in marriage, fifty about fifteen percent in the States, um, but still, it's that's still a high number of marriages into which these abortion laws are inserted and into which the man doesn't have a say.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: So to say that men and women are in in this together, well, if you really believe that, you you might want to see the the undoing of Roe vs.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: Wade.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: This conversation went out live on our YouTube channel.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can watch it and all of our other conversations at youtube.com forward slash speaklifemedia.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're on the other social media platforms, just search for Speak Life UK.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: That will keep you posted.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And why not join us when we next go live?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can also email comments and questions to info at speaklife.org.uk.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: SpeakLife is supported entirely by the generosity of people like you, especially through your prayers.
• 26:44
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• 26:53
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• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: Let's get back to the podcast.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: One of the other things then that uh we've seen out of this with Roe versus Wade coming through, and it's meant that there's been a number of sort of laws, the trigger laws that have been passed in some states where abortion would have become sort of illegal overnight.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: There are other states where it may come in in the next few months as things go through.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: But some of the big corporations sort of online have been saying that you know, if you're in a particular state where this happens, um, we'll kind of pay for you to go out and have all your care.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I think uh what we've got here, major entertainment companies, Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Netflix, and tech giants, Google, Apple and Microsoft now often now offer abortion benefits money to travel for elective abortions.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: So effectively saying, you know, we will if you're a member of a staff and you want an abortion, you're in a state where you can't have an abortion, we'll pay for you to go and have all your expenses paid to do that.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: Of course they will.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: Of course they will, because the what they don't want to do is pay for maternity leave.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what's more expensive?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, maternity leave is much more expensive.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like, it's it's it's expensive to have kids, you know, and it's expensive to corporations to have kids.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: And they they would rather the employees were gender-neutral robots, frankly, who can just churn out the work.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it's very inconvenient to the workplace to have children get in the way, and it's expensive to have children get in the way.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so what I notice is that Disney and Warner Brothers and Netflix and they're gonna pay to have abortions, they're not gonna pay for the women to have the babies, right?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: And again, it makes you see whose interests does abortion serve.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: It serves male interests and it serves corporate interests.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's not the friend, it's really not the friend of women, which is with I mean it's slightly ironic as well that I imagine there'd be many people who would be pro-choice who would have been who would have argued for things like um maternity leave for women and things like that.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: But now as soon as this has come through, their argument is that they're kind of actually saying they're they're lauding companies for paying for abortions rather than pushing those companies to be the company that does the maternity leave and say, you know, what would have been can can you imagine if Disney had said instead, if you find yourself in a state where this happens, we're actually going to bring in maternity leave for all women, you know, not just in the states that not just in the states where this is illegal, but in all things, we're just gonna make it you know, you go, okay, that's great.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: Surely that's what you'd want.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's what you'd push for is your you'd want your company to have.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: Soup it up so it was the best, absolutely the best for others.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: And you would applaud and and you can see what and you know, people would applaud that.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: That would be something that would be applauded, but yet what people are applauding is that they're saying, No, we're not gonna do that, but we'll pay for you to have the abortion instead.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: So and then you come back to work on the next week.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: So what are we prioritizing?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: We're prioritizing the career, not not just of the actresses and the singers and the you know, the novelists that we've just spoken about, but just regular employees.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and again, sacrificing our children for what?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for you know, sex, money, and power.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, we're we're still sacrificing our children for our gods.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: Completely.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: And then we saw a tweet that was saying, Imagine if all the people promising to help women get abortions were instead promising to do whatever it takes to help them be a mother, and that's kind of what we were touching on there, wasn't it?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_03: That yeah, yeah.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know there seems to be a l a lot being said at the moment about you know, we will go to whatever extent is needed to help you get that abortion, you know, for you.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um well that why not pour that energy into saying we will go to any extent to help you have this child now that you are having a child.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: Which which is you know hopefully what a fully orbed pro-life position is all about.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's ironic that that is the that's the thing that's thrown at pro-lifers, that you they would say you don't do that.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, um but yet at the moment what are people thro what are the pro choices throwing their weight into?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: Not into saying, well, we'll help these mums who are having babies, they're throwing their weight into saying we'll try and help you get more abortions if we can.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: So even they're not really they I mean they you know they're not for helping the mothers.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Even though they're accusing pro-lifers of not helping mothers either.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: So they're not they're not into helping mothers, they're they're into helping women.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and and yeah, there's a there's a massive difference in that, isn't it?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: Well, what is a woman, Glenn?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: Oh well yeah.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's another episode.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: Another week.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's another episode.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: Not that I don't know the answer.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um not a geneticist, I'm not a biologist.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, is the Supreme Court judge?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, anyway, that's another episode.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: When Christians um do step up, they're they're often accused of of you know not being sufficiently pro-life, they're just pro-baby, right?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so you know, a lot of Christians pushing back against that.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: The church has a long 2,000-year history of engaging justice for human flourishing and God's glory, because that is the Lord's heartbeat.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Christians in foster care, Christians in adoption, um it is massive.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: And and this um these these stats I've found very helpful just in in little conversations online.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, research evidences that Americans who identify as Christians are two to three times more likely to adopt.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they will volunteer uh for for charities, uh, about 67% um uh at a 67% higher rate uh compared to those self-identifying as secular progressive or liberals.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um they will give to charitable causes uh at a rate of 91% compared to 66% uh of those who identify as secular progressive or liberals.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and and therefore the the the old um canard that's that's sort of thrown at Christians that that they are simply pro-baby and not pro-life is not true.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um who who really cares, who really gives?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um pro-lifers do on average invest such such that there are almost three times as many um pregnancy crisis centers, yeah.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: Crisis pregnancy centers um in the US than there are um Planned Parenthood centers.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: I mean I think it's become a it's just a trope of the conversation for someone to say, oh well, you know, you don't really care about these people.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: But that that's not what the facts show.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: The actual facts, as we've seen, the statistics show you, no, actually, this is what people are doing, but it's it's not very convenient to your narrative to accept those facts.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's much easier to kind of well, I I imagine a lot of people just aren't aware of it because they've already assumed that their part of the narrative is true.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: And also when people are confronted with things like that, they just dismiss it.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, oh yeah, well, you know, whatever.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, well, at this case, at this point, you're not really interested in you're not interested in the facts, you're not interested in having an honest discussion about this.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um you're not interested really in in the helping of people.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: You're just using this to throw mud at the other side.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: And to tell a story, a compelling story.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, social media is just a world of compelling stories that are told and the stuff the figures don't really matter.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like one one of the um tweets I was gonna share was just one woman saying, aged 18, she got pregnant, she had the baby like all the pro-lifers wanted her to, but then she turned around and she was like, Are you gonna help me now that I've got this newborn?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I got no help whatsoever.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so she told this story about hypocritical Christians who are, you know, they they're just pro-baby, they're not pro-life, and they weren't there to help her.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I I guess there's two lines of response to her.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, one one is um look at the statistics.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really sorry that that happened in your kind of case.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: In your case, but your pro-life friends are better at looking at, you know, are better at giving towards these sorts of sorts of causes than your pro-choice friends.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's a fact.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's just a fact.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sorry it wasn't the case in your circumstance.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: But then the second thing is your pro-life friends persuaded you to have a baby.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: Do you regret that?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because you did not seem to regret that.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: It was really difficult.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: But it was also the most meaningful thing she did in her life.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: And again, the the answer to if if you if the situation, if it were the case that there was no help for any mothers, the answer to that should be let us work out how we can better help.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: Rather than the answer being we need to work out how we can get more abortions, therefore.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: And particularly, you know, that it would seem strange that that lady would be arguing that way because you know, like I say, she she seemed from her tweets to have been very happy that she had this child.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, the solution for her would not have been, well, you should have just had the abortion then.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and I don't think she'd be arguing that.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's so it's it seems a strange line she was going down to suggest that Roe vs.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: Way was bad because of that.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it's similar to the Washington Post article that was about it's about three weeks old now, in which um a Texas woman had twins, and because of the heartbeat lore that came in in Texas, she had to have the twins when ordinarily she would have wanted an abortion.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it was an article about how difficult it was to have those twins as opposed to pursue the desires that she had, you know, if she if she wasn't pregnant.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it was almost a pro-life article in the way that it came across, because though life was made inordinately more difficult because of twins.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, my goodness, a young, a young mum, um, dad, dad not around, she has to take care of twins.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how she did it, but it was life-affirming in in in the richest, most profound kind of sense.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and and again, have we made a god and an idol out of convenience?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that sh you know, surely if it's really hard, it can't be the right thing to do.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, that's that's just kind of our our kind of Epicurean, hedonistic, expressive individualism coming through.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, and kids kids dissuade you of those notions.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess you know, there's been also sort of an unfair portrayal of pro-life people, you know, and particularly when you had these things thrown at you about you know, people saying you're just pro-baby, you don't care about people afterwards.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, why aren't you out adopting all these kids and stuff?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I mean, there's been a number of tweets kind of showing pictures of people with signs saying we'll adopt your baby, um Mark Hamill, um Luke Skywalk.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: Skywalk himself put up We Will Adopt Your Baby, he's got a picture of the Joker with Harley Quinn there.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it's just you know, this sort of negative portrayal, therefore, of those who are actually seeking to adopt.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of like again, there's this why don't you know, why don't you adopt all these babies and step up?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: Alright, we'll adopt your baby.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_03: God, look at these creepy weirdos wanting to take your baby away, you know.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: Would you give it to them?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: And and it happens with the with the crisis pregnancy centres as well.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like, you're just pro-baby, you're not pro-life, and you point to all that that Christians are doing in order to adopt and in order to give mothers you know the the best chance of of looking after their children.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: And and then they firebomb the crisis pregnancy centers, or just say it's a cynical ploy by pro-life, as they just like uh man, at some point just just admit you just find it more convenient to kill the unborn.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: There's been a lot of misinformation as well going round, so in the wake of it sort of saying that well, actually, this is gonna have a massive effect on the health of women.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: So Halle Berry, uh the kind of Hollywood actress, tweeted this image where she said uh it said the treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is abortion, the treatment for a septic uterus is abortion, the treatment for a miscarriage that your body won't release is abortion.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: If you can't get those abortions, you die.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: You die.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, she was kind of very outraged at this was happening there, but of course, the reality is that in in I think every state there are exceptions for the the uh health of the mother, and no pro-lifer worth their salt would ever be advocating for something that would allow the death of both the mother and the child, yeah.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: They would always be looking to seek and save lives.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: So there have always been provisions for miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies and things like that.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um and even in the states that had those trigger laws um where that has changed overnight, those provisions are still there.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: So and it's I mean it is indeed the case that if if if women would die uh because of an ectopic pregnancy, then that's dreadful.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: And if the laws have been so constructed that that is allowed to happen, then we must repeal those laws or or change those laws as soon as possible, and you know what a what a hellish idea.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: But some people might say, well, it's very vague, so you could end up having a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy and being prosecuted.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: And you say, okay, then well let's that does need to change.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: That law does need to change in order to be you know made much more clear.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: So and then you say, Well, if we can change the law, so that it's very clear that these are exceptions, are you happy?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: And my suspicion is the answer is no, because it's never it's not really about those things.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, often those things are thrown up as a bit of a smoke screen.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, oh, here's the miscarriages, the ectopic pregnancies.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well let's say we get abortions outlawed in all cases except for those.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: Are we happy?
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well, it's not really about those things then for you, is it?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: There is something else going on.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I often think this is a bit of a a dishonest.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well, given that also so many people have tweeted these things.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_03: I've seen hundreds of uh tweets with information like that.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh that was retweeted like tens of thousands of times.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, they're not based in fact.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: They're they're just I mean, just nonsense.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_03: But of course, you see something on your timeline that fits your narrative, I don't need to research it because it backs up what I think, so I can hit retweet straight away.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um and if there's anything that goes against it, I can just ignore it.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's it's important to respond to those things in the in the right way, because for every one Halle Berry, there there's like a hundred other women who are just generally Oh, is that the case?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and if we're callously sort of saying, Ah, fake news, move on, um, it it certainly casts the the yeah, the wrong impression.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because yeah, I'm I would genuinely be horrified if an ectopic pregnancy led to a you know the death of a woman unnecessarily because of any any of these laws.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've yet to see evidence of that being the case, but you know, I think I think we should um be be live to the fact that that's a possibility and and be on the side of life.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: One of the other things I think you mentioned at the beginning was that um in all these discussions there seems to be a a claim from both sides to know the motivation of the other side.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so that like what people are saying who are pro-tri saying well pro-lifers just want to control women's bodies, um and um you know, if you are a kind of a kind of evangelical, you're just signaling to the church.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: Ah.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: On the on the inside of the church, in the in this sort of intramural discussions within the church about you know how we're gonna forward any kind of pro-life ends, yeah, there's all sorts of um attributing of of motives to other Christians um that I see as being very unhealthy.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um some people were saying, like, now okay, now the church needs to step up.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: You're right, right.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: On June 24th, everyone was saying, well, the law's in place.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now the church needs to step up and show that we are not just pro-baby but pro-life from womb to tomb and all that kind of stuff.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, which I I think, yeah, is is absolutely right.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and and you know, it it it's it's fair if if if it was the case that churches don't haven't been doing those things at all, which we've already established that they have, but you know, I can see in a on a local level there might be places that can do a lot better.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um it seems strange to me that the criticism is people saying, let's step up.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_03: We're going, oh you know, should have been doing that before.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_03: But like don't knock people for wanting to step up.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I think there's a time and a place to say to the church, we need to step up, because like uh like six hundred thousand babies in the US aborted every every year plus, no north of six hundred thousand.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if if let's say four hundred and fifty thousand um uh are not aborted, how are we gonna look after four hundred and fifty thousand extra babies a year?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Church, step up.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like, absolutely, Joseph.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: And and and I say that as somebody who l wants to expend himself and has expended himself and our family has expended themselves in in pro-life kind of causes.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I don't feel like, oh, how dare somebody tell me to step up?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Don't you realize what I've done?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna list what I've done, I'm not gonna put a monetary value on that.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: How dare you just tell me to step up?
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well I did see someone say, like, you know, I'm gonna be watching people's uh watching people's timelines now to see, you know, the evidence of what you're doing.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean it and again I mean that's such a weird thing.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like I mean I've got, you know, we give to charities, you know, we've regular direct debits.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: What I don't do is post every month on Twitter just to let you know my direct debit went out today.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: Just to let you know.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Just to tell Twitter that I'm definitely doing the right thing.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like, right.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_03: But that's because Twitter isn't the real world.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because we know that you know if it's not on Twitter, it didn't happen.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: But I I think what we're seeing is a whole bunch of people who are like they they don't like the rhetoric around church step up because they say church has already stepped up.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_02: And because I think there are multiple reasons why you might be pro-life.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: And one might be that you've got a an all-of-life concern from womb to tomb.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: Another is a more libertarian desire.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we've got laws on our statute books that are unjust, and they do not extend the right to life to every member of the human family.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's unjust, and and we are an unjust nation while ever we have those laws in our statute books.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: Correct that job done in every to a degree.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: If you're a pure libertarian, then yeah, yeah.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: You've corrected that job done, and then let the free market have its play and private charity do its thing.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: In terms of meeting whatever needs there are.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um so like um so this this person on Twitter said, Um, okay, but why are all the big Eva, big evangelical Christians on my timeline saying that I must now give women cash so they won't kill their kids?
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know that that's a kind of a a summary of what the I'm pro-life from womb to tomb people are saying.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's have a holistic kind of solution to um to this crisis.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: And this woman's like, Well, just don't kill your kids.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: Apart from that, I don't I don't owe you anything.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then a lot of people um on that side of the the more libertarian side, they kind of say, It would be like um with slavery coming along and and saying, you know, we're gonna abolish slavery and we're going to compensate all the slave traders.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but if you say that, you just tell me, you know, tell tell me you know nothing about abolition without telling me you know nothing about abolition.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: Because, rightly or wrongly, um, the only way they could get abolition through was by compensating the slave owners.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, compensating them to the tune of 17 billion pounds back in the day, which which um sorry, yeah.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was 40% of the UK exchequer, 40% of the of the annual budget.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_03: Didn't we only finish like repaying that money in like 2015 or something?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's it.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: It was called a connoissite.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: The only way they could get it through was actually by having a whole of life, you know, thing, and they paid slave traders, right?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: Radically controversial kind of thing.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: But that so like the the idea of helping women to raise their t kids is much less objectionable.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it can't it can't just be um that kind of thing.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: The other the other thing people objected to, I found, um, was language of uh like we don't want to make abortion illegal, we want to make it unimaginable.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: Or we want to make it unthinkable.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: Unthinkable.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: And people were kind of objecting to that.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: They were like, no, like we just if it's wrong, you just legislate against it and it's it's immoral, and so you make it illegal.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so um, you know, different people were saying this, for instance, um sin and violence will never be unimaginable, but violence towards fellow image bearers can be made illegal and punishable.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: So again, this is a pushback against the whole of life Christians who are just saying the law is one thing, we want to make it unthinkable.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I found a lot of a lot of um very conservative Christians um don't like that because they say, well, murder is never going to be unthinkable.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: But again, with my historical hat on, I say, well, there's all sorts of sins and crimes down through the years that were universal, um, but then became unthinkable because of the Christian Revolution.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like gladiatorial games have become unthinkable, like like not literally unthinkable, because we can write a script for Squid Game and we can show it on Netflix.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: But we'd be appalled if it was happening in society like day by day.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: It would be unimaginable to go to South Korea and discover that this was in fact a documentary.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, like that.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's not cool, guys.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: That that is unimaginable, right?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: But gladiatorial games were as bad, yeah, yeah.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um, and they have become unimaginable.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um trial by combat used to be a thing.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how do we how do we decide who's right?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: Fight, fight, fight.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's funny when Harry Hill says it.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but it's unimaginable if it were to be the case.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um pederasty used to be like uh this universal practice that was just celebrated, and now we imagine it now it is unimaginable.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: It it is child abuse, right?
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: Slavery was a human universal, and now it is unimaginable.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: Infanticide was a human universal, and now it is unimaginable.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: Abortion used to be unimaginable, it's become it's become very much imaginable, and we've we structured our societies around it.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: But but to to think that uh abortion can once again be unimaginable, just the way that the slave trade or gladiatorial games is exactly the kind of revolution in our moral intuitions that we should be aiming for.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: Not just the law thing.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely anyway.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's my final tirade because we've we've got to wrap up.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: We are, yeah.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's loads of things we could say, I guess, on this topic, and I'm sure lots of people, I'm sure we everyone knows him, I'm sure you've got lots of things to say.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure the comment section will have lots of things to say.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_03: So uh yeah, do let us know what you think about some of these things in the comments.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's uh you know, it's uh it's a heavy topic, but it is it is worth talking about, yeah.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um undoubtedly worth talking about, and there is uh there are a lot of kind of nuances to the discussions, and I'm sure people will have you know heard things today that might have made them think, but also things may have rubbed you the wrong way a little bit in some cases.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you know, do kind of the Debbie Mountford um interview would be great for people to find that one.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so do check that out.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's only a c a few weeks old, so you should be able to find it quite easily on the uh Speak Life um YouTube channel.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: But search for Speak Life UK and Debbie Mountford and you will definitely find it.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say you'll definitely find it.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_03: You'll definitely, you'll definitely find it.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_03: And uh Debbie uh is uh yes very good um there on this topic.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for chatting, Glenn.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Paul.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: Good stuff, um, thanks for joining us, everybody.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_03: We will catch you again next week.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_03: Take care of yourselves.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: God bless.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: Bye.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: Bye bye.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there we go.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions or comments, you can get in touch at info at speaklife.org.uk.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: We will be back next week for some more content, hopefully engaging the issues of our time in a way that points to Christ.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for listening.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: We really appreciate that you've chosen to listen to this podcast out of undoubtedly countless podcasts that are talking about similar issues.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're really grateful to have you with us on the journey.