Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Josh vs the Anti-Abortion Activist

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Josh vs the Anti-Abortion Activist · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Good day humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
• 0:07
  Today one of the internet's most outspoken anti-abortion activists joins me in the studio.
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  We try to model, I suppose, how to have genuinely uncomfortable disagreements about issues
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  that we don't normally know how to talk about constructively across the aisle.
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  Joanna Howe is a law professor and a Catholic.
• 0:28
  She's best known for her viral videos on YouTube and on social media where she gets into
• 0:33
  arguments with people on the street about abortion or she confronts politicians outside
• 0:37
  their offices or she smacks down politicians even if they're pro-life for being inadequately
• 0:43
  pro-life.
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  Joanna genuinely believes that abortion should be illegal and it's part of her deeply
• 0:49
  held conviction that abortion is murder from the moment of fertilization.
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  If you haven't heard an episode that I did last July with the family values activist
• 0:59
  and the anti-Saragasy campaigner from America named Katie Faust, that is also worth listening
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  to.
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  That became one of the most effective episodes of this show ever in terms of, I suppose,
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  modeling a rational debate about a very emotional topic.
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  And so I hope that doing more of these kinds of things is some kind of a help to you
• 1:20
  and your loved ones in figuring out how to have less toxic and more constructive conversations
• 1:26
  about some of the most sensitive issues in the modern world.
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  I hope you enjoy, as much as I did the one, the only Joanna Howe.
• 1:41
  Yes, I've been scrambling around just before the recording began trying to figure
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  out who is actually collecting my children.
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  You know that panic attack you get when you're like, wait a second, was I supposed to be,
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  wasn't it, was there a dentist appointment, was I supposed to be at right now?
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  So welcome, lovely, you have kids as well, right?
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  We do.
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  We've got five.
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  Five.
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  How's that?
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  Look, it's wild.
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  But it actually, once we hit three, it was fine, like that, that just,
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  Right.
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  Then you're like, it's just many.
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  It's just many.
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  It could be ten.
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  They expect very little of you because there's more of them.
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  Yes.
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  So they just start to fend for themselves.
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  It's funny you say three, actually, because my cousin, when before I had kids, was giving
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  me some advice about having kids and she was like, the first one, you know, you think
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  everything is the end of the world, you think it really matters what you do.
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  And you have this, you have this illusion that you as a parent are fundamentally important
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  to an inactual fact, all you have to do is love them and, you know, they're going to
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  be what they're going to be.
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  And she was like, by the time we had the third one, it was like, where is he again?
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  Like we don't even, you know, you hit this just climb up the walls.
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  You realize that they just sort of take care of themselves.
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  And so my partner and I always had this motto that, like, just treat our first two because
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  we had twins like they're the third.
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  Yeah.
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  Try not to give a shit.
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  Yeah, exactly.
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  Yeah.
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  I think in this era of smaller families, it's important that people do, like they don't
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  helicopter, right?
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  Yes.
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  We're not raising snowflakes.
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  We are trying to raise the children of the 1990s, you know, that we're just riding
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  their bikes down the street and supervising the playground.
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  We're capable of going down to the corner store and buying food, you know, that sort
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  of thing.
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  Do you think it's possible?
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  That's what we do.
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  Yeah.
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  So our kids run the streets like little gypsies.
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  That's true.
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  And just with some coins in their back pockets.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  That is the way we've raised ours.
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  And in our family, I think you're right.
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  So you've got to love them.
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  I also think in this era, you've got to form them to have good character and to be
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  discerning, because I think the culture, we're living in interesting times.
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  And so teaching your children to think critically and to think for themselves is really important.
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  So, you know, in our family, more than a swear word, if you're, you know, the other day
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  page came running to me, mum, mum, just called me a woke leftist, like that was the
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  insult.
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  That's the worst thing you could call somebody in our family.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Exactly.
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  I've just honed you around my house.
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  What does a critical thinking mean then?
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  What does that look like?
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  Because I normally, you're quite religious.
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  Would you say that?
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  I would normally associate me having a bias towards secular humanism and sort of agnosticism.
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  And, you know, I would normally have a presumption that critical thinking means I don't subscribe
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  to any dogma.
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  I don't take on faith that something, you know, some description of what happened thousands
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  of years ago in the Middle East is literally what happened.
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  And therefore, you know, the cosmos is probably a lot more complicated than any particular
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  doctrine says it is.
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  How does critical thinking work for you in a Catholic framework?
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  Well, I would say that's a dogma, that's a, that's a world view, right?
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  So, irrespective of whether you're atheist, agnostic or Christian, or Muslim or Buddhist
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  or Hindu, you've got a world view, you've got a perspective.
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  And I think as your children, like when they're little, they just believe what you believe,
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  they just do.
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  You know, you could, you could tell them anything was real and they'd believe that, you know,
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  but I think as they get older, around the time that they start questioning the, where
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  the Santa and the Easter Bunny and the truth fairy is real and how does that possibly work,
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  they also start to think about, you know, is God real, where the babies come from, had,
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  you know, all of that stuff.
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  And then now, increasingly, they're growing up in an education system which is telling
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  them things like you can be whatever gender you want to be, you know, there's all sorts
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  of ideas that are now coming through.
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  And I think when that starts to happen, you've just got to be prepared to have the conversations,
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  allow them to go on their own journey with that, tell them what you think to be true,
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  but also hold it loosely because I think that the era of just expecting your children
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  to be Catholic or Christian because that is what it is at home, that is what the Bible
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  says or whatever, you know, like that, that doesn't work anymore, that doesn't work.
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  I mean, if it ever did.
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  Yes.
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  You all know the highly religious families, whose kids then rebel in their teens and become,
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  you know, goths.
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  I think it raised cultural Christians or cultural Catholics in particular, but not people
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  that actually knew what they believed.
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  Yes.
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  Why?
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  For example, I was pro-choice.
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  I grew up in a Catholic family, but I didn't know anything about abortion or what it was
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  or what it would be wrong.
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  And so at the time that I was studying, you know, economic sluritz in the uni, I was pro-choice,
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  I was 20.
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  And God carrying leftist.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, just before we move on to abortion, because I do want to, obviously, but before we
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  leave religion, it's a slight bugbearer of mine when religious people make the move of
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  saying, like, everything is a story, everything is a doctrine.
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  So the claim that religions are doctrines is itself a doctrine, a materialist doctrine,
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  simply because the claim that I was making as a secular, for secular humanism was just
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  that we don't have good evidence for knowing whether or not Jesus bodily, like, rose to
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  heaven after three days in a cave or whether Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse or
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  whether a Ganesh literally grew the head of an elephant, right?
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  And so those are claims on which it's incumbent on the person who's saying that there's
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  good reason to believe that.
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  They have, they're the one who has to come up with the reason for believing that, to simply
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  refrain from believing that unless you're also then imposing a whole bunch of other stories,
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  you say, like, I don't know, biology is made up and you can be whatever gender you want
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  to, which are also, I will concede sort of quasi-religious faith claims, essentially.
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  But my limited materialism and humanism would simply be a space of agnosticism.
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  It's not a dogma to say that dogma is a dogmatic.
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  But from your space of secular humanism, there would be perspectives that you have on
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  the world that I, as a Christian, would disagree with, that, you know, we started, I don't
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  know whether we want to get into this, but you started it before we met and I asked
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  you who you were, because we hadn't really chatted before.
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  And I was curious because you had me on and you're not known as a conservative podcast.
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  And I was really grateful that you had me on, because typically people that don't agree
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  with me completely don't want to have me on to have this conversation.
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  It's just part of the problem.
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  I mean, if people aren't talking to each other, who they...
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  So it's really grateful that you did that, but you did, before we, you know, just at the
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  very start, you told me, I've got children who started to see, for example.
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  Now, presumably, your worldview tells you the particular perspective that you come
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  from, tells you that that would be an ethical way to raise a family, because you're doing
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  it.
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  Yes.
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  Yeah.
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  And, presumably, from my perspective, as a Catholic, but it doesn't just come from that,
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  it comes in, you know, signs and philosophy as well, I would say that I potentially have
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  some problems with that.
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  Yeah.
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  Yes, but I mean, the grounds on which we would be able to have a reasonable conversation
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  about our differences of opinion about surrogacy would always come back.
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  They would always cash out in philosophical or ethical claims that can be based on reason
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  or evidence.
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  Yes.
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  I would assume.
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  Yeah.
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  Okay.
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  Once they start becoming theological, we're going to be at an impasse, essentially,
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  right?
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  Because you're going to be relying on claims about things that happen that I don't think
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  there are good reasons to believe.
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  That's all I'm saying.
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  Okay.
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  So I think I can agree with that.
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  We would have a deeper conversation about, you know, so I think there's enough evidence
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  to suggest that Jesus was a historical figure.
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  Yes, me too.
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  And then the big claim is, yeah, did he rise from the dead, easy to son of God?
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  Yeah.
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  Exactly.
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  So, and I think this is obviously not the topic of this podcast.
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  Yeah.
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  But I think there are good arguments to suggest that that is the case, obviously, you're
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  not persuaded.
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  But in our family, for example, with the kids, that is the kind of conversation we would
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  have.
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  Yeah.
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  No, that's fair enough.
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  A line in the sand for the listener who here's quite frequently religious people say,
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  well, everything's a religion, materialism is a religion, secular humanism is a religion.
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  So you might as well, all I'm, yeah, when I hear that, I go, yeah, but my quite unquote
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  religion doesn't, doesn't depend on believing in things that there are insufficient evidence
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  to believe.
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  That's, that's it.
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  That's it.
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  That's my claim.
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  So yes.
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  Let's get into reproductive rights and let's phrase, it's just call it abortions so that
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  we don't, you know, pussy foot around with euphemisms because I know that irritates
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  you.
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  Yes.
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  What's your basic, make, make your basic pitch and then let's talk about it.
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  Okay.
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  Um, all right.
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  So when a woman is pregnant, she's pregnant with a human being.
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  We know it's a human being because that's who it's parents are, so it's not a, it's a
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  fetus, but that's a stage of development and that doesn't connote a species.
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  So it's not a dog fetus or a porcupine fetus or a dolphin fetus.
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  It's a human fetus.
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  It's a human being from the moment of fertilization, from zygote to embryo to fetus to newborn.
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  It's always wrong to kill an innocent human being, therefore abortion is wrong.
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  Cool.
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  Um, do you differentiate, I mean, a lot of the traction that you get online and in social
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  media is about specifically late term abortions, which are obviously, um, the most morally
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  complicated.
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  I think you might think that there's no difference, but, but we can get into that about
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  the morality of, of what stage a fetus is at when it's killed, um, but it's certainly
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  shocking for people when they start learning about, you know, the reality and the legality,
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  for example, of a 36 week old, um, baby being killed in utero or out of utero as you
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  sometimes, as you sometimes say, um, to what extent is that, is that a moral emphasis
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  for you?
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  And to what extent is that just a sort of tactical way of getting people to focus on what
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  you think is the bigger issue, which is abortion.
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  Yeah.
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  Plot abortion.
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  Yeah.
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  So I don't, um, think that there's any difference between, um, killing a 90 euro person
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  and killing a one day old person.
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  And in the same way, I don't think there's any difference between killing a six week old
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  embryo and a 37 week old fetus.
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  I think that that's, that's all killing and assuming being, um, and it's, it, it's
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  wrong.
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  So the focus on babies who survived their abortion and a left to die or late term abortion,
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  that is strategic.
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  Um, it's because that's the, we've literally got abortion up to birth and in some states
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  and territories, it's okay.
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  It's acceptable, um, for a baby to survive their abortion and then to be left to die.
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  And so in terms of any kind of social reform, if we think about, um, you know, uh, the
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  right for women to stand in parliament, that came through a fight around getting women
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  equal franchise, the right to vote.
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  Um, the ability, uh, for men and women to be free to not be enslaved, that came through,
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  um, a battle to end the slave trade that then, you know, I think it was something like
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  18 years later led to ending slavery itself in, in bread and in the colonies.
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  So, you know, uh, any kind of major social reform typically takes place incrementally, um,
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  and you can see that.
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  Just to quibble with the sort of historical analogy there, obviously the, the pro choice
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  movement would regard that as being a slightly, um, sinister or cute analogy in the sense
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  that those civil rights struggle, that it's not like abortion is, uh, is a tradition
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  that we inherited from old and that it's a civil rights struggle to now prevent women
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  from getting abortion.
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  It's absolutely a civil rights struggle.
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  How is it not?
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  You've got, well, but I'm just talking about the historical analogy, right?
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  Slavery had been, had existed since for time immemorial and it was a new thing to come
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  up with the idea of emancipating slaves.
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  That was a civil rights struggle like black people had been persecuted for time immemorial
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  by white people and, you know, the civil rights movement of the 1960s was a new thing.
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  Women had not been had equal rights since time immemorial and then feminism was a new
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  idea.
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  So comparing abortion to, you know, the banning of abortion to, you know, female liberation
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  as an analogy is sort of like implying that, uh, women have had the right to abortion
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  since time immemorial and now you've come up with this brilliant new idea, which is
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  that killing babies is wrong.
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  You know, obviously for a very, very long time women didn't have control over their unborn
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  babies and you may say that that was right and just and that we took a wrong path, but
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  it was three seconds ago in cultural and political time that women attained a right.
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  And now you're talking about, I don't want to say taking away that right because that
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  prejudges the case against you, but you're talking about, you're saying that that was
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  not a right that was there as to take because it infringes on the rights of the unborn baby.
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  So it's not really an, I mean, I don't think it's analogous to other civil rights struggles
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  that have overturned millennia of injustice.
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  Okay.
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  So I think the analogy stems from the fact that you've got two classes of human beings
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  and in each of those three scenarios, slavery, women's right to vote and stand in parliament
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  and abortion, you've got a weaker, marginalized subset of the human population who's seen
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  as lesser than.
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  So it's the black slave, it's the woman who's seen as emotional and unfit to partake in
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  these decisions.
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  Or it's the human in the womb who's seen as too young, too disabled, has the wrong gender.
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  And because of their age, size or location, in all of those cases, because of that attribute
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  that pertains that subset of the human population, we see them as lesser than.
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  And there's a grave injustice that's been, that they're under because of that view, that
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  the more powerful voice party, the party with voice, the party that can vote, the party
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  that can agitate, that they get to determine the outcome for that other group.
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  And that's the analogy.
• 15:51
  Yes.
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  So you've got in all three cases, you've got human beings and you've got one group of
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  the human population whose human rights are trampled on.
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  And so the left talks a big game about being the side of human rights.
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  And yet it is the left that is the side of abortion, it just is.
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  And you know, you said that the other side might see this as a sinister way to end abortion.
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  But let's think about what they did, you know, if you think about, this is just the history
• 16:19
  of social reform.
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  So in the late 1960s abortion became legal in South Australia, it was either 68 or 69.
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  And at that point in the law, it was clearly written that from 28 weeks, because that was
• 16:30
  deemed viability at that stage because of the wear medical science wasn't that point.
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  A baby couldn't survive before 28 weeks, but they could afterwards.
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  So it was explicitly written in the law that abortion is legal, except for after 28 weeks
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  when a baby could survive outside the womb.
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  Now that was in South Australia, the first day in Australia to do that in 2021 in South
• 16:51
  Australia, that legislation was changed to allow abortion up to birth for any reason,
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  other than sex selection in New South Wales.
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  It's for any reason everywhere else, but we have that particular ban in South Australia.
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  And so you can see the same impulse to go from narrow to broad and unrestricted from
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  the opposite direction.
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  And it's just, it is the way that I think, I think is the way that the culture moves.
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  It's the way that we do anything.
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  Even if you think about it, I've been looking quite closely at the battle to end slavery
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  in Britain.
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  Initially, there were calls to abolish slavery, but there were also calls to regulate it.
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  So to limit the amount of slaves that you could have in a ship or to have increased sleeping
• 17:43
  corners.
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  And in 1806, WW4 couldn't end slavery.
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  So what he did is he regulated the flags and he said, you have to have a certain flag.
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  And that actually ended two thirds of the slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean.
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  The following year, they were able to abolish it completely.
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  But then it took to 1833 to actually abolish slavery itself, but they replaced it with an
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  apprentice model.
• 18:04
  So if you were a slave, you had to be an apprentice, like, you know, I mean, I'm not sure
• 18:10
  you're getting anywhere really here by saying that civil rights struggles take a long time
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  to implement, because I mean, it's a little bit, it's just a little bit, I don't know,
• 18:24
  isn't it a bit offensive to compare, like, black people to a five-day old blastocyst?
• 18:30
  No.
• 18:31
  The size of a pinhead is like the problem.
• 18:34
  The question is not, does this have, you know, does this possibly have cultural similarities
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  to civil rights struggles of the past in the fact that it is going to take us a long
• 18:44
  time to change the laws, which is the sort of analogy that seems that you're making that,
• 18:48
  you know, it takes a long time for disenfranchised people to be emancipated.
• 18:54
  That's not a problem that anyone's, no one's going to have a problem with that.
• 18:57
  I mean, the problem that they have is with the black and white interpretation of all
• 19:05
  human life from the moment of conception as being equally deserving of a right to life.
• 19:12
  Right?
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  It's really the China crux of the ethical quibble.
• 19:16
  Why would you differentiate between certain human beings in terms of according to human rights?
• 19:24
  You know, like...
• 19:25
  Well, I think there's a confusion here between human being, like between being a member
• 19:28
  of the species, homo sapiens, like having a distinct genetic code and being a person,
• 19:35
  what philosophers would call a person, having personhood, which means having self-awareness
• 19:39
  and consciousness and experience of what it's like to be alive and having relationships
• 19:44
  and having a sense of oneself and a concept of the future, even at the most rudimentary level.
• 19:49
  So...
• 19:50
  Okay, so that's what some philosophers say that's the determinant of a personhood.
• 19:54
  But I would be of the perspective, and there'd be other philosophers that agree with my
• 19:57
  perspective, that humanity cannot be separated from personhood.
• 20:02
  So you've got a human being, you've got a person, and whenever, and this would be my
• 20:05
  claim, whenever you try and disentangle personhood from human being, is when we get the worst
• 20:11
  atrocities in the world.
• 20:13
  You know, that's when we get...
• 20:14
  It's certainly risky.
• 20:15
  It's certainly risky.
• 20:16
  I'll go into that.
• 20:17
  I mean, my dad died of Alzheimer's last year, and in his final months, when he was,
• 20:24
  you know, really bad, it seems a bit evasive to me to...
• 20:34
  evasive to me to imply that there wasn't something fundamental about his personhood that
• 20:39
  was lost.
• 20:40
  I don't think that means that he no longer has rights.
• 20:45
  I'm certain that it means that he would have wanted us to end his life.
• 20:49
  Had we been able to, legally, or had he been able to, earlier?
• 20:55
  But there was certainly something about him when he was at his most vital that was different
• 21:03
  from the way he was when he was essentially a vegetable.
• 21:07
  Of course.
• 21:08
  And I don't think...
• 21:09
  So I think we need a some way of talking about...
• 21:11
  I think we need some spectrum, right, where we can talk about persons as distinct from
• 21:18
  members of the species, homo sapiens, something that can include us at our most vital and differentiate
• 21:25
  that from my father and differentiate him from a blastocyst, the size of a pinhead.
• 21:32
  So what did I mean acceptable with your father assuming that he wasn't cared for in your
• 21:36
  home, but he was in some hospital way...
• 21:38
  He was in a facility.
• 21:39
  Yes, he was.
• 21:40
  He's in a facility.
• 21:42
  They deem him too much of a burden and they kill him, you know, let's take the cleanest
• 21:49
  method of abortion.
• 21:50
  They get an injection, a needle filled with potassium chloride, they inject that into
• 21:54
  his heart and he goes into a cardiac arrest, a burning sensation if he can feel anything.
• 21:58
  This is for late term abortions, right?
• 22:00
  Yes, I'm using the best method.
• 22:01
  I mean, we could use dilation and evacuation where we literally rip off his arms and legs
• 22:04
  with a metal four-seps.
• 22:05
  Right, but those are for earlier, that's before the baby presumably has the capacity for
• 22:12
  what we would call thought.
• 22:13
  Well, they have the capacity to feel pain and they can sense, they can hear their mothers
• 22:16
  and fathers voice and they can see the difference between light and sound.
• 22:18
  We're talking between 13 weeks and 24 weeks.
• 22:21
  That metal four-seps method is a dilation and evacuation, but anyway, we can talk about
• 22:25
  the methods in a minute, but my point is with your father, if he's in some facility and
• 22:29
  they deem him too much, it's a burden on the system, it's costing us too much.
• 22:33
  He's, he doesn't look like he's having a good quality of life anyway.
• 22:37
  Let's kill him, whether it's the injection or it's the ripping the arms and legs off.
• 22:41
  Would that be okay?
• 22:43
  I think it would be a really undesirable legal outcome.
• 22:47
  Is it wrong?
• 22:48
  Is it morally wrong?
• 22:49
  Is it unethical to do that?
• 22:51
  I think that if he has expressed in the past his willingness to consent to that and
• 22:56
  we agree.
• 22:57
  So this is an area where he hasn't expressed consent.
• 22:58
  Okay, if you're, I would, I don't want to say I'm divisive, but it would really depend.
• 23:05
  I mean, what I can say is I wouldn't want to live under a legal regime where that was permissible.
• 23:11
  Well, that is the legal regime for babies in the womb, isn't it?
• 23:13
  Yeah, yeah.
• 23:14
  You know, they can't consent.
• 23:15
  They're violently killed and they have no ability to challenge them.
• 23:19
  And we can talk about why I think there would be different, why the legal regime for
• 23:24
  youth in Asia against the will of the patient would be different in terms of its consequences,
• 23:28
  being a consequentialist, then the consequences of banning abortion.
• 23:33
  So there are all kinds of negative externalities to the latter, which I don't think I've
• 23:37
  loved.
• 23:38
  Sure, but I think the point that I'm making, because you used your father as an example.
• 23:40
  I'm sorry that he passed, but you use as an example to say that he was perhaps,
• 23:49
  and I don't want to miss quote you, less of a person.
• 23:51
  And I guess to imply that there's a slippery, a slippery slide, right, that there's a gradient
• 23:59
  of personhood, which makes conversations about these tricky moral questions, quite slippery
• 24:05
  and sophisticated and difficult, and which I think if there's one criticism that I would have of
• 24:11
  the stridently anti-abortion or stridently pro-abortion point of view, it would be that they're
• 24:18
  making absolutely just claims about things that are inherently quite difficult to pin down,
• 24:24
  like personhood. So I mean, the easy claim that you can just say, well, if an entity is a member
• 24:31
  of the species homo sapiens, then it is a person, and therefore it should be accorded all the rights
• 24:36
  of all other persons, gets a bit tricky when you start talking about a baby that is born without a
• 24:42
  brain that has no capacity to think, you know, suppose it's not born, suppose it's in utero,
• 24:48
  and it has no brain, it will never have a brain, it has an encephaly or whatever it's called,
• 24:53
  and it's just basically a brain stem, it's never going to be capable of thought.
• 25:00
  Is that, so is that deserving, is that fetus as deserving of all of the fully fledged rights
• 25:06
  of personhood as you? So coming out of World War II, I guess, they were trying to think about
• 25:15
  how could we stop this ever happening again? And I'm guided by the preamble. I don't want you to
• 25:20
  jump to it. No, but I'm guided by the preamble to the United Nations Declaration of Humorites
• 25:26
  that every member of the human family, so it is every member of the species homo sapiens,
• 25:31
  you know, it's your father. It's your father. It's your father. It's your father.
• 25:33
  About gender. But that's the modern day iteration of the United Nations. If we think about
• 25:40
  coming out of one of the greatest atrocities, the world has ever seen, there was a recognition
• 25:44
  that if you are a member of the human family, if you're a member of the human family,
• 25:48
  you have human rights. So yes, the child with encephaly, whose brain is literally disintegrating
• 25:53
  or maybe never even formed has the same human rights as you are, because they are members of
• 25:59
  the human family, just like it would be wrong to intentionally end the life of your father
• 26:04
  without his consent, just because he's a burden on the system, or because he's too disabled,
• 26:09
  because he's lost his mind, he's now in a vegetative state, it is wrong to do the same to a child
• 26:13
  in the womb who is a member of the human family. That is the position. And I would love Josh to not
• 26:18
  be an absolutist about this. It would be so much easier if I could just say to you, look,
• 26:22
  let's just end late term abortion because it's so bad, those babies are viable, they can feel pain,
• 26:27
  they're capable of cognizance, it would be so much easier to have that discussion, but it would
• 26:31
  also be wrong. With great moral questions, we have to be absolutely sure. So let me just clarify
• 26:38
  that because it is an interesting conclusion that you've just ended up out. There's a burning
• 26:44
  house inside the house is a healthy eight year old girl, and there is a jar with a brain
• 26:56
  circulated a lot online. No, I've never heard this. I'm making it up literally.
• 26:59
  Are you really? This is one of the big dilemmas that people throw online.
• 27:03
  I mean, obviously a burning house, burning house dilemma is a famous philosophical job.
• 27:06
  Is it a jar of audio, embryos? Is that what you're going to do now?
• 27:08
  No, no, it's a brain dead baby that's hooked up to life support, and it's 36 weeks. It could
• 27:16
  be viable. It's basically, it's in a humidity crib, so it was something, but it's never going to
• 27:23
  sink. It's never going to feel. And you have to run in. You're telling me that your moral intuition
• 27:30
  will be that it is that you might as well toss a coin as to which of those you rescue.
• 27:35
  Irrespective of who I save, the moral worth of both are the same. If your children, you got two.
• 27:40
  If your children were in a house with my children, house is burning down, you can only save
• 27:43
  two children who you're going to save. My five or you're two or two of mine or you're two.
• 27:47
  Mine. Exactly. Because you have a relationship with them. Similarly, in that scenario, when it's
• 27:51
  thrown around and it's thrown around in different ways, so it's the child within a
• 27:53
  Stephanie hooked up to machine or it's a giant IVF clinic that's burning down and you've got like
• 27:57
  a thousand frozen embryos and one five-year-old child. Typically, people will save the five-year-old
• 28:02
  child, the eight-year-old child, just like you would save your children over mine because of the
• 28:06
  connection, but that doesn't speak to the fact that that child has more moral worth than the child
• 28:12
  within a Stephanie hooked up to a life support machine or the jar of a thousand frozen embryos.
• 28:18
  In my world view, if you're a member of the human family, you have human rights and irrespective
• 28:23
  of my emotional connection to you and how the world views you, that subjective, you know,
• 28:27
  that subjective viewing of that person. The objective truth is you've got a human being
• 28:31
  and that human being has to have human rights and when we take them away or say that they're
• 28:36
  uncillary, then there's problems. So if you did go into the, let's take the IVF example now with the,
• 28:43
  there are a thousand frozen embryos. If you did go in and rescue the eight-year-old girl
• 28:49
  instead of the thousand embryos, you would be allowing your emotional bias essentially
• 28:56
  to occlude what is morally the right or option. Did you just like you would be allowing your
• 29:03
  emotional bias to save your children over mine? I don't think that's exactly the same because I do
• 29:07
  think that you could have a moral principle that says commitment to family matters more than
• 29:13
  commitment to, you know, like some abstract truthfully utilitarian, you know, that utilitarianism
• 29:18
  and consequentialism wouldn't work if I was required to care as much about a baby,
• 29:22
  assigning baby in Africa as about my own kids because everyone would abandon their own kids
• 29:26
  and nothing would, would operate, would function, right? Yeah, parents have special responsibilities
• 29:29
  exactly. So you could make, you could make a rational, rational argument about that, but, but,
• 29:34
  So I think, I think with the IVF scenario, you've got an eight-year-old child, she's screaming
• 29:39
  out, you're saying, save me, save me, save me, she's crying, then you've got these a thousand
• 29:43
  frozen embryos. You've got questions over like if you would have grabbed those a thousand frozen
• 29:47
  embryos, would you even be able to have the materials able to keep them alive, to keep them?
• 29:52
  I mean, let's assume you can. But, you know, you've got all of these questions in this scenario,
• 29:56
  then you've got the eight-year-old child. I would honestly say that in that circumstance,
• 30:01
  if I've got an eight-year-old child screaming at me, I think the mother instinct is, I'm going to pick
• 30:05
  up that eight-year-old child, I'm going to try and get that jar, and I'm going to try and get outside.
• 30:08
  I think that's the natural... I mean, you can only do one. You can only do one. Maybe the case that
• 30:14
  we're just, it's fine to say I would do the wrong thing because I am a primate who cares about,
• 30:21
  you know... Well, I think... Let's change it to, it's a really, really, really cute girl,
• 30:28
  and it's a couple of ugly, pimply teenage boys or something, and you can only take either the adorable
• 30:36
  girl or the ugly kids. Maybe I would take the girl, even though that's... It doesn't speak to the
• 30:44
  value in eight-value of the teenage boys versus the girl or the embryos, in my view, versus the
• 30:50
  eight-year-old child. It just doesn't. But, you know, you spoke earlier about your view that,
• 30:56
  and I don't want to put words in your mouth, that personhood relates to a consciousness,
• 30:59
  cognizant ability, ability to have aspirations and hopes for the future. Is that the Peter Singer?
• 31:04
  Well, yeah, that was the extreme. Yes, I was alluding to Singer as the sort of extreme,
• 31:09
  that's not really relevant, but I'm using him as the sort of most extreme version of the
• 31:15
  personhood argument, which would, in some cases, permit, like, infanticide, for example.
• 31:19
  Yeah, I'm killing disabled children up until the age of two, three, or toddlers because they
• 31:24
  don't have aspiration. I mean, I think what I believe is sort of immaterial, because I'm
• 31:29
  interested in what you believe, but mine would probably be a more limited case than singers,
• 31:34
  in which you would certainly want there to be something that it's like to be the thing.
• 31:45
  In order for it to have personhood. Could you explain a little bit more?
• 31:51
  Yeah, so like, if you were transplanted, if I said to you, I mean, when you go to sleep tonight,
• 31:58
  you're going to wake up tomorrow morning as a chimpanzee, or you're going to wake up tomorrow
• 32:07
  morning as a rock. Do you want to make a choice of which? I'm guessing you would probably say
• 32:15
  chimpanzee, because there's probably still, if you wake up as a rock, you basically don't wake up,
• 32:21
  wake up, right? I mean, that's you that's I'm just saying that you're going to die tonight.
• 32:25
  You wake up tomorrow as a chimpanzee. There's still something that's like to be you.
• 32:29
  You're still having experiences. You're having a point of view of the world. You've got some kind of
• 32:33
  your interior soul, your brain. Yes, but you'll just get whatever it is. You're but you're
• 32:38
  well, not even if you had the brain of a chim, like there would still be something that it was
• 32:41
  like to be a chimpanzee. But it's you. It's me, but I don't have to be. Yep. Yes, either way.
• 32:49
  I think that if I say you're going to wake up tomorrow and you're me, you'd be like, well,
• 32:53
  that would be interesting. If I say you're going to wake up tomorrow and you'll be my dad
• 32:58
  on the day before he died, you'd be like pretty scary. And if I said you're going to wake up
• 33:05
  as a newborn, you'd be like, that would be wild. If I said you're going to wake up as a
• 33:13
  two-day-old blaster cyst, I think you would basically treat that like the rock.
• 33:19
  I think you would basically say, well, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's
• 33:23
  no on there. There's no brain. There's no neurological system. There's no nerves. There's no
• 33:27
  nothing. That's not. But the difference between the rocks is nothing that I'd like to be that
• 33:31
  blaster cyst. But the difference between the rock and the two-day-old blaster cyst is that the
• 33:35
  rock has no human future. It's not human. It doesn't have a future. It doesn't have any potential
• 33:42
  for a future. And if we intervene with the rock, like if I take the rock and bang through it at
• 33:46
  that wall, it doesn't change that rock about breaking up into a few bits. If I intervene with
• 33:52
  the two-day-old blaster cyst and end of life kill it, it will no longer have that future. But if I
• 33:59
  don't interfere with it, unlike the rock, it will grow into a human being born like you and I.
• 34:06
  They're a human being already, but they'll grow into a embryo than a fetus.
• 34:10
  Well, they're a member of the species. But also without another act to end the life of that
• 34:18
  two-day-old blaster cyst, it will become like you and I. And there's a future that you're
• 34:22
  robbing, so it's a member of our species and you're robbing it of its future when you choose to
• 34:27
  end its life. Yes. And that's different to the rock. When I masturbate, I'm like, and well,
• 34:31
  when I refrain from having sex with a first-hour woman, I'm also like robbing the future of
• 34:40
  that's going to the dumbest argument I've had online. We will say these things like should sperm,
• 34:45
  like should men be criminalized for like, you know, masturbating and not using the
• 34:49
  what the heck. It's okay. So when we have a fertilized cell, as I go, you've got a unique and
• 34:57
  independent set of DNA. It's not independent. Well, as in it's, it's, sorry, by independent,
• 35:03
  what I mean is it's different to you all right. Like it doesn't exist again in the world
• 35:11
  and it never existed before. It's completely new. Yes. And so with your sperm or with my eggs,
• 35:17
  that's not the case. Here you've got a huge. It is. I mean, no, but you don't have that
• 35:22
  shuffling. No, no, no, no. You don't need a single cell. No, but in a single cell embryo,
• 35:27
  you don't have, you have the potential to become you all right. In your sperm, you don't,
• 35:32
  because your sperm needs right. Yes. It's completely, they are completely different. One,
• 35:37
  one has, one is a human being, one isn't. One is a member of the human family.
• 35:42
  You're lying in your hopscotching back and forth between two different arguments. One is the
• 35:46
  argument of, is it a member of the species? And the other is, does it have the potential to become
• 35:53
  a person, a fully fledged person like us? And those are two different questions. It's a member of
• 35:58
  the species. And it definitely has a, and it has potential to grow into us. But like an acorn
• 36:08
  is not an oak tree, you know, and doe is not bred. And a blastocyst is not a person. It has the
• 36:14
  potential to become a person. So it's not crazy for me to say, if a, you know, if a couple are
• 36:20
  making out and they can, and they want to have a baby and they're considering whether or not to
• 36:26
  have sex, and they decline to have sex that night, they are closing off the potential of a human
• 36:34
  life. Now, you can say, well, that's a silly analogy because in the case of a blastocyst,
• 36:38
  you already have a member of the species homo sapiens. But then you're jumping back to the other
• 36:43
  argument about whether or not a blastocyst is a member of the species homo sapiens. On the
• 36:47
  potentiality argument, on the question of whether or not, it's sort of incumbent upon us to allow
• 36:55
  the circumstances to unfold in such a way that we end up with more humans, that we allow the
• 37:01
  generation of human beings. Then I don't think it's crazy to say that contraception is wrong,
• 37:08
  or that, you know, beating off into a sock is wrong, or that two people who were framed from having
• 37:13
  sex is wrong. And all of those cases, you're, you're preventing a human being from coming into
• 37:19
  existence. There's a fundamental difference that isn't that because with the, only if you,
• 37:23
  with the man and woman that don't have sex because they don't want to, because the woman's
• 37:26
  fertile, the human being doesn't come into existence. But with the man and woman who do have sex
• 37:31
  during a fertile period and the blastocyst, you know, the zygote is created. That is a member of
• 37:38
  the human species homo sapiens. Yes. They are a new human life that that will never be again
• 37:44
  and never was before. That has a future full of potential. But the fundamental argument I gave
• 37:50
  you at the beginning is you've got a human being from the moment of conception and personhood and
• 37:54
  humanity are one that we don't separate the two. We don't do a singer. And that, even if you're
• 38:00
  not as extreme as singer throughout history, whenever we're separated, human rights and personhood,
• 38:06
  humanity and personhood and we said that subset of the population doesn't have human rights,
• 38:10
  then the worst atrocities have happened. That is exactly what I'm definitely with you on how cautious
• 38:15
  we should be about these ideas. Can you think of any other circumstance where you would be
• 38:19
  acceptable to separate human rights from a human being and it hasn't led to atrocity? Like when
• 38:26
  is that okay? Well, I mean, it depends, again, you're sort of begging the question because you're
• 38:31
  you're defining human being in such a way that the human family. Yeah, right. What are they? If
• 38:39
  they're not a member of the human family, what are they? Well, that's why we have names for them
• 38:44
  like Blastocyst and Zygote. That's a stage of development. Embryos and fetus. Like your father's
• 38:48
  geriatric, your my daughter who's 15 is a teenager, my five-year-old is coming out of the toddler stage,
• 38:53
  you know, my 10-year-olds are twin. Like we have stages of development. These are these are words
• 38:58
  to connote the stage of development that a human being has. It's it's not. Definitely who they are.
• 39:04
  Well, it doesn't. Well, it does. It does to a certain extent if you believe that personhood is more
• 39:09
  than just being a member of the species. Now, I don't know much about animal reproduction,
• 39:12
  but presumably there are animals that have Blastocyst. They certainly have fetuses and embryos,
• 39:17
  so it's not a species, but again, a butterfly is not a caterpillar. Sure, but a human being,
• 39:23
  but it always has, but a, but a, but it's, but it's, we don't differentiate between human being
• 39:29
  after birth and prebirth. Like they are a member of the human species. They just are. They just are.
• 39:35
  And so, you know, I think your worldview has to say that some human, some members of the human
• 39:40
  species, we'll put it in your terms, don't have human rights. My worldview says that if you remember
• 39:44
  human species, you have human rights. Yes, I know, but it's under that logic and egg is the same
• 39:48
  thing as a chicken. It's not. I mean, it's genetically the same thing. Look, I think at the end of the day,
• 39:58
  and in your worldview, you, because I'm presuming that you are not for abortion up to both,
• 40:04
  you sort of said at the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. So, so your worldview seems, I don't want to put
• 40:08
  into your mouth, but I'm assuming you're again, again, slate term abortion. I once a baby's
• 40:12
  viable. Would that be correct? Yes, probably. So, so then if your worldview is based on consciousness
• 40:18
  and cognitive ability, then why is it right? Okay, acceptable to kill a rat who has more
• 40:23
  cognitive inability, you know, then, then a baby before birth or even after birth, you know,
• 40:28
  we clearly see humanity as necessitating some form of human rights, which is why you also said
• 40:35
  that it would be wrong for someone to just kill your father for being a burden to the system,
• 40:39
  you know, right? Yeah, that's right. And these are babies who are being killed without
• 40:44
  their consent. We don't poll them. We don't ask them. I mean, I think you're right. So, again,
• 40:48
  coming back to the areas in which we agree, because I think that's also, that's also important,
• 40:52
  but I mean, not for very long. I want to get back to the disagreements as well, but I just want to
• 40:56
  also acknowledge the fact that it's extremely tricky and difficult and hazardous terrain,
• 41:05
  which once you start talking about the, you know, the possibility that some human lives are
• 41:10
  less worth living or more justifiable to snuff out than others, even if those human lives are,
• 41:19
  you know, and we've used these. Yeah. And a point that I would like to make is we've used
• 41:24
  dehumanizing language throughout the history of the world whenever we've wanted to
• 41:30
  deem a subset of the population as less worthy and not having human rights. So, if you think
• 41:33
  of the Rwandan genocide, the hoodies would talk about the Tootsies as cockroaches. And that's how
• 41:37
  they, you know, transformed these kids had gone side by side through school hoodies and Tootsies
• 41:42
  for years. But through language, we dehumanize a subset and we say it's okay to kill them. So,
• 41:48
  the baby and the worms are parasite. They're a clumber cells or they're a blastocyst or they're
• 41:52
  a fetus. Like, we use this language specifically. Now, some of that is actually scientifically
• 41:56
  correct. Like, they're just toms, blastocyst, embryos, I go feed them. Yes, I'm not using terms
• 42:00
  that I don't know. But, but, but they often used as a way to say because of that stage of
• 42:07
  development, because of that term, because you could, you know, if it's a wanted child, like,
• 42:11
  if you think about a woman who gets pregnant, you know, and she's done that test and she tells
• 42:15
  her friends that everyone's so happy you're happy you're pregnant with a baby. The only time
• 42:19
  we use the word fetus is when we want to dehumanize that child, because we're like,
• 42:22
  oh, do you know what you want to do with it? You have to consider your options.
• 42:25
  Right. You know, we don't say come to my fetish out because we just don't dehumanize unless
• 42:30
  we're okay. And in the frame of mind that we're going to kill that fetus. That is interesting.
• 42:35
  I mean, yes, if you were talking to a, you know, a 10 year old or an eight year old or a five
• 42:39
  year old about it and you'd just gotten pregnant, you wouldn't say to them, you know,
• 42:44
  mummies got a, a zygote in her tummy. You'd say mummies got a baby in her tummy, even if it was
• 42:49
  only two weeks old. But just quickly, before the, before we go, before I give grant you all of the
• 42:56
  other things that I'm willing to agree with you on, one other thing that you were just saying
• 43:00
  before I forget about the individuality of the, of the baby from the point of conception, right?
• 43:07
  Even it doesn't matter if it's only a five day old blastocyst the size of a kinhead, it is still
• 43:12
  a unique snowflake and essentially possesses the same person, hoydus, any person, unique human
• 43:21
  person. So for the first two weeks of its life, it can split into two people.
• 43:29
  Okay. So Josh, a couple of weeks, which of the identical twins is the person and which one
• 43:32
  is the imposter? So are they half persons?
• 43:36
  So Josh, I'll answer that from a non-scientific perspective first. Like we've got five kids,
• 43:44
  age between five and 15. I should say we actually got six because a couple of weeks ago,
• 43:50
  we lost our child who was a blastocyst. Like I was maybe five and a half weeks pregnant,
• 43:55
  pinprone, right? Yeah. And I think the thing that hit me, like that's the first miscarriage I've
• 44:02
  had. And the thing that hit me the hardest was the fact that this wasn't Laura Jessie Page Net and
• 44:06
  Tommy, that's my part of who I lost. Like they're all so completely different. Like Laura wants to be
• 44:12
  an Olympic climber, Jessie also wants to be a climber, but he's very good at maths and science
• 44:17
  could be an engineer, you know, then page is the most like me. Like they're all, but they're all
• 44:21
  different. Even if she's like me, she's still different. This little bun that we lost,
• 44:26
  who, you know, like they were the, we're not visible to the human eye unless you've got like a
• 44:34
  microscope. They're pinpricks size, right? But wait, six weeks? Five and five to six weeks. I
• 44:39
  don't know fully what, yeah, but they're tiny. They're tiny, like they're tiny. Like when I
• 44:44
  miscarried, I didn't, yeah, I wasn't confronted with. But the thing is for me and this perspective,
• 44:53
  it's not about size and it's not about location. It's about the fact that in our family now,
• 44:59
  we don't have that sixth child there who would never have been like the others. That child
• 45:03
  would have been different. And we'll never meet them. We'll never know what they could have done.
• 45:09
  And, you know, it is the absence of a person who would have been in our family and would have
• 45:17
  made a contribution to not just our family but our world. Similarly, you know, you asked the question
• 45:21
  about the blastocyst that splits into two. Yeah, I mean, that could have been two. It could have
• 45:27
  been, but I think the point is what is morally wrong is to kill the blastocyst. We don't know what
• 45:34
  the future of that blastocyst is. That human being is or human being. Oh, yeah, potentially,
• 45:40
  but we don't know. But it has that that that blastocyst has moral worth as a human person
• 45:47
  because they're a human person because they're because they're the member of the species.
• 45:52
  The members of the species. Yeah. Yeah. Members and then they both got moral worth. Yeah,
• 45:55
  absolutely. We don't kill either of them. Yes, but it just complicates the claim that they are a
• 46:01
  snowflake that they are an individual human life. Okay. We'll take out the word individual. They're
• 46:05
  a human life. Yeah. Okay. They're members. It's a member of the species. Yeah. And in my world,
• 46:11
  you, when I'm separate personhood from the member of the species, membership of the species.
• 46:15
  So just to say with the with things that I think you do get right, I was alarmed by the
• 46:20
  legal status and we don't need to go into a huge amount of it in Australia because we have
• 46:24
  an international audience, but how easy it is actually to get quite a late abortion in Australia.
• 46:30
  So for in most states, correct me if I'm wrong, pre 22 weeks, it's just on demand. But after 22
• 46:37
  weeks, where I thought it was only in cases of, you know, serious medical complications,
• 46:44
  there's no specification about at least in New South Wales about what constitutes a justifiable,
• 46:49
  I come up with the definition, but it's something like a medically appropriate. Of sufficient
• 46:54
  grant, they have to be sufficient grounds, right? And so and you need two obstetricians to sign off
• 47:00
  on whether or not. Okay. So you don't even need two obstetricians. You just need two doctors.
• 47:03
  No, they need to be specialists. No, they don't. I just read it. Yeah. So in in the legislation,
• 47:09
  in New South Wales, one of the specialists needs to be an obstetrician. So in New South Wales,
• 47:13
  that might be the case, but if you look at across Australia, so for example, South Australia,
• 47:18
  where I'm from Victoria or Queensland, the second doctor doesn't even have to see the patient,
• 47:23
  they can just consult the file. Right. And so any needless to say. And in those other jurisdictions,
• 47:28
  they don't have to have a specialist specialist in OBGYN, like it can be anything. They seem to be
• 47:35
  a doctor. Right. And so, for example, in South Australia, there was a woman Taylor Jane,
• 47:40
  who the ABC interviewed, and she had an abortion at 27 weeks and six days. And the ABC found her
• 47:46
  because we were introducing a bill, I'd helped draft it, that said, after 28 weeks, instead of
• 47:51
  injecting the child with potassium chloride in the womb, because the mother has to go through
• 47:56
  labor or any way in a late term abortion at 28 weeks, they've got to go through labor and
• 48:00
  deliver that child. There's no way else to get that child out, except via emergency scissors area.
• 48:03
  They're too big to have their body broken apart or to be disintegrated, so they have to be
• 48:08
  delivered. And so what Taylor Jane had to do was her baby was injected with potassium chloride,
• 48:13
  dies either instantly, but not typically, typically takes some time off in a second injection,
• 48:18
  which is really just a form of torture. They used to do this on death row without pain relief,
• 48:23
  some of the prisoners survived, and have spoken and lived to tell the tale of the excruciating
• 48:27
  agony of that. An advocate's then quite rightly afford for a humane treatment of those prisoners.
• 48:32
  Now, these are innocent babies who can feel pain, who are fully developed because they're fully
• 48:37
  developed after 12 weeks. And so even if you just Google that, they've got all of their body parts
• 48:44
  and they're not fully cognitively developed. They're not fully so not cognitively, but in terms of
• 48:49
  a they got everything, they've got everything, they've got everything and then it's just about growth,
• 48:54
  it's about time and development in order to grow. And so at 28 weeks, Taylor Jane's baby was
• 48:59
  injected with poison, dies in the womb. She then is given labor inducing drugs, and that took her,
• 49:04
  I think, 72 hours to go through the process of labor, delivering her stillborn child deliberately
• 49:12
  dead. Now in South Australia, that child, if the mother doesn't want a funeral, the child is placed
• 49:18
  in the medical waste bin. So there's a midwife who's gone into that vacation to deliver babies,
• 49:22
  like that's why she went in there. And she's delivering this baby who's been intentionally killed,
• 49:26
  Taylor Jane's baby is perfectly healthy, placed in the bin. And our legislation simply said
• 49:33
  that at 28 weeks, the child is a 96% survival rate. Let's skip the injection,
• 49:39
  but will allow the woman the right to terminate her pregnancy in if she's facing a significant risk
• 49:44
  to her mental or physical health. Let her terminate the pregnancy, but deliver that child alive,
• 49:48
  give medical care to the child to the mother, and yet that bill lost by one vote because-
• 49:52
  Just to clarify, terminate the pregnancy normally, for most people's years, that'll mean
• 49:55
  kill the baby, but what you're talking about is induce labor. She can give birth early.
• 50:00
  It still ends the pregnancy, but without killing.
• 50:02
  Yeah, you take the baby away and you put it into the adoption system. Is that the idea?
• 50:05
  Correct. Yeah, correct. I mean, there are women who have been known to change their mind once
• 50:09
  the baby's been born as well. That's not unusual, that that would happen, that once the baby comes
• 50:14
  out, the woman and the mother regrets. You've even got circumstances of women taking that first
• 50:18
  abortion pill prior to nine weeks and then regretting it going on to progesterone and then trying
• 50:24
  to ensure her baby's survival. So changing her mind between pill number one and pill number two.
• 50:28
  So the reality is in Australia, it's in every state and territory. It's legal up to birth for
• 50:35
  any reason except in South Australia where there's a limit on sex selection. Now people will make
• 50:39
  the claim our joe- We've got a bill in New South Wales, I think about sex elections coming through as well.
• 50:44
  We're seeking a ban, sex-selective abortions and then either the county university study of
• 50:48
  came through last year which showed that in Indian Chinese families, if there were two previous
• 50:52
  girls that have been born, the chance of the third child being a girl is drastically reduced. So
• 50:57
  it's 135 boys being born to 100 girls and it should be roughly 105 to 100. So that
• 51:03
  occurs with a lot of trove study that was done many years ago that also showed the same thing
• 51:06
  was happening in ethnic communities in Victoria. There's 100 million girls missing worldwide.
• 51:11
  This is definitely something that's happening, but I think to your point. So abortion up to Bethesley
• 51:14
  is legal for any reason and it's never medically necessary for the mother because if her life was at risk
• 51:23
  she would have an emergency cesarean. She doesn't need to go through that 36 to 72-hour process. So she's
• 51:28
  got severe preeclampsia or really high blood pressure and she's imminently going to die. The correct
• 51:35
  approach is to Russia to emergency. Do the cesarean cake out that baby in 10 minutes? Not waste time
• 51:41
  killing the baby first. Cairs given to the mother. Cairs given to the baby. Okay, I mean there is a
• 51:46
  I'll just put a question mark over everything because saying when it comes down to the technical
• 51:51
  staff because I know that a lot of parliamentarians and certainly the Royal Australian Museum
• 51:56
  College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have in has information that contradicts a lot of what
• 52:02
  you say or they claim that you exaggerate or you know almost claim things. They can't argue that
• 52:11
  a late term abortion is necessary to save the physical life of the mother. They just can't.
• 52:16
  Well they say so the Royal Australian Museum College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in their
• 52:20
  submission to the 2019 Bill right in New South Wales which legalized abortion because prior to that
• 52:25
  it was a criminal offense but it was done in a wink and a nod sort of way.
• 52:30
  Said that the compelling clinical need for the post 22 week abortion clause was that it would
• 52:40
  include extensive consultation between the woman and her treating practitioners often including
• 52:44
  fetal maternal medicine specialist and the own autologists, geneticists, social workers, mental
• 52:49
  health specialists and that the 22 week threshold matters clinically because serious fetal conditions
• 52:53
  may only become clear at the 18 to 20 week morphology scan or later. So as far as they're concerned
• 53:00
  it's necessary to have a later term abortion because in their opinion there's frequently the case
• 53:06
  that you know something that's wrong with the fetus is not like I'm a parent until later.
• 53:11
  Is that the end of their quote? Yes. Okay so that then I mean it was a five to five page
• 53:17
  which we could go through. I mean I've read all of this stuff but yeah but that doesn't I mean
• 53:23
  that doesn't prove the point at all it doesn't make the point at all because they can't make that
• 53:29
  point that a late term abortion is necessary to say the physical life of the mother is just not.
• 53:33
  You don't do that long process if the mother's life is in danger. The singular purpose of a
• 53:39
  fetus side just like you know pesticide and fantaside any kind of side right it is to kill the
• 53:45
  the purpose of a fetus side which is what a late term abortion is is to kill the baby and to then
• 53:51
  the mother has to deliver that baby dead that that is the purpose and if the mother's life is at risk
• 53:55
  they don't do this. Now they always use this argument they say we need abortion we need reproductive
• 54:00
  rights and they use a lot of big words to essentially say because the baby might be disabled
• 54:07
  but if you look at South Australia because they don't release the data in New South Wales
• 54:11
  on the reason for a late term abortion they do in Victoria and they do in South Australia.
• 54:16
  In South Australia same arguments we're given so you know we might think oh well we really need
• 54:22
  to kill these babies because they are disabled and we need to have late term abortion for that reason
• 54:26
  but 75% of late term abortions in South Australia kill a mother whose life is not at risk
• 54:31
  and the baby is healthy. That's 79 babies who were healthy and the mother mother's life was not
• 54:38
  at risk they were injected with poison into the heart and delivered dead in Victoria.
• 54:42
  You're just to clarify when you say the mother's life was not at risk you mean physiologically it was
• 54:47
  not at risk because I've seen the graphs that like the stats that you put out about that and so the
• 54:54
  category of looking at is the category of that it's psychological reasons rather than physiological
• 55:01
  reasons now there would be some social workers and probably midwives and postpartum psychologists
• 55:10
  who would probably say that it wasn't a physiological life risk but some proportion of that cohort
• 55:15
  may have had suicidal ideation or you know it may be a very very serious psychiatric problem
• 55:23
  nonetheless. Yes so in that in no circumstances so 79 were probably killed because of a mental
• 55:30
  health reason and if that baby was one day old I couldn't turn around the mother couldn't turn around
• 55:35
  and say kill my baby I want to kill myself Taylor Jane presented with she said I wouldn't be here
• 55:40
  today if I hadn't had that abortion but the point is and that was the point of the bill we drafted
• 55:44
  they have to deliver these babies anyway so why do they have the right to deliver a dead baby
• 55:49
  rather than a live one. I am glad you raised the question about the day old baby because I think it
• 55:55
  brings us to another area of agreement which is that there's a lot of fudging on the pro-choice
• 56:01
  side in terms of the way that we talk about a woman's right to reproductive health and the way
• 56:08
  we think about birth as being a deeply morally relevant line like this is where I would agree with
• 56:14
  singer and where you would agree with singer where you know a Peter singer has the same position
• 56:20
  essentially as an extreme anti-abortionist in believing that the birth is kind of arbitrary like
• 56:27
  if the salient moral question is on what basis can you take the life of a member of the species
• 56:34
  home sapiens in its developmental you know growth then the instant of whether or not it happens
• 56:42
  to be located in a uterus or outside a uterus is not hugely relevant like you basically have to
• 56:48
  decide one way or another either you're going to say it's from conception as you do or you're going
• 56:55
  to have to find some other way of talking about developmental growth and the growth of consciousness
• 57:00
  and personhood as I would try to and trying to and being a consequentialist try to take into
• 57:05
  consideration a whole bunch of other variables about is the child going to have anything like a good
• 57:09
  life is it going to ruin the life of the mother was it a product of rape or in a some other horrible
• 57:15
  tragic thing is the mother and underage girl who was raped or who was a sex slave or something
• 57:19
  like that all of these situations where I would go you know what in an absolute esoteric sort of
• 57:26
  platonic philosophical like university class we might say that murdering every member of the species
• 57:33
  home sapiens is wrong but in the case of a member of the species home sapiens that is a five day old
• 57:39
  blasphemous blasphemous that doesn't have a brain even though it does have the capability to go
• 57:44
  on to become a person or two persons the downsides of forcing the 15 year old incest victim or whatever
• 57:54
  to carry that baby a too great and I'm willing to cop the so I think you're I think you're right in
• 58:00
  trying to inject an amount of into around to encourage people to actually wrestle with the moral
• 58:07
  gravity of abortion rather than hiding behind easy euphemisms like it's a reproductive health
• 58:12
  matter or something like that so we can really agree that birth is an armetry line actually in terms
• 58:17
  of the child very little changes other than the location yes that's right and the other thing is
• 58:24
  that I think you're right to point out is that my worldview my secular worldview has been way too
• 58:34
  triumphalist on this and a bunch of other issues right and that really has not given adequate
• 58:40
  consideration to religious people in Australia because like when you think about the moral I don't
• 58:48
  want to say moral complexity because I don't think it's that morally complex the late term abortion
• 58:51
  stuff like the idea that all you need to do is find two doctors who can say that there's a reason
• 59:00
  a legitimate reason why you should be able to kill a creature that worried outside your
• 59:08
  uterus would obviously be a viable human being I think most Australians would be surprised by that
• 59:16
  and many Australians would not think that that should be the rule and yet we've never had
• 59:20
  a national conversation about this because the kinds of experts who we appoint to resolve such
• 59:26
  questions essentially share my secular humanist worldview and tip the scales in our favour and
• 59:33
  against yours it's not just that it's not just that those experts have risen to those positions and
• 59:42
  shared that perspective it's that they've actively tried to shut down any alternative voice
• 59:48
  on this issue like I'm an academic at the University of Adelaide um for 15 years I published
• 59:57
  on migrant worker exploitation which was consistent with the orthodoxy of the left that if we bring
• 1:00:02
  temporary migrants into this country we should treat them just like we treat any other Australian
• 1:00:05
  worker and they should have the same kind of rights and employers should have the same kind of
• 1:00:10
  responsibilities now writing on that I was prolific ARC grounds on on four corners 730
• 1:00:18
  promoted to professor by the age of 40 but in 2021 South Australia legislated a portion up
• 1:00:24
  to birth and I knew having had my son Jesse Flinders and he was born at 37 weeks having seen
• 1:00:31
  the Victorian data that law had been introduced in Victorian 2008 came into effect in 2009 just
• 1:00:37
  two years after that a 37-weeker at the same age as my child Jesse went born who was perfectly
• 1:00:43
  healthy and the mum was perfectly physically healthy he was injected with potassium chloride
• 1:00:48
  into the heart in the name of healthcare and delivered dead for a psychosocial reason and that
• 1:00:53
  was perfectly legal I knew that was going to happen in South Australia because we were introducing
• 1:00:57
  ostensibly the same legal regime I then chose with great trebidation because I knew that this was
• 1:01:04
  career suicide that I would speak out about this and it started in a really pathetic kind of way
• 1:01:10
  and then I just started posting a video to socials every day because I didn't know how else to get
• 1:01:16
  the message out because I tried to set up in alliance list named after our first female federal
• 1:01:22
  parliamentarian in alliance who was a fierce advocate against abortion I don't like to use the
• 1:01:27
  word pro-life I don't like to use the word pro-choice I'm not pro-life I'm anti-abortion I'm against
• 1:01:31
  abortion I appreciate that yeah and in alliance she was fiercely against anti-abortion at
• 1:01:40
  against abortion at a time that second wave feminism said it was fundamental to women's equality
• 1:01:45
  now we set up in alliance list to rival the power of endless list which is the underground
• 1:01:50
  militia within the labor party to get pro-abortion women into the labor party and to pre-select
• 1:01:54
  them into winnable seats they started in 1996 it fundamentally changed the labor party and you
• 1:01:58
  know Tony Abbott said the most powerful faction in the labor party is Emily's list most people
• 1:02:02
  don't even know that now we wanted to try and counter that so I set up in alliance list we had
• 1:02:08
  our first event the second event first event went off without a hitch in South Australia second event
• 1:02:13
  happened to be the Saturday in the week that Roby Wade was overturned and so the Greens MP Tammy
• 1:02:19
  Frank sketch up on the Friday the day before I went she says can you believe there's an
• 1:02:23
  anti-abortion rally happening tomorrow at their but in community center I need everybody to go
• 1:02:27
  down there and to march and to pick it this now we wasn't a rally we were just having a conference
• 1:02:32
  like there was tea and yoga mats and it was young men and women coming to kind of learn about this
• 1:02:39
  it's about a hundred people registered we changed the venue at the last minute because we just
• 1:02:42
  didn't feel that it was appropriate for those people to have to walk through a picket line as it
• 1:02:46
  turned out only about fifty of them turned up but then after that in setting up in alliance list
• 1:02:52
  all of the women's health ministers met in South Australia the following week to determine how
• 1:02:56
  we're going to deal with this onslaught against reproductive freedoms we were the top story in the
• 1:03:00
  ABC the advertiser how do I do this like I'm never going to be able to publish an article and get it
• 1:03:05
  through the academic peer review post process I'd actually already tried in in the a colleague of mine
• 1:03:11
  professor Suzanne Lamir and I'd written an article about conscientious objection for doctors so not
• 1:03:16
  having to refer for abortion we looked at the role of conscientious objection the history and whether
• 1:03:21
  that's ethical participation we tried to read journals in in Australia and three top journals none of
• 1:03:26
  them accepted it and we were told by a colleague that you're going to have to publish that overseas the
• 1:03:30
  academy in Australia will not publish something that goes against the orthodoxy of the academy should
• 1:03:35
  submit it to be the singers we publicate well we public we we send it to the Cambridge Journal of
• 1:03:39
  law and we got it published straight away no probably he probably would be singer probably was it's
• 1:03:44
  rigorous singer probably would but the point is the Australian Academy would not yes and your point
• 1:03:48
  about okay you know is it just that the louder voices have been on the prohibition sign well no
• 1:03:53
  it's that they've actually actively tried to silence voices so then but then let me just continue
• 1:03:58
  the truth sorry it's just that within the first 18 months of speaking out on social media I'd
• 1:04:02
  everyone from the head of the Australian Women's Law Association to political federal politicians
• 1:04:08
  trying to shut me down activists online six investigations within 18 months prior to that I'd
• 1:04:13
  never had any problems at work you know I've been promoted but I was on the executive
• 1:04:18
  and and I had to go to the Fair Work Commission to get the university to stop investigating me that to
• 1:04:24
  be honest and I won at the Fair Work Commission you know they they they they last the sixth
• 1:04:30
  investigation found that I had not breached the Australian code for a responsible research
• 1:04:36
  but the university ordered me to do an anti-biased course and I said no a thing wait I'm not going
• 1:04:41
  to fucking do that I mean Joe I don't want to be dismissive I'm in more interested in your ideas
• 1:04:45
  no but I'm hearing you win Japan I know terrible cancel yeah but we all know I mean we
• 1:04:50
  we sing the story a million times I've experienced yeah most of my audience is aware but on the issue
• 1:04:56
  of abortion this is why if if sauce does a poll 74% of Australians identify as pro choice they then
• 1:05:03
  ask the question are you comfortable with abortion up to 20 weeks and then you find out it's only 39
• 1:05:08
  percent and and so when you actually poll Australians properly on the issue you'll get an answer
• 1:05:15
  that's granular that's that's different yeah but the level of knowledge is so low because I think
• 1:05:19
  what most people assume is we're talking about the first trimester we're not talking about a
• 1:05:24
  you know any an entity that can feel pain I have thoughts yeah and so in that case the woman
• 1:05:29
  should have the right to reverse her mistake but would do you think people in the audience would
• 1:05:34
  be surprised I know they're just in South Australia alone 305 babies aged between 12 weeks to 22
• 1:05:40
  weeks were killed via a dilation and evacuation in the last year so that's metal four steps rip off
• 1:05:45
  an arm pull it out rip off the leg pull it off crush the tummy crush the skull of the torso and
• 1:05:51
  pull that child out now someone ripped off just your thumb you'd be an excruciating pain this is
• 1:05:56
  all done without pain relief politicians have actively voted against bills so there is a little
• 1:06:00
  bit of you know as you said earlier there's a bit of a question about exactly when when the capacity
• 1:06:05
  for passion arises in during development but there are certainly windows during which abortion is legal
• 1:06:12
  in which it definitely is there there's a really good I don't think that I don't really think that
• 1:06:18
  that's salient I think that what frustrates me a little bit about the way this argument is framed
• 1:06:24
  is it feels for someone like me who's a bit ADHD and a bit aspy and likes like logic it feels a bit
• 1:06:30
  bastard yeah and to introduce visceral images of babies limbs being ripped off and questions about
• 1:06:38
  how mean it is to put them through that pain feels to my my bullshit detector goes off a little bit
• 1:06:45
  because I feel like if you dig into any medical procedure enough and I don't mean that to say that
• 1:06:52
  it is a mere medical procedure yeah I'm saying that if you if you dig into warfare if you dig into
• 1:06:59
  the treatment the things that we have to do in our intelligence services the manipulation the
• 1:07:07
  there are a lot of nasty things and we can easily much as we were talking about in the analogy
• 1:07:12
  of the eight year old girl and the two ugly pimpley 15 year old boys we can be swayed by a motive
• 1:07:18
  stuff that can mislead us okay so when and the question of whether or not you know I don't really
• 1:07:24
  think it's salient to look at pictures of how gross it looks for a 12 week old fetus to be
• 1:07:30
  dismembered because what's relevant is whether or not the fetus had a right to life whether it
• 1:07:38
  felt pain I think that is salient and whether and what the our ethical norm should be around the
• 1:07:45
  fact that it had the potential to become a human being because let me put it this way I would
• 1:07:51
  hazard a guess that if we said okay you're right they feel pain this is really cruel let's
• 1:07:57
  anesthetize them all before we perform abortions your opinion would not change a bit of course not
• 1:08:02
  so let's just park the pain thing well in this conversation with you perhaps but I would say that
• 1:08:08
  you're not typical most people like if we think about many people would say that I'm not
• 1:08:12
  sick sometimes that's a good thing yeah but you know if you think about you know the Palestine
• 1:08:17
  Gaza kind of movement the way that we persuade people is often through their emotions is often
• 1:08:23
  through the heart and so when I do that many people were mislead on that perhaps they were but
• 1:08:28
  what I'm saying is actually scientifically accurate in terms of the medical procedure it
• 1:08:33
  rips the arms and legs off the baby they are at a gestation for some of them that they can feel
• 1:08:37
  pain that's just morally wrong but I I said to you at the outset that I think that even when
• 1:08:42
  the child can't feel pain and they're a blast assist it's still morally wrong yes now so I
• 1:08:46
  understand that at a philosophical level you know I understand that you may book at me raising
• 1:08:55
  the fact that this is just a really gross thing a gross way to train a child you know yeah I mean
• 1:09:01
  like but but cosmetic surgery it's but cosmetic surgery or heart surgery like you know you're right
• 1:09:07
  medical procedures often involve really gross stuff that we just wouldn't want to see but they
• 1:09:11
  the purpose of those procedures isn't to kill a human being without their consent correct that's
• 1:09:16
  what so and so not whether it's gross or not I'm happy to speak about that but I would say that
• 1:09:21
  probably you're like my husband my husband would have this conversation in the same way that you're
• 1:09:25
  having it with me but I would say as a woman and and in fact talking to a lot of people I know
• 1:09:30
  that what's changed their minds is indeed when they've they've seen it they've seen the procedure
• 1:09:35
  I'm glad to hear your marriage to such a wise and you would get a well with it so the if a woman
• 1:09:40
  gets pregnant and then she finds out that she's got like a heart condition that means that she
• 1:09:46
  will die if she brings the baby to term then doesn't it become a question of like you've got two
• 1:09:52
  lives to consider and you know that one of them is gonna go so how do you deal with that well I'm
• 1:09:58
  not a medical doctor is one of the things I get trolled about online because my doctorates in law
• 1:10:05
  but when I've spoken to OBGYNs about this so the first thing they will say is that pre-viability
• 1:10:10
  it's really rare do it's it's extraordinarily rare do have a situation like that where the mother's
• 1:10:16
  life is at imminent I'm just interested in the ethics I know because yeah but but I think just if
• 1:10:22
  we like do we just do you flip a call it's a bit it's a little bit like the the thousand that I
• 1:10:26
  know you do that you do the medical intervention um that is I think you can I think what's ethical
• 1:10:33
  is you're seeking a proper preserve both lives so you've got two patients you're seeking a
• 1:10:37
  preserve both what happens when they come into direct conflict so the American Association of
• 1:10:42
  pro-life OBGYNs has a position statement on this and they say that an ethical method would be
• 1:10:48
  pregnancy separation prior to viability but without direct killing so it would be wrong say the
• 1:10:53
  woman seven weeks pregnant it'd be wrong to use a dilation and evacuation ribbeamles and legs
• 1:10:57
  off the ethical method would be to either emergency cesarean or deliver the child prematurely and
• 1:11:04
  give care to the child and care to the mother but there's been no direct intentional act to kill
• 1:11:09
  that child right I see and and if you know that I mean if it's starting to get hazardous if
• 1:11:14
  our heart condition like as she gets larger and larger starting to get hazardous at 12 13 14 15 16
• 1:11:20
  weeks then it's not it doesn't make much difference whether you're calling an abortion or just
• 1:11:25
  delivering the child and up until if it's not viable yet then so again I want to reiterate how rare
• 1:11:32
  these circumstances are but in there's different ways so the different men are spontaneous abortion
• 1:11:38
  that's often what they're right on the medical forms as a miscarriage so that's what I had a
• 1:11:42
  couple of weeks ago a spontaneous abortion baby diet of natural causes if apolog speaks of a
• 1:11:49
  pregnancy separation at that earlier gestation in that circumstance there was an intention to kill
• 1:11:55
  the baby it's to save the life of the mother and so it is different and I guess what I would say
• 1:12:00
  people who want to talk about those things is all right so you want to talk about the rare
• 1:12:04
  exceptional cases like incest rape and when the mums life is truly at risk are you willing to
• 1:12:09
  ban abortion every other circumstance because typically what I find is that people are using those
• 1:12:13
  circumstances as a as a way to just allow abortion you know that you're right I mean I also think
• 1:12:21
  that you do the reverse which is to use the most extreme cases of late term of grizzly late term
• 1:12:26
  abortions and to go viral with images of some 36-week-old baby left rotting on a a bench in some
• 1:12:34
  abortion clinic that's been smuggled out you know and then create a campaign around you know
• 1:12:39
  in honor of that baby I don't have those images I've got Samuel he was 16 weeks
• 1:12:43
  who survived his abortion and sent to stump for that even on your website the link that you have
• 1:12:50
  to like the outfit that changed your mind which was live action or whatever was one of those
• 1:12:55
  hidden camera you know the American outfit which has lots of grizzly images and stuff that wasn't
• 1:12:59
  what changed my mind yeah well you'd be in your bio it says like I used to be pro-choice until I
• 1:13:04
  saw the reality of abortion which has a hyperlink of that yeah but I what changed my mind what changed
• 1:13:10
  my mind was I read academic articles when I was 21 and in one of them they had pictures of
• 1:13:17
  fetuses who were dismembered three 12 weeks either way I mean my point is just we're all playing
• 1:13:22
  this game of using like the tools that we have in order to sway people's emotions like that
• 1:13:26
  you're right the pro is the politics of social reform I mean I wish it weren't I wish everyone
• 1:13:32
  was a bit more like your husband and we could like talk about you know wouldn't it be better if
• 1:13:35
  we were all a little bit more like your husband and you know we were talking to each other like
• 1:13:39
  where rational brains in vats instead of manipulating each other based on extreme thought experiments
• 1:13:45
  I don't know um maybe on one level maybe on not another level like my husband does like to
• 1:13:50
  and you but it's a look at things like act superior intellectually superior because you argue on
• 1:13:56
  this plane but I also think that there's a role it's not an act you believe it you're acting
• 1:14:02
  intellectually superior I think if if if a person is cherry picking extremely emotive examples
• 1:14:08
  in order to sway in order to play on people's emotions then there's obviously playing a different
• 1:14:13
  game so I think when William will force ended slavery than talking about like moral philosophy when
• 1:14:18
  William will force ended slavery he didn't do it purely by talking about moral philosophy he
• 1:14:21
  did it by showing images of black men in chains it was it was through equiano um a former slave
• 1:14:27
  talking about showing the scars on his back like that was one of the most evocative things again
• 1:14:31
  I'm not saying it's an illegitimate move or that it's without you know you're kind of you're
• 1:14:35
  kind of trying to say like could we just leave it to the side well you know when I was growing up
• 1:14:41
  and there were all of the famines that we saw on our TV screens seeing it led to people
• 1:14:47
  going I want to do something about it similarly with slavery similarly with abortion like if I
• 1:14:52
  don't have the images of the victim how do you prickle the conscience of the Australian people
• 1:14:58
  who go about their day every day you know you do I do uh ignorant of the fact and not even
• 1:15:06
  thinking about the fact that babies are being slaughtered right up into birthing this country
• 1:15:09
  I mean I I'm responding to the fact that you were dismissive of people like me who use arguments
• 1:15:16
  about you know you're saying people raise arguments about like whether or about the the mother
• 1:15:23
  who might die if she has a baby and whether or not we should kill the baby in order to save her
• 1:15:29
  life in order to you know sort of hoodwink us into allowing abortion in all cases all I'm saying
• 1:15:37
  is to comply with that game and you do by using the opposite extreme no except except that
• 1:15:45
  in the circumstances of babies who survived their abortion and left to die it's one per week
• 1:15:49
  it was 50 in Queensland in 2022 like 50 like Samuel who literally survived their abortion
• 1:15:55
  and they're at a gestation older than 14 weeks they look like a baby then I look like a rock
• 1:16:00
  and they're left to die and the average survival time is 32 minutes but the officials say that
• 1:16:05
  that there's no way that you could know that honestly because in the in the tell me about it
• 1:16:10
  well in the New South Wales Act I was looking at it clause 113 says to avoid doubt the duty
• 1:16:16
  owed by a registered health practitioner to provide medical care and treatment to a person born
• 1:16:21
  as a result of a termination is no different than the duty owed to provide medical care and
• 1:16:26
  treatment to a person born other than as a result of a termination and that's a good course
• 1:16:31
  maybe can be viable then it yeah if it comes out and it's alive they have exactly the same
• 1:16:37
  care to that baby so that's New South Wales and it's South Australia they both have those yeah
• 1:16:41
  but Queensland doesn't and if you look at the annual reports produced by Queensland Health 2022
• 1:16:47
  and I can send them to you so you can click them off on the screen but 2022 it shows you
• 1:16:52
  termination pregnancy after 20 weeks in 2022 there were 271 that worse born still born so it
• 1:17:00
  was a termination pregnancy and that born still born injection into the heart delivered dead
• 1:17:03
  but there were 50 neonatal deaths now when it says neonatal death it means the baby has survived
• 1:17:08
  the birth canal they're born alive they die within the first 28 days so there were 50 babies who
• 1:17:15
  it was a termination of pregnancy procedure but they weren't born still born they were in neonatal
• 1:17:20
  deaths so what we know then is that baby survived their abortion and they didn't have a right to
• 1:17:25
  equal treatment in the law like they do have in South Australia and New South Wales now similarly
• 1:17:30
  in Victoria same thing so when I give you that statistic of it's one baby a week one newborn
• 1:17:35
  a week so I see it's an inference on the delta between uh no it's just it's just literally using
• 1:17:40
  those two states it's actually probably more we just don't have the data from tazzy or intake
• 1:17:44
  I'm not just good you want it because I don't know the answer all I know is that when you ask
• 1:17:48
  when you say to me about what she can't know when you say yeah no I know and and and the thing is
• 1:17:52
  this like if I really was flying about this I wouldn't be able to have a job at the university
• 1:17:57
  because obviously there's been multiple attempts to try and get me for misinformation and I've
• 1:18:01
  been investigated to like you know up the you know so so much and so the the fact that I still have
• 1:18:07
  a job should at least give some people who don't believe me some pause for thought because I'm
• 1:18:12
  quite not sure about that I mean I would believe that and I believe that academic freedom should
• 1:18:16
  extend to being allowed to mislead people who have things into life that's what academic tenure
• 1:18:22
  shouldn't it doesn't mean that and and and in um like in our codes of conduct at the university
• 1:18:28
  you you have to have research integrity so the things you say have to be true or you know
• 1:18:32
  even to claim on a data point it actually I do yeah yeah okay I do it's a fry
• 1:18:40
  so what should the punishment be then just once we start thinking about the legal like framework
• 1:18:46
  of outlawing abortion like what should the punishment be for the woman
• 1:18:56
  what do you think the punishment should be for a woman who kills her newborn
• 1:19:01
  well I think if the I mean I think suppose that you're in a jurisdiction where
• 1:19:07
  you know there's the death penalty like jurisdictions in the United States
• 1:19:10
  uh there was an interesting moment I don't know if you remember with Donald Trump during his
• 1:19:15
  first election campaign where he was trying to court the evangelical base and he was asked about
• 1:19:19
  abortion uh you know because obviously he'd been historically traditionally liberty and very
• 1:19:25
  much a democrat on social issues and you know I had paid for abortions for you know
• 1:19:30
  people who had slept with and so on um and so he was like uh I'm totally against that it should
• 1:19:36
  be illegal and the interviewer was like and you know should we punish the woman which is very
• 1:19:42
  taboo amongst most evangelical Christian communities who think that the woman should not be
• 1:19:46
  prosecuted and he was like yeah I mean if it's murder then you should and then the next day had to
• 1:19:50
  furiously backtrack um around the same time Kevin Williamson who's a quite brilliant very
• 1:19:56
  controversial very conservative American writer wrote a piece saying like that he believes in the
• 1:20:02
  death penalty and he believes abortion is murder and therefore for the sake of consistency
• 1:20:08
  women who abort their babies should be given lethal injection just the same way as any other
• 1:20:14
  murder especially if they do it many times I don't see a moral inconsistency with that do you?
• 1:20:22
  So when I have the death penalty in Australia and the question I asked you was what should the
• 1:20:25
  penalty be for a mother who kills a newborn well I mean I'm not the one who's the interviewer
• 1:20:30
  but what do you think the penalties should be um for that you know she's struggling she can't cope
• 1:20:36
  and she her baby she kills a baby in the bath or she um you know just locks a baby in a room
• 1:20:44
  and I don't know because there's probably a lot of variables but I would be happy for the penalty
• 1:20:48
  to be less if the less if a woman kills her newborn baby who's one day old then if she kills her
• 1:20:56
  teenage son or husband really I'd be comfortable with that you would have a different penalty
• 1:21:01
  for yeah I think so because why again I mean on a sort of singarian level I do think that there's more
• 1:21:09
  you are losing more once the child is capable of thought awareness a conception of the future
• 1:21:16
  we're talking about a one day old baby right we're talking about one day old baby is a teenager the
• 1:21:20
  Lord obviously Australian Lord doesn't treat them differently no that's right yes
• 1:21:24
  and I wouldn't wait to the cookie on that I think you are I would wait to the most people would would
• 1:21:29
  yeah most people haven't thought it through very well well but I also think the most people
• 1:21:32
  land as like brutal as that like I and as you sort of I think I'm not saying it should be fine
• 1:21:40
  but I but I think the most I also don't think it should be fine to abort a baby one day before
• 1:21:44
  but you but I think most people would say that the 15 year old and the one day old are both
• 1:21:49
  well maybe it's more human beings maybe it's simpler to say like a four or five year old because
• 1:21:53
  there I think you do have full you know conscious development but it's even again I think
• 1:21:58
  as people would say it's wrong to go the one year old it was so one day old and it's wrong to kill
• 1:22:01
  the four year old now I think you would acknowledge that there should be some kind of penalty for
• 1:22:07
  someone that does that right yes yes okay and so in my view anyone abortion is murder anyone
• 1:22:14
  involved in the process of murder just like they are after birth you know this is about equal
• 1:22:20
  protection it's about recognizing that human rights are the same um pre and after birth and so
• 1:22:27
  it's it should be criminalized it is killing a human being you know it would be inconsistent for
• 1:22:32
  me to say that that isn't the case I mean I guess the reason why I'm comfortable with there being
• 1:22:39
  a difference is because we already have differences you do extenuating circumstances just to clarify
• 1:22:43
  my position in before getting to yours in all kinds of ways like there are we have battered women
• 1:22:48
  syndrome we have you know survivors of domestic violence who kill their spouses there are all kinds
• 1:22:54
  of reasons why we have man slaughter if it was a partial accident we have so we always understand
• 1:23:01
  that things happen in a certain context and if you have a woman who does not want a child suppose
• 1:23:07
  she didn't even know that she was pregnant or maybe popped out while she was on the toilet she's
• 1:23:11
  very fat whatever you know there are the stories like that um and she does some things stupid in a
• 1:23:16
  hysterical rage when the baby is one day old I do think that's different than if she forms a
• 1:23:21
  calculated plan to kill her husband and to steal all his money uh so we all and the law would already
• 1:23:28
  recognize so the law might recognize that there's a um you know for we don't want to get into criminal
• 1:23:34
  law but to be convicted of murder there's actress ray and mens ray so you have to have done the act
• 1:23:38
  but you also have to have the full mental capacity right and so a woman that's going through severe
• 1:23:43
  mental distress and strangles her one-year-old baby one day old baby who's crying and she's can't
• 1:23:47
  cope so she strangles him and then the woman who plans out for months house months as she's going to kill
• 1:23:52
  her for rendering husband you know the law will treat them differently based on potentially mens ray
• 1:23:57
  like potentially like um and and and but you're right that is not going to treat them differently
• 1:24:02
  on the basis of the capability of the of the colony of capability of the of the I think person
• 1:24:07
  I find that really gross way it would gross world view I can be honest like that that killing
• 1:24:13
  the 15-year-old is is is is is worse than killing the one day old I just well I mean I'm saying
• 1:24:18
  it to give you an entry point into articulating how you you could have a slippery slope um position
• 1:24:24
  on killing uh um born it's a bad entry point I I don't want that entry point I don't want it
• 1:24:29
  brought it up you're the one who asked me that question but I said I said I'm not the
• 1:24:33
  one my question to you was do you think someone who's convicted of do you think someone who's
• 1:24:37
  committed murder to their you know two-day-old child we've already been done yes but that was my
• 1:24:43
  question it wasn't about whether there's a difference between you know a more developed older
• 1:24:46
  human and a younger human and and I think the point that I'm trying to make is if abortion is
• 1:24:52
  murder and kills an innocent human being then if there's criminal penalties for killing innocent
• 1:24:57
  human beings they should apply a crystal board yeah so you've had sex last night you go all
• 1:25:05
  shit it's like a few days later you get myth of Preston or whatever the you know are you what are
• 1:25:14
  they where I can well it's my personal my personal yeah yeah or two the drug the two-drug
• 1:25:19
  you can get a you can get from a pharmacist um and so that teenage girl
• 1:25:26
  life in prison do you get life in prison if you've killed your one-day-old baby probably no you don't
• 1:25:33
  well 20 years no you don't you don't you don't look at the law you know you you raise the death
• 1:25:39
  penalty but even if you raise the death penalty in the US she doesn't know you raise the death penalty
• 1:25:43
  in the US did you know that even when abortion was illegal in the US prior to Roe v Wade when it
• 1:25:48
  was criminalized you know not a single woman had had suffered the death penalty as it was out of an
• 1:25:54
  abortion no no I think the reality is the criminal law as you yourself acknowledge operates
• 1:26:01
  within a context of illegal framework that says you know depending depending on the depending
• 1:26:06
  of course I object to abortion to her killing her child but my point is you're my point is
• 1:26:12
  But my point is no object to a legal framework that takes into account the age of the human
• 1:26:17
  that was killed.
• 1:26:18
  So I think a legal framework should be the same if the victim is 15 or if they're one
• 1:26:22
  or if they're a blaster system.
• 1:26:24
  But then on what basis were not our legal system operates anyway other than like after
• 1:26:28
  birth.
• 1:26:29
  We don't change.
• 1:26:30
  Wait, wait, wait.
• 1:26:31
  Just one second.
• 1:26:32
  I just want to take this bit by bit.
• 1:26:33
  Okay.
• 1:26:34
  So it's logical.
• 1:26:35
  You're saying that in the States where before abortion was legalized, no women were
• 1:26:41
  prosecuted anyway for having abortion.
• 1:26:45
  That's not what I said.
• 1:26:46
  No.
• 1:26:47
  So what did you just say about that?
• 1:26:48
  So my understanding is that I'm not an expert on the US, that no one, no one got the
• 1:26:51
  death penalty.
• 1:26:52
  Okay.
• 1:26:53
  For murdering that unborn child.
• 1:26:55
  Got it.
• 1:26:56
  My question is whether or not you think that that's right or whether you think that they
• 1:27:01
  should have gotten the death penalty if the death penalty would have been applied to
• 1:27:05
  their killing of an adult.
• 1:27:07
  So I think that the criminal law should treat a woman who kills her baby after birth
• 1:27:12
  the same way as a woman who kills her baby before birth.
• 1:27:14
  I think the abortionist should go to jail for life like the life.
• 1:27:17
  I mean, they've got none of this mental distress.
• 1:27:19
  They're just doing it for a paycheck or because of some mistaken belief that it's healthcare.
• 1:27:23
  Right.
• 1:27:24
  So I'm just clarifying.
• 1:27:25
  It's not a, it's not a get out of jail free card for you at all to say that in practice
• 1:27:29
  this doesn't happen because your whole point is that you don't want the status quo
• 1:27:33
  anti-practice to continue.
• 1:27:35
  You want a new system and under the new system, the same penalties would apply regardless
• 1:27:40
  of the age of the victim.
• 1:27:42
  So if you take the morning after pill, okay, let's say that one time doesn't get your
• 1:27:47
  life in jail because killing one person doesn't get your life in jail in yourself.
• 1:27:51
  Well, when I say life, I'm using life in quotation marks because life ends up meaning
• 1:27:55
  after parole.
• 1:27:56
  But let's suppose you need to kill three people.
• 1:27:58
  Suppose a person needs to kill 10 people in order to get actual life.
• 1:28:05
  And let's suppose a teenager over the course of her teenage years takes the morning after
• 1:28:10
  pill 10 times between the ages of, I don't know, 15 and 20.
• 1:28:17
  So does that mean that yes, regardless of what happened or whether or not the death penalty
• 1:28:23
  was or was not applied, she should go to jail.
• 1:28:26
  So first of all, in Australia, we just don't have the death penalty.
• 1:28:29
  But second of all, in any of those, well, that's because you raised it when talking about
• 1:28:35
  Trump.
• 1:28:36
  So I wanted to address that that that that was about your belief, but I'm telling you
• 1:28:40
  my belief in Australia, if a woman is prosecuted because she's taken the morning after pill,
• 1:28:45
  let's use your example.
• 1:28:47
  And she has prosecuted.
• 1:28:48
  So that's the decision of the state prosecuted a prosecutor.
• 1:28:51
  She then has to go through through a jury trial of her peers, right?
• 1:28:55
  And then you have to prove actress Raya and men's Raya.
• 1:28:57
  And that's in the same way a woman who has murdered her newborn has to go through.
• 1:29:02
  And under our criminal law, that never that has never resulted in anything close to life
• 1:29:07
  in prison.
• 1:29:08
  But I do think that if we want equal protection, if we believe a child in the womb has the
• 1:29:13
  same human value and rights as a baby after birth, then it's the same process that should
• 1:29:18
  be applied.
• 1:29:19
  That's all I'm arguing.
• 1:29:20
  Yes.
• 1:29:21
  I'm not saying what the penalty should be.
• 1:29:22
  I'm saying whatever we do to a mother who kills her three day old, we should apply that
• 1:29:26
  in the womb.
• 1:29:27
  Right.
• 1:29:28
  But whatever we do to a mother who kills her three day old, you also believe we should
• 1:29:31
  do to a mother who kills a 30-year-old.
• 1:29:33
  Yeah.
• 1:29:34
  Yeah.
• 1:29:35
  So the mother who...
• 1:29:36
  Because killing, it's just the killing people bit that I am.
• 1:29:38
  Yeah, I am.
• 1:29:39
  No matter.
• 1:29:40
  I totally understand that.
• 1:29:41
  Yes.
• 1:29:42
  This is not a gotcha.
• 1:29:43
  I think you're turning it into a gotcha.
• 1:29:44
  Well, I'm saying is...
• 1:29:45
  You want me to say that they should get executed or spend their rest of their life in jail.
• 1:29:49
  I guess I'm saying you.
• 1:29:50
  I don't know.
• 1:29:51
  The background is as a law academic and from when I've, you know, when I studied criminal
• 1:29:55
  law, I'm not an expert in it.
• 1:29:56
  You know, it depends on the circumstances and how the law is then applied to that person.
• 1:30:00
  Yes.
• 1:30:01
  But I am telling you which would be...
• 1:30:02
  The circumstances should not depend on the age of the victim.
• 1:30:04
  Yes.
• 1:30:05
  But the circumstances...
• 1:30:06
  But when we're talking about circumstances...
• 1:30:08
  The judge would instruct the jury in such a case to say it is important that you do not
• 1:30:12
  take into account the fact that, you know, this baby was in utero.
• 1:30:17
  Absolutely.
• 1:30:18
  But when I talk about the circumstances, I'm talking about things like duress, coercion,
• 1:30:22
  intoxication, like all of those contextual factors that may be downgraded from murder and
• 1:30:27
  a manslaughter, that have an impact on the menswear aspect of it.
• 1:30:29
  Yes.
• 1:30:30
  So, but I'm saying...
• 1:30:31
  If the menswear area was there, as it usually is, if you're taking the morning after
• 1:30:33
  pill, you know what you're doing, you're, you know, you're terminating...
• 1:30:35
  Yeah, but there'll be other evidence tended about the circumstances of what the woman
• 1:30:39
  is going through, et cetera, whether she, you know, you've got some senses of the coercive
• 1:30:43
  relationships, whatever.
• 1:30:45
  Like, you, the age of the child or the person who took the morning after pill, there
• 1:30:49
  will be contextual circumstances that the law will take into account.
• 1:30:53
  I'm telling you that they can't take into account the age of the victim.
• 1:30:55
  Yes.
• 1:30:56
  And I'm also saying to you that, however we would apply those contextual circumstances
• 1:31:00
  after birth, we should be consistent pre-birth.
• 1:31:02
  Yes.
• 1:31:03
  It should be criminalized.
• 1:31:04
  It's murder.
• 1:31:05
  Yes.
• 1:31:06
  No, but I understand that.
• 1:31:07
  But you don't have to be so, I don't think you need to be so cautious about saying like,
• 1:31:10
  yes, if a person who kills 10 adults is going to go to jail for life, then a person who
• 1:31:19
  kills 10 of their own, you know, I go over the course of some period of time should also
• 1:31:27
  go to jail for life.
• 1:31:28
  I think that if that person is so reckless about human life and they've murdered 10
• 1:31:32
  fetuses, 10 children, and I think they should be treated in the same way as someone who's
• 1:31:37
  killed 10 born people.
• 1:31:38
  Yes.
• 1:31:39
  It's the same.
• 1:31:41
  So the question I guess is like sort of how we wrestle with like these very contentious
• 1:31:49
  things in a democracy, right?
• 1:31:52
  And what the least bad option is because I think part of the problem is like when I became
• 1:32:03
  a father, even though it was through Saragasy, we're very close to the Saragat and we're
• 1:32:08
  very close to the Agdonar and it was like a big family experience.
• 1:32:13
  It wasn't a cold harsh, like send away a cheque to Cambodia and get a baby back kind
• 1:32:18
  of thing.
• 1:32:20
  And so it did make me more skeptical of abortion and it did make me more open to the
• 1:32:25
  sort of majesty and mystery of life, of conception and more queasy, I suppose, about
• 1:32:33
  my previously unruffled support for, you know, I want to say support for abortion because
• 1:32:40
  I don't think it was that, but support for not wanting the state to get involved in those
• 1:32:44
  kinds of decisions.
• 1:32:46
  And if it strikes me that you're one of the things that you're doing well is reminding
• 1:32:52
  people that this is a human thing, right?
• 1:32:56
  These things, regardless of these things in our bellies and women's bellies are not
• 1:33:03
  an appendage, they're not a parasite, they're not a part of a woman's reproductive system
• 1:33:08
  that doesn't have a future of its own or is not deserving of some kind of moral consideration.
• 1:33:14
  And then we have to address this with a little bit more heart perhaps than a clinical
• 1:33:20
  called medicalized bureaucracy that likes euphemisms, but when I think about what is actually
• 1:33:28
  the least bureaucratized and medicalized way of dealing with this, isn't that the case
• 1:33:34
  that in a world in which women are going to find themselves getting pregnant against
• 1:33:42
  their will or unintentionally.
• 1:33:45
  And some subset of those women are going to seek to end those pregnancies that the
• 1:33:53
  less bureaucratized way of dealing with those situations might be within families, with
• 1:34:02
  nurses and gynecologists, rather than through courts, police officers, bureaucrats and legislators.
• 1:34:14
  I think the role of the law, like this one of the reasons I went into it, Josh, is to
• 1:34:17
  protect the vulnerable, like it's a concern for justice.
• 1:34:21
  And so if we want to protect the weak and the vulnerable, that's the function of the
• 1:34:27
  law.
• 1:34:28
  There's no human, more vulnerable than the child in the womb, you know, even part of my
• 1:34:34
  research on migrant workers, I looked at undocumented migrants, that's the most recent
• 1:34:37
  piece of work I've done.
• 1:34:38
  And what's really interesting about undocumented workers is, you know, they just don't even
• 1:34:41
  have a right to be in the country.
• 1:34:44
  So they can't complain about work exploitation because, you know, they'll just get deported.
• 1:34:48
  And for the child in the womb, they don't have the right to be in the womb under our
• 1:34:53
  currently legal system.
• 1:34:55
  And unless we have laws to give them those rights, then, you know, yeah, we could have a
• 1:35:01
  conversation behind closed doors.
• 1:35:02
  We could try and support the woman, hold her hand, give her whatever she needs with
• 1:35:05
  that secure housing, deal with her relationship, break down or her job scenario, whatever.
• 1:35:10
  We could change those things, but without full legal protection for the unborn, we're
• 1:35:15
  never going to save these babies.
• 1:35:18
  And if you think about slavery, for example, you know, people would say, like, we would
• 1:35:21
  never accept that it would be okay for, you know, you to have slaves.
• 1:35:28
  And for me, not to.
• 1:35:30
  So I would say, I'm against slavery personally, but, you know, I'm not going to interfere
• 1:35:35
  with other people.
• 1:35:36
  I don't think we need to have laws about that.
• 1:35:37
  I just won't have them.
• 1:35:39
  We know that slavery is a grave injustice, and therefore there should be laws protecting
• 1:35:42
  people against slavery, vulnerable people in the same way with abortion.
• 1:35:47
  We need laws to protect the vulnerable human person from being protected.
• 1:35:51
  I agree with the basic, your basic sort of, I guess, jurisprudential position that everybody
• 1:35:58
  has standing to decide this.
• 1:36:00
  Like I've never quite understood the your body, your choice argument, you know, my body,
• 1:36:05
  my choice.
• 1:36:07
  Well, if you don't want to have an abortion, then don't have an abortion, because that
• 1:36:10
  doesn't address, as you say, the salient moral question of whether or not the, the unborn
• 1:36:15
  baby has rights or has a right to life.
• 1:36:17
  Like it's not like, we all, we all live in this society.
• 1:36:20
  We all get to decide what the norms and the rules are going to be.
• 1:36:24
  So if we all decide that plasticists are persons and persons can never be killed, then, you
• 1:36:31
  know, you could argue that that everyone, that that is then the conclusion.
• 1:36:35
  I just don't understand why you think that you're going to win by adopting such a position
• 1:36:47
  that strikes me as being blind to all of the kind of situational and civilizational and
• 1:36:57
  ethical complexities that actually arise when the sort of lofty moral precepts that you
• 1:37:03
  hold, crash into the reality of human life with, you know, all of those things that you
• 1:37:08
  were saying people trot out when they just want to plop people's heartstrings and, you
• 1:37:12
  know, legalize all abortion.
• 1:37:14
  The underage girl, the victim of incest, the sex slave, the rape victim, like all of these
• 1:37:22
  scenarios where a certain deftness is called for are steamrolled by your worldview, where
• 1:37:31
  suddenly the police and the courts are the correct tool to use.
• 1:37:36
  I'm not going to lie to you about this, Josh, like I think it would be morally inconsistent
• 1:37:43
  and you would be the first person to call it out.
• 1:37:45
  Like if I'd answered your question, that women who have abortions shouldn't be criminalized,
• 1:37:51
  then you would say to me, well, you don't clearly don't view the pre-born human in the
• 1:37:54
  same way.
• 1:37:55
  I mean, I do it.
• 1:37:56
  You would get, you would say to me that's ethically inconsistent and you would be right.
• 1:38:01
  So of course, you know, if I, like in terms of, of course, I know that this particular
• 1:38:08
  admission here in this moment, in the short time, it's going to be detrimental there,
• 1:38:13
  we're going to be able to already do, but say, you know, Joe's an extremist, this is so
• 1:38:18
  bad.
• 1:38:19
  Can't have any part of it.
• 1:38:20
  I think the horse has bolted on your extremist on this particular issue, I don't think
• 1:38:23
  you, I don't think anyone's going to be able to do it.
• 1:38:25
  But I think that, you know, but I think that it's the only consistent position to take,
• 1:38:29
  which is that you've got a member of the human species who has human rights killing
• 1:38:34
  them in the same way.
• 1:38:35
  Why is that so important to you, Joe?
• 1:38:37
  The key rights?
• 1:38:38
  No, not human rights.
• 1:38:40
  This, I guess, what strikes me as a somewhat semantic technocratic quibble about whether
• 1:38:46
  or not membership of the species homo sapiens is identical to personhood.
• 1:38:52
  I mean, I understand that it's tricky to sort of acknowledge that there's a slippery slope
• 1:39:00
  that the development, we don't like it when there are shades of grey.
• 1:39:04
  I just see how you cut it any other way.
• 1:39:05
  Like, I think your argument gives you a lot of contrast.
• 1:39:10
  Maybe you just can't cut it.
• 1:39:12
  I mean, maybe there is not a good way to cut it, which is why you want to leave it in
• 1:39:15
  the hands of, you know, as localized, you want to leave it as localized a decision as
• 1:39:20
  possible.
• 1:39:21
  But that's because the victim is always a person, whereas here, and that's, I would say the
• 1:39:30
  victim is always a person.
• 1:39:31
  Yeah, but it's obviously not.
• 1:39:32
  I mean, you know, that's your perspective, but that's your self that you can't even see
• 1:39:37
  is not identical.
• 1:39:38
  No, I don't think that.
• 1:39:39
  That's not a religious world.
• 1:39:40
  Well, it's pretty dogmatic, like this position of, okay, it doesn't have a brain.
• 1:39:44
  It can't feel pain.
• 1:39:45
  So why are they the determinants of humanity, like a personhood?
• 1:39:50
  Because if they're not, then the word person just doesn't mean anything.
• 1:39:53
  No, I think that, I think that's just enormous with a member of the species homo sapien, whether
• 1:40:00
  or not they're just a cluster of self, whether or not they're just a cluster of self.
• 1:40:02
  You're choosing arbitrary determinants of personhood, and I am sure you're saying it's about
• 1:40:07
  brain capacity.
• 1:40:08
  Is there something that it's like to be that thing?
• 1:40:10
  I think that, I think that my definition works just as well as yours and if not better,
• 1:40:14
  because yours accords personhoods to rats, you know, yours says, it does because rats
• 1:40:19
  have the same.
• 1:40:20
  But it doesn't, but if personhood is determined and determined by consciousness, then, you
• 1:40:26
  know, because you're against like term abortion, it's not, no, consciousness is not just
• 1:40:29
  to clarify.
• 1:40:30
  Consciousness is not sufficient.
• 1:40:31
  So what is it then?
• 1:40:32
  It's consciousness plus what?
• 1:40:33
  It is.
• 1:40:34
  A member of the human species.
• 1:40:35
  No, there are all kinds of attributes that human beings have that makes them persons,
• 1:40:39
  like a sense of their own existence through time, like a sense of the future, like relation.
• 1:40:44
  There's a, you know, philosophers are not dummies when it comes to trying to think about
• 1:40:48
  it.
• 1:40:49
  No, but they're essentially, they're essentially attributes that you are saying this cocktail
• 1:40:53
  of attributes makes someone a person.
• 1:40:56
  Yes.
• 1:40:57
  And I don't believe that you don't believe that because I don't believe that you actually
• 1:41:00
  think that there's no moral difference between a one day old blastocyst and a human being,
• 1:41:06
  like an adult human being.
• 1:41:08
  No, that's actually what I do believe, Josh.
• 1:41:10
  I believe that a one day old blastocyst has the same moral value as you.
• 1:41:14
  Yes.
• 1:41:15
  I believe that you believe that in.
• 1:41:17
  And that it is murdered, a kill both.
• 1:41:19
  And the position that I take that they should both be criminalized shows the consistency
• 1:41:22
  of that.
• 1:41:23
  Yes.
• 1:41:24
  I believe I'm not doubting, I'm not saying that you're a phony.
• 1:41:26
  Yeah.
• 1:41:27
  And I'm not just like arguing this to take a position.
• 1:41:31
  I'm obviously a great person of sacrifice chosen to do this because because I think that,
• 1:41:36
  you know,
• 1:41:37
  Just to clarify, because I don't want to sound like I was dismissing your, what is obviously
• 1:41:40
  a very brave position for you to take.
• 1:41:42
  And I say, I don't believe that you believe that all I mean is that deep down, there's
• 1:41:48
  an intuition that we all have about what about how human beings relate and how we relate
• 1:41:53
  to other human beings and about how about what it's like to be other human beings.
• 1:41:57
  And that intuition is absent when we're talking about either my father a day before he died
• 1:42:03
  or a blastocyst or a person who's born without a brain or a person in a coma.
• 1:42:10
  Josh, I think if I just think about my own experience and I think the women listening
• 1:42:14
  you have had miscarriages, you just feel devastated, like your baby might be as I go, you just,
• 1:42:20
  that pregnancy test is so early because you've been tracking your fertility and you've
• 1:42:24
  lost, and then all of a sudden, the ACG goes low and you've lost that baby.
• 1:42:28
  And you can't even see them when you go to the bathroom and you're bleeding out blood
• 1:42:31
  clots.
• 1:42:32
  And then it's still the same.
• 1:42:34
  Like the loss for the wanted child, like we treat that exactly the same, you know,
• 1:42:40
  I don't doubt it, but I don't believe you that it's the same as if you one of your children
• 1:42:45
  died.
• 1:42:46
  So I was thinking about this because, you know, after my child died, like after I had
• 1:42:50
  the miscarriage a few weeks ago, I was really upset and it still hits me in waves, but
• 1:42:57
  I'll be honest with you if that was my, you know, 11 year old page who had been mowed
• 1:43:03
  down by a car just a suddenly as my child, Sammy, who I lost, I don't think I'd be doing
• 1:43:09
  this interview.
• 1:43:10
  But that goes to the relationship point, doesn't it, Josh?
• 1:43:14
  Like, you know, it's that I've had 11 years with Paige and nine months in the womb and
• 1:43:18
  I grew to know her and love her in a completely different level, like we've watched movies
• 1:43:22
  together, we've sung together, I've seen a compete in sporting competitions, I've trained
• 1:43:26
  her to sing for the school musical auditions, you know, we've cooked meals together.
• 1:43:32
  I've put her on the naughty step, like I haven't done that with my glasses.
• 1:43:35
  No, that's definitely fair enough, but that's a good point.
• 1:43:38
  I would just say that the blaster says also is incapable of doing any of those things.
• 1:43:41
  Of course, but that incapacity to me does not deprive it from the right to life.
• 1:43:47
  Yeah, and the right to life, like, you know, the incapacity of my newborn to do the things
• 1:43:50
  that my six year old and 10 year old and 20 year old can do does not deprive my newborn
• 1:43:55
  of the right to life.
• 1:43:56
  I understand totally what you're saying.
• 1:43:59
  And I just want to know with your surrogacy, Johnny, because my understanding of friends
• 1:44:03
  who've gone through that is that, you know, you're weighing week by week, aren't you?
• 1:44:08
  Yes.
• 1:44:09
  To know that that child is safe and growing.
• 1:44:11
  Absolutely.
• 1:44:12
  It's an incredible thing.
• 1:44:13
  I mean, you know, bringing life into this world is an incredible thing, and it is a
• 1:44:16
  thing that deserves more.
• 1:44:17
  And so you had a friend or family member carry your children for you, I mean, how would
• 1:44:24
  you have felt if that child, if she had walked in for an abortion, you know, when you,
• 1:44:30
  they were pregnant with your blastocyst.
• 1:44:32
  I mean, devastated, totally devastated.
• 1:44:35
  And at the same time.
• 1:44:36
  But there was just a blastocyst.
• 1:44:38
  Yes.
• 1:44:39
  I'm not, I mean, I'm not saying that I'm not, you know, as you can tell, I'm not taking
• 1:44:43
  an extreme pro-abortion position here, which is to say these things deserve no moral
• 1:44:48
  consideration until the moment that they happen to pop out of the womb and then all of
• 1:44:52
  a sudden they become fully fledged human beings and that makes total moral sense.
• 1:44:56
  My claim is that delicate, complicated, thorny, messy, bloody, grisly, theological, you
• 1:45:06
  know, conundrums deserve a certain amount of delicacy, difference of opinion, not
• 1:45:15
  absolutism.
• 1:45:16
  Well, I would say that sometimes there's, sometimes the grave injustice, it is black and white,
• 1:45:20
  you know?
• 1:45:21
  But with rape, slavery, domestic violence, murder, it's black and white.
• 1:45:27
  And I just, I mean, I would just note, note that all of those things have a victim who
• 1:45:31
  is conscious and self-aware of being a victim, right?
• 1:45:33
  Okay.
• 1:45:34
  But you're saying that the same thing is, yeah, so of course you can keep making those analogies,
• 1:45:40
  but where the rubber has to meet the road on these conversations, I think.
• 1:45:42
  Okay.
• 1:45:43
  So what about a surrogacy arrangement where it's commercial, you don't know this person,
• 1:45:47
  you've just got a contract and they've breached the contract, but aborted your blast
• 1:45:52
  assist.
• 1:45:54
  What should you be able to do in that contractual arrangement?
• 1:45:57
  I think we're going to bore everyone to tears and nor do we have time to go into like legalistic
• 1:46:00
  sort of thought.
• 1:46:01
  But what do you, how do you feel then when that surrogate kills your blast assist?
• 1:46:08
  That's the child that you're in.
• 1:46:09
  Terrible and not as terrible as I would if they killed my husband or my kid.
• 1:46:12
  Of course.
• 1:46:13
  And we acknowledge that whether if my 11 year old dies versus the child, I'm his
• 1:46:16
  child two weeks.
• 1:46:17
  So I mean, my only, I want to give you the final word, but my only, you know, my only
• 1:46:24
  encouragement would be probably it for me to tell you how to do your job.
• 1:46:29
  That sometimes it was sometimes you can win more people with sugar than, you know, than
• 1:46:35
  spice.
• 1:46:36
  It is like because there are a lot of things that are worth bringing to people's attention
• 1:46:40
  in this space.
• 1:46:41
  And there's probably a lot of common ground that you could, that you can win and are winning
• 1:46:46
  and may even be magnified if people didn't feel like to go along with you would also
• 1:46:55
  mean that they have to take a, that they're going to be subjected to a highly, what they
• 1:47:03
  would regard as being a highly intrusive and authoritarian and absolute approach towards
• 1:47:08
  even the most sympathetic cases of, you know, a very early term abortion from a very,
• 1:47:17
  by a very sympathetic young woman who has suffered a terrible rape or something like that.
• 1:47:23
  But you do you, and if it's a moral, absolute, it's a moral, absolute, and I do admire the
• 1:47:27
  consistency of it in a way that I have more respect for your position as intellectually
• 1:47:32
  coherent than the average position of, you know, the approach I suppose who hasn't thought
• 1:47:38
  about it very much.
• 1:47:39
  Josh, I really appreciate the conversation.
• 1:47:41
  I think, you know, this is probably the best conversation I've had on this on a podcast
• 1:47:46
  and no one else has done this.
• 1:47:48
  Generally, people who agree with me interview me.
• 1:47:51
  And so I've really appreciated this.
• 1:47:53
  Sorry.
• 1:47:54
  And I've been battling through this horrible point.
• 1:47:56
  Yeah, you're going to give me a call.
• 1:47:57
  Yeah, no, no, no.
• 1:47:58
  I'm not contagious.
• 1:47:59
  I've just been, this is the tail end of something that hit on Easter Sunday.
• 1:48:03
  And so it's just been, yeah, it's just been getting better, but still the voice is, is
• 1:48:08
  not great.
• 1:48:09
  But so I congratulate you on having the conversation.
• 1:48:10
  This has been really good fun.
• 1:48:11
  And it's been really interesting.
• 1:48:12
  And we need to do more of this.
• 1:48:14
  I think would it be easier, like I said, to not have such an absolutist position, it
• 1:48:21
  would in terms of, you know, selling the message.
• 1:48:23
  But in terms of just what I really believe, I don't want to lie about it.
• 1:48:28
  And this is the truthful position.
• 1:48:30
  And I think all of the bills that we've introduced, you know, since doing this, I've helped
• 1:48:33
  draft bills to say babies after 28 weeks, say babies after 23 weeks, give equal protection
• 1:48:39
  of babies who survived their abortion.
• 1:48:41
  You know, create that New South Wales and essay carve out, do that nationally.
• 1:48:45
  So we've tried all of that.
• 1:48:46
  A ban on sex selective abortion.
• 1:48:48
  That's something that's going up for a vote in New South Wales this year.
• 1:48:50
  So all of the bills that we've introduced have been, I think, at a level that someone
• 1:48:54
  like you and other reasonable people would agree with you.
• 1:48:57
  Yes.
• 1:48:58
  But what I'm saying is really crazy to the normal person that they just have never thought
• 1:49:03
  about it in this way before they've never been exposed to it.
• 1:49:05
  And even if they had been like you had been, you still look at me and think that's an
• 1:49:10
  extremely radical position to take.
• 1:49:14
  But I guess the thing is I'm conscious that any social reform has occurred according
• 1:49:19
  to a journey.
• 1:49:20
  This is a democracy.
• 1:49:21
  I'm not seeing a bulldoze anyone and make them agree with me.
• 1:49:23
  I am trying to persuade with words and through legislative and social change.
• 1:49:27
  And you know, on social media, it's obviously resonating.
• 1:49:29
  We're getting 25 million views a month.
• 1:49:31
  The following is now over 330,000 across platforms.
• 1:49:34
  There's clearly a desire to, there's clearly a desire to push back on the fact that Australia
• 1:49:40
  has the harshest abortion laws in the world after birth for any reason, even at the point
• 1:49:44
  of leaving babies to die.
• 1:49:45
  There's clearly people that want to get on board with changing that.
• 1:49:48
  And I think we will start to see some legislative change.
• 1:49:51
  Will we get to the point where it's criminalised to kill a blast assist?
• 1:49:55
  I hope so.
• 1:49:56
  We protect all human beings.
• 1:49:58
  But I'm recognising that that fight, like the battle to end slavery or to give women
• 1:50:02
  the right to vote.
• 1:50:03
  All of these take decades and it takes time.
• 1:50:06
  And I appreciate the conversation because I think it's from places like this where you've
• 1:50:11
  given me stuff to think about.
• 1:50:12
  Hopefully I've given you stuff to think about.
• 1:50:14
  It's from here that, you know, the journey goes on.
• 1:50:16
  Joanna, thanks for coming along.
• 1:50:18
  Couple of conversations.
• 1:50:19
  Thanks, Josh.