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Life Defenders - Are Pro-Life Equal Protection Laws the Answer? · Bott Podcast Network

0:02
Abby Johnson: Who was actually the victim in an abortion procedure?
0:07
Abby Johnson: When an abortion takes place, whose body did I hold in my hands as I was piecing it back together?
0:18
Abby Johnson: It was the child in the womb.
0:20
Abby Johnson: You know, who was fighting for its life?
0:25
Abby Johnson: It wasn't the woman.
0:27
Abby Johnson: It was the child in the womb.
0:43
Victor Nieves: Right now in the pro-life movement, there's an ongoing debate surrounding the topic of equal protection.
0:48
Victor Nieves: Should mothers also be held accountable under the law in cases of abortion?
0:52
Victor Nieves: Welcome to Life Defenders.
0:54
Victor Nieves: I'm Victor Nieves, president of Life Issues Institute.
0:56
Victor Nieves: Today we're going to be talking about this divide in the Pro-Life Movement with none other than Abby Johnson.
1:01
Victor Nieves: You probably know her and love her.
1:02
Victor Nieves: She's one of the most influential voices in the entire pro-life movement.
1:05
Victor Nieves: She worked for Planned Parenthood for eight years, eventually even becoming a clinic director in Bryan, Texas.
1:11
Victor Nieves: She was Planned Parenthood's employee of the year, but she walked away, and her story has been told and seen by millions in the Unplanned movie and book.
1:18
Victor Nieves: Abby, thank you so much for joining us today.
1:21
Abby Johnson: Of course.
1:21
Abby Johnson: Thank you so much for having me.
1:23
Victor Nieves: Well, as we mentioned, there's a debate going on right now in the pro-life movement.
1:28
Victor Nieves: And I think it's safe to say that you have kind of created some shockwaves, you've started some conversations over the years, and particularly as of recent.
1:35
Victor Nieves: So I think a good place to start would be what is your position for anybody who may not yet know it.
1:41
Victor Nieves: What do you think about the topic of equal protection?
1:44
Abby Johnson: So I support an equal protection position.
1:47
Abby Johnson: I didn't always think because I didn't really understand.
1:50
Abby Johnson: I think there's a switch that flips in your brain.
1:54
Abby Johnson: And I think once it flips, you can't flip it back.
1:59
Abby Johnson: I remember getting into the pro-life movement.
2:02
Abby Johnson: And, you know, here I was coming from a place where I had killed babies.
2:08
Abby Johnson: And, you know, I was coming into this movement and, you know, by and large, welcomed into a movement that should have seen me as an enemy.
2:19
Abby Johnson: And they didn't, right?
2:21
Abby Johnson: They tolerated me.
2:23
Abby Johnson: And for all of my flaws and places where I needed to grow and things that I needed to, you know, I had not yet seen clearly, you know, they walked with me till I did.
2:36
Abby Johnson: And so I felt very grateful to, you know, have this group of people.
2:42
Abby Johnson: I mean, I lost everyone when I left Planned Parenthood.
2:46
Abby Johnson: I lost all my friendships, my faith community, you know, I was kicked out of my church.
2:50
Abby Johnson: So I had no one.
2:52
Abby Johnson: And so here was this, you know, movement really embracing me.
2:56
Abby Johnson: And so I remember, you know, conversations surrounding this topic specifically.
3:02
Abby Johnson: And I remember being told that the pro-life movement sees women as victims and that women are the victim of abortion.
3:12
Abby Johnson: And, you know, I thought, okay, well, it was kind of like you tell me what to say and I'll say it, right?
3:19
Abby Johnson: Whatever you believe, right?
3:21
Abby Johnson: I'll believe it.
3:22
Abby Johnson: I'll say it, right?
3:23
Abby Johnson: Because I didn't know really what I believed, you know, I didn't really know, to be perfectly honest with you.
3:29
Abby Johnson: And I did know that we lied to women.
3:33
Abby Johnson: I knew that I lied to women.
3:35
Abby Johnson: And so I thought, okay, like maybe they are victims, you know, because we did lie and we did have quotas to fulfill.
3:45
Abby Johnson: And so, okay, yeah, they are victims.
3:49
Abby Johnson: So that's what I believed for a long time.
3:53
Abby Johnson: And then I started to really think more and more about it.
3:59
Abby Johnson: And I just started to think about the act of abortion.
4:04
Abby Johnson: And our culture started to change.
4:08
Abby Johnson: And we at our ministry, And Then There Were None, started to hear a different from the women who were coming out of the abortion industry.
4:18
Abby Johnson: When we started And Then There Were None in 2012, most of the time, women who were leaving either had a tragedy surrounding a baby or a mother.
4:30
Abby Johnson: So a baby had been born alive and had been drowned, or, you know, something terrible like that had happened, or a woman had been almost killed and emergency help hadn't been, or you know, something like that.
4:44
Abby Johnson: There had been something tragic happening with a woman or a baby.
4:47
Abby Johnson: And then over time, we started seeing a different demographic of women coming to us.
4:53
Abby Johnson: And it had nothing to do with the tragedies surrounding a woman or a baby.
4:57
Abby Johnson: It had to do with the callousness of the women coming in to have abortions.
5:03
Abby Johnson: And so these clinic workers were going in, many of them post-abortive themselves, but they were going in believing the mantra that we're coming in to help women.
5:13
Abby Johnson: We're coming in because women are reluctantly choosing abortion, right?
5:18
Abby Johnson: That abortion is a tragedy, that it's a difficult decision for women.
5:22
Abby Johnson: And that's why they were going in.
5:24
Abby Johnson: But that's not what they were actually experiencing in the clinics.
5:28
Abby Johnson: So what they were experiencing were women coming in, laughing about having an abortion, coming in having five, six, eight, ten abortions, using it as a form of contraception, not having difficulty choosing abortion at all.
5:44
Abby Johnson: And they were like, whoa, this isn't what I thought it was going to be at all.
5:49
Abby Johnson: It doesn't seem like abortion is a tragedy at all.
5:52
Abby Johnson: It seems like the abortion industry is really celebrating abortion.
5:56
Abby Johnson: And so that's why they were leaving.
5:58
Abby Johnson: And the demographic for those women continued to increase in our ministry at And Then There Were None.
6:05
Abby Johnson: And that, those things, what I was seeing online, the women that were coming to us at And Then There Were None, that really got me thinking about my own views.
6:15
Abby Johnson: Was I being consistent in my beliefs?
6:19
Abby Johnson: Who was actually the victim in an abortion procedure?
6:24
Abby Johnson: When an abortion takes place, whose body did I hold in my hands as I was piecing it back together?
6:32
Abby Johnson: It was the child in the womb.
6:35
Abby Johnson: You know, who was fighting for its life on ultrasound against those abortion instruments?
6:41
Abby Johnson: It wasn't the woman.
6:42
Abby Johnson: In fact, it was rarely the woman who was protesting the abortion.
6:47
Abby Johnson: It was the child in the womb.
6:49
Abby Johnson: And so I just thought if we've been saying for 50 years that abortion is murder, then we have to start acting as if abortion is murder.
7:02
Abby Johnson: And if it is murder, then there must be a perpetrator of that crime.
7:08
Abby Johnson: Right.
7:09
Abby Johnson: And when we look at statistics today, 70% of abortions are done by pill.
7:16
Abby Johnson: So for a long time, you know, the abortion, the pro-life movement was like, well, pin it on the doctor, pin it on the doctor.
7:23
Abby Johnson: It's the doctor's fault.
7:25
Abby Johnson: It's the doctor's fault.
7:26
Abby Johnson: But now the women are acting as the doctor.
7:30
Abby Johnson: The women are the ones going online.
7:32
Abby Johnson: The women are the ones making their own appointments.
7:35
Abby Johnson: They're getting the abortion pills themselves.
7:38
Abby Johnson: They're taking the pills.
7:39
Abby Johnson: They're acting as the doctor.
7:41
Abby Johnson: So we can't pin it on a doctor anymore because now we've actually removed the doctor from the equation.
7:48
Abby Johnson: So now it's the women themselves.
7:50
Abby Johnson: So if it's just the woman, then somebody has to be responsible, right?
7:55
Abby Johnson: If there is a murder, someone has to be responsible.
7:58
Abby Johnson: And I'm a devout Catholic.
8:01
Abby Johnson: And so I went to scripture.
8:03
Abby Johnson: I went to the catechism of the Catholic Church.
8:06
Abby Johnson: And the catechism of the Catholic Church calls abortion a crime.
8:11
Abby Johnson: It says it is a crime.
8:13
Abby Johnson: And if there is a crime, someone must be held accountable.
8:18
Abby Johnson: And if there is no doctor to be held accountable, then who else is to be held accountable?
8:25
Abby Johnson: Certainly there are women who are truly victims of abortion, women who are trafficked, minors who are being forced by their parents.
8:35
Abby Johnson: But as the law stands right now, because abortion is not treated as a crime, we can't even hold those traffickers accountable.
8:45
Abby Johnson: We can't hold those parents accountable.
8:48
Abby Johnson: We can't hold those boyfriends who force their girlfriends to have abortions accountable.
8:53
Abby Johnson: We can't hold the boyfriend who slips abortion drugs into his girlfriend's drink.
9:00
Abby Johnson: We can't charge them with first degree murder.
9:04
Abby Johnson: So we've put ourselves into a very difficult place because when a boyfriend does slip pills into a drink and the pro-life movement says, that's murder, that's murder.
9:16
Abby Johnson: He should be held accountable for murder.
9:19
Abby Johnson: You can have the same baby, the same drink, the same pills, the same woman.
9:27
Abby Johnson: But if she knowingly takes those pills herself, we look at her and say, She's a victim.
9:33
Abby Johnson: And that doesn't make any sense.
9:36
Abby Johnson: That's not logical consistency.
9:38
Abby Johnson: And so for me, in my mind, I was like, this doesn't make sense.
9:43
Abby Johnson: I I can't make this, you know, the math isn't mathing.
9:46
Abby Johnson: Right.
9:47
Victor Nieves: It's a point of contradiction.
9:49
Abby Johnson: I I couldn't make it make sense.
9:50
Abby Johnson: And so I I just had to take a step kind of outside of what I had been told to say for all of these years.
10:01
Abby Johnson: And I just had to say what I I felt like God honestly was really encouraging me to say.
10:10
Abby Johnson: And it wasn't about criminalizing women.
10:14
Abby Johnson: It's not about that.
10:16
Abby Johnson: It's about holding people accountable for murder.
10:22
Abby Johnson: And I believe abortion is murder.
10:25
Abby Johnson: And once that has clicked in my brain, I can't undo it.
10:31
Victor Nieves: Yeah.
10:31
Victor Nieves: So I'm curious, Abby.
10:33
Victor Nieves: I mean, I kind of know, but obviously you'd be the one with the firsthand knowledge.
10:36
Victor Nieves: You have this experience.
10:38
Victor Nieves: You're already, you're a very well-known pro-life advocate.
10:40
Victor Nieves: People look to you as a leader in the movement, and then you start evaluating the question of equal protection.
10:46
Victor Nieves: And I know this, many people know this.
10:48
Victor Nieves: It has been historically the position, like you said, of the pro-life movement that that's kind of the forbidden thing.
10:54
Victor Nieves: We we kind of don't do that.
10:55
Victor Nieves: It, you know, we we focused on the love both campaign, which obviously love both mother and child.
11:00
Victor Nieves: Equal protection, it's growing in popularity for sure.
11:03
Victor Nieves: But it goes kind of against what for a long time the pro-life establishment has believed, which is that that's like the forbidden fruit.
11:09
Victor Nieves: We cannot ever do that.
11:11
Victor Nieves: When you came out in support of equal protection, what was the reception that you got?
11:16
Victor Nieves: And I'm curious if there was a difference, the reception you got from the average pro-lifer versus the pro-life, what I would call not to be rude, but like the pro-life establishment, the people who have been doing it for a long time.
11:26
Abby Johnson: It was completely different.
11:28
Abby Johnson: So the just the average pro-life movement goer, right?
11:34
Abby Johnson: They were like, wow, hey, yeah, totally.
11:38
Abby Johnson: Like, yes, why hasn't this been a thing?
11:42
Abby Johnson: Why haven't we been fighting for this?
11:45
Abby Johnson: I mean, this is obviously why we haven't yet ended abortion.
11:52
Abby Johnson: I mean, it was kind of like, duh.
11:55
Abby Johnson: I mean, they they were all very supportive and also, I think, surprised that this seemed to be a new concept in the movement, right?
12:07
Abby Johnson: That not everyone was taking this position and that this was somehow a controversial take, right?
12:16
Victor Nieves: Because if I may, it doesn't seem like it should be a controversial take.
12:19
Victor Nieves: Like in my experience speaking with people on this issue, when I talk to the average pro-lifer, it seems when they hear it's not the default position, they're surprised.
12:27
Victor Nieves: They almost hear and they go, Well, I thought that was kind of the whole idea.
12:29
Victor Nieves: I thought we were going to make abortion a crime.
12:32
Victor Nieves: Like the act of abortion itself, irrespective of who does it.
12:35
Victor Nieves: I thought we were that was kind of like the whole goal.
12:37
Victor Nieves: And so people may be surprised, like just average pro-life Americans, they may be surprised to even hear that there is this divide, that there is this debate.
12:44
Victor Nieves: So I kind of share in that experience of people just sort of assumed that that was what we were here to do.
12:49
Victor Nieves: Now, on the on the flip side of that, there were obviously those, this was considered rather taboo.
12:53
Victor Nieves: I mean, I can speak to this just from my own personal experience.
12:56
Victor Nieves: Um, Abby, you know, I mean, there's pro-life leader groups where we get together and we talk about these sort of issues and planning going forward.
13:02
Victor Nieves: And I've had many people, so their position, their story, I'm not going to share their names, but I've had many people at meetings come to me and they'll lean, physically lean in and whisper in my ear and they'll say, Yeah, I support equal protection.
13:13
Victor Nieves: And in the first few times that happened, I thought, why are we whispering?
13:15
Victor Nieves: I'm thinking, why, you know, uh, this should be a productive point of conversation at the least.
13:20
Victor Nieves: This shouldn't be something that's taboo.
13:21
Victor Nieves: There shouldn't be like a thumb put on it and silencing the issue.
13:24
Victor Nieves: It does seem to be, and I I say this understanding, I'm the new guy in town in the pro-life space, but it does seem to me that historically there has been an effort kind of not to talk about this.
13:33
Victor Nieves: Again, it's like a forbidden discussion in a way.
13:36
Victor Nieves: And you sort of blew the lid off of it.
13:37
Victor Nieves: I think you, maybe um Seth Gruber and A.J.
13:40
Victor Nieves: Hurley, there's a handful that sort of blew the lid off of this conversation.
13:43
Victor Nieves: It's now being had in in public, and people are scratching their head and they're thinking, okay, what's going on here?
13:48
Victor Nieves: So, what was the response you got maybe from the establishment?
13:50
Abby Johnson: So, yeah, I mean, I had people that I've worked with for a long time.
13:56
Abby Johnson: Um, I had one woman send me a message and said that she's never been more disappointed with anyone in her whole entire life.
14:08
Victor Nieves: My goodness.
14:09
Abby Johnson: And I was like, well, you know, we only talk once a year at the March for Life.
14:16
Abby Johnson: So I mean, if that is your bar for disappointment, I mean, it's pretty low, dude.
14:22
Abby Johnson: It was interesting.
14:24
Abby Johnson: I mean, I had people that I've known for a long time that are kind of leaders in in the establishment pro-life groups, you know, tell me, don't ever talk to me again, you know, don't ever text me again.
14:38
Abby Johnson: And I guess I don't know that I expected that.
14:42
Abby Johnson: I guess I expected some pushback.
14:47
Abby Johnson: I I mean, I remember just, you know, telling my husband, like, did I do the wrong thing?
14:52
Abby Johnson: Like, did I just make the wrong decision?
14:55
Abby Johnson: And he was like, no.
14:57
Abby Johnson: You know, he said, no, you have done the right thing.
15:00
Abby Johnson: He said, it's just gonna take people a while to have courage and to catch up.
15:06
Abby Johnson: And I think that's true.
15:08
Abby Johnson: I think my husband was right because I think people are realizing, even leaders in this movement are realizing that this is the way forward, that this is the only way forward that actually makes sense.
15:24
Abby Johnson: I think people are realizing now that overturning Roe v.
15:29
Abby Johnson: Wade was a terrible decision, even though they don't want to say it.
15:34
Abby Johnson: Like I'm willing to say it.
15:36
Victor Nieves: That's a hot take, Abby.
15:37
Abby Johnson: But moving abortion, moving murder to a state-by-state regulatory decision is bizarre.
15:46
Abby Johnson: It's a bizarre strategy to be able to murder in California, but not murder in Texas is the weirdest strategy I've ever heard in my life.
15:58
Abby Johnson: And so for a movement to champion murder by state is crazy.
16:03
Abby Johnson: I've never heard of a crazier.
16:05
Victor Nieves: It would certainly be a bad final goal.
16:07
Victor Nieves: I mean, that cannot be our when we look at when do we win.
16:10
Abby Johnson: That is the final goal.
16:10
Abby Johnson: When do we have to when you make something as polarizing as abortion a state by state issue, that becomes the final, that becomes the final decision.
16:21
Abby Johnson: Because a state like California is never going to enact an equal protection law.
16:26
Abby Johnson: So that is the final.
16:28
Abby Johnson: And everybody had to know that.
16:30
Abby Johnson: Everybody did know that because we were having conversations about this.
16:36
Abby Johnson: Like people would say, Well, I mean, California, you know, it's always going to be legal in California.
16:42
Abby Johnson: Then this is a failed strategy because the end goal is to protect babies across our country.
16:49
Abby Johnson: And so it was such a strange strategy.
16:53
Abby Johnson: And I just remember thinking, this is bad.
16:57
Abby Johnson: And I remember saying, this is bad.
17:00
Abby Johnson: We need to move toward federal protection.
17:04
Abby Johnson: We need to move toward enacting the 14th Amendment to protect the unborn.
17:10
Abby Johnson: But people were like, no.
17:11
Abby Johnson: Trump said states' rights, states rights.
17:16
Abby Johnson: That's what we want, states rights.
17:18
Abby Johnson: And I was like, no, we have federal protections for bald eagles.
17:24
Abby Johnson: We have federal protections for sea turtles.
17:28
Abby Johnson: We have federal protections against dog fighting.
17:32
Abby Johnson: We already have federal statutes against murder.
17:37
Abby Johnson: This can happen.
17:38
Abby Johnson: But if you move this to a state-by-state issue, that's a losing strategy.
17:44
Victor Nieves: So you see that in the grand scheme of things, like on the overall chessboard, you see it actually as a move in the wrong direction
17:50
Abby Johnson: Totally
17:51
Victor Nieves: gone.
17:51
Victor Nieves: That's interesting.
17:52
Victor Nieves: Because the conventional knowledge I've heard from many people is that that's a step toward the federal.
17:57
Victor Nieves: Like even though right now, obviously, we don't like that uh, let's say California is a good example.
18:01
Victor Nieves: California is ravenously pro-abortion.
18:02
Victor Nieves: Massachusetts just did the ridiculous and decided to go abortion until birth.
18:07
Victor Nieves: That's interesting.
18:07
Victor Nieves: So most people that I've heard at least would say that that the state's ability to regulate, the state's ability for places, let's say Texas, for example, which obviously has not totally ended abortion, but is trying maybe incrementally .
18:19
Abby Johnson: No in fact abortion is up in Texas.
18:22
Victor Nieves: Which we can get into as well through like the abortion pill.
18:24
Victor Nieves: Because, and this is one of the things.
18:26
Victor Nieves: So having the conversation about equal protection, one of the things that was interesting to me, because I kind of fit in the default position for years and years of, well, yeah, you go for the abortionist.
18:34
Victor Nieves: That's the way you get rid of this.
18:35
Victor Nieves: You go for the abortionist.
18:36
Victor Nieves: It made sense, it's what everybody said.
18:37
Victor Nieves: But like you said, the climate has changed, the laws have changed, the circumstances have changed to where it's it's no longer sufficient to just stop the abortionist in a physical brick and mortar building because 70% of these abortions are done by pill, and an increasing percent are just sent in the mail.
18:52
Victor Nieves: There's never even a physical interaction.
18:53
Victor Nieves: And so as I started thinking about it more, you know, it can seem like a crazy hypothetical to some people, but it is our law allows it.
19:00
Victor Nieves: So if the law allows ridiculously immoral things, then the law should be changed to no longer allow those ridiculously immoral things.
19:07
Victor Nieves: Somebody came to me with the hypothetical, because I live in Texas, a place that's nominally banned abortion.
19:12
Victor Nieves: And they said, well, if a woman is pregnant in Texas and she goes to her local sheriff's office and she has her positive pregnancy test in one hand and she has abortion pills in the other, she says to the officer, I'm pregnant.
19:24
Victor Nieves: I know that this is my baby, I know it's a living human being, and she pops those pills, kills her child right in front of the officer, nothing can be done.
19:30
Victor Nieves: And so it's a real head scratcher.
19:32
Victor Nieves: What do we do to protect that baby?
19:33
Victor Nieves: I want to protect that baby's life too, because it deserves justice under the law, just like anybody else.
19:37
Victor Nieves: It's a human being, no different.
19:38
Victor Nieves: I mean, that's what we've said since the very beginning is that that baby is a human being deserving of human rights, deserving of protection under the law.
19:46
Victor Nieves: So how can we have a law that allows that child to be so flippantly and intentionally killed with no meaningful recourse, no justice for the baby?
19:52
Victor Nieves: And it's, of course, like you said, it's I don't say that in an interest of punishing women.
19:56
Victor Nieves: I don't have any interest in writing any law or supporting any law just to spite women.
20:00
Victor Nieves: That'd be a crazy legislative goal.
20:02
Victor Nieves: It's in the interest of protecting the child, justice for the child, preventing children from being murdered.
20:07
Victor Nieves: And so, you know, it is inconsistent when we see some of this stuff.
20:11
Victor Nieves: And it is interesting to me, and I'm curious, it's just its interpretation.
20:15
Victor Nieves: We've had people, you know, differing views here on the program in the past, but when you see this, sometimes it's hard to make sense to me of the position that says, no, not ever, never, never, never.
20:25
Victor Nieves: Never, never, never can we apply an equal protection law.
20:29
Victor Nieves: If you had to steel man that position, what's the justification to be against equal protection?
20:35
Abby Johnson: I had uh coffee with a friend of mine who runs a pregnancy center in Texas.
20:41
Abby Johnson: And she is one of those.
20:42
Abby Johnson: Never, ever, ever.
20:44
Abby Johnson: And I was trying to understand her position.
20:48
Abby Johnson: She obviously knows mine.
20:50
Abby Johnson: And I said to her, if I walked into your office tomorrow and I said, I have some pills in my bag.
20:58
Abby Johnson: And, you know, my youngest son, Fulton, he was just one too many.
21:02
Abby Johnson: I should have stopped at seven.
21:04
Abby Johnson: I shouldn't have had, shouldn't have had my eighth.
21:06
Abby Johnson: You know, he's just a financial drain.
21:08
Abby Johnson: I have to take him to speech therapy.
21:10
Abby Johnson: He's costing me extra money.
21:12
Abby Johnson: So I have some pills in my bag.
21:14
Abby Johnson: And tomorrow, in his lunch, I'm gonna put those pills in his drink and I'm gonna kill him.
21:20
Abby Johnson: And I said, if I walked into your center tomorrow and I said that, would you, and I do not mean this in a condescending way, would you give me some pamphlets and say, you know what, Abby?
21:33
Abby Johnson: I have some resources to help you with speech therapy and to help you with food in your home.
21:39
Abby Johnson: And would you let me walk out the door?
21:42
Abby Johnson: And she was offended by the suggestion that she would allow me, or anyone on her staff would allow me to walk out the door.
21:50
Abby Johnson: And I said, Well, what would you do?
21:51
Abby Johnson: And she said, Well, we would call the police.
21:54
Abby Johnson: And I said, But every day, women are walking into your center and they have abortion pills.
21:59
Abby Johnson: In their purse, or they have an appointment at an abortion clinic in New Mexico, and they tell you tomorrow, I'm gonna kill this baby in my womb.
22:08
Abby Johnson: And you say, Here are some pamphlets, here are some resources so that you won't murder your baby, and you let them walk out the door.
22:16
Abby Johnson: And you think that that is perfectly justifiable?
22:21
Abby Johnson: And that's what I mean, Victor.
22:23
Abby Johnson: She would take every actionable possibility to stop me from killing my seven-year-old child.
22:31
Abby Johnson: But she'll let a woman with a living child in her womb just casually walk out the door, knowing that woman is about to kill her child in the womb and say, Well, we did the best we could.
22:44
Abby Johnson: Somewhere in people's brains, the switch has to flip where they actually see the child in the womb as the exact same as a child outside of the womb.
22:59
Abby Johnson: And I believe that most people in this establishment pro-life movement and you know the upper echelon of the pro-life movement, that switch has not flipped for them because they're looking at it from a political standpoint.
23:16
Abby Johnson: They're looking at it from an optics standpoint.
23:20
Abby Johnson: What is this gonna look like if we do this?
23:23
Abby Johnson: How much support are we you know, pro-choicers are gonna say that we're trying to put women in jail.
23:30
Abby Johnson: They're already saying that.
23:31
Abby Johnson: Who cares what pro-choicers say?
23:34
Abby Johnson: I went to a Republican dinner, my local Republican dinner a couple months ago.
23:39
Abby Johnson: And my local representative was in attendance.
23:42
Abby Johnson: Now we had an abolition bill here in the state of Texas, and I talked to her personally and asked her to co to sign on as a joint author of the bill, and she didn't.
23:54
Abby Johnson: And she was there that night when I spoke at at our local Republican women's group.
24:00
Abby Johnson: And I called her out right there in the group.
24:03
Abby Johnson: And I said, Well, my local representative who's here with us tonight failed to sign on to the bill that would have actually ended abortion, effectively ended abortion here in the state of Texas.
24:15
Abby Johnson: And so one of the other women called out and said, Why didn't you sign on?
24:19
Abby Johnson: And you know what her answer was?
24:20
Abby Johnson: She said, Well, when I was campaigning, I was block walking.
24:25
Abby Johnson: And one time a Democratic woman asked me if I would ever sign on to a bill that criminalized women for having an abortion.
24:37
Abby Johnson: And I promised her I never would.
24:39
Abby Johnson: And I said, So you promised a Democrat that you would never sign on to a bill that criminalized women, and that's why you're not going to do the most effective thing to end child murder in your state.
24:52
Abby Johnson: Like, that's what we're dealing with here.
24:54
Abby Johnson: So I mean, like, I dare to say that so many of the people that are leading the pro-life movement right now, they say it with their mouth.
25:04
Abby Johnson: They say that babies in the womb have the exact same human dignity and human value as children outside of the womb, but they do not believe it.
25:13
Abby Johnson: They do not believe it.
25:14
Abby Johnson: That has not flipped in their minds.
25:16
Abby Johnson: They do not believe it.
25:17
Abby Johnson: And I say this with the utmost respect to pregnancy resource centers and their directors and the people I love them, I work with them all the time.
25:25
Abby Johnson: But even they have not had that switch flipped for many of them because pregnancy resource centers, the overwhelming majority of them, do not support equal protection, which is mind-boggling to me because so many of those centers are the ones that are seeing the after effects of abortion.
25:43
Abby Johnson: And to me, as a woman that has had an abortion, two abortions, as a woman that has seen the devastating effects of abortion firsthand, the most loving thing you can do for a woman is to put her in a position so that she never has an abortion to begin with, no matter how you have to do it, whether it's through the law, whether it's through education, whether it's through that ultrasound, however, you have to do it.
26:11
Abby Johnson: And the law is a tool that we can use to prevent abortions.
26:17
Abby Johnson: Why would you not utilize that?
26:19
Abby Johnson: So to me, it is mind-boggling to me how people on the front lines are so vehemently opposed to using a tool that we know works, we know it works, it's been proven to work, and yet they still oppose it.
26:38
Victor Nieves: Well, and Abby, to your point, people want to talk about the political side, the optic side, the pragmatic side.
26:42
Victor Nieves: Well, it's pragmatically suicide for any movement, the pro-life movement included, to decide what our strategy is based on the chirping of the opposition.
26:51
Victor Nieves: So if the pro-abortion side is telling us, well, you can't do this, you can't do this, and we listen to them, we lost.
26:57
Victor Nieves: And I hope everybody understands that.
26:59
Victor Nieves: We don't get our advice from them.
27:01
Victor Nieves: That almost you could take the exact opposite perspective.
27:03
Victor Nieves: Whatever they tell us not to do, perhaps we ought to consider.
27:06
Victor Nieves: We we might consider doing it as long as they're saying not to.
27:09
Victor Nieves: The other thing is politically, pragmatically, culturally, we worry sometimes.
27:13
Victor Nieves: And I can be, Abby, in all honesty, I can be very sympathetic to political pragmatism on a wide variety of issues.
27:20
Victor Nieves: I'm passionate about all sorts of things, as we all are.
27:22
Victor Nieves: The life issue is one that's unique.
27:24
Victor Nieves: The life issue is one where, you know what, frankly, I think we should do what's right and let God handle where the pieces fall.
27:31
Victor Nieves: If we have the opportunity to save babies, this is another thing.
27:35
Victor Nieves: I had a friend of mine come who sews into my life spiritually very often, and he said, Victor, you know, I want to challenge you, because this is as I was kind of thinking this stuff through.
27:43
Victor Nieves: He said, I want to challenge you on some of your thoughts.
27:45
Victor Nieves: Who are you to pray to God for the opportunity to end abortion?
27:48
Victor Nieves: God gives you the opportunity, and you tell him not now.
27:51
Victor Nieves: Who are you to tell him that you know pragmatically better than he does?
27:54
Victor Nieves: If you've prayed for the opportunity over and over and over, God let us do it, let us end this thing.
27:59
Victor Nieves: And the opportunity arises in Texas.
28:01
Victor Nieves: Let's say, because Texas is a state that could presumably do it.
28:04
Victor Nieves: Texas gets the opportunity to pass a bill of total equal protection, totally ending abortion.
28:08
Victor Nieves: Who are we?
28:09
Victor Nieves: And that's a question that deserves looking in the mirror for a minute.
28:12
Victor Nieves: Who are we to say, no God, I know better than you?
28:14
Victor Nieves: Now is not actually the time for us to do good, for us to save the life of innocent people.
28:19
Victor Nieves: Now is not the time.
28:20
Victor Nieves: I dispute that.
28:21
Victor Nieves: You could make that argument when it comes to an economic theory.
28:24
Victor Nieves: We're not talking economics.
28:25
Victor Nieves: We're talking about babies being ripped limb from limb.
28:27
Victor Nieves: So I just think that that's not a moral position to take.
28:30
Victor Nieves: And that's, you know, and maybe people can wrestle with that in their own life, but for me it's it's actually pretty simple.
28:34
Victor Nieves: The other thing is pragmatically, you know, we can say, well, what about the optics of a woman being hauled off?
28:40
Victor Nieves: You know, maybe a scared crying, let's make it as tear-jerking as possible.
28:43
Victor Nieves: It's a scared teenage girl and she gets the abortion, you know, whatever it is, let's just go into the hypothetical.
28:48
Victor Nieves: Okay, the optics of that, I understand, would be politically advantageous for the pro-abortion side.
28:53
Victor Nieves: They would use that, they would run it in ads, this much is true.
28:56
Victor Nieves: We also have to think, though, on the counter, if we, as the pro-life movement, are displaying publicly inconsistency, if we are not communicating to the culture at large that we believe what we're selling.
29:09
Victor Nieves: When we tell somebody abortion is murder, the unborn baby is a human being.
29:13
Victor Nieves: Well, to say and to not do, we're painting a very big, you know, there's an old phrase very similar to that.
29:18
Victor Nieves: It's something like uh to know and not do is to not know.
29:21
Victor Nieves: So if we know it's an unborn baby, but we don't behave like it, we're actually sending a very important, subtle message to the culture, which is we don't believe what we're selling.
29:29
Victor Nieves: So if we don't even believe it, why in a million years would they believe it?
29:33
Victor Nieves: If we're trying to convince a culture, inconsistencies are kryptonite.
29:36
Victor Nieves: We just can't do that.
29:37
Victor Nieves: It's an interesting conversation.
29:38
Victor Nieves: And I, again, as the Johnny Cum lately in the pro-life movement, as a newer guy to this, I'm very respectful to the people who have fought for years, 30, 40, 50 years and trying to get these victories and paving the way.
29:49
Victor Nieves: I think we're closer to ending it than people realize, though.
29:52
Victor Nieves: When I look at this and I look at the way that, especially young people are changing on these topics, I look at it and I say, well, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy to say, and I know you've spoken about this 50 more years.
30:02
Victor Nieves: Well, if you think it's got to be 50 more years, it will be 50 more years.
30:06
Victor Nieves: But let's do it now.
30:07
Victor Nieves: Let's actually try and push the envelope.
30:09
Victor Nieves: Let's go ahead and end this thing.
30:10
Victor Nieves: What do you see as far as the direction of the movement?
30:13
Victor Nieves: I think it's heading in the direction very clearly of equal protection.
30:16
Victor Nieves: I think people want to end it.
30:17
Victor Nieves: I don't think people want to do this for a hundred more years.
30:20
Victor Nieves: I was speaking with a mutual friend of ours, Sean Corcoran, and he was speaking about how you had given a speech that really inspired him.
30:26
Victor Nieves: And he was kind of saying the same thing, but I'm young enough, I could pass this on to my kids, and then they could pass it on to their kid.
30:31
Victor Nieves: And I don't want to do that.
30:33
Abby Johnson: And that's not what I want to do.
30:34
Victor Nieves: I don't want to do that.
30:35
Victor Nieves: Because to me, where we are right now in 2026, I want to end it.
30:39
Victor Nieves: I don't want my kids to be fighting this battle.
30:41
Victor Nieves: I want to end it now.
30:42
Victor Nieves: I when we see Goliath walk out, we should see that and we should say, okay, let the stone come from my sling.
30:48
Victor Nieves: Let's drop this dude.
30:49
Victor Nieves: Let's end it and not pass it off to somebody else.
30:51
Victor Nieves: So, what do you see as the direction?
30:52
Victor Nieves: Do you think that tides are shifting?
30:54
Victor Nieves: Do you think that things are changing in the pro-life movement?
30:57
Abby Johnson: I do.
30:58
Abby Johnson: I think one of the problems, I guess, that we have right now in the pro-life movement is that we do not have good, clear leadership right now.
31:10
Abby Johnson: I don't know that we've ever had really good, clear leadership.
31:13
Abby Johnson: That's a failure in the pro-life movement.
31:16
Abby Johnson: That's something that the pro-abortion movement does have, and they've always had very clear leadership.
31:22
Abby Johnson: They've got a leadership triangle, and it varies like who's at the top, but it's a triangle between Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation, and NARAL.
31:33
Abby Johnson: Right now, NARAL is on top, and then the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood are kind of underneath them.
31:39
Abby Johnson: And that's for various reasons that we could talk about later.
31:43
Abby Johnson: But anyway, NARAL is really kind of pushing the triangle and kind of steering the ship.
31:49
Abby Johnson: But we don't really have that in the pro-life movement.
31:51
Abby Johnson: I would like to see kind of a synergy come together of people who are like-minded who can say this is where we feel like the movement needs to go and we are moving it in this direction.
32:06
Abby Johnson: We want the movement to kind of come on board and stand with us.
32:10
Abby Johnson: So I'd like to see that happen.
32:13
Abby Johnson: The reason I do feel very hopeful for the movement right now is because 100 people on board with equal protection.
32:22
Abby Johnson: I go to colleges all over the country every year, do tours on college campuses, and I've never been to a college campus talking to pro-life young people who are like, I really see the woman as a victim.
32:37
Abby Johnson: Never before.
32:38
Abby Johnson: Young people are like, abortion is a crime.
32:41
Abby Johnson: Someone needs to be held accountable.
32:43
Abby Johnson: You know, by and large, women know exactly what they're doing.
32:47
Abby Johnson: I mean, everybody has a smartphone, you know, at their fingertips.
32:52
Abby Johnson: Like people know what they're doing.
32:54
Abby Johnson: That's kind of what we're dealing with too.
32:56
Abby Johnson: So we have, you know, people in the movement, kind of the more establishment pro-life movement, who is talking out of both sides of their mouth.
33:03
Abby Johnson: And I think people are tired of that too, particularly women.
33:06
Abby Johnson: So, you know, women are hearing two completely different messages from the pro-life establishment movement.
33:12
Abby Johnson: They're hearing women are poor, helpless little flowers, sensitive flowers that can't make decisions for themselves and they're just poor little victims being so manipulated and violated by the the big bad abortion industry.
33:26
Abby Johnson: And then they're also hearing women are so strong and confident and capable and can overcome any obstacle.
33:34
Abby Johnson: All right, well, which one is it?
33:36
Abby Johnson: Right?
33:37
Abby Johnson: Because two aren't going to exist in the same person.
33:40
Abby Johnson: And I choose to believe that women are really strong and capable and making smart decisions.
33:48
Abby Johnson: And they can overcome any obstacle that's put in front of them.
33:52
Abby Johnson: And many times they do need support.
33:54
Abby Johnson: And guess what?
33:54
Abby Johnson: We do have those supports in the pro-life movement.
33:57
Abby Johnson: So I'm not going to entertain this poor victimhood status that we have been projecting onto women in the pro-life movement that causes this victimhood narrative.
34:09
Abby Johnson: Like, I'm not doing it.
34:11
Abby Johnson: I'm not going to entertain that anymore because the women I know are not like that.
34:15
Abby Johnson: And I think it's going to take, number one, some leadership changes in the pro-life movement.
34:21
Abby Johnson: I think that's going to have to happen.
34:22
Abby Johnson: I think that's going to be coming soon.
34:24
Abby Johnson: I think some of the old guard is going to have to retire and leave, and we're going to have to get some of those changes.
34:31
Abby Johnson: But I think also, I think there is going to have to be some sort of kind of leadership component where people kind of come together and say, this is how we're moving forward.
34:40
Abby Johnson: This is the direction where people say, these are the leaders we want to kind of get behind.
34:46
Abby Johnson: And this is the direction that we see moving forward that will be most successful.
34:51
Victor Nieves: And Abby, I think that's kind of happening.
34:52
Victor Nieves: And it could just be me seeing this as a bit of maybe wishful thinking.
34:55
Victor Nieves: But as you know, you're a signer, as am I, of the White Rose statement on equal protection.
34:59
Victor Nieves: This is not a fringe position anymore.
35:02
Victor Nieves: It may have been at one point something of a fringe position.
35:05
Victor Nieves: But as people are thinking about it, and these are people that are thinking about this in good faith.
35:09
Victor Nieves: I know sometimes there's attacks on those who are in favor of equal protection as though we're just these hard-hearted, angry people.
35:15
Victor Nieves: You know, you hear the propaganda about how we want to criminalize women or something like that.
35:20
Victor Nieves: But that's not true of any of these people who signed- not that I know, and I I know many of them.
35:24
Victor Nieves: It's not true of the people.
35:25
Victor Nieves: It's not true of you, it's not true of me.
35:26
Victor Nieves: And now, you know, the list of signatories is very impressive on that White Rose list.
35:31
Victor Nieves: You have Nick V, obviously yourself, Riley Gaines, Frank Turek, you have Seth Gruber, Eric Metaxis, Ali Beth Stuckey, Jack Hibbs, Brian Kemper, Alex Clark.
35:40
Victor Nieves: I mean, this is a list that goes on and on of very well-respected people who come to this position in good faith, who are simply consistent on it.
35:46
Victor Nieves: And I do think that that's happening.
35:47
Victor Nieves: And to echo what you said, I mean, as I go to college campuses, as I talk with people who are in very similar age demographic to me, and I ask them about this question, they're like, well, of course.
35:56
Victor Nieves: Like, duh, I don't, I don't know anybody who's not on this page.
35:59
Victor Nieves: I always want to be very careful for myself personally.
36:02
Victor Nieves: I don't know, I don't know the motives of anybody else, but I do see inconsistency.
36:06
Victor Nieves: And I think the inconsistency is very clear on this issue.
36:08
Victor Nieves: And so I do, I very much support it.
36:10
Victor Nieves: I'm curious, Abby, wrapping up here, do you think things like the enforcing the Comstock Act?
36:15
Victor Nieves: We've had talk about that.
36:16
Victor Nieves: Perhaps the Attorney General will be doing that, ending the mail order distribution.
36:20
Victor Nieves: Do you do you think things like that could potentially reduce the need for equal protection?
36:25
Victor Nieves: What do you see as maybe like the tangible steps forward?
36:29
Abby Johnson: Yeah, I don't know.
36:30
Abby Johnson: I don't know about the Comstock Act.
36:32
Abby Johnson: I've done some considerable research on it.
36:34
Abby Johnson: You know, I know that everybody wants the Comstock Act.
36:38
Abby Johnson: You know, I do kind of worry about could that be an overreach into other areas that we're not intending.
36:44
Abby Johnson: So I do have a little bit of hesitation there.
36:48
Abby Johnson: I feel like it's a band aid to the actual problem.
36:53
Abby Johnson: And I feel like all of these little band-aids that we're trying to put over a bullet hole are having unintended consequences.
37:03
Abby Johnson: And so I'll just give you a quick example.
37:06
Abby Johnson: The pro-life movement years ago, and I was one of the people that championed this, so I'm throwing myself under the bus here, but the pro-life movement years ago championed bills that required abortion facilities to become ambulatory surgical centers.
37:23
Abby Johnson: So they had to become, you know, these state-of-the-art ASCs in order to continue to operate.
37:30
Abby Johnson: And that was with the intention that they would not be able to, you know, come up with those standards.
37:36
Abby Johnson: And so they would close.
37:37
Abby Johnson: And so there were some that closed in Texas, for instance, but the other ones decided we're not going to close.
37:44
Abby Johnson: We're actually going to rebuild, we're going to retrofit our clinics and we're going to reopen these big, beautiful ASC facilities.
37:54
Abby Johnson: And now I drive by these facilities and think, oh my gosh, they could start performing transgender surgeries at any point in time if they wanted to, which is a much larger ticket item for a Planned Parenthood facility.
38:10
Abby Johnson: I mean, who cares about a $600 abortion if you can perform a $20,000 top surgery and keep that person, you know, on hormone, cross-sex hormones for the rest of their life.
38:23
Abby Johnson: I mean, so I think about unintended consequences all the time as we're trying to kind of whittle away at things instead of just doing what God has commanded us to do and to stop the murder, right?
38:38
Abby Johnson: We're trying to go around and figure out a way to stop the bleed little by little instead of just doing what we need to do, and that is to stop the murder.
38:50
Abby Johnson: So I do worry about that.
38:51
Abby Johnson: I worry about unintended consequences of enforcing Comstock.
38:55
Abby Johnson: I think, you know, ultimately we just have to do what God is commanding us to do.
39:01
Abby Johnson: I mean, thou shalt not murder is so serious.
39:04
Abby Johnson: It's one of the Ten Commandments.
39:06
Abby Johnson: And so I think we need to take that seriously.
39:09
Abby Johnson: And I absolutely agree with you.
39:10
Abby Johnson: I think that, you know, we say that we're the most blessed nation in America.
39:15
Abby Johnson: We are the best.
39:17
Abby Johnson: I mean, the most blessed nation in the world.
39:19
Abby Johnson: I believe we are the best country in the world.
39:22
Abby Johnson: But how do we expect God to continue these blessings on our nation when we are murdering children up until birth?
39:31
Abby Johnson: And so I think we're not putting all our full trust in God.
39:36
Abby Johnson: Um, when we worry so much about politics and optics, we need to simply follow His word and be in obedience to Him and trust that He will work out the details.
39:48
Victor Nieves: So, Abby, I totally agree.
39:49
Victor Nieves: Some people may hear that and they may wonder, is Abby Johnson an abolitionist?
39:53
Victor Nieves: So I have to ask the question.
39:54
Victor Nieves: Are you Are you an abolitionist?
39:56
Victor Nieves: I'm not an abolitionist.
39:57
Victor Nieves: So you're not inherently opposed to incrementalism.
40:00
Abby Johnson: I'm not inherently opposed to incrementalism.
40:03
Abby Johnson: So, you know, I would support and would love to write up a model legislation, you know, proposed model legislation that had, for instance, like a sunset period.
40:13
Abby Johnson: So, you know, like a two-year sunset period, you know, before we moved into actually, you know, an abolition position in the law, which is what, you know, we kind of did with like seatbelt.
40:25
Abby Johnson: I'm old enough to remember when seatbelt laws went into effect.
40:30
Abby Johnson: And, you know, I don't know how long it was.
40:31
Abby Johnson: It was like for a year, they were showing us all these videos of crash test dummies.
40:35
Abby Johnson: Like, this is what happens when you don't wear your seatbelt, you know, and crash test dummies were flying all over the car.
40:40
Abby Johnson: And so there was like an educational period before they actually started their click it or ticket campaign.
40:46
Abby Johnson: And so I'm not opposed to something like that.
40:49
Abby Johnson: I'm not opposed to sort of some sort of like sunset period before we actually move into the criminalization period.
40:57
Abby Johnson: You know, I believe that education is a huge part of what we need to be doing in the pro-life movement.
41:04
Abby Johnson: But I would also say that I do believe in the pregnancy resource center movement probably more than the abolitionists do.
41:13
Abby Johnson: I probably lean more toward grace and mercy more than the abolitionist position.
41:21
Abby Johnson: I mean, just because of the work that I do within then there were none.
41:24
Abby Johnson: But I mean, the main reason that I I would I would never be a part of the abolitionist movement is because I'm Roman Catholic.
41:32
Abby Johnson: And I actually think abolitionists dislike Catholics more than they dislike abortion.
41:38
Abby Johnson: So, but yeah, I applaud their desire to end abortion and to end it with immediacy.
41:46
Abby Johnson: And I would say that I am absolutely I'm for that.
41:51
Abby Johnson: I am for the immediate abolition of abortion.
41:54
Victor Nieves: And I don't know if this is your position as well.
41:56
Victor Nieves: The way I've explained it in the past is that I do support incrementalism conceptually, but incrementalism itself is not inherently virtuous.
42:03
Victor Nieves: I give the example, Abby, if you were the governor, let's say, of Texas tomorrow and you got two bills that you could sign, either one.
42:10
Victor Nieves: You get to pick your pick your choice.
42:12
Victor Nieves: One bill was, let's just say there was no law in the book, heartbeat bill.
42:15
Victor Nieves: One bill is a heartbeat bill, the other is total abolition.
42:18
Victor Nieves: Your signature decides which one.
42:19
Victor Nieves: It's my belief that if you signed the heartbeat bill as opposed to the bill that actually ended abortion, I would consider that immoral to sign that bill when you have the opportunity.
42:27
Victor Nieves: But I also would understand, like, for example, now if you're hypothetically the governor of California somehow, and California gets a heartbeat bill and nothing else, and you're the governor and your signature will enact a heartbeat bill, sign that thing.
42:39
Victor Nieves: Sign it so fast, you know, your hand cramps, kind of a thing.
42:41
Victor Nieves: So I would consider myself a quote unquote smash mouth incrementalist where we want to totally end it right now, today.
42:47
Victor Nieves: I'm gonna play the hand I'm dealt.
42:49
Victor Nieves: So if I have the opportunity to move the ball in the right direction, I'll do it.
42:52
Victor Nieves: If I have the the opportunity to end it tomorrow, do it.
42:55
Victor Nieves: You know, that's so that's kind of my position.
42:56
Victor Nieves: I think that's a lot of people's position.
42:57
Victor Nieves: If they sit and they think about it and they wonder, so we will have what we'll be exploring in a future episode with uh Bradley Pierce, with one of the abolition leaders.
43:04
Victor Nieves: And so we'll be talking about it, and I'm sure that'll be a very interesting conversation.
43:07
Victor Nieves: But anyways, Abby, thank you so much for joining us today.
43:10
Victor Nieves: It's been a very interesting conversation.
43:12
Victor Nieves: I thank you for the work that you do, uh, for the voice that you have.
43:14
Victor Nieves: And obviously, you know, people can say whatever they want about you.
43:17
Victor Nieves: You do this with a pure heart.
43:18
Victor Nieves: I know that you do.
43:19
Victor Nieves: You do this from a position of grace, from a position of an amazing testimony in life.
43:23
Victor Nieves: Many people are familiar with it.
43:24
Victor Nieves: And whatever somebody might think, they should respect the consistency.
43:27
Victor Nieves: So, Abby, thank you so much for joining us.
43:29
Abby Johnson: Thank you.
43:29
Abby Johnson: Thank you, Victor.