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Life Defenders - Dobbs Wasn't the Finish Line | Congressman Mark Harris on the Fight for Life · Bott Podcast Network

• 0:03
  Congressman Harris: The whole chemical abortion and the mail-in abortion type of program kind of took hold to where we saw 28% of the abortions in the last year were chemical abortions.
• 0:16
  Congressman Harris: And so, you know, again, these conversations that we have in the halls of Congress, we have to be real about them.
• 0:24
  Congressman Harris: And we have to always understand the bottom line issue is the life itself.
• 0:46
  Victor Nieves: These days, it can seem like life is under attack from all directions.
• 0:51
  Victor Nieves: Of course, we see this in every facet of our world, every facet of our country, but at times perhaps it's no more true than in the halls of Congress.
• 0:59
  Victor Nieves: But even in Congress, we do have those who speak out, who stand in defense of those who cannot stand in defense of themselves.
• 1:07
  Victor Nieves: I'm Victor Nieves, president of Life Issues Institute.
• 1:10
  Victor Nieves: This is Life Defenders, and today we have the honor and the privilege of being joined by one such defender of life.
• 1:17
  Victor Nieves: Congressman Mark Harris.
• 1:19
  Victor Nieves: He is the representative of North Carolina's 8th Congressional District.
• 1:22
  Victor Nieves: He has a proven track record over the years, both in his personal life and in his public service of defending the unborn.
• 1:29
  Victor Nieves: He served as the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Charlotte for over a decade.
• 1:34
  Victor Nieves: He even served as the president of the North Carolina Baptist Association.
• 1:38
  Victor Nieves: Congressman Harris, thank you so much for joining us today.
• 1:41
  Congressman Harris: Victor, it's a real honor and privilege to be with you today.
• 1:44
  Congressman Harris: I've I've heard so many great things about your podcast and the work that you're doing, and very grateful for the opportunity just to uh be here with you today.
• 1:52
  Victor Nieves: Well, thank you, Congressman.
• 1:53
  Victor Nieves: It's a pleasure you flatter us.
• 1:54
  Victor Nieves: I think the best place to start, uh just so that our listeners can kind of understand the context of the, for one, kind of the work that you're doing up in Congress, but just also the broader picture of why you're pro-life.
• 2:05
  Victor Nieves: Tell us your story, your testimony.
• 2:07
  Victor Nieves: How did you get?
• 2:08
  Victor Nieves: Because everybody wants to be involved.
• 2:10
  Victor Nieves: Everybody wants to fight for the unborn.
• 2:12
  Victor Nieves: Everybody wants to make a dent in evil, as we often say.
• 2:15
  Victor Nieves: And you're one of the people that are doing it.
• 2:16
  Victor Nieves: So how did you get there?
• 2:17
  Victor Nieves: What led you to the place where you now are defending the unborn?
• 2:21
  Congressman Harris: Well, you know, Victor, there's so much wrapped up in all of that, to be honest with you.
• 2:25
  Congressman Harris: And I, you know, when God called me to ministry, there was a church that I had been serving while I was in college.
• 2:31
  Congressman Harris: I actually was headed to law school.
• 2:33
  Congressman Harris: And two weeks before I was to get married, and two months before I was to start law school, God called me to preach.
• 2:39
  Congressman Harris: And so I had a real shift, if you will, at that particular time in my life.
• 2:44
  Congressman Harris: But I had been serving and doing youth ministry.
• 2:46
  Congressman Harris: And I actually had a young man.
• 2:49
  Congressman Harris: Uh, I was only like 20 years old, and I had a young man, a teenager, that came in, called, and told me he was in a crisis, brought his girlfriend, sat down to meet with me, told me that they thought that she was pregnant.
• 3:01
  Congressman Harris: And they were very concerned, didn't know what to happen.
• 3:03
  Congressman Harris: I knew what the Bible said, and I talked to them, and I said, listen, we've got to dig into this and try to get some help.
• 3:10
  Congressman Harris: And to be honest, I really didn't know what to do, other than I knew that there were these support centers.
• 3:15
  Congressman Harris: And thank the Lord, I went to the Yellow Pages and I found a place called Salem Pregnancy in Winston-Salem, which is where I was serving as a youth minister at that time.
• 3:25
  Congressman Harris: And uh, so I picked up the phone, called the lady at Salem Pregnancy, and said, Look, I'm a youth minister.
• 3:31
  Congressman Harris: I've got somebody here in my office.
• 3:33
  Congressman Harris: She thinks she's pregnant.
• 3:35
  Congressman Harris: I think they need to sit down with you, and we need to get some help and we need to get some wise counsel in this situation.
• 3:41
  Congressman Harris: And the lady was so kind, invited me to come over there.
• 3:44
  Congressman Harris: And uh, we went over there with this young couple.
• 3:47
  Congressman Harris: The girl took a pregnancy test.
• 3:49
  Congressman Harris: She was not pregnant, it turned out.
• 3:51
  Congressman Harris: But the counsel and the wisdom and the doors that were opened up through that were incredible.
• 3:56
  Congressman Harris: I learned more about that lady.
• 3:58
  Congressman Harris: My wife got involved at the pregnancy care center as a volunteer because we had been pro-life.
• 4:04
  Congressman Harris: And it was out of that we learned more about the movement, frankly, at that point.
• 4:08
  Congressman Harris: Then became a pastor of a church and felt it was important for our church to be engaged in this issue because this is a rock bottom line issue for all of civilization, quite frankly.
• 4:20
  Congressman Harris: And I think it's important.
• 4:22
  Congressman Harris: And so I never hesitated to preach on the value of life as I preached God's word week in and week out.
• 4:28
  Congressman Harris: I got us involved as a church.
• 4:30
  Congressman Harris: We knew what it was to stand on the sidewalk in what was called life chain and be involved.
• 4:35
  Congressman Harris: Uh, we had people that would volunteer at the local pregnancy center.
• 4:38
  Congressman Harris: My wife became a board member of local pregnancy center.
• 4:41
  Congressman Harris: We traveled in 19, I think it was 91, when James Dobson had invited a million people, may have been 1990, but he was trying to gather a million people between the Capitol and the Washington Monument to fill in there.
• 4:54
  Congressman Harris: And so uh we have pictures.
• 4:55
  Congressman Harris: We took our oldest, which was our daughter, our son had been born.
• 4:59
  Congressman Harris: He was still very small, so he didn't make the trip up with us, but we went and we were part of that movement.
• 5:04
  Congressman Harris: And again, for me, the issue is not of political football.
• 5:08
  Congressman Harris: For me, it is the issue of life.
• 5:11
  Congressman Harris: And it's something that we have to continue to defend.
• 5:14
  Congressman Harris: And so I've been engaged from day one, quite frankly.
• 5:18
  Victor Nieves: Congressman Harris, you know, there's a lot of people who, when they have a pregnancy scare, they are afraid to go to the church.
• 5:24
  Victor Nieves: They're afraid to go to their pastor.
• 5:25
  Victor Nieves: They're afraid perhaps to go to their parents.
• 5:27
  Victor Nieves: They fear judgment, they fear some sort of retribution.
• 5:30
  Victor Nieves: He said that he would work with anyone to do good and he would work with no one to do evil.There's a lot of fears that bounce around in people's heads.
• 5:32
  Victor Nieves: I think it's a testament to your ministry when you were a youth pastor that they came to you, that they felt comfortable.
• 5:39
  Victor Nieves: This is one of those things where many pastors, many Christians at large, I mean, we this should be something the body of Christ, every single one of us, should be the kind of person that people would turn to in in a time of need.
• 5:50
  Victor Nieves: We should be the hands and feet of Christ.
• 5:51
  Victor Nieves: How did you get to the point where these young people would come to you in that moment of need?
• 5:56
  Victor Nieves: And I guess connected to that, what advice do you have for people who are in ministry who want to be the kind of uh, you know, the person that people can turn to in those moments?
• 6:06
  Congressman Harris: Well, I think that it it all comes down to at the end of the day, who you are and how you carry out your ministry.
• 6:13
  Congressman Harris: And I think consistency is a huge part of that.
• 6:16
  Congressman Harris: I always wanted to know the youth group that I was uh ministering to then and the churches that I would later pastor in the years that would follow certainly knew that I loved them and that I cared for them.
• 6:27
  Congressman Harris: I've taken seriously the role of being a shepherd and trying to care for folks.
• 6:32
  Congressman Harris: So I think these young people understood that I was somebody that they could talk to, somebody that they could hopefully help them get to some answers that were going to be meaningful.
• 6:42
  Congressman Harris: And again, I'm grateful that they chose to make that decision.
• 6:46
  Congressman Harris: I'm grateful that the girl in this situation was counting on her, it was her boyfriend.
• 6:51
  Congressman Harris: She was not active in our church.
• 6:53
  Congressman Harris: He was the one that was active in our youth group.
• 6:56
  Congressman Harris: Uh, and so for him to feel that he could come and sit down and talk to me, um, he knew what I believed.
• 7:02
  Congressman Harris: He knew what we taught.
• 7:03
  Congressman Harris: He knew he had sinned, he knew that he had gotten into a place he didn't need to be going, and he knew that he was now in the midst of a crisis.
• 7:11
  Congressman Harris: And so I think if people know that they can trust you and they know that you're gonna look after their best interest and you're gonna care for them genuinely, I think that opens the door.
• 7:21
  Congressman Harris: And I would encourage people in ministry to just have that kind of um, I don't know, be be able to just open up and be who you are and be yourself.
• 7:31
  Congressman Harris: And uh young people, they tend to always be able to uh it's kind of like children and dogs.
• 7:37
  Congressman Harris: They have a way of sniffing out and knowing uh something that's genuine and someone they can trust.
• 7:44
  Victor Nieves: It's true.
• 7:44
  Victor Nieves: It's true.
• 7:44
  Victor Nieves: And I also want to say, to the credit of that young man, we always say this all the time that for any young man in that position, for any man, no matter your age, if you're in that position, that's a time for things to change in life.
• 7:56
  Victor Nieves: It's not a time to run away, it's a time to stand firm for the life of your child.
• 8:00
  Victor Nieves: So often culture tells us over and over and over again that as a man, the correct answer in that situation is to say, whatever you want.
• 8:08
  Victor Nieves: I'm with you no matter whatever you want to decide.
• 8:11
  Victor Nieves: It takes all of the pressure and it puts it onto that woman rather than as a man.
• 8:14
  Victor Nieves: And it sounds like in this case, he did the right thing.
• 8:16
  Victor Nieves: He said, no, we're gonna go seek wise counsel.
• 8:19
  Victor Nieves: At the very least, we're gonna go seek wise counsel.
• 8:21
  Victor Nieves: We're gonna be in this together.
• 8:23
  Victor Nieves: I'm not just gonna abandon you.
• 8:24
  Victor Nieves: I'm not just gonna run off on you.
• 8:26
  Victor Nieves: That's one of those core things that I think culturally we have to have, not to put all the blame on young men or anything, but there is a responsibility.
• 8:32
  Victor Nieves: You're a father now.
• 8:33
  Victor Nieves: You're not just a young guy running around, you're a father.
• 8:35
  Victor Nieves: And so um, to his credit, he did that right.
• 8:38
  Victor Nieves: Congressman, you you mentioned earlier that for you, the life issue is not political football.
• 8:44
  Victor Nieves: It's not something that, you know, you might use for political expedience.
• 8:47
  Victor Nieves: Obviously, unfortunately, we we see that on all issues, right?
• 8:50
  Victor Nieves: It's this is the nature of politics.
• 8:51
  Victor Nieves: People do that from time to time.
• 8:53
  Victor Nieves: What is it like when you walk the halls of Congress?
• 8:55
  Victor Nieves: Can you give us, can you pull the curtain just a little bit back and give us a bit of an inside scoop onto how your colleagues, how others on Capitol Hill are viewing the life issue?
• 9:06
  Congressman Harris: Well, I do think it's important uh to recognize that the issue is not just of political football.
• 9:14
  Congressman Harris: And and I do have colleagues, quite frankly, that that I engage with and have gotten to know over this first term that I've been in Congress, that again, you can tell pretty quickly if this is really the issue about life or whether it's more of a political leverage issue.
• 9:32
  Congressman Harris: Uh, to me, it's just about doing the right thing.
• 9:36
  Congressman Harris: And I think that in the halls of Congress, you have a mix of all of that.
• 9:40
  Congressman Harris: Now, you know, there used to be in the halls of Congress a few, and it was a few pro-life on the other side of the aisle that you would be able to go to.
• 9:50
  Congressman Harris: That is nearly impossible to find anymore whatsoever.
• 9:55
  Congressman Harris: And so you kind of work within our own conference when it comes to the life issue and just trying to help people understand how critically important it is.
• 10:04
  Congressman Harris: And when you get into conversations and you start talking about the issue, you do find some that kind of, I don't know, they kind of pull back a little bit and go, well, is this the right time?
• 10:15
  Congressman Harris: Well, listen, it's never the right time to do the wrong thing.
• 10:19
  Congressman Harris: And it's never the wrong time to do the right thing.
• 10:21
  Congressman Harris: And so I do think you have to always look at the issue that's in front of you and speak to the reality of it.
• 10:28
  Congressman Harris: Some people, they they kind of made the mistake of thinking when the Dobbs decision was made that this life issue was settled and that it was over.
• 10:35
  Congressman Harris: Listen, I'm championing the Dobbs decision.
• 10:38
  Congressman Harris: I'm grateful for it.
• 10:40
  Congressman Harris: But there's some real realities that we have to face.
• 10:43
  Congressman Harris: And the fact that 300,000 abortions have taken place uh since the Dobbs decision just last year, that's a concern.
• 10:51
  Congressman Harris: And we all know the reason why.
• 10:53
  Congressman Harris: Because the whole chemical abortion and the mail-in abortion type of program kind of took hold to where we saw 28% of the abortions in the last year were chemical abortions.
• 11:07
  Congressman Harris: And so, you know, again, these conversations that we have in the halls of Congress, we have to be real about them.
• 11:14
  Congressman Harris: And we have to always understand the bottom line issue is the life itself.
• 11:20
  Congressman Harris: It's the pregnancy.
• 11:22
  Congressman Harris: And if some people somehow think that a chemical abortion is somehow better because maybe it's done in the privacy of your home rather than going to a clinic, that's ludicrous.
• 11:32
  Congressman Harris: And I think we need to make sure that there's never the right time to do the wrong thing.
• 11:37
  Congressman Harris: And we've got to be serious about that.
• 11:40
  Victor Nieves: Congressman Harris, I love the way that you put that.
• 11:42
  Victor Nieves: As there's never a good time to do something that's bad.
• 11:45
  Victor Nieves: It reminds me of a quote, and hopefully I'll get it correct, from the abolitionist Frederick Douglas.
• 11:50
  Victor Nieves: He famously said, I would work with anyone to do good, but with no one to do evil.
• 11:55
  Victor Nieves: And so something you said there sticks out to me.
• 11:57
  Victor Nieves: We all see this, we all notice it uh within politics, and and it just is the way that it is.
• 12:02
  Victor Nieves: I'm curious, maybe you could help us understand why.
• 12:05
  Victor Nieves: I think any of us who who are partisan, everybody's kind of got their own partisan affiliation, right?
• 12:10
  Victor Nieves: We would happily reach across the aisle on an issue like life.
• 12:14
  Victor Nieves: This would seemingly be the kind of an issue, as you mentioned, there was a time in the Democrat caucus where there were those who were pro-life.
• 12:21
  Victor Nieves: They have been effectively exterminated.
• 12:23
  Victor Nieves: They have been run out.
• 12:24
  Victor Nieves: This is just my observation as somebody looking in.
• 12:26
  Victor Nieves: It doesn't seem like there's any of them in in Congress anymore.
• 12:29
  Victor Nieves: They have been run out.
• 12:31
  Victor Nieves: Why is it an issue that would seemingly just be dictated by your moral compass?
• 12:36
  Victor Nieves: Why is it that this is like an extinct, uh, it's an extinct creature in the halls of Congress, the pro-life Democrat?
• 12:43
  Congressman Harris: Well, you're you're really, Victor, probably getting into the deeper issue of what has happened in the culture.
• 12:49
  Congressman Harris: And we have devalued life uh in the culture, and that's the shame of it all.
• 12:55
  Congressman Harris: And a lot of it goes back to the original decision of Roe v.
• 12:59
  Congressman Harris: Wade.
• 13:00
  Congressman Harris: I mean, I've shared with people for years when you have your government that says that it's okay to just terminate the life of a child in the mother's womb or outside the mother's womb, when you say it's okay to terminate, you have just devalued life.
• 13:16
  Congressman Harris: And I think you begin to see results of that all the way across the gamut of your society.
• 13:23
  Congressman Harris: Uh, you see murder rates go up, you see violent crime going up because again, you have devalued life.
• 13:31
  Congressman Harris: And I think that we went through a period of time in this country, whether it be in the 60s and the 70s, where there was a movement afoot that really devalued life.
• 13:41
  Congressman Harris: Did the people that were doing it, some of them, really understand what they were doing?
• 13:46
  Congressman Harris: Maybe not.
• 13:47
  Congressman Harris: I don't know.
• 13:47
  Congressman Harris: You know, I was born in the mid-60s myself, and I'm 60 years old now.
• 13:51
  Congressman Harris: So uh, but I can say that people began to replace moral absolutes, if you will, for far more of what's convenient for me.
• 14:02
  Congressman Harris: And when you start replacing those moral absolutes for conveniences, and then you begin to let your moral compass drop lower and lower and lower, then you've got a real problem.
• 14:13
  Congressman Harris: And I think that's what we've seen happen in the culture.
• 14:15
  Congressman Harris: And so there's a political party, as you mentioned on the other side, that has set out to really just exterminate from its ranks anybody that would even speak to a pro-life issue in some ways.
• 14:29
  Congressman Harris: And they're, you know, they're just not willing to do it.
• 14:31
  Congressman Harris: I think there was a time that Bill Clinton probably even made the statement that abortion should be rare, you know, and that's long gone.
• 14:40
  Congressman Harris: I mean, that seems like that was uh, you know, centuries ago, uh, when in fact it was decades ago, but the party on the other side has just continued to move in that direction to uh just devalue life.
• 14:55
  Victor Nieves: You know, Congressman Harris, on the flip side of that, not to only point fingers in in one direction here, it does seem, this is my read on the situation, it seems that before Dobbs, it was easy to check a box for some Republicans at all levels of government.
• 15:11
  Victor Nieves: It was easy to check the I'm pro-life box.
• 15:13
  Victor Nieves: Post Dobbs, the rubber met the road.
• 15:16
  Victor Nieves: Post Dobbs, the talk had to have some action behind it.
• 15:18
  Victor Nieves: And it seems that we've seen some people who are now starting to balk.
• 15:22
  Victor Nieves: They talked a really big game about I'm pro-life, this is a core conviction, you know, but now it's time.
• 15:27
  Victor Nieves: And you know, this this happens.
• 15:29
  Victor Nieves: Um, now it's time to actually walk it out.
• 15:31
  Victor Nieves: And as you mentioned, there could be this hesitation of is now a good time to do the right thing?
• 15:36
  Victor Nieves: Well, it's all I believe it's always a good time to do the right thing.
• 15:39
  Victor Nieves: Do you see any creep within the Republican Party?
• 15:42
  Victor Nieves: There was a slight change to the party platform not so long ago that did seem to be a step in the wrong direction when it came to the life issue.
• 15:50
  Victor Nieves: Do you see anybody who's trying to say, okay, let's just, we got the win with Dobbs.
• 15:55
  Victor Nieves: We we got rid of Roe.
• 15:56
  Victor Nieves: Let's put that in the in the backseat, and we're just gonna kind of ignore it because we got the win that we were looking for.
• 16:02
  Victor Nieves: Some people don't think it's maybe politically advantageous to focus on the issue of life.
• 16:07
  Victor Nieves: Are there those who are trying to kind of just leave the life issue in the past?
• 16:11
  Congressman Harris: I think there probably are some folks in our party that would probably just choose to look the other way at what is happening with the whole chemical abortion industry.
• 16:20
  Congressman Harris: And I think that's a mistake.
• 16:22
  Congressman Harris: I think that's very sad.
• 16:23
  Congressman Harris: I think the numbers bear it out when you see the number of abortions.
• 16:27
  Congressman Harris: Of course, putting the power back in the states, I think was a wise decision.
• 16:32
  Congressman Harris: And states are able to take the steps.
• 16:35
  Congressman Harris: But I know here in my own state of North Carolina, that was a huge battle.
• 16:38
  Congressman Harris: And unfortunately, North Carolina sort of has become a destination place for abortions because to our South, they had the six-week heartbeat bill in South Carolina, and yet we could never get there.
• 16:53
  Congressman Harris: Our state legislature never got there in North Carolina.
• 16:56
  Congressman Harris: So we're at that 12-week window.
• 16:59
  Congressman Harris: And so people are coming from South Carolina and other states into North Carolina in order to get abortions.
• 17:07
  Congressman Harris: And that's a tragedy.
• 17:08
  Congressman Harris: And I think it's important for this issue to continue to be brought up within the Republican ranks.
• 17:15
  Congressman Harris: We are a Republican-controlled state legislature.
• 17:19
  Congressman Harris: Now, granted, we have a Democrat governor and we know that he vetoes anything that is there.
• 17:25
  Congressman Harris: And right now, we don't have a veto-proof uh majority in the House or the Senate in the state General Assembly.
• 17:33
  Congressman Harris: So 12 weeks is where they had to compromise and settle at.
• 17:37
  Congressman Harris: But again, we're still in our own party need to have voices that are speaking strongly and moving the needle.
• 17:47
  Congressman Harris: I think it's important for all of our legislatures and all of our states to understand that the life issue is still there.
• 17:56
  Congressman Harris: As long as we are ending life in the mother's womb, there is a problem here.
• 18:02
  Congressman Harris: And folks have got to be willing to speak up and stand up in their own states and within our own party, to your point.
• 18:10
  Victor Nieves: And you know, I would go so far as to say, in a definitional sense, and not to impugn people's motives, they may do it unintentionally.
• 18:17
  Victor Nieves: If we are to turn a blind eye, if we're to just ignore the butchering of innocent children, and and this is we have to sometimes splash a little cold water in our face.
• 18:25
  Victor Nieves: The abortion issue is not like it, it's not like tax policy, albeit that's very important as well.
• 18:30
  Victor Nieves: It's not like any of these other topics.
• 18:32
  Victor Nieves: The abortion question is whether or not we are murdering innocent children.
• 18:36
  Victor Nieves: And the answer is obviously yes.
• 18:38
  Victor Nieves: Abortion is the killing, it's the intentional, the premeditated killing of an innocent human being.
• 18:42
  Victor Nieves: And it's happening to the tune last year, 1.1 million.
• 18:45
  Victor Nieves: We we're we're estimates are getting around 65 million since 1973.
• 18:49
  Victor Nieves: This is the biggest mass murder that we have ever seen.
• 18:53
  Victor Nieves: It's happening every single day.
• 18:55
  Victor Nieves: There are thousands of babies that are being killed.
• 18:57
  Victor Nieves: If we were to turn a blind eye to that as a culture, it's human sacrifice.
• 19:01
  Victor Nieves: We are sacrificing those babies for what is perceived to be politically expedient.
• 19:06
  Victor Nieves: That is definitionally human sacrifice.
• 19:09
  Victor Nieves: And so I would warn anybody who wants to ignore it for your own conscience, right?
• 19:13
  Victor Nieves: For the soul of the nation.
• 19:15
  Victor Nieves: We cannot be a nation that prospers if we are butchering the most innocent, the most vulnerable among us.
• 19:21
  Victor Nieves: So at times, I do think it's important.
• 19:23
  Victor Nieves: Obviously, this isn't directed toward you, Congressman Harris, but just all of us collectively.
• 19:27
  Victor Nieves: We splash a little water in our face and go, all right, we we got to kind of lock in on what this really is, what this is all about.
• 19:33
  Victor Nieves: That's right.
• 19:33
  Victor Nieves: It's very concerning anytime I see somebody who wants to move on for expedient's sake.
• 19:38
  Victor Nieves: You mentioned, Congressman, several times the the state of affairs with the abortion pill.
• 19:42
  Victor Nieves: And we know that this is very dangerous.
• 19:44
  Victor Nieves: There was a massive study, the largest of its kind, finds about 11% of women who take this chemical abortion pill, end up in a hospital.
• 19:51
  Victor Nieves: Obviously, it's deadly for the hundreds of thousands of innocent babies that are being killed.
• 19:55
  Victor Nieves: What is the situation?
• 19:56
  Victor Nieves: What is the status update that you can give us from Capitol Hill on the state of affairs with the abortion pill?
• 20:02
  Victor Nieves: I know that there's an investigation, FDA is looking into it.
• 20:06
  Victor Nieves: There's been calls even for EPA on their side of things to look into what's the environmental impact of aborted babies being flushed into our wastewater system.
• 20:15
  Victor Nieves: What can you tell us about chemical abortion?
• 20:17
  Congressman Harris: Well, I can tell you that there are those of us that are continuing to push on this issue and to bring it to light.
• 20:24
  Congressman Harris: There have been several things during my first term here in DC that we have dealt with.
• 20:29
  Congressman Harris: Number one, first bill I introduced was to try to ban tele-abortion and try to take steps that obviously were going to protect women and begin to move the needle in bringing down the number of these abortions that were taking place.
• 20:45
  Congressman Harris: It needed to end.
• 20:46
  Congressman Harris: Unfortunately, our Department of Health and Human Resources actually took a position that allowed a generic of mifepristone to actually be produced.
• 20:56
  Congressman Harris: And so I was part of a letter that was sending that to the administration and the leadership over at Health and Human Services to try to call attention to this and how wrong it was to take that step.
• 21:08
  Congressman Harris: So I think we've got to continue to put the pressure there and these investigations.
• 21:13
  Congressman Harris: I know my colleague Mary Miller had a bill that was very involved in what you just referenced a moment ago, Victor, and how the uh remains being flushed down and how that is making our wastewater system toxic and the things that are involved with that.
• 21:27
  Congressman Harris: So there are a lot of things that are happening.
• 21:30
  Congressman Harris: They're certainly not making the six o'clock news.
• 21:32
  Congressman Harris: They're not being pushed by the media in any way, shape, or form, but there is a continued effort.
• 21:38
  Congressman Harris: I mean, for me, I've really had two primary focuses that I've been dealing with.
• 21:44
  Congressman Harris: Number one is trying to do everything I can to restrict or end this abortion pill and access to it as much as possible.
• 21:53
  Congressman Harris: But then, secondly, making sure that we don't have any federal funding of these proportions.
• 21:59
  Congressman Harris: Abortion groups that are out there.
• 22:02
  Congressman Harris: And as you know, we we passed in the House the one big beautiful bill, the defunding of Planned Parenthood for a decade.
• 22:09
  Congressman Harris: We had that as 10 years that we were banning it.
• 22:12
  Congressman Harris: Unfortunately, it got over to the Senate, and the Senate did its work, and they stripped out all but one year.
• 22:19
  Congressman Harris: And so we had from July of 25 until this past July the banning of any federal funding of Planned Parenthood.
• 22:27
  Congressman Harris: But unfortunately, that year ran out and we're back to the usual, unfortunately.
• 22:33
  Congressman Harris: But I do think there continues to be work on that.
• 22:35
  Congressman Harris: There are folks that are continuing to work behind the scenes that are working on issues that we can try to restrict and bring this back.
• 22:43
  Congressman Harris: But it's just going to be important for folks to keep this issue at the forefront.
• 22:48
  Congressman Harris: What you're doing with your podcast, getting this word out, folks continuing to talk about it in their churches.
• 22:55
  Congressman Harris: Look, we've got a crucial midterm coming up.
• 22:57
  Congressman Harris: To be honest, you don't hear the pro-life issue being discussed in the midterm.
• 23:03
  Congressman Harris: We're talking about affordability, we're talking about gas prices, we're talking about grocery prices.
• 23:08
  Congressman Harris: To what we touched on earlier, you've got more than a million babies being slaughtered, and nobody's talking about that right here at the midterms.
• 23:17
  Congressman Harris: So I think we as candidates have a responsibility to keep this issue first in the forefront.
• 23:23
  Congressman Harris: And I think that citizens have a responsibility to continue to keep asking about it and push it to the forefront when it's not getting the conversation in the town hall meetings or on the campaign trail.
• 23:37
  Victor Nieves: Yep.
• 23:38
  Victor Nieves: Congressman Harris, you know, I had the privilege when that uh the original, the one big beautiful bill went through.
• 23:43
  Victor Nieves: I had the privilege of being up on Capitol Hill and meeting with some offices in Congress and helping to get that across the finish line when we got it.
• 23:50
  Victor Nieves: We were very optimistic, as you know, for example, the Hyde Amendment.
• 23:54
  Victor Nieves: We were very optimistic that we could get something similar to the Hyde Amendment, which is just renewed over and over and over.
• 23:59
  Victor Nieves: Thank the Lord for the Hyde Amendment.
• 24:00
  Victor Nieves: We were hopeful that we could continue a pattern like that when it came to defunding these massive abortion, people didn't realize that to the tune, you know, we're talking about $700 million at least in taxpayer funding that was going to groups like Planned Parenthood.
• 24:15
  Victor Nieves: And we we all understand that what's the old phrase, funding is fungible.
• 24:19
  Victor Nieves: People end up moving it around, you know, it keeps the lights on.
• 24:22
  Victor Nieves: And so the taxpayer, basically nobody that you talk to, even those who are very pro-abortion, very few people will tell you, oh, I would love to give my tax dollars when I go to work.
• 24:31
  Victor Nieves: I, you know, what I'm thinking about when I clock in is how much of my money I want to send to Planned Parenthood.
• 24:36
  Victor Nieves: Most people are not thinking along those lines.
• 24:38
  Victor Nieves: And so it was a, it seemed a very winning issue.
• 24:40
  Victor Nieves: We got it through in the big, the big beautiful bill, and then it died.
• 24:44
  Victor Nieves: What went wrong?
• 24:45
  Victor Nieves: What went wrong that allowed that to unfortunately sunset?
• 24:48
  Victor Nieves: Because, you know, looking at it to us, it seems as though we have to climb Everest once again to get that defunding through.
• 24:55
  Victor Nieves: What went wrong?
• 24:56
  Congressman Harris: Well, obviously, what went wrong was what happened in the Senate.
• 24:59
  Congressman Harris: I mean, obviously, this was something in the House that we were able to get that 10-year moratorium uh defunding gets over to the Senate.
• 25:07
  Congressman Harris: And uh even again, it goes back to our conversation about within our own conference.
• 25:13
  Congressman Harris: And you had people with a narrow majority.
• 25:15
  Congressman Harris: Of course, they have an even less narrow majority than we have in the House, but over in the Senate at uh 5347 majority, you have a handful that are not willing to fight for it and are willing to surrender it, and it went out.
• 25:30
  Congressman Harris: And again, this was the one big beautiful bill.
• 25:32
  Congressman Harris: It was reconciliation.
• 25:34
  Congressman Harris: It only took Republican votes to be able to pass it the way we had sent it out of the House that included the 10-year ban, but they weren't able to do it.
• 25:43
  Congressman Harris: Again, when you ask what went wrong, it comes back to what in the world are we going to do?
• 25:48
  Congressman Harris: And I think it is so crucial that we elect people to the Senate as well as the House that are going to stand on this issue and fight for this issue.
• 25:59
  Victor Nieves: You know, Congressman Harris, if you go back and you read some of the texts of our founding fathers, whether it's Ben Franklin or Jefferson, you often see something of a theme, a bit of a warning, a caution to the American people that would basically be surmised as saying we will have the government we deserve.
• 26:14
  Victor Nieves: And it's kind of a scary thought that we will have the government that we deserve.
• 26:18
  Victor Nieves: So a lot of this, it's very easy for all of us to point fingers at an elected official, to point fingers at Congress, our state legislature, when in a way, the people, not individuals, but the people, when we look to our government, we ought to see a reflection of ourselves, of our values.
• 26:33
  Victor Nieves: And if that's not the case, it means we're not involved.
• 26:36
  Victor Nieves: That's why we were told we have a republic if we can keep it, because the responsibility is on the people to watch what's going on.
• 26:42
  Victor Nieves: And it's very confusing.
• 26:43
  Victor Nieves: DC does not make it easy.
• 26:45
  Victor Nieves: As I'm sure you're well aware, DC does not make it easy for the average person who's got a job and kids and their own five fires to put out every day.
• 26:53
  Victor Nieves: It doesn't make it easy for for us to know what's going on, but there's a heavy burden, not just on you as an elected official, but on the constituents who who need to be paying attention.
• 27:01
  Victor Nieves: We talk about these narrow majorities.
• 27:03
  Victor Nieves: We talk about people who, when the time comes, perhaps we really needed them and they didn't have that courage in the moment.
• 27:10
  Victor Nieves: Well, sometimes courage is contagious.
• 27:11
  Victor Nieves: And sometimes in a tight district, we have to understand political realities.
• 27:15
  Victor Nieves: There could be people who are afraid they're going to lose a seat.
• 27:18
  Victor Nieves: And they might do a political calculation and say, well, if I'm gone, then the voice is totally gone.
• 27:22
  Victor Nieves: You know, then there's then it's a totally pro-abortion voice on the on the other side of it.
• 27:27
  Victor Nieves: There's a responsibility for us as the people to bolster the good, right?
• 27:32
  Victor Nieves: When we see something good, to encourage it, to bolster it, to give it the momentum that it needs.
• 27:36
  Victor Nieves: But there's also on the flip side, there's a responsibility for us to be educated voters.
• 27:40
  Victor Nieves: So pay attention to what's going on.
• 27:42
  Victor Nieves: Obviously, we're going into the general.
• 27:44
  Victor Nieves: I would advise people to be purist in the primaries, more so than the general.
• 27:48
  Victor Nieves: But uh, what is something that we can do as the people to make life easier for those in Congress?
• 27:54
  Victor Nieves: We don't often think of it in those terms, but if we the people are the driving force, what can we do to make it easier for Congress to do what we want y'all to do?
• 28:03
  Congressman Harris: Well, I would say, obviously, when when I look at the whole pro-life movement, number one, we do need to change the laws and that we need to hold our elected officials accountable to do what they said they were going to do.
• 28:17
  Congressman Harris: So I think that's absolutely crucial.
• 28:19
  Congressman Harris: Secondly, I would say that we've got to all do our part in changing the culture.
• 28:24
  Congressman Harris: And listen, having been a pastor for 38 years, I believe that pastors across this country have got to come to real life terms in what the Bible says and that uh and what the Bible says about life and how we are shaped and formed in our mother's womb and the creation hand of God.
• 28:44
  Congressman Harris: I think all of those things.
• 28:45
  Congressman Harris: So, and then that's affect our churches, and then our churches have got to be engaged in helping to affect the culture and change the culture.
• 28:54
  Congressman Harris: So I change the law, change the culture, and I think supporting mothers, I think that's a huge part of that.
• 29:00
  Congressman Harris: That's the reason I've been a part of pregnancy resource centers and supporting them for so long and been a part of this movement.
• 29:08
  Congressman Harris: I mean, I speak at uh pregnancy resource center banquets.
• 29:11
  Congressman Harris: I attend them when I'm not the speaker.
• 29:13
  Congressman Harris: We give to them because I think that is such an important and valuable piece of the culture.
• 29:19
  Congressman Harris: As I said, we're still here in North Carolina, you know, seeing an uptick actually in the number of abortions.
• 29:25
  Congressman Harris: So we've got to be making sure we are getting the support to the mothers that are there.
• 29:30
  Congressman Harris: And then I would say to your listeners, make sure you're persistent.
• 29:34
  Congressman Harris: Don't just make one effort and then walk away and say, well, it didn't work.
• 29:38
  Congressman Harris: You just got to keep going back again and again and again.
• 29:42
  Congressman Harris: And I think that persistence actually eventually pays off.
• 29:46
  Congressman Harris: I really do.
• 29:47
  Congressman Harris: And, you know, I do think it's somewhat of an excuse.
• 29:50
  Congressman Harris: I hear people talk about, well, if I take this vote and this is a swing district, I'm gonna lose because of my pro-life vote.
• 29:58
  Congressman Harris: I'll be honest with you.
• 29:59
  Congressman Harris: I mean, and I realize I'm not in what would be considered maybe a swing district, but I find it hard to believe that one vote is gonna cost you your entire district, especially when it comes down to the issue of protecting life, protecting women, protecting mothers.
• 30:16
  Congressman Harris: It's just one of those things.
• 30:18
  Congressman Harris: And I think we're, again, it goes back to our earlier part of the conversation.
• 30:22
  Congressman Harris: I think we are afraid of the issue.
• 30:25
  Congressman Harris: And as believers, anyway, we don't operate by fear.
• 30:28
  Congressman Harris: We operate by faith.
• 30:30
  Congressman Harris: And that's got to be foundational.
• 30:32
  Victor Nieves: Well, and if you're gonna have fear, Congressman, it better be fear of the Lord and not fear of constituents.
• 30:38
  Congressman Harris: Exactly.
• 30:38
  Victor Nieves: Just a thought.
• 30:39
  Victor Nieves: How do you, uh in your time in Congress, how do you maintain who you are?
• 30:44
  Victor Nieves: We we see so many people who go up potentially with the best of intentions, right?
• 30:49
  Victor Nieves: They go there for a while and and we've seen it, that that city, uh, I don't know what it is about it, but it chews people up and it spits them out, and and you know, they go in one man, they can't, they they come out another.
• 30:58
  Victor Nieves: How can somebody who goes to DC being pro-life, a person of faith, how can they stay that way?
• 31:05
  Congressman Harris: Well, you know, one thing I always learned from my parents long ago as a child, birds of a feather tend to flock together.
• 31:12
  Congressman Harris: So I think it's always important for you to build relationships and initially find those relationships that are going to help you stay strong and be accountable.
• 31:21
  Congressman Harris: I'm in a Bible study with some folks that I dearly love and that are colleagues, and we have a pastor that leads that Bible study.
• 31:29
  Congressman Harris: And then again, personally for me, I still preach every Sunday.
• 31:33
  Congressman Harris: So I know uh as a pastor and preacher that I have to stay grounded, and that keeps me grounded, just being in the Word every day and knowing that I'm having to deliver God's Word.
• 31:45
  Congressman Harris: The importance of that consistency, I think, helps keep you grounded.
• 31:49
  Congressman Harris: And, you know, just don't let your eyes get on something that is uh is going to drive you away or pull you away.
• 31:57
  Congressman Harris: Just stay focused on who you are, who God made you to be, and how you got where you are, I think is ultimately the key.
• 32:05
  Victor Nieves: Congressman, you mentioned that.
• 32:06
  Victor Nieves: And I have to ask the question.
• 32:08
  Victor Nieves: I did not know that you still preach on Sundays.
• 32:10
  Victor Nieves: That's pretty remarkable.
• 32:11
  Victor Nieves: So this I have to ask, what's your message to pastors who are afraid?
• 32:17
  Victor Nieves: I mean, obviously, it's not like you're a political guy.
• 32:19
  Victor Nieves: You're in Congress.
• 32:20
  Victor Nieves: So we know that you're involved in politics.
• 32:23
  Victor Nieves: What's your message to pastors?
• 32:24
  Victor Nieves: Because we deal with this all the time, and I'm very passionate about it.
• 32:27
  Victor Nieves: It'll get me all fired up.
• 32:28
  Victor Nieves: So I won't go too far down the rabbit trail.
• 32:29
  Victor Nieves: But if we had the church, the Capital C church, if we as the church get involved and fight for life, we change this overnight.
• 32:37
  Victor Nieves: The the believers in this country are the largest voting bloc in the entire country.
• 32:41
  Victor Nieves: If if every Christian voted like a Christian, this nation would be, in a good way, unrecognizable in one election cycle.
• 32:47
  Victor Nieves: One, let's call it a four-year cycle, it'll be so much better.
• 32:50
  Victor Nieves: And I think a lot of that is it falls on the pastors all across the country.
• 32:54
  Victor Nieves: It falls on people who are, I would be pointed with it and say potentially more afraid of man than they are of God.
• 33:00
  Victor Nieves: They're afraid to talk on some of these issues.
• 33:02
  Victor Nieves: And they say, well, it's political.
• 33:04
  Victor Nieves: And I don't want to talk about it.
• 33:05
  Victor Nieves: Congressman, what do you say to somebody who refuses to touch on, let's do air quotes here, political topics when there's script, to me, these are not political topics.
• 33:15
  Victor Nieves: These are moral topics, these are scriptural topics.
• 33:18
  Victor Nieves: How can they find a little courage to uh step up on that?
• 33:21
  Congressman Harris: Well, again, I think for me, uh, and I try to remind pastors all the time, you got to be true to your call.
• 33:28
  Congressman Harris: You got to go back and remember the time that you were touched by the Holy Spirit, how you came and gave your life to Christ and became a believer.
• 33:36
  Congressman Harris: You got to be foundational to that.
• 33:38
  Congressman Harris: Then you've got to remember when God called you to preach, when he called you to take that step of faith and be that leader.
• 33:45
  Congressman Harris: Listen, the word of God is full of following personalities and spiritual leaders in their journey.
• 33:53
  Congressman Harris: They weren't always perfect.
• 33:54
  Congressman Harris: They made a lot of mistakes.
• 33:56
  Congressman Harris: I mean, right now, I've always preached through books of the Bible.
• 33:58
  Congressman Harris: And I preach chapter by chapter and verse by verse.
• 34:01
  Congressman Harris: And when you do that, you know, you're just teaching the principles of God's word.
• 34:05
  Congressman Harris: And I don't set out in a sermon each week to say, wow, I'm gonna be political today or I'm gonna not be political today.
• 34:13
  Congressman Harris: Just preach the word.
• 34:14
  Congressman Harris: And if you preach the principles of the word, I'd tell you, you're gonna hit the issue of life very frequently.
• 34:21
  Congressman Harris: You're gonna hit the issue of homosexuality from time and sexual perversion.
• 34:27
  Congressman Harris: You're gonna hit that.
• 34:28
  Congressman Harris: You're gonna hit the issue of lying.
• 34:30
  Congressman Harris: Right now, Genesis, I preached this past week on uh Abraham and him being in this backslidden state where he told Sarah to lie and tell Pharaoh that she was his sister rather than his wife.
• 34:42
  Congressman Harris: And you know, listen, you get into things when you begin to just preach the principles of God's word, and it takes care of it.
• 34:50
  Congressman Harris: I don't consider myself being overly courageous.
• 34:53
  Congressman Harris: I just believe in preaching the word.
• 34:55
  Congressman Harris: And fortunately, in the culture today, that is marked as being courageous, just standing on the word and preaching it.
• 35:02
  Congressman Harris: So I tell pastors all the time, you're not fulfilling your call if you're not being the spiritual leader to your church and to your community that you've been called to be.
• 35:12
  Congressman Harris: And um, we have that responsibility.
• 35:15
  Victor Nieves: Yep.
• 35:15
  Victor Nieves: Well, and and scripture often I say this all the time, it likens the role of a pastor to that of a shepherd.
• 35:21
  Victor Nieves: And we have biblical examples of shepherds.
• 35:23
  Victor Nieves: I always reference what did David do when the lion entered the pen to kill his sheep?
• 35:28
  Victor Nieves: He killed it.
• 35:29
  Victor Nieves: What did he do when the bear came in?
• 35:30
  Victor Nieves: He killed it.
• 35:31
  Victor Nieves: He wasn't silent, he didn't ignore it, he didn't close his eyes and pretend, well, the lion's not actually there.
• 35:36
  Victor Nieves: And so pastors don't have to kill any lions these days.
• 35:39
  Victor Nieves: I'm sure they'll all be very grateful for that.
• 35:41
  Victor Nieves: But they should speak out.
• 35:42
  Victor Nieves: You know, whenever your flock is being ravaged, when when you have so many, we so many Christians are impacted by abortion.
• 35:48
  Victor Nieves: The children of Christian parents are being aborted and pastors aren't saying anything.
• 35:52
  Victor Nieves: It's uh not a good shepherd.
• 35:54
  Victor Nieves: That's a good shepherd kills the lion, it kills the bear.
• 35:56
  Victor Nieves: Congressman, my final question.
• 35:58
  Victor Nieves: This is always one of my favorite questions to ask people.
• 36:00
  Victor Nieves: What is your prescription for our country?
• 36:03
  Victor Nieves: What do we do going forward?
• 36:04
  Victor Nieves: How do we end this horrible atrocity, the butchering of innocent children?
• 36:08
  Victor Nieves: How do we stop it?
• 36:09
  Congressman Harris: I think, honestly, Victor, short of a spiritual awakening in this country, I don't know that we're going to see it.
• 36:17
  Congressman Harris: That's why I pray for a spiritual awakening.
• 36:20
  Congressman Harris: That's why I preach week in and week out.
• 36:22
  Congressman Harris: That's why I take every opportunity I can because there is a spiritual underpinning problem that we've got here in this country.
• 36:31
  Congressman Harris: And I again, it you can go back and point fingers and we can go back and look at the decades.
• 36:36
  Congressman Harris: But the reality is we devalued life.
• 36:39
  Congressman Harris: And until we put God in his proper place and our eyes are focused upon him, we're not going to understand the value of human life whom God created.
• 36:50
  Congressman Harris: And when we do that and we begin to get all those things in their proper perspective, that's when we're going to see the change.
• 36:57
  Congressman Harris: And I would go back to something I touched on earlier.
• 37:00
  Congressman Harris: I I think you've got to be engaged to find people that are going to help us change the laws.
• 37:05
  Congressman Harris: We've got to be engaged to help people that are going to be willing to support mothers and stand with that.
• 37:12
  Congressman Harris: And you've got to be willing to be persistent in that process.
• 37:16
  Congressman Harris: And then ultimately, we change the culture.
• 37:19
  Congressman Harris: And but I think it's going to take all of those things that folks need to be involved in doing.
• 37:24
  Victor Nieves: Amen.
• 37:24
  Victor Nieves: Well, Congressman Harris, thank you so much for joining us.
• 37:27
  Victor Nieves: Thank you for the good work that you do.
• 37:28
  Victor Nieves: Please keep fighting for the babies up there.
• 37:30
  Victor Nieves: Be a voice for the voiceless.
• 37:32
  Victor Nieves: Thank you so much for joining us today.
• 37:34
  Congressman Harris: Been a pleasure.
• 37:34
  Congressman Harris: God bless you.