Pints With Aquinas - The End of Roe, Pro-Life Issues, and State Laws w/ Stephanie Gray Connors

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Stephanie Gray joins the show to talk about her new Book "My Body for You: A Pro-Life Message for a Post-Roe World". She and Matt talk about a wide range of topics from long distance dating to miscarriage, and of course abortion. Get Stephanie's Book 15% off (Code: PINTS15): https://stpaulcenter.com/product/my-body-for-you-a-pro-life-message-for-a-post-roe-world/ Show Sponsors:  https://ascensionpress.com/fradd https://strive21.com/matt  

Hello. Hello. It is so good to have you on. It is great to be back. So for those who don't know you, I need to tell them two things and then you can tell them what you want to tell them about you. Number one, I once had you on the show to debate an abortionist. Yes.

And I think you said that with such intensity. I think what people don't realize about you is you have such this like joyful, like lighthearted demeanor. You mean people don't realize that about me? No, they realize that bit. But then what they don't realize is that you're going to get on stage and rip the face off of a pro abort. You are outstanding at debates. Thank you. Trent Horn has said of you that you're the only one he would substitute for himself if he couldn't make it.

That is high praise. Trent is a kind man. So we will put a link below to that debate with the abortionist so people can see you in action. Well, it seems every time I'm on your show, I'm pregnant because I was pregnant then and I'm pregnant now. It was wild. I said this to you last night when he congratulated you. I think that may be when he lost the debate.

Right. When he congratulated you for being pregnant. Yeah, very early trimester pregnant when he would be totally OK with abortion. He's like, congratulations. I wonder if as an abortionist, you have to kind of bend over backwards to sort of like how science, sort of how Christians feel threatened by maybe atheists who think science, science, science are always, I love science. I love it. I wonder if that is what abortionists have to do.

They have, I mean, they have to do all kinds of mental gymnastics and yeah. And then when you were in Ottawa, I said, I might come to your debate tonight. Like, yeah, if you want to see, like, if you want to hear a rehearsal of absolutely God awful, pro-abortion arguments or something like that, your confidence.

I think maybe something like that is I'm already after. I don't think I typically say God awful, although the phrase is well used by many, but. So how did we meet? Was it all or what? We met at net. Not that I intended to rhyme. I met you when you were married to Cam.

And I think you just had Liam, maybe Avila. Avila's next, right? Or is it Kiara? Liam Avila. Yeah. But I had met Cam before she was even dating you in 2003. I think that was her net year. And I trained. I gave a little presentation to the net missionaries in Kamloops British Columbia Canada and then they kept having you come back they did yeah they did yes and I remember when I met Kam she said I'm thinking of joining the

Sisters of Life yeah whenever I see the Sisters of Life it's like seeing the fella I beat Whenever I see the Sisters of Life, it's like seeing the fella I beat. You know, I got it. Like I got it. Yeah. Yeah. So and then a couple years later, because you guys married. When did you marry? That's amazing that she said that to you.

That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. She went and lived with this. Well, she actually went on a discernment retreat with the Sisters of Life. Mm hmm. Yeah. As did I.

I think somebody said to her, like, you're far too too bigger fish for this pond or something to that effect. Oh really? Yeah, Father Glenn from the CFRs I think said that to her. Ah, yeah well she's made a huge impact in the world with you as a spouse so. She's a good woman. So yeah, so we go that far back. I like to say before you were the Matt Fradd, I knew you. Yeah. And then I remember when you stayed with us in San Diego. Yes. And I remember you saying something. At the time I was like, probably not, but sure. And now it's been born out and you don't remember it.

I don't. Okay, what did I say? You said- I remember, by the way, your wife took me, you were working the next day for some really delicious cupcakes. It was my birthday. Did you? Yeah. But anyway, so what did I say? That's funny, that must have been a while ago

because if my wife ate anything resembling gluten, now she would die. Oh, right, the poor thing, I know, I know. Hey, Thursday, should we shut this door a little bit because it's covering up the light or is it okay? That's what I mean by cash. Yeah, we'll leave this, just leave it all in. It's all good.

The joys of not being live. No, we'll leave it in. It's fun. But thank you. No, what you said to me was, do you think there will come a day soon where people will no longer be attracted to men and women, that we're actually going to become asexual? I said that. You said that.

Yes. And I went, I mean, no, but it's an interesting idea. And here we are. Here we are. Now. I think was that the time of the hunger games that had been released 2012. So yeah, I think so. Hunger games was all the movie. I mean, the books have been out, but the movies were already out. Cause I remember when I watched the hunger games and those people at the Capitol that have the weird makeup and they look strange and they eat all the time like they're gorging themselves on food. I remember watching those characters thinking, I don't feel like there's any sexual attraction,

like that they're neutral, they're sexually neutral. And their outlet for some sort of satisfaction is food and then this crazy world they live in. But and I remember thinking, oh my goodness, I feel like our world is going in this direction. Yeah, yeah, certainly. I certainly think we've seen for a while people who are like, no, pornography is way better than a human relationship. Right, right. That's maybe increasing. Yes.

But this idea that people would just be asexual. I don't know how you would arrive and people who might be asexual. I don't know how you would arrive and people who might be asexual can let us know in the comment section, but I'm not sure how you would arrive at being asexual unless you'd experienced some kind of trauma surrounding sex. Well, and I think that's increasingly happening in partly because of pornography and it's getting so weird and people are becoming saturated that they're losing interest altogether. It's very strange. Yeah.

But also because we have as a culture lost sight of its purpose, which is a communion of persons and bringing together in a reflection of the Trinity and love and giving and receiving. Yeah. Well, there we go. Sacramentality of sex and how contraception is like the A-bomb that ruins everything. Right. Right. There we go sacramentality of sex and how contraception is like the a bomb that ruins everything right, right? I Want to be careful though? Because I remember once upon a time saying the line that you know Well, the only reason a woman would look at porn might be because you know when you try to psychologize and then you realize well

No, you're actually wrong. There might be other reasons So I wouldn't want to say the only reason people would claim to be asexual is because of some sort of trauma But it seems to make sense to me that if you're viewing pornography or seeing sexual abuse and you think that's what sex is that you would want nothing to do with that and you'd be right to not want to do. Right and I think you can see trends without it being the reality for every single individual case, but I think it's a fair theory to hold even if there are other reasons someone would would move in that direction. So you've written a book called My Body For You, a pro-life message for a post-Roe world. Yes. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah,

I'm really excited by this book and I've worked with Emmaus Rode, they're the publishers and a shout out to them. I just want to say it's been a joy to work with them. I found that too. Yeah, yeah, really impressed. And they're quick, they don't go, well yeah, we'll get this out in five years. Oh my goodness, isn't that the truth? Yes, yeah, yeah, the turnaround has been great, but the team has been wonderful. Melissa Gerard in particular has been the one I've worked most closely with. And so yeah, so I'm excited, they're excited by the book. So then it just, it feels like hopefully it will reach many people and help them. I can't wait to learn from you about this because I'm sure everyone thinks they understand what it might mean that the fight is now just beginning or some little line like that. But you've been

on the front lines of this battle for how long? Well now we're aging me, but I'm considered a geriatric multigravity pregnancy, by the way, at 43. My blood work says that. When they check my progesterone regularly in my blood, it literally says geriatric multigravity. So I'm 43 and I went full time in the pro-life movement at 21. So more than 20 years. But of course I was raised in the movement. I mean both my parents were very active. So as a young child I was going to events with them and pregnancy centers with my mom and conferences with both my parents, protests. So yeah, so it's literally been a lifetime, multiple decades. And then we

had this historic moment, you know, a couple of years ago with the overturning of Roe v Wade. But as you pointed out, it's like, the battle is the war is not over a battle was won, but there's a whole bunch more battles going on and will continue to erupt. So like, okay, six months before the overturning of Roe, if you had have been told, or if you had to be nice, do you think this will one day happen? I want to know what your opinion was then. And then I want to know how you heard that it was overturned and what you thought of it.

Yes. So yeah, I was pretty confident with the Supreme Court that it was going to be overturned so that I would see that in my lifetime. Six months before I was confident that would happen. At the time, in fact, to the day, you know, I even point this out in my book, when significant moments happen, we often ask or ask others or ask ourselves, like, where were you when, you know, when 9-11 happened, where were you when? And so where was I? I was at home and I was, I was literally cleaning the toilets. I, our first daughter, our second child, because

our first is in heaven, but our daughter Violet was born in August, it was June, so she was almost a year. And my husband was home that morning. And so I was cleaning the bathrooms and he called out to me as literally I'm scrubbing a toilet. And he's like, the decision came down, Roe V Wade was overturned. And so I rushed, you know, to the office to watch the news with him. And it was just a very sweet moment. And I know a lot of pro lifers, of course, were excitedly in DC and, you know, had a lot of different activities and activism going on related to it

because people were waiting in anticipation. It was the end of the season for the judges. And I was kind of hidden away at home and I was totally okay with that. It was like this moment of sweet joy to hold my baby and watch this great moment in history, in a sense from afar and still rejoice in it and just be so grateful that there are so many people and so many more people on the front lines than there were when I started full-time pro-life

work in you know early 2000s. You used to travel a lot. I did. I traveled. What does a lot sound like? Well several times a month. Sometimes it was weekly. I know for some people they do several times a week but I was definitely and then traveling overseas at the time I was living in Canada, like you I've married an American, so I'm now joyfully living in the United States, but I was traveling here a lot from Canada, going to Europe, going to Latin America, and now writing is a really good outlet for me. One, I love it, and two, it's very conducive to mom life. So, so travel less.

Was it a bit of a death to have to recede from the front lines? You know what? It wasn't. And I know for some people it is. And I think it was where I was at in life. The Lord had prepared my heart for the change. I also felt very full. Like I had, my heart for the change. I also felt very full. Like, I had, I met my husband and we married in 2020. So from 2001 to 2020, I had had this very busy, more than full-time career in traveling and speaking. So I felt very full. And I still knew that from a kind of ministry perspective, I had more to give, but not to the degree that I had given. It was kind of a relief almost to slow down. And then the reality was the world slowed down in 2020. So everything went online, most events were canceled and that just sweetly coincided with my personal life getting serious with, you know, meeting

the man of my dreams and then becoming a mom shortly after we got married. And so, yeah, it was quite easy. It was lovely to meet your husband because my wife and I love you so much, you know, and to meet him and go, wow, what a good looking, like beautiful fella. Like he just seems wonderful. He is. And I have to say the moment I met him. So we do we do have, I have to say the moment I met him, so we do, we do have, I have to say like a really great story. Like I feel like it could be a Hallmark movie before Hallmark went woke, you know?

Did it go woke? Didn't it? I think. Nevermind. But so in 2016, my dear friend who's been on your show, Lila Rose, tried to set me up with my now husband. And she's like, I'm telling you, sis, he's the one for you. And I'm like, I don't know. I live in Vancouver.

He lives in Florida. This is like a cross continent thing. But she convinced me to be open to emailing and we emailed for three weeks and I didn't know he'd looked up flights to meet in person. I did know that, you know, he had suggested we at least move to phone and the day we were scheduled to move to phone, I, I was like, this long distance thing isn't doing it for me. And so I messaged him and said, I don't see the reason to move to phone. Like, I just want to meet someone in the flesh and be able to get to know them in person. So it's been nice getting to know you, but we'll just leave it

there. And so when I told Lila, I did this, she was so mad at me. She's like, what? I'm telling you, this guy is for you. I'm like, no, no. So four years go by, no contact. And every time I saw Lila, she would tell me I'd been wrong and that Joe Connor's guy was the one for me. And then in 2020, he reached out to me. And it was interesting because I was almost 40. And I had women like, okay, God, I'm still single.

I don't wanna be. So I have to accept this reality. I'm gonna buy a condo. I'm gonna settle down near my family in Canada. And I did that and I got possession of my condo in January of 2020. And my spiritual director, a Byzantine priest monk visited me and blessed my home, which as you know,

with the home blessings of Byzantines, so much more epic than a regular Latin Catholic home blessing. So much longer. Longer, true, but they're just really great. You're like, my home is so safe. It's definitely blessed. Yeah. So he came and blessed it and I fed him and then we have spiritual direction. I just start sobbing, I have this beautiful home and no one to share it with.

So he starts praying over me and pulling out the Byzantine and like pressing them into my head. It was like intense. And I found this out later because of timestamps, but literally across the continent after four years of no contact, my now husband is in our now home and in his home at the time, flossing his teeth thinking to himself, I wonder if that Stephanie Gray girl is still single. And he grabbed his phone and he texted Lila. And so that's how we know the timestamp of that text and father praying over me. Wow. So long story short, um, he reached out to me after Lila said, Hey, he's contacted me. Can he, can he contact you? And the moment we met, so I had a work trip that brought me through Florida. The moment we met, he came to pick me up at the hotel and I'm walking towards him and

I took one look at him. I'm like, Lila was right the whole time. I could just tell now. Yes, I thought he was handsome. I'm sure you'd seen photos. I had, but there was like something about the in the flesh, you know, you mean a person, but so there was the handsome element, but I could tell the moment I looked at him that he was kind. And he is kind. And so I just was like, oh, my goodness. And then, you know, we hang out and spend all this time together. I'm like, oh, yeah, she was right.

She was right. She was right. So. OK, I don't know if I'm allowed to bring this up, but last time you were on my show in Sandia in Atlanta, yeah, you may be dating someone else. Yeah. In Europe, right? So you were cool with long distance then apparently. Yeah. Well, when you get burned after a number of different dating relationships, you're like maybe just knowing someone locally would work better. But but thankfully, thankfully, I realized long distance can work.

Well, I mean, there's a lot of women who are in the shoes you were in. What do you say to them who they want to date, they want to marry, but they just feel like it's not going to happen? Yes. So, oh, man, I say I hear you. It feels like it will never end. But hang on and wait for Mr. Wright, like the joy and fulfillment I have in my relationship. My married relationship, is just so beautiful and so as it was meant to be in the beginning. And I just praise

and thank God now for all the broken hearts because I'm like, I was saved from something that wasn't meant to be and, and prepared for something which, which was meant to be. And I remember a young woman who I had met, who was also, when I was single, she had just gotten married, but had waited until she was in her early 40s and her husband was his early 50s. And I remember her saying,

Oh my goodness, I'm so glad I waited for the right guy. And she said, my marriage is so amazing. I would have waited 10 more years if I had to just to be with this man. And then once I met my husband, I remember texting her and being like, I found my McConaughey, which is her husband's name. I'm like, oh my goodness, like, it's so true. So yeah, for the woman still waiting, I was 40 when I married and my husband was 45.

And God is merciful because I've managed to get pregnant and we have lost some babies we've lost four but we have a two year old and we have this baby that six months in my womb so. What would he say though I wonder because we often talk to the women who are waiting around but clearly your husband wasn't just partying hoping not to to be married. Right, right. Yeah. What do you think he would say? Well, you know, so we've talked about that. So on one hand, like he was very fulfilled in his life. He had a great and meaningful job, great family. He would visit the family. And for him, it was more that it was kind of a later development where he started to think to himself in his early 40s, I probably should get married. Like this would be a good thing. And this realization that there's something that comes with having a defined vocation that brings us even more out of ourselves.

I mean, you can live a very selfless life and a loving and serving life outside of a big V vocation. But he came to that point of realizing, I think, living for another, whether that's in a religious life or through marriage, having children, you know, having to really my work, my income, my everything is for, you know, others and not just me and started to realize this, I think this is for my holiness. I think this is a good thing that I should pursue. And, but then it was just finding the right person. And he, um, like me was, was very selective and really wanted to have a deep sense that this was a good match. And then when we met, it really felt like that, even though we raised in two different countries, even like the type of parents that we had

and how they raised us, there was just a lot of parallels. Both our parents were super involved in the pro-life movement, in pregnancy centers, and local community pro-life groups. So we just, we had a lot of similarities that lined up nicely. Were you ever tempted to settle prior to meeting him? Well, you know, that's a good question.

I feel on one hand, I wasn't because I often was the heartbreaker. So I would end the relationships that I just felt weren't right. So I didn't settle there. But then there were times where my heart was broken. And in my mind, at the time, I wasn't settling. I really felt like those guys were right. But it's now in hindsight where I look back and I think Goodness, it was a blessing that I was heartbroken

Because I really don't think it was a good match Even if they were good men that and so that's the other thing to remember in invocation and relationships That's like people pursuing religious orders. You can have a call to religious life but a particular order just not being the right match for you and so I think I probably if I married other people would have been in a situation of settling without probably realizing it at the time. that you know the the pro-abortion side is often trying in their idea estimation to liberate women from the servitude of house and husband and children and here you are scrubbing a toilet for love of your husband and daughter yes and yet there wasn't this sense of bitterness that gosh I should have been on the front lines I should have been part of this yeah I mean, you were part of it in one sense

because you've been doing this for 20 something years. Right, yeah, and I really think that's grace, that's receptivity to the Holy Spirit, responding to where does God want me now? And I really think, again, in hindsight, if I think about all those times I wished I'd been married, that the Lord didn't want me married in those seasons so I could fully give of myself in a way that I not only can't now, I think, to be the wife and mother I want to be,

but I don't even desire to be. I want to be very present to them. Yes, obviously to my daughter as a mother, but even to my husband. Like before Violet was born, I remember thinking, I don't even leave Joe. And it wasn't this imposed thing on his part. It was, it was deep from within me, this desire to maintain this very daily routine life that for so long I didn't have, because you don't necessarily have routine when you're traveling hither, thither and yon. And so I look back with fondness of the experiences I've had and the insights it's given me and how I can still, you know, through writing and, and, and things like this, I can still share the insights I believe the Lord has given me, but be very grounded in what I think we're all made for, which is relationship, communion of persons, routine,

stability. So, you know, sometimes, you know, the days can seem quite simple and a little boring, but there's also something really beautiful about that and routine and, and just being like, I think of religious orders, they have a schedule to their day and there's a flow and there's balance, you know, there's work, there's prayer, there's play. And to establish that in a little domestic church is profoundly fulfilling. And then to say, and yet through our domestic church, like any church, we're meant to go forth, we're meant to shine so that others can see the light of Christ. And so this is where, you know, I'm grateful for my husband being raised as he was

in the movement, because he is very supportive of the degree of involvement that I do have and wants to see whatever the Lord has given me make its way out to the world. I know when my wife leaves for a weekend with the kids or something, there's initially a part of me that's like, yes, I mean, I love my wife, I love my kids, but it's like, this is nice, I'm going to have some free time here. Yes. And that joy lasts for about 12 hours. And I'm like, where are my boundaries and my structure and my, you know, I find myself a lot less productive, actually, you know, because of the freedom you have from routine. But once my wife, my kids go, my routine goes and all these plans that I have to do X, Y and Z don't end up happening usually. It's so true. kids go, my routine goes and all these plans that I have to do X, Y, and Z don't end up happening usually.

It's so true. It's like we actually need boundaries and bookends and things to keep us on the straight and narrow, even when it came to writing this book, because I was now a wife and mother. It's like I have to carve out small windows in which to write and I've got to be really efficient in that time. I would go to a coffee shop for like an hour and a half and Joe would watch Violet and I'm like type, type, type, type, type because it's like, I can't waste my time. I don't have time to waste, you know, so we become more efficient, more effective. I think we thrive as human beings in, in a controlled

setting. Um, I wonder how the pro abortion argument has developed over the last 50 whatever years. You know, like, I imagine the arguments that were being offered in the 50s and 60s and 70s were archaic compared to what's happening today. And maybe that's because they were then soundly refuted and then morphed, right? Right, right. We'll get to this, but I'm hearing a lot of people today talking about sure human being not person or something like that. And we'll get to that. I don't want to get to that right now. Yeah. But in the beginning, I heard, I don't know

that I heard people say things like clump of cells, not actually a human life, things like that. Right. And we have you done a study of the kind of most popular arguments for abortion over the years? I've not done a formal study. I think it is reasonable to say in the very beginning when we didn't have the type of ultrasound we have, the type of just general technology that gives us a window to the womb and understanding prenatal development,

that it was more easy for the movement back then to say it's not a baby yet, at least early in pregnancy. And as the decades have gone on and technology has advanced, you know, we're seeing that heartbeat a few weeks, you know, at three weeks, it starts beating, but you see that very early in the pregnancy. I've seen that very early with my own pregnancy. Embarrassed to say, I didn't realize it was that early that the heart started beating three weeks. Right. And so, you know,

and so when people talk about these heartbeat bills, it's often that the line is six weeks because that's when our medical devices will detect the beating heart. But if you use, you know, less, you know, popular technologies, just because they're more expensive, that actually can look into the womb, you know, video cameras, embryoscopy and so forth, Uh, you can see the heart is actually beating it at three weeks. And so we now don't hear as much from the abortion supporters of it's just a clump of cells. It's not a baby yet. You know, you're right. Generally there's this movement towards

distinguishing a human from a person, uh, or this gen and related to that is the general attitude of my body, my choice, which is why I wanted to write a message that's very Eucharistic at its heart, which is no, the response to that is my body for you, that we are made for love, not for self interest. And love necessitates the presence of another because there has to be another to whom we're directing that willing of their good. And then we receive love back from them. So, so yeah, this, this movement towards it's, it's just my body to, well, it might be another body, but it's not the same as my body because it's not a

person, you know? And then, uh, so there's been some evolution, but the overall, it's still the attitude of, evolution, but the overall it's still the attitude of I am a full individual and I'm fully developed and they aren't yet. Yeah. And that's... No, I suppose if you have the kind of atheistic mentality where, I mean, we saw this on that debate between Trent and Lila and the porn performer. On the Whatever ES Podcast, yes.

And that unfortunate performer. Whatever. Yes. Podcast. Yes. Unfortunate fellow. Yeah. It's like they got them to concede all sorts of horrible things. Bestiality, animated child rape porn, why it might be good for a 12 year old to be watching. Right. And it's like, okay, like we are clearly, we clearly disagree on what sex is and what the human person is and is for. Right. And what we're made for. Yeah. And so it sounds like that's really what you got to get to, because if you don't begin from that premise, like what I am and what I am for, then it doesn't really matter

that you can now show that it's a person, that it has 46 chromosomes or what have you. Right. And that's why with this book, that's what I wanted to get to the heart of is to ask the question is one of my chapters does. What are our bodies for? Like when people say my body, my choice, what are our bodies for? Like, have you ever stopped that person and asked them, why do you care so much about your body. Can I be the woman? I think, or the man, I think I would say, my body is for whatever I want it to be for. That's what it's for. I'm not going to let you or the church or anybody else tell me what I'm to do or how to live. So then I would ask such an individual to imagine two people, one who says my body's for whatever I want. So therefore I can use my fists and my arms to swing them around and hit whoever I walk past because it makes me feel powerful and empowered. And I like to do that. So I disagree with that as the I would say no, like I could I can do whatever I want so long as it's not interfering with your autonomy. Okay. So then if they were to say that, then I would say,

so if what one chooses to do with their own body is impacting another body, then are we on the same page that that would be wrong? Then I suppose I would say I might have two escape routes at this point. One might be yes, if it's not somehow leachinging off of my body or two if the body is in fact. At the level of dignity that you and I possess. So then each of those we would need to unpack and then it becomes the pro lifers discernment of do I unpack you know that, that second one or the first, but, but in terms of leaching off, I would say, okay, well, what do you mean by that? And then they

might give the concrete example of, well, the baby, and they probably wouldn't even call it a baby, but the baby in the womb is a parasite because it's, it exists off of me. It isn't something that could exist independent from me. So then we can make the analogy to a born child. And although a born child could, you know, if I delivered my child and left the room and you were here and then you took the baby, you could get formula and you could feed and care for the baby. So multiple people after birth can take care of the child. But the question is, could the child survive without anyone caring for them? Right now? In the womb?

No, the one if I just delivered. So if you, it couldn't, right? So if you walked away and passed the baby to Thursday and then Thursday passed the baby to someone, there's a chain of people that could ultimately care for the child. But the question is, if no one cared for the child that's newborn, would the child live? No. And the answer is no. So then we make the point to use their terminology, which I wouldn't agree with,

but to say, even then, in a sense, a born child is leeching off of others in so far as that they are dependent on others to meet needs for them, that they cannot meet for them, meet for themselves, that if not met will literally result in their demise, will result in their death. And would we consider that wrong? And if so, why? And in that then gets to the sense that we're meant to care for others in general, but specifically for the weak and vulnerable who are incapable of caring for themselves. And that shouldn't be seen as a burden, but as a blessing, um, to be able to serve another. And that's kind of the realization. I mean, I've always known this in my mind and, and made this point in debates, but it was becoming a mother that all of this theory became very

real to me. You know, pregnancy is beautiful, but it has its challenges, its discomforts, its inconveniences. Every night I don't sleep well anymore. You know, as my belly gets bigger and bigger, I'm like, can't even lay on my back. I can't lay on my stomach. Okay, I can. I have two sides to pick from. But it's like, every time I turn from one side to the other, I really am like a geriatric pregnancy. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this hurts so much. So there is this realization that my life is not my own. And that's not a bad thing. That's actually a beautiful thing because I'm growing in virtue. I'm, I'm stepping outside of myself. And then it was when I gave birth that in a sense, I almost experienced that even more when my child was no longer dependent on my body the way a baby in the womb is and Violet was still

dependent on me you know for my breast milk and for my arms and for my you know everything I do to clothe her and change her but in a different way and as many women struggle I actually was just talking to your lovely wife this morning about this but my struggles with breastfeeding were huge. Like I almost gave up and praise God I didn't. But it was very, very challenging. Violet didn't latch for three weeks. And one of the stories I share in the book is how after, you know, we'd had many weeks

and months of difficulty with breastfeeding, everything was finally good. And we, she was six months old and we were in mass one day and I was holding her, no, Joe was holding her and she started fussing. And so I was a feed on demand mom. And so I was like, okay, I'll give her the poop. So Joe passed her to me. I sat down and as I'm looking at her, you know, she's latching. It was the exact moment of the mass of the consecration. And so I'm looking at violet, but my ears are hearing father say, take and eat. This is my body given for you. And I have heard those words my whole life,

but suddenly in that moment, those words took on a whole new meaning. It was like, Oh my goodness, she is literally consuming my flesh. My body is a gift to her. I am becoming present to another person and where the world says, Oh, they're parasites. That's disgusting. I'm in this moment of bliss realizing what an opportunity this is for me to really live up to what I meant to be, which is mother, whether that's physical in my case, it is or spiritual.

I think of, for example, the sisters of life I mentioned earlier that your wife and I consider joining this idea that we are meant for maternity and we are meant for paternity. And so I've seen as we were talking about the relationship with my husband, like my husband was and is an incredibly virtuous man. But even before I met him, like a man of profound virtue, like his personal holiness is, it was truly extraordinary. But now that he's become a father and a husband, a husband and father, his holiness is because he is living out paternity. He was a spiritual father, you could say in a sense to his nieces and nephews, and he

was really good at it. But there's nothing like, as you know, solely caring for one's offspring and the demands that those children have at all hours of the night and the exhaustion that comes with it. But then you realize when I'm responsive to the needs of another, when I'm literally using my body in every way to help another person, not just survive, but thrive, right? We don't just want to change our children and feed our children. We want to love our children. We want to see them come to life to be, to become whole and, and, and holy. Um, when we are

the ones helping them do that, then it also helps us grow in virtue. So, yeah. So all that to say, like, I always knew this and I always taught this, but the experience of living it out radically and the, the suffering that motherhood has brought into my life. And at the same time, the profound joys that it has brought into my life has taught me that the, my body, my choice mantra is, is sad and it's ugly. And we are attracted to the good, the true and the beautiful. And my body for you, which is perfectly lived out through Christ, that is beautiful. And my body for you, which is perfectly lived out through Christ, that is beautiful. And that's what we want to show the abortion supporter who would say, yeah, it's I can

do whatever I want. It's like, are you really fulfilled? Are you really thriving? And I think if you get these people one on one, where there isn't a crowd, there isn't, you know, the whatever podcast audience. And if you could just meet with these individuals on a one-on-one level, they would see the emptiness of their philosophy and that there's something attractive about the pro-life philosophy, even if they can't yet put their finger on it. There's something beautiful that speaks to a truth written on our hearts. Yeah, I'm going to tell you guys about my new favorite app. It's called Ascension and it's by to a truth written on our hearts. sent you, it is absolutely fantastic. It has the entire Bible there, very well laid out. The whole Bible is read to you by Father Mike Schmitz, or just sections of the Bible. It

has the catechism there. It's cross-referenced absolutely beautifully. It's really actually quite difficult to explain to you how good this is. Just download it and check it out for yourself. It even has over 1,600 frequently asked questions about Scripture. So if you go to Genesis 1, you might have a question about evolution. Well there's a drop down right there you can read an article that'll help you understand it. I went through it with the guys at Ascension the other day and my mouth my jaw was just it was dropped it was absolutely amazing. It's had tens of thousands of five star reviews. Again go to ascensionpress.com slash frad. It also has all of their amazing Bible studies.

So I remember back in the day, I had a big DVD case of Jeff Cavins Bible studies. Well, it's all there on the app. So go download it right now. Please go to ascensionpress.com slash frad. Yeah, in some ways, what you're trying to do here is much more personal and therefore, in a sense, much harder than merely pointing to the objective reality of the personal and therefore in a sense much harder than merely

pointing to the objective reality of the fact that this is a child because if selfishness persists or if I've bought the sort of feminist lie which seems to be, you know, women are vulnerable, we need to eradicate that vulnerability so that they can be men, so that they can compete. I understand from that kind of reasoning that it seems just incredibly unfair. You know, you've been told you can be like men, and yet you're the one holding the bag

when the unwed pregnancy or the pre-wed pregnancy takes place. And you're like, this is so unfair. And so if I am going to be able to live in a man's world, or if this isn't going to be a man's world, but my world too, and if I can advance in my career and pursue my interests, then this is really necessary. Like abortion is necessary.

Right. If you want to be like men, because men can walk away. Should they walk away? No. Ought they walk away? No. But they can at a technical level, because there isn't that biological attachment. And often do.

And often do. And so then the... Yeah, I get the rage. I mean, I mean, maybe I don't, but how could I? But I am sympathetic to the rage that a woman feels when a man takes his pleasure, but not his responsibility. And now she's left with the responsibility. And now she has to do either a horrific thing, pay somebody to kill it or bear it and raise

it on its own. And then look at all of her life and plans and dreams and how they've now had to change radically. Radically. And it's not easy. And that's the other thing my own experience of motherhood has taught me. I have been so grateful for a supportive husband and supportive community around me that has really stood by me in my mothering. And I have often thought now more than I have before of the single mothers thinking,

how do they do it? Like, oh, my gosh, the times where I was so sleep deprived that I needed my husband to respond to Violet's cries because I just could not do it. And so I think how do these other people do it? And so that's one of the points I wanted to make in the book is that even if someone doesn't have a supportive spouse, that we can nonetheless build community around us so that we aren't languishing, that we really are thriving. And that's why, you know, the pro-life movement is often unfairly characterized as only caring about babies in the womb and not caring about children after. And that's false. I not only know individual pro-lifers who have opened their home to women and children

in crisis, but I know of manyprofit organizations that are not government funded, the way Planned Parenthood, for example, would be. And they journey with a woman, not only through her pregnancy, but after. And again, the Sisters of Life, they open up one of their convents to women who are pregnant, as well as they can stay for a period of time, I think it's up to several years after the baby's born. And it's during that time that the sisters work with a woman to teach her to fish, not just give her a fish. It's like, OK, how do I help you in your mothering? How do I help you with your education?

How do I help you with your career pursuits so that when you leave, you're not just surviving, you're actually thriving. And in a sense, you're doing better because you're a mother, but you're able to support your child and so forth. There's another great group Mary's shelter there in the Virginia area and again they journey with a woman through the pregnancy and beyond and these things exist and then the other reality is there are people who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy who don't have a supportive you know husband or or boyfriend or even a whatever guy it was they had a one-night stand with

But they actually do if they look closely enough already have the supports around them and I think of a friend of mine from a devout Catholic family who got pregnant and Her three other sisters, you know, rallied around her, as did her parents, but the sisters were offering to adopt the child in the end, she decided to parent, but she's been able to parent because of the support of the sisters, because of the support of the parents, because of the support of the broader family and friends. So is the father of the child involved? Not at all, but she already in reality had the supports around her. It was just that she needed the willingness, which she ultimately tapped into to ask for that help and receive that help.

So whether we need to create the community or use the community that's already there, it's there. Is it a heroic thing for a single mother to choose to go through the pregnancy or should we not be calling people heroes who don't kill their children? That's a great question. I think it can feel heroic because it's so hard and there are heroic elements because we are made for a communion of persons. So the single woman lacks the communion of persons through the partnership of a spouse and the father of her child that, that we're made for. And that God designed children to come ideally into a relationship of. So she's having to do things and create community or tap into a broader

community that is not the ideal of having that partner right by your side. And so that feels like above and beyond the norm. Yet at the same time, as you say, you know, do we call someone a hero for just not killing their child? No, in that sense, we have a basic duty not to commit homicide to our children. And then beyond that, we have a basic duty to meet the needs of our children. And one of those needs is love, not just, you know, the physical sustenance. And so maintaining a pregnancy and caring for your born child, whether that's through you doing it or enlisting the help of others is basic responsibility. It's basic care in that sense. It's not heroic to be a mom. It's not heroic to be a dad. It's actually our call

It's how God designed us One of the quotes I have in my book is of Pope Francis who said everyone is called to be mother and father All of us and so, you know when when we are moving towards adulthood What we should be realizing is we're moving towards parenthood. We're moving towards fatherhood. We're moving towards motherhood and that may be spiritual or it may be biological, but either way we are called to give of ourselves for the flourishing of others. Yeah. I want to think about that more because you know, structures of sin that JP to talks about the world in which we are born.

You know, you have these deceitful ideas that you might say come from the demonic and then those deceitful ideas are well what? They appeal to our full and flesh. But then they're also sort of galvanized and proclaimed as goods by a fallen world. So I can't help but think of the poor woman who grew up in a family and she was watching Friends every night, that show that you and I would have watched growing up. You know, I remember it. I was never a friends person. Good for you. I just didn't like it. I wish I didn't.

I mean, it has totally our era. We're early 40s. It has legitimately funny, funny things. Well, all you think of like Seventeen magazine that's was mailed to my wife as a child. I remember actually, I go to the library. I remember reading People magazine and Seventeen at the library. Yeah. So in a way, you're kind of being indoctrinated into this feminist, or if you don't want to use that word, like atheist kind of view of how men and women interact and what sex is and is for and what your life is and is for.

And now you live in a society where abortion, depending on where you live, is something that's somewhat simple to attain, I would assume. Doesn't mean it's not heartbreaking or traumatic. Right. But it means- Generally. And I mean, of course, that's the post-ro debate of what states is it accessible in. But the reality is there's whole networks of abortion rights activists working to help women get abortion.

So you've got that, right? You've got this easy access to abortion, relatively speaking. And then you've got a whole culture that will tell you you are a hero for doing it. So in that context, I can see how it feels heroic to not go with that. Do you think we do? We not do a good enough job at sympathizing with women? Well, again, that's a very broad question. Does the movement, you know, and I think, I think actually the answer for the movement, broadly speaking, is it does do a very good job of sympathizing with women.

Once you start looking at an individual activist or pro-life supporter, that's going to vary from person to person because the presence of vice is no different outside the movement than it is in the movement insofar as we all have our sins and we all have our feelings. It gets manifested differently from one person to the next. One person's inclination to sin may be of a sexual nature and other person's inclination to sin may be of pride. But we all have our inclinations. And so there may be some in the movement that don't behave in a way to really believe in sympathy or show sympathy for women who are suffering and who have been abandoned. But I would say if you look structurally at the movement and how much has been developed to really journey with women,

there really is a good job that has been done. It's a matter in many cases of convincing women who have it so easy on one hand, as you say, the attractions of the world is just, you know, easy to get the abortion. It seems like it's going to solve the problem, get you out of your difficult situation and, and pursuing the help that is available is making the longterm commitment to raise that child or at the very least to go through with the pregnancy. And then when you place the child for adoption, that is not an easy thing to do. You know, I have friends that were on the cusp of adopting a baby and the birth mom changed her mind and decided to keep the child.

So she just in the end was like, I can't, I can't do this because it is very hard when you have come to the point of a deep bond that is more likely to happen over time as pregnancy progresses and you go through labor and you have the natural hormone release versus early in pregnancy when you don't feel a baby kick, you know, you just you don't bond the same way. It doesn't mean it's the baby's not human or that you're not any less of a mom. It's just you don't feel emotionally the same things you do early as you would over time. That's normal. But it doesn't mean we disregard the baby earlier. Yeah, and then I guess it comes down to the fact that like love is as hard as iron sometimes, you know, it's not sentimentality and it's not false compassion to tell somebody to follow their inclinations sounds like compassion at the beginning, but if it ends in literally death, it ends in homicide then it's, it's not only not going to be good or loving for the very obvious victim,

the victim of homicide, but it's ultimately not going to be good or loving for the person who's complicit because we weren't made to kill. We were made to love. We were made for relationship. We were made to image the Trinity and the Trinity is a communion of persons that are continually giving and receiving love. And so when we violate that nature, it may happen so often that it seems like it's normal because so many people around us have done that and have taught us that's okay. But deep down, I really believe people know. I mean, even, and I've seen that with the abortionists that I've debated. I don't know if I ever told you this, but one of the abortionists I debated, I have this practice of asking my opponents if they'll do coffee before the debate.

And I say my one rule is that we don't discuss abortion because that's what the debate is for. So coffee is just to get to know each other as people. And what I'm really trying to do is build a spirit of civility, but also evangelize just by being someone who can sit in their presence and be interested in who they are outside of the abortion issue and yet hate what they do and be on stage, as you say, and tear apart their arguments. Um, but they remember, oh, she was really pleasant to have coffee with. And so in the context of these coffees, I once asked one of the abortionists,

I debated, I'm curious what made you want to become a physician because typically you don't, these doctors didn't go into become abortionists. They became in the, they went into become just general practitioners or obstetrician gynecologists and abortion became part of the many other things that they did. And this one abortionist got glassy eyed got glassy eyed and he looked at me and he said, I saw a birth and it was so beautiful and I knew I wanted to help that. And I bet you attempted to be like, do you see the problem? I know right and it's like I told him we're not discussing abortion so I'm just going to absorb bad answer. But it goes to show that even in the heart of a man who had spent decades using his hands to dismember the bodies of babies who could not defend themselves, there was something good, true and beautiful within him that he knew birth was beautiful, even though he participated

in its opposite with abortion. And he saw the beauty in that. On another occasion, a different abortionist debated. We were having coffee. We've had several. And he brought this up. We often would talk about our families. And he said at one point, I have a story you're going to like. Like he was like, I'm excited to tell you this. I'm like, okay, what is it? And he said, I think it was his oldest son, but he said, my oldest son, when he went off to college, he and his girlfriend got pregnant. It was Christ's praise. It wasn't wanted. They didn't want to be pregnant. I said, well, what happened? And he said, well, my wife and I welcomed them to our home. And that's my oldest grandchild now. And I did say, well, aren't you glad they didn't have

an abortion? That was the only kind of abortion reference in the coffee. But again, it showed, not only was he grateful for his grandchild, but he wanted to share that gratitude and he wanted to be affirmed for the goodness of that story. I have a story you're going to like, you know? So I think even the person who makes their livelihood in defending and doing abortion, who is so much immersed and surrounded by ugliness, they still know in their heart what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful. And for them, I think it's very much that when sin overtakes us in such a habitual way,

it is very hard to get out of that cycle because of getting out what getting out means in terms of admitting the gravity of what we've done, which can be so overwhelming that it seems easier and safer to just keep doing what you're doing to validate it as opposed to break break free. I want to pick up on that in a second, but I just typed into Google. What is abortion? You tell me if this is right abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or Expulsion of an embryo or fetus I can't help but think that if we live during Nazi Germany and type

What is a Jew we would get this sort of these pseudonyms these right? type what is a Jew we would get this sort of these pseudonyms these right an abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage an abortion that occurs with that end wow right so a miscarriage according to Google is also a kind of abortion well yes and if you look at the medical a quote spontaneous abortion so really we're just using medicine to do something that otherwise might happen naturally. So tell me what's wrong with this. Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. What's wrong with that so far? So I would say actually that's accurate,

but it's so clinical in its description. It doesn't sound like an immoral act. You're like change that and make it about murder. like an immoral act. You like change that and make it about murder. Right. Murder is the termination of a what growing organism. Right of a human a human person. And so if well what I would say for when someone talks about terminating they are admitting it's bringing the end to something which isn't yet over. Right. So what has begun? So that's what we'd have to ask. And they say, well, pregnancy has begun. Well, what is a pregnancy? What makes a pregnant woman different from a non-pregnant woman? Well, with a pregnant, with a non-pregnant woman, it's literally just her body. You know, people say my body, my choice. When you're not pregnant,

there is no other body but that of that particular female. But once you get the positive pregnancy test, even before the test tells you you're positive, but once you have sperm egg fusion within your body, there is no longer just one body. There is a second body. That body has begun that life, that individual's life has begun. So there are different ways to terminate or end

that which has already begun. Technically you could say birth is an abortion because it's the end, the termination of the pregnancy. But again, that's a natural end, right? Miscarriage is also the termination or the end of a pregnancy, but that's not self-inflicted. It happened against- I never thought of that. Birth is the termination of a pregnancy. It's totally the termination of a pregnancy. So that's where it's so frustrating. That's why I do enjoy debate because when I'm in a debate context where an abortion supporter would use a definition like that, I can break it down and say,

okay, well, let's look at what each of these things mean. And when they say, you know, the termination of an embryo or fetus, well, what is an embryo or fetus? You know, fetus is a Latin term for young one. So it's basically another language to describe one's offspring and to describe offspring within a certain age range. You know, you're considering embryo from fertilization to eight weeks. And then at the start of nine weeks, I believe it is, then you're called a fetus. And then at birth, you're called an infant.

My daughter, who's two is no longer an infant. She's classified as a toddler. So we have these labels to refer to age ranges. And so what that kind of clinical definition is simply telling us is that abortion is intentionally ending the life of a human in a certain age range, that of the embryonic age range or the fetal age range. So then the question is, do we have a right to end the life of someone who is younger than us? And if atheism is true, I would say yes, sure. Yeah, if we make up our own moral code. Yeah, I mean, if everything is just, there isn't

a higher power dictating how things ought to be But instead it's based on an individual whether in my own personal life or I become the leader of a government and convince enough people Yeah to think the worldview I'm proclaiming is the right one, right? because it was seemed that like an atheistic worldview we want to live as well as we can and What sort of agreement should we have with each other so that that can come about? We're not irrational. We can reason our way to this. We understand that certain people have certain desires and that maybe there are exceptions made for certain things. But overall, it's probably not good that we murder each other and rape each other and steal from each other.

So we should probably come up with some rules like that. But it seems to me kind of arbitrary. Oh, totally. Because then you get the people, you know, like Peter Singer, who I've debated, who would draw the line after birth. And then you get people who would draw the line before birth, but late before birth and those who would draw early before birth. And so even though there's the general rule of we ought to be kind to others and we ought not cheat and we ought not steal and we ought not kill people find ways to do the mental gymnastics. Well, it feels like to the further we adrift from reality, you sever yourself off from

God and the reality of now what we are. Is it gaudium it spares? Maybe not. Second, I can counsel either way. When the God has forgotten the the creature itself grows unintelligible. So it seems like you sever yourself off from reality and then you just start reasoning within this false framework. Then all of a sudden, like we mentioned earlier, bestiality, all sorts of repulsive ideas that were previously indefensible, given who we were and what we were for are now reasonable. When did you debate Peter Singer? Because he's an Aussie, sorry.

So, you know, your Aussie accent really wins points with the crowd because it's just so soothing and pleasant to listen to. And so I feel like there were people that just enjoyed hearing him. Does he live there still? He goes back and forth. So he part time lives in Australia, but then, when he teaches a semester at Princeton, he's back in the States. So, but when I debate him, it was within a week of my debate on your show against Dr. Potts. And so I was pregnant with our first child, Lele, for both of those debates. And we miscarried Lele within days of the second debate. I can't remember which order the debates happened in. And I think the purpose of her life was to be a witness to both of those men. As you pointed out,

Dr. Potts congratulated me when I incorporated her presence in the debate and Dr. Singer did our Peter Singer. I don't know if he's officially named, I think he's a doctor. Anyways, he did the same thing and like, Oh, congratulations. Like that's, that's exciting. Um, so, you know, men don't congratulate a woman because she has eggs in her body, you know, like you don't just walk up to a random one. Congratulations. You know, you're a female. Uh, so what is it about pregnancy that draws out of someone? These were this message of congratulation. It's the realization that there's someone else there, you know, that you're a mother. It could be the realization that something is in the process of evolving.

It's not there yet, but if it weren't there yet, it would never result. Yeah. I mean, I guess that would be Singer's kind of view. Yeah. They certainly, if you probed them deeper, well, why'd you congratulate me? If it's not really, you know, a person yet, you know, they would at least acknowledge something has developed that wasn't there before. Although then they would argue it still needs further development. Um, but in both those debates, I feel like Lele's mission on

this earth for her few weeks of life, about six weeks of life, uh, was to be a witness in those debates into those men. Singer only has a master's degree. Yeah, that's right. I didn't think he was a doctor. Yeah, yeah, it's so funny because he's, you know, I just saw a debate on Australian television recently between him and Cardinal Pell. Oh, really? Who we have here now wasn't a debate.

It was more of an audience asking questions. So fascinating on any a number of topics or did they pick one in particular? Well, they were debating a recent insect. Look at him. Here's what he looks like back then. Sorry, everybody at home. Oh, the debate that you saw. That was an old debate. Yeah. He was doing the mustache thing.

What a boss monster. Yeah. I'll maybe I'll slack these. What's that? Well, you found it. Well done. Wow. Yeah, I'll maybe I'll slack these. What's that? You found it. Well done. All right. So there's Pell. What a champ.

And there's a heretical Jesuit or a dissenting Jesuit. Yeah. But wait, and we're like scroll through and show them or I guess don't play it, but scroll through because I just look at Pell. Look at that jaw. He was the original Australian Chad. I guess don't play it, but scroll through because I just look at Pell. Look at that jaw. He was the original Australian Chad. You won't be able to find Singer, of course, because he's he only asked

a question at some point, but also he was in the audience. Oh, I see. Oh, I thought he was clearly chosen to be part of this limited audience. Yeah. OK. So what was it like debating him? Singer? How do I put into words? It was quite challenging. It was challenging. Challenging because I recognize these, these elements about him that would be attractive to the audience beyond his accent. So he's known for example, for

developing and proclaiming this, um, thought experiment, uh, the drowning child experiment where he came up with. So he said decades ago in one of his writings, you know, imagine you see a pond and you see a child drowning in the pond and no one else is around. Um, and you know, if you weighed into the pond that you could save the child's life, but you have really expensive shoes on that you've recently purchased at a high cost and waiting into the pond will ruin your shoes. Should, should you wait into the pond?

He hasn't even singers as obviously yes. And, and so he uses that in a number of contexts to talk about how we should help others. And then he's known for, he calls it effective altruism. There are people that have donated kidneys to strangers because of the teachings of Peter Singer. He himself donates a large percentage of his income beyond a 10%, what we religious people would call a tithe, to various charities and people in need and encourages others to do that. So there are good qualities to him and

those qualities are known and some of which would come out in the debate. And so I knew that someone in the audience who hears that was, well that's, he's a good guy. And this is where again, we can define people as good or bad based on the virtue or the vice. And instead we need to say, okay, those are good ideas and perspectives and those are worth emulating, but it doesn't follow therefore everything else this man believes is good or worth emulating.

That effective altruism was the philosophy claimed by Sam Bankman Fried who just went to jail for the FTX scandal. Oh wow. Was that like a came out on Google or he just told us that he. You could probably tell us those at this point. He was CEO of FTX. Yeah. This effective altruism.

Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was hard because I knew there were admirable qualities about him that could then be, could result in people being misled by his other views. And that he's an academic with, you know, a good academic reputation, you know, teaching at Princeton, being in bioethics. And it was hard also because, and that's again, why I wanted to write this book that was overtly religious and centered on Christ and Eucharistic. Because I really felt at the end of the day as the debate progressed I felt a deep sadness for him

In his what I understand to be his atheism, although he's ethnically Jewish and lost relatives to the Holocaust I don't My understanding is he's not what one would consider a religious Jew or at least an Orthodox Jew living out that faith in um, in, in, in that way. And so it's very sad to see someone who does not believe in God. And as you've pointed out, this is then the natural consequence of cutting ourselves off from the source of life and reason, right? And then we develop all these things, some of which can sound good because again, we're ultimately created from goodness? And then we develop all these things, some of which can sound good, because again, we're

ultimately created from goodness, but then it gets all warped and messed up. It just occurred to me that some people, many people don't even know who we're talking about or why it's worth talking about. Could we give his maybe basic idea that shocks people? Right, right. So he is a professor of bioethics, a philosophy and is kind of known in the realm of bioethics, who argues that not only abortion is justified because the preborn child wouldn't be considered a person. So as we were talking earlier, this distinction of a human and a

person, and he would admit that the embryo of a human parent is a biological, you know, um, human being, you know, of the species homo sapiens, uh, he talks a lot about personhood and that a person is someone who's rational, conscious, or self aware has desires and interests. And so he would argue that the preborn child has not achieved the level of consciousness or rational thought or desires or interests that he believes is necessary to be considered worthy of protection. But then he would therefore extend that beyond the point of birth in some cases. And he brought this up in the debate saying he has supported some couples when they've

had born children that are very disabled to have what he would classify as euthanasia because it's not abortion, the baby's already out, but basically arguing, well, they're not really persons. So you can essentially terminate the life if we go back to the use of that term. I mean, he's known for being an animal rights activist, arguing that some species of animals again show, he looks at the brain current function and say, well, they have seemed to show signs of consciousness or whatever. So we should not kill those animals because that would be cruel. And so people are generally shocked that some humans could be killed because they're not considered persons and some animals ought to be saved in his worldview because they should be considered persons, just non-human persons.

And so that's kind of all the, you know. It kind of makes sense from a sort of materialist point of view. If we're going to reduce personhood, brain structure and level of consciousness. And how you currently function, because there are some animals that currently function more impressively than the baby in my womb right now, or even my toddler. But inherently, by virtue of being of the species homo sapiens, my toddler and my preborn child have capacities intellectually that far surpass that of other species. It's just due to their age. They can't yet manifest or act on those inherent capacities. And so the question

becomes, do we protect or value an entity because of how it currently functions or because of its nature, what it is? And by virtue of your human nature, then you have these amazing capacities to be reflective of God's image, to be rational, to be loving, to be have an intellect, to be creative. These are how we image God. And these are all built within our nature. But we can't, you know, one of the points I make in the book is, is, is I ask, you know, when I want to get to that question of what are our bodies for, when people like singer or other philosophers would say, you need to be rational, conscious or self-aware. Like what is our consciousness for? What is our rational nature for? It's for love. That what good is it

to be rational and conscious, but be immoral, amoral, to be a psychopath. You could be really smart and really intellectual, but morally bankrupt. So in a sense, there's something about Singer that I would agree with, which is that we can go beyond the physical, not just the presence of the body. There are other things that matter, but it's these inherent capacity, this inherent capacity to ultimately love that my rational nature, my intellect, my ability to create all of this should be ordered to the good, the true and the beautiful to be loving to others and loved by others. And in that sense, even a newborn child can't love the way we can love just due to their

immaturity in their development. But by nature, they are wired to love. They can't yet act on it, but it doesn't mean that we who can love can kill those who can't yet act on that loving nature. In fact, the only way generally those who don't yet know how to act on love are going to learn love is by being loved. And so it is the responsibility of those of us who are older and have reached development to manifest love on the, on the weakest among us so that they grow up to become loving. So we, we can't put expectations on people that, that have yet to be able to fulfill those expectations. We don't expect a five year old to keep order in the kindergarten classroom.

We expect the teacher to do that. Um, we don't expect a two year old to pay the bill at a restaurant. We expect their parents to. So there are expectations we have based on development, but we still acknowledge the five-year-old in the classroom and the two-year-old in the restaurant is still a valuable human person. We just say they can't necessarily act on the human nature built within them because of their lower level of development. But what about those capacities that will not be actualized because of some serious mental retardation or brain damage where we know for a fact that this

person will never actualize these potentials? So I would say the potential is still there. And so we still value them because they have, well Well because we could say the lack, the alternative, which is not potential and not a potential person, but the potential to act on love, rational nature, consciousness, so on and so forth. The alternative of saying it's how you currently function then creates a class system of humans where instead of all of us being equal by virtue of who we are, that our value is tied to what we do, which is truly going to vary from one individual to the next. And it doesn't seem right. That doesn't seem like we should do that.

Yeah. I mean, if you, if you come from the perspective that we should care for others, especially the vulnerable. Right. It's an even the person who generally would support abortion or infanticide release, there still is that sense that there's something beautiful about what Mother Teresa did and something ugly about what Hitler did. You know, we, we just in intuitively see there's a difference there. Yeah, that sense. Good luck. Yeah. So, um, you need a PhD to believe it maybe.

Well, and this is, you know, this is the other thing. Did you ever watch the movie Silence? Oh, I see. The one with, was it Robert De Niro who did that about the Jesuits? Was it Silence? No, no, no. No, it wasn't Silence. Robert De Niro.

Was it Robert De Niro? Well, that was the old no, it wasn't silence. What? Robert De Niro. Was it Robert De Niro? Well, that was the old movie called The Mission. No. Well, there's this one, Silence. Is that what you mean? Yeah, Morton's Crisez.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you watch that? No, I watched some of it and stopped. I think I was on an airplane. I didn't. Oh, okay. Why did you stop?

I get the premise and I understand, I think, how it ended. Well, what struck me about that movie, so that, you know, a couple of Jesuits go into, it was Japan to try to Christianize the people. And several of them became, what's the word when you deny Christ? Apostates. Right. We're guilty of that. And what struck me as I watched the film, at least as it was portrayed, is how the less

educated simple villager readily embraced the message of Christ and were willing to die in brutal ways rather than deny Christ, die versus deny. And it was the highly educated couple of the, the, the Jesuits and doesn't have to be Jessica, anyone who's highly educated, but in this case, that was this order that had gone in there and several of the very highly educated people that ultimately caved when it came to intellectual loophole or could, could bend things in such a way. Yeah. And so it's, and again, it's not that we shouldn't be intellectual.

God is a God of the intellect and the mind and he's rational. And so, but we, we can't lose sight of the simplicity of faith that were made for relationship. To get to your example earlier about the psychopath. I mean, I presume that even the psychopath has ways of justifying his killings or psychopathy. Right? Right. I mean, generally when someone does evil, they still find a way to think it's doing some sort of good.

Even if their rationalization is shocking to most. Yeah. Ross Kolnikov from the Crime and Punishment and these sorts of characters, yeah, who justify it to most. Yeah. Roscoe Nicole from the crime and punishment and these sorts of characters. Yeah. Who justify it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have some questions from our local support. OK. But first of all, I want to say like, well done. Thank you for doing it. And I want to get back to what I said earlier, though, too,

because it does sound like this is almost like a more difficult thing, but maybe the only thing that can really, really help, because it seems to me that if you've bought into a sort of atheist, I'm going to keep using the word atheist. I understand that there are atheists against abortion, but it just seems to me if that all we are, uh, the result of time plus matter plus chance that has been coughed into existence by a blind cosmic process that didn't have us in mind, right? You know, that's, that's kind of that worldview lends itself to abortion. It's kind of it can make sense of either abortion or not abortion, it seems to me.

Right. So merely laying out the scientific facts seems to be actually a lot easier to do. Like this is why you're insane. This is why you're wrong. This is why it is a human. This seems more difficult, but it seems more productive in the long run, maybe. That's what I really felt in the progression of my own heart and mind in the movement. And it's not that there isn't a place for just sticking to the logic, scientific, philosophical

arguments. But as I've debated more abortionists and more people like Peter Singer, just thinking at the end of the day, our goal is heaven. And we want to help everyone get there. And that means the cross. It means the story of Jesus. And one of the stories I share in there is of a remarkable experience I had. And it goes to show how God works over time,

literally years and decades. But when I had been an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia, in from 98 to 02, I participated in a pro-life display called the Genocide Awareness Project, which compares abortion to the Holocaust and other human rights violations, making the point that if it was wrong to deny humans personhood status historically, then it's wrong to deny humans personhood status presently.

I mean, much more could be said, but that was the main gist of the message. And so a lot of the Jewish groups, uh, or Jewish individuals were offended that we were comparing abortion to the Holocaust. And so there were a lot of efforts to shut down my club and our rights to express ourselves. And there was a tax on free speech and even attacks on our display from like atheist Jews or from, yeah, I mean, general and more than more than just Jewish groups, but certainly the main Jewish group on campus was not a fan of this project. The people that actually wonder if they weren't, if it, cause I can see that sorry to cut your hair.

I can see how comparing abortion to the Holocaust could be insensitive in that not that the evil is identical. One innocent person is killed, one innocent person is killed, but that you obviously have human beings undergoing a special type of emotional torture. You know, like if you know, you're going to be gassed or killed. Right. And certainly, and then you, and then these people have children and siblings and so it's not identical, is it? Correct. And one of the points we would make when we faced criticism was not that we're claiming

it's identical because, yes, someone who is aware of being killed at the time of their killing is going to experience a type of suffering and anguish that a preborn child who's not yet aware will not experience. Even though... Who have those who depend on them. Right. Who will then experience the be aware of the loss in a way that, you know, the pre-born child is not going to be aware of losing siblings and parents and so forth.

So there are differences, but we are making the point that just as you know, even the Holocaust Memorial Museum and other Jewish settings will compare the Rwandan genocide to the Holocaust and realize that there are similarities, albeit differences between those two things that we wanted to say, Hey, there's differences, but also strong similarities between these two things. So not only Jewish groups, but some Jewish groups and individuals and then other student groups on campus, as well as administratively, they were trying to take away our rights to free speech. And then three individuals on campus physically attacked our display at one

point. And all that to say that was the setting. And then fast forward to 2007, I graduated in 02, we did the exhibit over those three, three to four years. In 07, a former UBC student wrote the campus pro life club that I had been involved with and said that he wanted his message to be forwarded to me. And he said, I was a student when Stephanie Gray was a student and I was involved in various groups on campus that were trying to stop GAP from being able to be displayed on campus. And I just want to say that over the years, you know, I've experienced a change of heart. And my biggest regret from my time at UBC was trying to stop this display from being exhibited.

He shared in the email that he himself was Jewish. So when I got the email, I and so he said, I want to apologize to the club as well as to Stephanie Gray, please find her and send her this email. So I was blown away that someone who had like resisted our efforts was now coming with a repentant heart and apologizing. So I wrote back and said, Oh my goodness, like I'm touched by your message. And of course I forgive you. And then he wrote back more and shared his story that he was Jewish and had gone to a synagogue in Eastern Canada after graduating and saw a sign about the number of abortions in Israel. And he said, you know, in Jewish circles,

we talk about the silent Holocaust where Jews just don't have children. And so therefore, or they have few children. So then you're not, you know, Judaism is passed through the mother. So therefore you're not having as many Jewish children in the world. He goes, but when I saw the numbers of abortions in Israel, I saw this as a different type of Holocaust. Like we're how many Jew, how many would there be in world Jewry if, if abortions weren't happening amongst Jews and this realization that, Oh my goodness, we're losing Jewish children, you know, to abortion. And he said to me, I want to thank you for your forgiveness because now I can go to the day of atonement with a lighter conscience.

And again, blown away by, you know, the, the perspective of, of this man. And then we stayed in touch over the years and it all culminated in 2017. So now we're talking like 10 years after he emailed an apology, which was many years after he'd resisted the exhibit, he and his wife invited me to their home for Passover. And so here I am with someone who had once been on the opposite side of the fence with me. I'm sharing in a Passover meal with them as Orthodox Jews, me as a Roman Catholic, and we're journeying through this powerful Old Testament story of the Jews being saved by the blood of the lamb. And then my Catholic perspective being the new Passover, the new lamb is Jesus, who once and for all saved all of us through shedding His blood, saying, this is my body given for you. And so, you know, what I really wanted to do with this overtly religious message is

tie all that together and say, there once was a pregnant Jewish girl, Mary of Nazareth, who with her fiat of saying, may it be done to me according to your word, let her body be used for the good of another. And then raised that child to become a Jewish rabbi who as Jesus would then lay his body down for the good of and the salvation of us. And years and hundreds of years and 2, 2000 years later, we all have the opportunity to replicate that through motherhood and fatherhood. When we now look to the example of Christ and say, this also is my body given for you through a laying down of my life, very physically as a pregnant woman, but even for the father and others in the spiritual capacity, giving of themselves as in a totality of their person for the good of the other, the thriving of

the other. And that is what we're ultimately made for. And that's what I wanted to get across to what I believe are the hardened hearts of people like Peter Singer, Dr. Potts or Dr. Fellowes and other abortionists I've debated that at the end of the day, this is what we're made for. It's to embrace Christ and spend eternity with He who is love. Thank you. So this book you can get for 15% off right now? Yeah. So if people use the code PINTS15 at the St. Paul Center.

We'll have a link below with the promo code. They punch that in. Yes, at the St. Paul Center. We'll have a link below with the promo code. They punch that in. Yes, at the St. Paul. So it's specific to the St. Paul Center has Emmaus Road Publishing. And so if you order through them and put in the coupon code PINTS15, then you can get a discount on the book. Good. Now, I like what you said earlier about if we start sort of dividing up people based on their potential pentatentialities

actualized, then we start getting this weird class system that seems like some world we don't want to live in. But what if the only potentiality that needs to be actualized is personhood? And what if the fetus at certain stages doesn't has not yet actualized that once they do, then maybe we we don't kill them because they're a person like you and me. And then maybe they'll go on to to be mentally handicapped or some other thing might happen to them. But by that point, they've reached personhood. And how do you how do you did you find that difficult when you had to start interacting with that argument? Yeah, when I hear that argument, I mean, what I want to say back is, but why that particular

moment and what is about that moment versus someone else coming along and saying it has to be a little bit more like, how do you even define consciousness? Right? Like some, or even fetal pain, like some studies say 20 weeks, other studies say 13 weeks, which is probably dependent on the degree of pain that, you know, the baby is going to feel. So even with consciousness is like, what's the difference between, you know, week 20 versus week 19 day six or week 20 plus one day.

Like there's just a degree of development that happens. And the moment we even say personhood is achieved based on that, then if after you've lived for five years, you're in a serious car accident and your brain has essentially devolved back to the, the pre consciousness line that we've chosen, then even if we say you once were a person, wouldn't it be accurate to say you have lost your personhood? Sure. I'll buy that bullet. That's right. So then, so then we get down to it's the,

inevitably the stronger and more powerful and more conscious and developed individual picking criteria that includes themselves, which is always self-interested and excludes others who are incapable of defending themselves. And so we asked questions like, why should I believe that? Why this particular line and not this other line? And then what does that say about human equality where we would generally believe we're all equal to one another by virtue of being human, not developmental equality, which is that we're equal based on a certain level of development,

which we can't be equal based on because no one is actually at the exact same level of development. Even our brains, you know, aren't fully developed. I think until we're like 25 years old and even male brains versus female brains, there's a slight difference. The female brain completes development,

I think slightly earlier in the 20s. So it's just, there's a gradual development. It feels like an arbitrary line is what you're saying. It becomes an arbitrary line, which then gets drawn based on self-interest and conveniences, even if the individual isn't willing to admit that in the moment.

You probe deeper. Inevitably, these lines are being selected that exclude the most vulnerable and the test of a civil society, I would say, is how we treat the most vulnerable. So if we're excluding the most vulnerable, we're actually showing ourselves to be uncivil. And the most loving society is determined by how it treats the young and how it treats the vulnerable and those who can't care for or defend themselves, which is why, you know,

when a ship is going down, what do we say? Women and children first. It's not that men are inferior to women and children, because that would be wrong to think that we're not all equal. It's the recognition that a woman is less strong compared to a man and a child is certainly less strong compared to adults. So he who has the greatest strength, the man, ought to put first those who have less strength, in this case of people on a ship, the woman and child. And if we look to that as that should be the example, that should be what we have as a standard, then I say it should be the standard across the board

and therefore include pregnancy. Yeah, I see that. That makes sense to me that this is arbitrary in some sense, because it's not that something hasn't changed. It's just why at that change are you saying now personhood? Right. Why is it not equally arbitrary to say there is something about the female brain since it differs in some sense fundamentally from the male brain, that is not yet what we would consider personhood. And so we might choose to keep women, but we might choose to treat them as subclass citizens since they haven't met this particular. Right, because they're different. And then you can start doing that with other groups

and then ask the individual who's picked picked an arbitrary line, why the other arbitrary line is wrong. And whatever rhetoric and argumentation they have to use to dismiss what they consider a more extreme view, we likely can use to show how we should dismiss their view for being also extreme, even if it's not as equally extreme or whatever the case may be. I want to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography. It is called strive21.com slash Matt. You go there right now or if you text strive to 66866, we'll send you the link. It's a hundred percent free and it's a course I've created to help men to give them the tools to overcome pornography

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partners and things like that. Strive 21, that's strive21.com slash Matt, or as I say, Text Strive to 66866 to get started today. You won't regret it. What? You're good at the Scottish accent. Okay, right. We could do the rest of the interview in a Scottish accent. That's really quite good. I mean, I think you. I think it's good. Have you had Scottish people tell you it's good?

I know. Generally, the Scottish people will be like, no, but every now and then, actually, I had, I remember a Scottish seminarian once saying to me, that's that's an authentic Glaswegian accent. And my dad is from a suburb of Glasgow. So I mean, I have never heard anybody do an Australian accent that wasn't just cringy.

So yeah, I know it's I the Australian one's hard to do. I feel like the it's the word no, no, no, no. There's a number seven in there somehow. And seven W X. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a number seven in there somehow. N-O-7-W-X-O. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, I got a question for you. Okay. And it comes from MD Nelson.

Okay. What are Dr. Gray? Look at that, you got a doctorate. I haven't been made a doctor. You've been made a doctor. What are Stephanie Gray's thoughts on embryonic adoption for embryos that are currently frozen from IVF operations?

Great question. It is. OK, so I wrestle with this. I have a different book I've written, Conceived by Science, Thinking Carefully and Compassionately about Infertility and IVF. And in the book, I actually addressed the question of embryo adoption only as an appendix intentionally. I didn't exclude it entirely because I knew

if I make the case against IVF and the manufacturing of humans in a lab, as opposed to the reception of another individual through sexual intimacy, that inevitably people will say, okay, once been there, done that embryos created, is it ethical to adopt or not? And so I thought I have to speak to this, but I wanted my book to be timeless in that I wanted the main message of IVF being wrong to be accepted and used over time. And I think the question of whether it's ethical or not to adopt embryos is something we're trying to figure out, uh, as a society, but more specifically as people of goodwill and in the realm of, uh, you know, a Judeo-Christian worldview. And so I included an appendix that actually still doesn't come to a conclusion and I make the arguments for and against it. born against it. So I think one argument that can be made for why it seems reasonable to pursue embryo adoption is that the sin of manufacturing a human outside of sexual intimacy

is over. The human already exists, just like creating a human through rape or creating a human through a hookup. Uh, that's over. Now we've conceived new life. What do we do? And so one could argue that with frozen embryos, their parents made them unethically, but now that they exist, shouldn't we rescue them? And then another favor argument in favor of rescuing would be look, um, in fact, I was talking to your wife today about how, uh, was it Liam that a number of her Catholic friends were essentially wet nurses for it various times? Oh, was it Peter? Yeah, yeah, when when when Cam wasn't able to breastfeed or produce enough at times And so different friends actually not just gave milk, but like So, um

Someone would say well look that was a born child who had a need for sustenance and Someone was willing to use their body to support him. So isn't embryo adoption like a preborn child needing the sustenance of a uterus and someone offering their body to do that? So then the rebuttal would be the difference is, uh, when, you know, if, if someone were to feed my baby, uh, they're still able to feed their baby. Whereas if someone were to allow their uterus to be occupied by an embryo, they're closing their uterus off for more than nine months from being

occupied by their own child. So therefore, what responsibility does a couple have to be open to receiving new life in their own womb and can they prioritize filling the womb with someone else's child as opposed to the room? The other concern, so then someone might say, okay, well then only infertile couples would be candidates for embryo adoption. Um, and then some people would say, well, the whole reason they're infertile is it would be hard for embryo adoption. And then some people would say, well, the whole reason they're infertile is it would be hard to implant the embryo. So maybe that would only work if you had a couple

where it was the issue on the man's party as zero sperm count, but the woman's body is capable of gestating an embryo. And that this would be not ordinary care, but extraordinary care to allow your body to be used by someone else. So there wouldn't be a mandate that we must do this. But so all that to say, I struggle with where to land because I wouldn't want in any way to validate the

creation and manufacturing of life in a lab. And so, or, or as well get to a situation where if we're only supposed to come into existence through sexual intimacy, then that means morally speaking, it should never be possible for someone else's child to be in my body because that could never happen through sexual intimacy. So therefore is it okay for me to put someone else's child in my body when that should only happen through sexual intimacy and therefore, you know, so, um, I've analogized to this situation where if imagine someone has

created a bunch of babies in labs with the intention of, uh, making them so that they don't have kidneys and then creating kidneys and then, um, intending once these embryos make it to birth in a machine that they would then get kidneys put into them. Well imagine the people who do this have been able to make the embryos, but not the kidneys. So then they have a lab full of embryos in machines that need kidneys, but don't yet have the ability to lab make kidneys. And imagine the lab is rated and police are like, Oh my gosh, you met your manufacturing disabled human beings who need kidneys. We're going to shut this lab down.

Meanwhile, we have, let's say 200 humans that are in machines that need kidneys. There are no, let's say, kidneys that exist other than the kidneys in other babies' bodies. Is it ethical for parents to take, like if I took a kidney from my two-year-old to try to help these children, or would we say, you know what, your two-year-old has a right to their kidneys, they can't yet decide, or they want to donate a kidney. So we really don't have kidneys to give to these

other children and they die. It's not that I'm saying these lab made humans aren't valuable or equal to the rest of us. I'm just saying there isn't an ethical way to keep them alive. So sadly they die. And so the people who would be pro life, but opposed to embryo adoption still think those embryos are valuable humans that are equal to us. But so the people who would be pro-life but opposed to embryo adoption still think those embryos are valuable humans that are equal to us. But like the lab made humans in my analogy, we might say there is no ethical way to keep them alive. So sadly they will die, but they shouldn't have been created this way to begin with. And that's what we need to focus on. So I know that's not probably the, the most clear, this is my position, but this is how ethically complex it is, which always happens when we go down

the, an immoral path. So by going down the immoral path of manufacturing humans into existence by contracting a third party to work on them in a lab, by doing that we've then opened a Pandora's box of a whole bunch of more ethical dilemmas that if we just didn't make the first wrong choice, we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. Wow. Very well thought out. Thank you.

You said you wrote a book on it. Conceived by science, thinking carefully and compassionately about infertility and IVF. CTC asks, suppose that pregnancies lasted for 10 years, required women to be bedridden the entire time, and giving birth had a high maternal mortality rate. Would abortion still be wrong? Great question. As long as it is within our nature to produce offspring, and that is the norm for how we were created to be. Um, then if in this imaginary world that were to be a 10 year period instead of a nine month period,

we have to reverence and respect that nature. And if the high mortality rate is like the current high mortality rate for some pregnant women in other parts of the world. So I have a, there's a low mortality rate for me the current high mortality rate for some pregnant women in other parts of the world. So I have a, there's a low mortality rate for me as a pregnant woman in America compared to let's say a very impoverished nation in Africa that has a high mortality rate for women. Um, the solution there is not to introduce abortion, but introduce measures that would decrease mortality. So if in this imaginary world, pregnancy were for 10 years, but introduce measures that would decrease mortality.

So if in this imaginary world, pregnancy were for 10 years, but there were a high mortality rate, then we want to do other things that would decrease the mortality rate all the while respecting the two lives. So we don't ever want to be in a situation where we work to preserve life on one hand by committing homicide on another hand. And so in this imaginary scenario of could we do abortions over that 10-year pregnancy, the question really is can I commit homicide on one human to claim a benefit to another human? And a civil society shouldn't do that for the most vulnerable amongst us. And we don't accept killing a two-year-old to benefit someone else. So we shouldn't accept, you know, killing, you know,

a two-year-old to benefit someone else so we shouldn't accept killing a pre-born child, whether that's over a nine-month period or a 10-year period. Okay, Valelis DC says, Do you see a tension between the church's position on birth control and the church's position on abortion? Do you lose your audience by equating the two? Is interfering with God's will by preventing the creation of life the same thing as ending life in the womb. So I wouldn't equate birth control in the true sense of preventing pregnancy with abortion which is ending a pregnancy which has already begun. with abortion, which is ending a pregnancy, which has already begun. There are some methods of birth control, which are actually abortifacient.

So the birth control pill, for example, IUDs, these have a capacity within them to act after fertilization has occurred and prevent life from adequately implanting in the uterus. In that case, they can be abortifacient. But if we're talking about birth control, which just prevents pregnancy either by in, in the times where a pill would just only suppress ovulation. So there's no egg for sperm to get to, uh, or a condom, which would be a barrier method preventing sperm from getting to an egg. Um, I wouldn't say those two things are equal in nature. One prevents life, one ends life. However, I would still say they both can be very wrong. Something can be wrong that doesn't kill.

It can be immoral if it doesn't kill. So then the question would be, well, if you're against killing life, wouldn't you want to be in favor of creating life? So we don't have a situation where life is created. You don't want it. Therefore you have an abortion. And what I would suggest, if you look historically at the widespread acceptance of abortion as birth control has been introduced and also widely accepted is that the two tend to go hand in hand because even though there are differences between the two, there is a similar mentality. Birth control says, I want to engage in sex, but not have the natural outcome, which flows from that,

which is new life. And abortion says, I want to engage in sex, but not have the natural outcome, which comes from that, which is new life. So although one prevents it and one ends it both involve engaging in sex, but not wanting the life which naturally comes from it. So that if someone has used birth control, they almost feel a greater license to have an abortion because they've been quote unquote responsible. And it's like, I worked hard to make sure there was no life. And so if life happens to pop through, that's not my fault. I did everything I could responsibly.

So therefore I'm going to do the next responsible thing, which is to prevent this life from coming to birth. And so I think that there's a difference, but a connectivity between the immorality of birth control and the immorality of abortion. And the most consistent perspective is to say, what are our bodies for? They're for love. They're for a communion of persons that gets manifested in different ways. Motherhood is a communion of persons. But so is sexual intimacy.

And two people coming together in sexual intimacy is a giving and a receiving of each other's bodies and all that comes with it, which includes our fertility. And therefore if we enter into that social sexual intimacy with the understanding and, and willingness to embrace life that could come about when life does come about, we're like, well, yeah, that's, that's what I expected. And so there's a consistency to I reject birth control because I'm open to life. And then when life comes, I embrace the life because I'm open to life. Whereas the other one says, I don't want life,

shoot life came. I still don't want life. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Somebody asks if we found a way to nonviolently remove a fetus without killing it, but knowing that it would die soon after because it's not viable, would this be morally equivalent to unplugging from the violinist? Ah, so feel free to recap the violin. We should. Yeah, for the sake of your other listeners, we should. So just go watch the most popular video on that channel. The most popular video. Working hard for you, Matt.

Thank you. So the violence argument came out decades ago. It was the 1970s by a woman named Judith Jarvis Thompson, who argues that someone could justify abortion on the basis that you don't have a right to use another person's body and that if a, for example, world famous violinist was going to die and needed another person's body to be plugged into, to stay alive. And if someone kidnapped a stranger in order to plug the violinist into that stranger to keep them alive, because we all want to benefit from the violinist music. So let's keep him alive. Would the violinist have a right to use the

stranger's body that they're plugged into? And she argues no, because even if you have a right to life, you can't kind of take another person's life over with your own. So she argues that just as the stranger who was kidnapped can unplug the violinist because they're unethically attached. So too can a pregnant woman unplug her fetus who has no right to her body. And the pro-life response is actually the fetus does have a right to the mother's body in a way the violinist does not have a right to the stranger's body because we have to ask ourselves, Hey, what

are our bodies for? But more specifically in the case of a woman, what are our uterus is for. And if you look at the nature and purpose of the uterus, every single month cyclically, the uterine lining is thickening in expectation for implantation of someone else's body. And if that happens, then the uterus is living up to its purpose of sustaining the life of one's offspring. And so therefore, because the uterus by its function in nature is getting ready for the next generation and exists to sustain the next generation, an embryo or fetus can claim a right to that uterus in a way the violinist cannot claim a right to a stranger's body. So then that's the question was though, can we...

If we found a way to non-violently feed us without killing it, but we know that it would die soon after because it's not viable. Right. So I would say the issue with abortion is not the violence of the procedure, but the ejection of someone from a uterus who has the right to the uterus, which is made for them. So it is more disturbing to envision a late trimester dismemberment abortion where babies limbs are removed piece by piece. That might be more disturbing from an early trimester, first trimester medical abortion where a woman takes abortion pills and has what looks like a

miscarriage where she just bleeds out and might not even be able to identify the baby's body parts because it's so early. And even though it's not a miscarriage because miscarriage is natural and the abortion pills are intentional infliction of homicide, it looks the same and it doesn't look as disturbing. And therefore people might think, well, it's less violent. So therefore it's ethical, but it's still ending the life of someone who has a right to life and a right to that body part, which was made for them.

So therefore it would be as wrong as someone finding you in your sleep and giving you an injection without you even knowing or suffering. They're still killing you. Yeah. Okay. Uh, Brian Batco says who has the best defense for the pro-life argument? I'm going to interpret his question to mean who do you think is the best current defender of the pro-life position? Well, I mean, I think I do a pretty good job. If I may say so myself. Next question.

Well, I guess it would also depend on what what kind of venue the person is. Yes, yes, yes. Is it a debate? Is it a talk? Is it a on the? Yes, exactly. Are are we kind of doing a very academic debate or, you know, are we talking to a woman in a crisis pregnancy and

are we trying to convince her amidst her hardship to, to choose life for her child? Um, uh, certainly there are a number of peers like you had mentioned earlier, if, if Trent can't do a debate on abortion, he w he would have me step in. So certainly Trent Horn is someone who I would have replaced me if I couldn't do a debate. He's someone I do recommend if I can't do a debate on abortion. He would have me step in. So certainly Trent Horn is someone who I would have replace me if I couldn't do a debate. He's someone I do recommend if I'm asked to do an event, I have to decline. Steve Wagner who works with Justice For All is also an excellent debater.

My mentor, Scott Klusendorf, who's been doing this longer than all of us and who in some way mentored all of us kind of younger apologists would also be excellent. Seth Dreher over at Created Equal is very excellent in the art of debate kind of, I think, of the realm that I'm used to in terms of making argument. But then of course you have people who are starting marches, running organizations, doing all sorts of things that are necessary.

It's not just the debaters, is it? Well, exactly. So that's why it's like if someone is thinking, well, if I want to make this argument, you know, who has crafted a rebuttal that seems really strong and there's merit to that need for that. But we do need to remember like a toolbox has more than one tool in it because, you know, if you have a nail, then you need a hammer. But if you have a screw, you need a screwdriver. We need to look at reaching the culture and changing hearts and minds as being like a

toolbox where we need all kinds of tools depending on what we're working with. So you know, who who's, you know, on top of their game when it comes to political strategy, not all political strategies are equal. So you know, you want you want to look for what is going to be most effective at saving the most number of lives. Same with how do we best reach women on the sidewalk while walking into abortion clinics? Not all approaches are equal. So, yeah, it would depend on what genre we're talking about.

But in the realm of debate, those are the people I'd recommend. Yeah. Alissa asks, can you make an argument about how being a mother and raising your child is the noble thing to do, and how it will bring more joy, purpose, and meaning than abortion? Yeah, I mean, the fact that we're made for motherhood or fatherhood, we're made for parenthood. And so if we ask ourselves, similar to the question about what is the purpose of the uterus, if I'm made to be mother or father, then it is always going to be good for me to do that, which brings that to

fulfillment and helps me get to the very nature or purpose of, of, you know, and of course we're made to love at the end of the day, but that for mature adults looks like motherhood and fatherhood, spiritual or physical. Um, and I think the realization that we're made for relationship, we're made for a communion of persons and abortion is the opposite of that. It's the severing of a relationship and a division of persons. So it, it destroys the very thing that will actually bring fulfillment and satisfaction. So I'm just thinking you want to reread the question in terms of if there's any other thoughts that came to mind. I'm thinking even if it were the case that abortion brought you more subjective life, joy, purpose and meaning, it would still be wrong.

Right? In other words, even one doesn't have to argue for why. Baring and raising children brings you more joy than abortion in order for abortion to be the clearly evil thing to do. Yeah I mean absolutely I mean I guess you're right if someone's subjectively would argue is there are women out there that would argue their lives are better without children. I'm happier. Yeah, I've noticed this phenomenon. Actually these like anti-kid. Now, some of them have just never gotten pregnant, but probably some of them have gotten pregnant had abortions, but there's this whole movement. I just found out with his like the Dinks dual income.

No kids. Stupid name for a stupid thing. I know. Right. And actually read an awesome rebuttal by Joy Pullman at the Federalist. It was so good. She's like, I have six kids and learning about dinks makes me want to have a seventh. And she was basically saying all the things that dinks are saying that they can do.

I essentially do with children. And then there's greater fulfillment because of the joys of children. And when I read what, yeah, there was this one TikTok video of the, this couple without kids time, how cool their life is without kids. And I looked at everything they were highlighting. I was thinking, I do all of that, except the sleep. They've got me on the sleep. Like I would love to have eight hours straight of uninterrupted sleep. Not there right now. But the joys of parenthood are worth the sacrifice of a lack of sleep. So, and that's, that's the thing to realize. And I write in my book about

the hard times of parenthood. And for me, especially the one of the greatest challenges has been sleep deprivation and then how that's affected my mood and in my interactions with others. And that has been a great challenge. But if we focus on the negative, all we'll see is the negative, like the joys of watching another human person in their youngest stages. Would you like to share the story of what your daughter asked about me to her husband? Oh, yeah, I wish I had my phone, but I can remember it. Yeah, I mean, just the awe and wonder my husband and I continually have towards the sweetness of our child and the hilarity of, of certain moments. But, um, she's only two, but for some reason right now is obsessed with bodily functions and even P and poo, even though she won't be potty trained yet. I feel like she's at the stage

of a four year old when it comes to like the jokes and interest in P and poo. But anyways, um, she, we, we have this, um, Christmas book about the three wise men and in it is King Herod, who I keep referring to as a bad man. So then when she meets other men, she wants to know if they're good men or bad men. So she knows you're a good man. And so apparently my husband just texted me as we took a break, where Violet said to him, Mr. Matt is a good man. And Joe said, yes.

And then she said, does Mr. Matt pee and poo? She's going to come up with a silly non-sequitur syllogism soon. He pees and poos. Therefore he is a good man. She's that smart that she will make the connection. Um, so there was these moments of hilarity, but moments of also as someone who realizes our goal is heaven. It's not length of life. It's not a perfect earthly experience. It's not a life without suffering on this earth. It is eternal

life with Jesus. That is our purpose is to watch another human person unfold where you get to introduce them to that purpose and help them see they're made in God's image and they are good and they're made for the next world is is awe inspiring. And I think of recently Violet again, she just turned two a couple months ago. She was playing and it sounded like she just was repeating the word body, and then she was like, body, body, body. And so I just said to her, oh, you have a body. And then I responded to myself by saying, you are a body and a soul. And as soon as I said that without skipping a beat, she said, my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. Your daughter, your two year old said that? I am not kidding. I am not kidding.

And my husband and I both looked at each other. Now to give you some context, she's used to the phrase because we routinely before bed will sing her the song version of the Magnificat. It's a beautiful, I think it's John Michael Talbot. I love it. So we sing her that song. So she's heard the phrase, but that her little two year old mind can connect, can connected. You have a body and a soul to my soul proclaims

the greatness of the Lord. Like these are moments in parenthood where you look at this other human being. You're like, that is beautiful. And you are beautiful and you were made for greatness and yes, your soul does proclaim proclaim the greatness of the Lord. And and all of us are meant to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. And so that's the great tragedy of abortion is it's the opposite of proclaiming the greatness of the Lord. Amazing. Andrew Massey says, Do we think abortion will ever be outlawed while it is still a political

issue? On one side, the Democrats won't break with their party line, on the other, more Republicans do seem willing to break with their party line, but then those that are firmly pro-life also don't seem to want to set up the programs needed that can benefit a single mother because that would seem like they're supporting something on the Democratic platform. So a couple thoughts come to mind. So yeah, there is this tendency that if someone is considered more Republican or right wing,

that if they oppose government funded programs, that they oppose systems to help women in crisis. That's actually not true. Opposing government funded programs means you are against government forcibly taking money through taxes from people against their will and putting it to a certain program. Those on the right would say we should freely of our own accord hand our money over not to the government whose bureaucracies we don't trust, but instead to smaller nonprofits who can be held accountable

because of their size and because of our influence over them. And we should therefore set up systems to help the less fortunate through privately funded programs as opposed to government funded programs. So there's that. The first part of his question about, you know, are we ever going to see, you know, the political change is it's going to take a while because abortion is so widespread and acceptance of it has been so widespread. So when Roe was overturned with the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, you know, in June of 2022, that was a great cause for celebration because it was this realization is that the

decision declared, you know, abortion is not a constitutional right. What that resulted in though, is it went state by state. And so some states as we saw in Ohio, you know, passing amendment, the first, it was on it was called one right? But not amendment one, it was an amendment to the Ohio state constitution. And it was called something one and it was yes or no. And so unfortunately that passed, which then meant now in the state of Ohio,

people are claiming a state right to abortion. Issue one, issue one was the word. But now putting in the state constitution, a right to abortion. But then, and you have other states, liberal states like California that are also entrenching a support for abortion within the state. And then you have states where I'm from, like Florida, where, you know, there was widespread support for later abortion, and then it got dropped down to

15 weeks, then it got dropped down to six weeks. So you see in a state by state, it's varying from one place to the next. So will we see it the day come where no state allows for abortion? Yes, that will happen. How long is it going to take? When is that going to happen? That I can't predict because it's a big battle ahead. And in the States where abortion access is being limited, you have people challenging it all the time. There's a case going on in Texas where a woman is around 20 weeks pregnant. I'm 24, so literally just a few weeks less pregnant than me. And found out her baby had trisomy 18 and wanted to get an injunction against the state of Texas so that she could get an abortion without the doctor who does it or anyone being held criminally

responsible for doing something wrong. And she went to multiple court levels and she didn't get access to abortion in Texas so now the news is reporting that she went out of state to get her abortion. But what's horrifying about the situation is that everything being portrayed is that this child, because they're disabled and have trisomy 18 is somehow less valuable because she's claiming this was a wanted pregnancy and that she, you know, was planning on carrying to term. It's the presence of this trisomy 18 that's motivating her.

And then the media though, um, is trying to portray that it's more than that, that it's actually a matter of her health because she's had two C sections. And so if she has this baby, she'll have to have a third C section. Um, and she's arguing that she wants to have other children after this. So she needs to have the abortion so she can get pregnant again to have another child, which would be a third C section. But I keep thinking, wait a minute, if this baby didn't have trisomy 18, it sounds like you would have gone through with the third C-section anyways.

So, you know, is this a matter of you claiming it's your health or is it a matter of you claiming it's really, you know, the baby is, is, you know, disabled. And then the other thing going on related to this is no one's asking the question, what is this 20 week abortion going to be like? And how is that not only going to destroy the body of this baby, but what's that going to do your body? So all the concerns about her health, I keep thinking a 20 week abortion is not going to be easy on the

body. It's, it's a much more intense procedure than, you know, a first trimester abortion would be. So that's an example where you've got people with these individual cases, pulling on heartstrings in the public eye, telling their tales. And hers is one of many going on right now. And so that's then influencing the political world where people are like, OK, then then we need to make abortion more accessible or we need to entrench it in the, in the state constitution.

So the pro-life movement after the overturning of Ro needs to realize this isn't the end of the story, it's the start of a whole new battle. The war is still going on, we won one battle, but there's other battles to be fought so that we ultimately get to that day where children are protected across the country. Cosmopolitan recently posted this, the image said, so how does a satanic abortion ceremony

even work? You've seen this? No. What's, I mean, we always knew that Cosmopolitan was satanically inspired, but it's a bit on the nose. What's it like to have a satanic abortion? For Jessica, a 37 year old mother of three who received abortion medication via Samuel Alters' mom's satanic clinic, the experience was just very supportive. While she's

not a satanist, Jessica decided to incorporate a few ceremonial elements into her solo abortion experience. Why not? She thought I could give you a million reasons. Yes, I got. Um, she thought the overall messaging just clicked with her. How is abortion like child sacrifice to Moloch? Oh, it is. It's not like it. It is.

Thank you. Good. Um, and one of the quotes include it. I use in my book is a quote from Peter Kreeft to paraphrase because I'm the exact quote, but if the Eucharist is, if pregnancy is like the Eucharist, which is this is my body given for you, then abortion is the Antichrist, which is sacrificing on the altar of false gods, someone else's body for the benefit of ourselves. So it's the opposite of love, it's the opposite of self-sacrifice.

And it is satanic. And that is why it is so dark and frightening. Because whether someone goes to such a clinic described as a satanic abortion clinic or not, they are inviting in dark and evil spirits because God is a God of life whose very first command to us was to be fruitful and multiply. And when we follow that command, we become participants with God in creating souls that will live for all eternity that are made in his image. And that is a threat to Satan who doesn't like the advancement of God and life made in his image.

So God wants more life and Satan wants to destroy life. So if abortion destroys life, then that's on the side of a party that is frightening to say the least. One B says, what is a good source for abortion related statistics? Does Planned Parenthood release them? Their complications like abortion complications. Oh, in terms of complications. Yeah.

I mean, it's often difficult to get, um, you question when you see statistics, if they're the most accurate, I often do go to the good Mack are Institute, which is the research arm of Planned Parenthood. So they're not an ally to the pro-life movement, but I think to myself, well, if we're going to use any stats, let's use your own, but show how your own stats reveal very troubling trends or high numbers and so on and so forth. Um, of course, as particular States release their abortion figures, people could just go to that. I just don't know how easy it is to access on a state by state level, and it probably varies from state to state. But people could see what their states do release in terms of abortion rates versus birth

versus miscarriage, complications and so forth, and see what's in the public domain. Um, complications and so forth and see what's in the public domain. Uh, Javier, who is a Catholic medical student in Florida says, what is your answer to this objection? If human embryos are human persons with the same value as fully grown human persons, we should allocate most, if not all resources to avoiding miscarriages. Um, we don't do that. Therefore, maybe that's something of an argument against embryos being persons. But he says we should not allocate all of our resources to avoiding miss.

Oh, okay. So here would be the argument, right? So if that's the case, then we should allocate, but, but we, but we shouldn't really do that. Therefore embryos may not be considered human persons, or at least embryo death may not be at the same moral level as the death of a fully grown human person. Have you heard something like this?

Yeah. So, yeah, what he's getting at is if there's any type of inconsistency in our behavior, then maybe that calls into question the legitimacy of our claim. So that he might also be saying that even you agree that we shouldn't be spending most human resources on trying to prevent miscarriage. Well, I think we should put resources into trying to prevent miscarriage. But what does that actually look like from a resource perspective? So I have lost four babies to miscarriage, um, desperately wanted those children and wish I had not lost them. Um, in terms of figuring out what was wrong, it's, it's not a lot of resources that I think even needs to go into figuring out. So in my case, blood was drawn and it was examined to

determine, do I have antiphospholipid condition, which would be a condition of clotting, um, on my babies, essentially, which would then cause miscarriage. I was negative for that. I think I was tested for lupus and all kinds of like, they took so much blood out of me at one point. I was like, is it safe to drive home? Um, but my blood was tested for a myriad of things. Uh, that's not a high cost endeavor, but it could give me great results. In my case, it literally showed I was negative for everything. That was a, it was a miscarriage risk. When I've been pregnant, I get regular blood tests for my progesterone

levels. Cause if you have low progesterone, uh, that could result in miscarriage. But in five of my six pregnancies, uh, I have been on progesterone to keep my levels up. And yet sadly, four of my six pregnancies have not been able to remain even with the progesterone support. You can have a very specialized ultrasound done which I had done called a sonohistogram which is where saline is injected into the uterus and when you're not pregnant and the presence of saline when then a transvaginal ultrasound is done gives the radiologist a very clear view of the shape of the uterus

and whether you have a fibroids or polyps present there, which could then impact a pregnancy and its ability to continue. Uh, in my case, the, the radiologist was doing this procedure and said, beautiful, beautiful, your uterus is beautiful. And so I'm laying there like, okay, on one hand I'm really glad to hear there's nothing wrong with my uterus. But on the other hand, we're still not getting an explanation for why these miscarriages are happening. So my point is from my own experience that there are things we can do that are not a high cost of resources that would take away from other things,

but we still don't always get the answer. I mean, part of my questioning is, is it just my age? You know, by the fact that I'm in my forties, you know, people would say, I maybe have old eggs, and therefore my babies are very possibly very disabled and just not able to continue to grow and develop. And that's why the miscarriages are happening. In our case, we chose not to test our babies for genetic anomalies because that wouldn't change our perspective.

We value life, whether it's disabled or not. And the chance of having another disabled child is there, but we also might have a child who's not disabled. So we're not going to be close to life just because if that were the risk. So, so my point is that this person is, is questioning that if, if we did everything we could to prevent miscarriage, we'd be holding back from these other areas. I don't think we would in my case, basic investigations and research has been done. That's not a massive use of resources that enables us to still

put resources in other areas while valuing life in the womb and treating that life as equal to other life. So, um, should we try to avoid miscarriage? Absolutely. That's why women's blood should be checked and the hormones should be tested. And I don't think we should wait until three miscarriages to do it, which is what some doctors will do. Um, I think there's, there's a whole movement now for preconception care and counseling where people are learning how to get their bodies to optimal health before even trying to get pregnant or, you know, before getting married to, to potentially conceive. So all that to say, I think we can respond to the tragedy of miscarriage and try to decrease it

without being in a situation where we don't have resources to address other medical crises. The very fact that we have resources to put to medical conditions shows there's all kinds of conditions that can harm people's lives. Like we need to respond to AIDS, but we can't ignore cancer. So yeah, I think the person's question is- Is that all or nothing? Is it? Yeah, it's not all or nothing, is it? Yeah, it's not all or nothing.

Yeah. KB Jorkeland says, the argument I frequently see is the position of punishment using fear that women will be sent to prison. I often think that the response from abortion advocates is more about self-preservation than wholly about their worldview. Thoughts? Is there a way we can assuage these fears to maybe lessen the opposition? So the question of should women who have abortions face criminal consequences is one often raised by abortion supporters to make pro-lifers look either inconsistent or insensitive. So if pro-lifers say, yes, women who have abortion should go to jail, we look insensitive,

as well as impractical, because that would be so many women that our jails would probably overflow. And then if we say, no, they shouldn't go to jail, then we look inconsistent because then if we actually believed the preborn child was human and abortion is homicide, then isn't that the same as committing homicide on a five year old? And if you should go to prison for killing a five year old, shouldn't you go to prison for killing a preborn child? So you get varied positions from people in the pro-life movement. The position I hold is to say we should be consistent that possible jail time should be a consequence for someone who kills any innocent human being, whether that human being is in the

womb or out of the womb. But there's only going to be that possibility if the person has broken a law. be that possibility if the person has broken a law. So until the law changes, there's not going to be a criminal trial because there's no law that's been broken. Now, some people would point out, well, in some states, uh, the laws already are changing such that having an abortion would be a criminal offense. And then I would say, well, then that should go to trial, just like ending the life of a born child. And even when you end the life of a born child, you look at the parties involved and to what degree they gave consent, had culpability, full knowledge, you know, was someone dragged there by her mother or her boyfriend going to the abortion clinic really against her will? Or did she have full knowledge about what she was doing and how emotionally distressed was she? Right. There's, there's so many factors to consider.

And the next point I make is that the question of what our legal consequences should be comes after the question of, should this act be unlawful because we determine it's immoral or unethical. So until we've convinced people that abortion is immoral, that it's unethical, there's almost no point in talking about what the consequences should be for anyone who does an abortion. Because if you think abortion is a woman's right, you're obviously not going to support any legal consequences for someone who does it.

It's only once you've been convinced that it's an act of homicide that you then might start to entertain the idea, well, maybe those who participate in this should actually face criminal consequences. So we first need to convince people that abortion is immoral for them to even be open to the possibility of what the law should be and then what the legal consequences should be for breaking the law should be and then what the legal consequences should be for breaking the law. What about abortion providers? Shouldn't say doctors, isn't it?

That's such a bastardized way. I know, but at the same time, provider sounds like a service being offered. It's really hard to find the right words. Gnostic death cult priests. Homicide inflictors. These persons presumably don't have the same level of potential emotional distress or their culpability would seem to be much higher. Absolutely.

And that's why for sure, I mean, again, you always have to give people a fair trial, but I think there should, without a doubt, be criminal consequences for physicians who do abortions. Bearing in mind, as you've said, they're not as emotionally distressed the way a patient may be. They also have full knowledge with their medical education and they are being financially compensated, therefore benefiting from what they do. So those three things alone make what they do profoundly grave and disturbingly wrong. Sebastian says, how does one working in emergency health care explain the difference between eptopic pregnancies and abortions to colleagues

without sounding like the killing of the unborn is permitted in one circumstance but not the other? Does the threat to the mother's life in this situation justify the need for the killing of the unborn baby? Yeah, great question. So I think when we want to convey to colleagues, if you're in the medical profession, that a pro-life response when a woman's life is in danger is not abortion. We have to make sure how we describe what we do and what we actually do is not abortion, that it is responding to a pathology and addressing the pathology, trying to restore the body to health without directly and intentionally ending the life of the child. So in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, that's basically meaning out of the uterus and typically

in the fallopian tube. And so as the baby grows and develops, the tube expands and can burst and that bursting tube will bring about the death of the baby and can bring about the death of the mother through profound bleeding and hemorrhaging and so forth. So in that case, you can do what's called a cell pinectomy, which is a surgery that targets the tube, not the baby. And that section of the tube is cut out and removed. The tube exists in the woman's body to transport the embryo, but not for the implantation of

the embryo, whereas the uterus actually exists for the implantation of the embryo. So in the case of the embryo getting stuck in the tube, you're removing the tube because essentially that part of the mother's body has become pathological, has become a threat to two people's lives. And so you're removing this, this piece of pathological organ. If we could then transplant the baby somewhere, we would do that. We currently don't have the technology to do that. So the baby would die. Now some people would say, well, that sounds to me like abortion. Well no, the difference is abortion targets the baby's body for destruction.

Whereas in this case, there's a pathological condition or organ and we're targeting that, which is the mother's body part, um part and trying to bring a restoration of health. There are ways to intervene in ectopic pregnancy that I don't think are ethical. And I've written a whole paper on it. One of those methods is methotrexate, which is a cancer drug because it targets rapidly dividing cells, can be given to a woman with an ectopic pregnancy because it targets the rapidly dividing cells, not of cancer, but of the pre- the pre placenta the trophoblast cells which is the baby's body part and a necessary part of the baby for life and so if a woman takes methotrexate orally in pill

form the the kind of mechanism of action is that that pill would then target the rapidly dividing cells of the baby's body the the trophoblast and destroy that and I would argue that's unethical because you're saving the woman directly by killing the innocent child, which is different from saving her by directly moving a part of her body that has become pathological and a threat to her life. You're very good at this and I'm glad that you do it. Thank you. Praise God.

I've thought about this for a long time. Have you ever just kind of gotten tired of the topic or not tired because it's unworthy, but tired because you're a human being and focusing on such a dark subject? It's exhausting. It can be exhausting or, or in particular, if there's a question that seems to be something you've answered a lot and, and, you know, maybe in the same way. Um, but at the same time, you know, this realization that if I've been given a gift to think clearly and then to communicate clearly, there comes a profound responsibility to share that, to help others. And so, um, you know, I am happy to, to be able to do that. Um, and just actually relate to that as we go

back to the question about the woman's life in danger. One of the points I wanted to make in my book, if we set aside a topic which I dove into very specifically, one of the points I wanted to make in my book is something we often forget when the case of the woman's life being in danger comes up, which is something I referenced earlier, which is that our ultimate purpose in life is not length of life, it's heaven. And it's the loss of my four children through miscarriage that has really brought that idea to the forefront of my mind. Because when I lost baby after baby after baby, three in a row, the first one I lost, then I had a live birth, and then I lost three in a row.

And when we lost the third in a row, which was our fourth child, Job, who we named after the Job in the Bible. And we had named that baby Job before the baby died because at the end of the book of Job, everyone knows that story for Job having everything taken from him and all these terrible things happening to him. But at the end of the story, he gets everything back twofold. And so when we got pregnant again, we're like, Oh my goodness, God's blessing us with another child. We're getting everything twofold. You know, we saw the baby twice on ultrasound. We saw the heartbeat and everything seemed to be going great. Um, and then at a routine 12 week appointment, uh, the Doppler, my doctor

heard no heartbeat in the Doppler. And so he's did an ultrasound and then the baby is just still on the screen and my doctor is stone--faced and then I knew something was wrong. And I'm sorry. And we had no idea. So I had gone weeks thinking everything was just fine because we'd seen the baby. And I remember in that moment, uh, or shortly after when we left the doctor's office saying to my husband, I never want to get pregnant again. And there was a hardening of my heart

that naturally comes from suffering. And my claim that I didn't want to get pregnant again was really just a way of communicating, I don't want to lose another baby. And I'm afraid, and often so many things in life involve fear, I'm afraid that if I get pregnant again, I'm going to have another miscarriage

and I cannot emotionally endure losing another child, let alone the physical realities of miscarriage. And I remember being frustrated at that loss in particular because I had had a rough first trimester and felt very sick and was often like laying on the couch, not interacting with my toddler the way I felt she deserved and, and thinking, what was the point of that? Like Violet didn't get as much attention. I went through all this sickness, but for what? And it's okay to ask questions. What matters is getting the right answers.

And so as I really wrestled with that, I realized, oh my gosh, the value of my children's life is not in the length of their life. The value of my children's life is not in the length of their life. The value of my children's life is not what I get out of them. It's not in how much time I get to personally spend with them or how fulfilled I feel by them. The value in their life is that they are made in God's image and they are made for eternity and that in eternity, they're supposed to get to heaven. And four of my children are already there. You know, they've already achieved the goal.

And so it helped me realize that when we find ourselves in these ethical dilemmas, now going to the issue of a woman's life being in danger, I think if we can intervene ethically, we absolutely should. And that's why a cell pangectomy is a great alternative to methotrexate. It's not an abortion. But I think a more fundamental message we need to get across, which I convey in the chapter on the woman's life being in danger, is at the end of the day, if there isn't a way to save a woman's life without committing an act of homicide, then it's better to accept death because our goal isn't length of life. Our goal is heaven. And I share a very powerful story in the book, a true story

of a wonderful woman back in Canada who got pregnant and at 16 weeks, around 16 weeks, she found out she had breast cancer and the doctor said, look, this is super aggressive. And if we don't do an abortion and start chemo, like I'm worried you're going to die. And she just took one look at him and said, I'm not going to kill my baby. And um, would it have been okay if it was life or death for her to have chemo without the abortion and just it's possible chemo could hurt the baby but it might not. She could have done that certainly doing the abortion before chemo never would have been ethical but

she chose to not even do chemo until birth and she said I want to give this baby the best chance of life because I would do that for my born child and so she carried through with the pregnancy till 40 weeks when she went into labor and as soon as the baby was born they they started cancer treatment and chemo and radiation and surgery and everything and she lived for two years but she ultimately died. And I interviewed her husband for the book. Holy mackerel, what a woman. What a woman. And so I included her story in the book. And holy mackerel, what a woman. What a woman. And and so I included her story in the book very intentionally because she had the right

attitude and she had the right perspective. What was it like chatting to her husband? What's that? How did her husband speak of her? Oh my gosh. Well, I think I would I think I would vacillate between admiration and anger. Well, I like my wife. I know. Right.

And that's what as as now a pregnant wife and mother, I've thought, oh, my gosh, like, I would never want to die. Right. But see if I can find one of the exact quotes in here, because it's just so powerful to know, like what he didn't know was that as I interviewed him, I was miscarrying one of my babies. What he didn't know was that as I interviewed him, I was miscarrying one of my babies. And the attitude he had is truly remarkable. Where is it? When our bodies are broken.

I know it's in here. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Here it is. Okay. Okay. So her name was Lorraine. And Darryl said, where was Lorraine's heart? It was with the baby in her womb. That was of ultimate value. And then he described his wife as having what he called, quote, the

unbeatable three, courage, love, and a willingness to suffer. And then he explained, quote, the love she had for the child in the womb is what gave her the courage to be willing to sacrifice herself. And he said, these three qualities summarize what our faith represents. It's exactly what Jesus did. The love Jesus had for us is what gave him the courage to be willing to sacrifice himself. And so the attitude this woman had, which is, my life is not my own, my body for you, and I'm ultimately made for heaven. That's the ultimate perspective we need to have and to not be afraid to bear witness

to that because you can't help but be moved by someone who actually lives that out. And then the beautiful thing is, so she had an older son, a friend of mine, Michael, who actually is a Catholic missionary in Canada. And then this daughter who was two when the mom died, both of them are devout Catholics who love the Lord and are a profound witness to our ultimate goal being heaven, that they can suffer and they can lose. Um, but, but at the end of the day, we're living for a world where there are no more tears and no more suffering.

And we have everything but gain or everything we have is gain. Um, so I think, you know, when the woman's life is in danger to wrap all this up, do we look for ethical ways to intervene? Absolutely. And these days with medical modern technology, do we usually have a way to intervene? Absolutely. But if someone were to come to me and say, but if you had a situation where there was literally no way to save the mother without committing homicide, my answer would be, I would die.

I would die because my life is not, my goal is not this world. My goal is the next. Amen. Stephanie Gray. I'm going to leave it there. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for all the work you've put into this. And thank you for your new book again, My Body for You. Click the link in the description below to take you over to the St. Paul center. And you'll see we have a promo code there that will get you 15% off. Thank you. You're welcome.