Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 497 | Surprise: The 'Women's Health Protection Act' Doesn't Protect Health | Guest: Alexandra DeSanctis

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

Today we start off by talking to National Review writer Alexandra DeSanctis about the Women's Health Protection Act. DeSanctis closely follows the progressive pro-abortion movement and has all the relevant facts about this bill and how it really just exists to codify a "right" to abortion in law. Then, we go over some of the actual text of the bill and discuss the horrific reality of abortion and what the procedure actually entails. --- Today's Sponsors: Chamonix technology has a new Genucel serum with plant stem cells to help with bags and puffiness under the eyes for both men & women! Order now & get 50% off ALL Genucel packages during the final days of their end of summer clearance sale at LoveGenucel.com/ALLIE. Good Ranchers have met with the actual farmers that raise the livestock to ensure the product they're sending to your table is the very best. Go to GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE to place a one-time order OR subscribe today & save 20% on each box of mouth-watering meats. Plus, get an additional $20 off & free express shipping if you use the code 'ALLIE' at checkout! Dwell is a Bible app that's a beautiful listening and reading experience — inspired by the psalmist's command that we must hide the Word of God in our hearts. To get started, go to DwellApp.io/RELATABLE to get 10% off a yearly subscription, or 33% off Dwell for life! --- Show Links: H.R. 3755: "Women's Health Protection Act of 2021" - full text of the bill: https://bit.ly/39MmlLM National Review: "Susan Collins: Congressional Democrats' Abortion Bill Is Too 'Extreme'" https://bit.ly/3ifAtC4 Guttmacher Institute: "Evidence You Can Use: Later Abortion" https://bit.ly/3zRhQtZ LifeSite: "How a 3rd Trimester Abortion is ACTUALLY Performed (In Words of an Abortionist)" https://bit.ly/3AXfYkW Live Action News: "How Third Trimester Abortion Works: The Induction Method" https://bit.ly/3ognTpJ The Center for Medical Progress: "Fetal Experimentation at the University of Pittsburgh and Planned Parenthood" https://bit.ly/3CYEIJW --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV

or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful day, a wonderful week so far. Today we are talking about this abortion bill that has passed the House. It's on its way to the Senate, the so-called Women's Health Protection Act. We're going to talk to National Review journalist Alexandra DeSanktis. She is going to tell us what exactly is in this bill, the likelihood of it passing the Senate. And then after that short interview, we're going to talk about this subject. We're going to talk about this bill.

And why, guys, this is so important. As much as we talk about abortion, I don't think that we can ever talk about it enough and remind ourselves what it is and why it is so important for us to push back against. So without further ado, here is our friend Alexandra Dysanktis. Alexandra, thank you so much for joining us. So right off the back, can you just tell us what is the Women's Health Protection Act? Is it really about protecting the health of women? Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with women's health care.

Of course, this has to do with abortion, as it always does when Democrats talk about women's health. What the bill does is essentially eradicate or get rid of any. state law, pretty much any state law that regulates abortion. And so when you hear Democrats talking about codifying Roe v. Wade, something they all talked about during the presidential primary a couple years back. What they meant was the Women's Health Protection Act. And this bill, in fact, goes further than Roe, not only does it codify Roe or turn it into a statute, but it goes further than that by preventing states from passing basically any law limiting abortion. This could be informed consent laws, ultrasound requirements, even kind of gestational

age restrictions on abortion after viability. So this essentially allows for abortion or stop states from prohibiting abortion through nine months. Now, is it for any reason? I did read that there are some prohibitions or there are some stipulations that include, you know, it has to be for the health, mental health or physical health of the mother. Can you break that down? Tell us why that doesn't actually, that wouldn't actually prohibit any abortions from being performed in the second and third trimester.

Sure. So the bill would basically make it such that states cannot prohibit abortion after fetal viability unless they have what's called a maternal health exception. But they define health, Democrats define health the same way that the Supreme Court did very expansively. So this can include anything such as psychological health, financial health, familial health, just this whole logic. list of things. And that's from Doe v. Bolton. That's right. They could account for kind of maternal health.

It's not just these kind of health care emergencies that the Democrats try to pretend it is. There's all this whole host of factors that are considered. Plus, the bill would make it such that states would have to have to allow only one doctor to certify that a woman's health required this. So you could have just the abortion as to us this immense financial motivation to perform the abortion. It could be the only one certifying that a woman's health required the person.

Right. And the response to that is from Democrats. Well, that hardly ever happens. That's so rare. Why do we have to put restrictions on it anyway? As if that's even an argument for something. But it's not necessarily rare, right? No, late-term abortion is not rare at all. And it's very hard to get data on this sort of thing. But according to the best estimates we have, which come from the pro-choice Gapmacher Institute, there's somewhere around 12,000 abortions past the point of viability. And it's hard to find. know what the reasons for those are. From what I've looked at, the best information we can find, typically they're for the same reasons as early abortions. They're very rarely these kinds of health care emergencies we hear about, and in fact, are basically never something that would be medically necessary. There's more late-term abortions than there are gun homicides in the United States, and yet we're told that these are rare and only in emergencies. Right. And we're talking about second, third trimester, obviously we believe that life begins at conception. That's what science tells us, but second and third trimester, we're talking about a viable baby. That means a

baby who can live outside of the womb with or without help. We're talking about a moving, squirming, sucking, hearing, seeing, feeling baby. 12,000 times a year that baby is terminated inside the womb in very violent ways, which we'll talk about a little bit after this interview. And people say, you know, as you alluded to, that, well, no one actually wants that. It's only for emergencies. But as many OBGYNs will tell you, that actually doesn't make a lot of logical sense. If the mom's health, if the mom's actual physical health is at risk and the way to help her is to get the baby out of the womb, then you delist. that baby. The baby has to come out either way. There's no reason for as the baby has to be

delivered to kill that baby. It just doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense. And yet, I don't know, we're just told this propaganda over and over again that this really is about women's health care. Yeah, this is the most common argument that you hear from Democrats justifying late-term abortion that somehow these always happen in cases of medical emergency. And yet there's never any data to back this up. And in fact, when Republicans or pro-life lawmakers push for some kind of, at the very least, better abortion reporting mechanism so we know why women are getting abortions at this point, you know, what the circumstances are, if there are these medical emergencies, those types of policies are always opposed by the Planned Parenthoods of the world, you know, the naval pro-choice

Americas of the world, because they don't want us to find out what's going on. And so maybe they all are medical emergencies. But from the data we do have, that very much does not seem to be the case. And when we try to get better data, Democrats oppose that. And you'd think that if they were out to protect women's health, they would want to be documenting that kind of information. Yes. And again, even if it were an emergency, you get the baby out. There's no reason to kill the baby in the meantime. That just doesn't make any logical sense. Either way, you're going to deliver the baby. It's just a dead baby versus a baby that's alive. Your colleague, John McCormick, National Review, wrote about Susan Collins. And that is the most of the most of the most of the most of the

moderate Republican, you know, moderate in some ways, maybe even center left in other ways from Maine. She said this, I support codifying Roe. Unfortunately, the bill, this women's health protection act, goes way beyond that. It would severely weaken the conscience exceptions that are in the current law. Colin said, adding that she found parts of the bill's language extreme. Colin said the bill would weaken the religious freedom restoration act, which protects a person's ability to exercise their religion. She cited the pass support for the act by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Biden when he was in the Senate. So can you break this down for us? Of course, I think we probably both disagree with Susan Collins and the desire to codify Wade.

But when she says that this actually weakens conscience exceptions and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, what does she mean by that? Sure. So she's talking about basically the way in which Democrats now not only want abortion to be legal throughout pregnancy, not only to be federally funded by the U.S. taxpayer, but also performed by any doctor whenever a woman demands it, right? And so what this means is if you're a nurse, if you're a health care professional of any kind, if you're a doctor, you could be conscripted into performing abortion. And the health care or the conscience exceptions, rather, that have always been supported on a bipartisan basis are suddenly now something that are becoming a partisan issue. Democrats don't want to support this anymore, because the line has shifted from, you know, abortion as safe, legal, and rare, this kind of necessary evil, perhaps, to abortion is a social good. And so the logic that follows from that is, if you're a religious person or you have a moral objection to abortion, that's too bad. You better leave the medical profession or this might be something you end up having to participate in.

Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. on the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos.

If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. And this seems, this particular part actually seems like something that they are, that Democrats are very insistent upon including in their bills because there was similar language in the Equality Act, which also seeks to eliminate conscience rights for doctors who would be made, not all doctors, but doctors in that field could be made to perform abortions even if their, you know, conscience bids them otherwise. And so it seems like just as much an attack on life inside the womb as it is, or just as much of an attack on religious liberty as it is life inside the womb. They don't want any exceptions, any exemptions for people who might believe differently.

And yet we're hearing constantly from them that the right or the authoritarian. I mean, we were hearing constantly that the Texas law is authoritarian, that it's so bad. And yet here they are saying, look, not only do you have to do this, or be okay with this. You have to do it if you're a doctor. And also, you got to pay for it if you're a taxpayer, right? Yeah, and Democrats are always arguing, you know, pro-lifers are these theocrat. They're just trying to force their religion on everybody. You know, never mind that you can absolutely oppose abortion without being religious, right? This is killing an innocent human being. This is bad for women. You don't have to believe in God at all to think that that is wrong.

But they're always arguing this is just some kind of religious imposition on the rest of the country if you want to regulate or make abortion illegal. But in fact, they're the ones imposing this very obviously not morally neutral view on others, right? The idea that it's pregnancy discrimination of some kind not to perform an abortion if you're a doctor, that's obviously not true. And they're imposing this worldview on everybody or attempting to make it such that you can't even operate in the medical profession at all if you have some kind of conscience objection to these procedures. Yeah.

And, you know, I feel like I used to say that a lot, too, that you don't have to be religious in order to be pro-life. And it's true. Like, I definitely know agnostics, atheists who are pro-life. They recognize what this is. Even there are people who identify as Democrats and, you know, leftists who recognize, okay, there's really no moral justification for it. But, you know, I was challenged on that once, and it really made me think, what is the reason to protect any vulnerable life unless you believe that life has some kind of inherent worth. And where does inherent worth come from if we are not created? If we really are just all clumps of cells, just all clumps of matter, then why does abortion matter? Why does

anything matter? And so I almost appreciate the honesty and the recognition from the pro-abortion crowd that this does come down to, essentially, you can accept it even if you're an atheist. It does come down to the belief that life is valuable, that there is innate worth to human beings, vulnerable human beings, life inside the womb because they're made in the image of God. So in one sense, it is kind of a religious argument, but all morality is. You know, all laws come from some kind of worldview. Really, the question is not whether who's neutral and who's not, but who's right and who's not. I don't know what you think about that.

No, I agree. I think the case against abortions obviously much stronger and easier to make if you believe in God and if you believe that all human life is created in his image and likeness. And that's where our ultimate value and our worth comes from. I think there are ways in which non-believers can participate in that argument in some way through natural law, natural rights, that sort of argument. And I'm more than willing to accept them to the cause. But I do think it's a stronger argument from a religious perspective. And it really is at the end of the day, as you say, kind of the culture of life. versus the culture of death? Do we believe that all human beings are valuable for some reason and should be protected or that some can be discarded based on some rationale because the powerful are able to do so and they're too weak? Right, right. That's such a good point. Now, is there any way that this bill passes the Senate? I don't think that it will, no, given how close the split is, and Senator Manchin has typically been a pretty good vote on most pro-life issues. So I'd be surprised it if he backed this. And if it did somehow, either now or in the future, is this something that could be challenged in court? Do you see it being upheld? I don't think that it would be upheld.

I mean, I am very bad at reading the Supreme Court tea leaves. That's always a difficult thing to do. But I think what's so troubling about the law is it's not even really a federal statute legalizing this or that, right? It's a statute trying to make it such that states cannot legislate on this issue. It's just ripping the issue of abortion entirely, even more so than Roe v. Wade did, out of the hands of the American people. And I suppose it's, you know, you can respond to Congress as a voter more than you can respond to the Supreme Court. But the idea that Congress should be dictating the abortion laws in every country, I don't think is something that will fly. Yeah. Gosh, talk about authoritarian. You were recently that Americans don't really understand

Roe v. Wade. There was a poll that you referenced that said the majority of respondents said that, yes, we should uphold Roe. We don't think that it should be overturned. But then when the question was asked, well, do you think abortion should be illegal? Do you think abortion should be illegal? It was split, like pretty much 50-50. So can you break that down for us? Like, where do you think this cognitive dissonance is coming from?

Yeah, I always find these polls so fascinating. And this is something you hear a lot from abortion rights groups like Planned Parenthood and NAROL. They're always saying, oh, the American people love Roe v. Wade. you know, this is popular, seven out of ten Americans want to keep Roe. And on the one hand, you just want to say to them, okay, well, if that's true, then certainly you won't mind if we overturn Roe because the majority of Americans will ensure that you get the abortion policy that you want, right? Wait, can you break that down for us? What do you mean by if we overturn Roe, what would happen

then? Because I'm not sure everyone knows. Right. Well, this goes to your first question as well, right? If Roe v. Wade were overturned, the issue, most likely the Supreme Court would decide the issue in a way where every state would then get to set its own abortion policy. And abortion rights groups profit from this lie, frankly, that if Roby Wade were overturned, abortion would immediately become illegal everywhere, which explains why you could have a poll where, you know, 65% of people say they support Roe, but the poll is perfectly split down the middle in terms of whether voters want abortion to be legal or illegal. They don't know that Roe v. Wade makes it impossible for abortion to be illegal anywhere, even at the state level.

And they don't know that overturning Roe would make it such that states could set their own abortion policy and people could vote, which is why it's ironic when Planned Parenthood says, well, most people support Roe, but don't overturn it because then the American people won't get what they want. Yeah. Wow. It really is so much misinformation. I saw a tweet by Neyroll the other day saying, you know, why do anti-choice extremists,

which whatever, that's fine. You're right. I am against the choice of killing a child. but why do they rely on misinformation? Why do they lie on misleading language? And of course, the exact opposite is true. All pro-lifers have to do is tell the truth. Tell the truth about what abortion is.

Tell the truth about what Roe V-A does. It's not an easy position always to defend because of the onslaught of misinformation that we're fighting against, but it is a very simple truth to defend, right? No, it absolutely is. And I think the hard part, you know, the reason why we get a poll like that is that so much of the media is complicit in line to

Americans about what Roe v. Wade is. Where is the piece explaining what Roeby Wade did to abortion policy in our country? You know, where is the piece explaining from a mainstream outlet explaining to people what would actually happen if Rose overturned? It's all this kind of fearmongering and propaganda, repeating Planned Parenthood talking points. You kind of can't blame people for not knowing all the information that is kind of true. They don't know what reality is. Right. And even, you know, it's feeling. with euphemisms, even supposedly non-biased outlets and, you know, sources on social media who say that they're just kind of telling the fact about, for example, Texas's abortion law,

you can see where they stand not just by what they say, but also by what they don't say when they say terminating a pregnancy, when they refuse to say baby, when they refuse to say human being, when they refuse to say what happens in an abortion. anytime that you are on the side that has to choose euphemisms in order to make your argument palatable, I think that it's typically a good reason to double check if you are on the right side. Well, thank you. Thank you for being so clear and for always reporting on this with so much courage and so much consistency. Where can people follow you and support you?

My work can be found at National Review Online, and you can also find me on Twitter. at Zan underscore Desanctives. Awesome. Thank you so much, Alexandra. Thank you. Okay, let's talk a little bit more about this bill, some of just the absolute radicalism and craziness that's in this bill. And then just a reminder of the subject that we're talking about, the grotesqueness of the subject that we're talking about.

I think it's so important for us to remember that we're not just talking about this kind of nebulous policy issue that doesn't affect anyone. We are talking about life and death. We are talking about the killing of babies. Literally, sometimes the reality of what we are talking about when we're talking about the subject of abortion keeps me awake at night. Or I literally, I wake up in the middle of the night and I think, oh my gosh, I can't believe we're actually having a debate about this.

And I especially cannot believe that people who profess the name of Christ can't get on board with trying to make this illegal. We'll talk more about that in a second. But I want to talk about this bill because progressivism is, It's constantly tripping over itself to try to keep up with where this moral and sexual and gender revolution is going. They are constantly trying to keep up with just how radical progressivism has become. And of course, that's the nature of progressivism. There's never like an end goal of progressivism.

Of course, I believe it's very morally regressive. But it is constantly moving in a direction without any. any kind of understanding of what goal it's trying to reach or what it's trying to build. Its means is always destruction. And its end is some kind of mysterious utopia that never actually works out. Like throughout the history of the world, these kinds of revolutions, this breakdown of the family, this breakdown of morality and the understanding of right and wrong and human dignity and all of these things, it never actually ends up in the utopia that progress.

progressive think that it's going to, where people are just all happy and they're not owning any property. There's no hierarchies. There's no family unit. There's no religion. They just think John Lennon's imagined is going to manifest itself. It never actually happens. Like history shows us this, especially the 20th century. And this bill, this so-called Women's Health Protection Act, is a really good example of all of that. Now, I was surprised by this title, Women's Health Protection Act because Democrats have been pushing, especially over the past year, to remove gendered language from policy. So I would assume that they would use the word pregnant person instead of women. And just a note on that, like to deny the biological dichotomy of male and female, the reality

of male and female is to deny what it means to be human. From a Christian perspective, it's to deny what it means to be made in God's image. There is no biblical for gender identity that is separate and opposed to sex. And so this idea that we are going to do away with those categories and somehow we're going to be able to effectively obscure reality, it's not going to happen. It can't happen. Human nature, as I like to say on this podcast, is like a beach ball. You can try to push it underwater as much as you want to with all of your might. You can get the whole world to, you know, try to push that beach ball down. It's going to keep popping back up. That's what it does. And so we can try through policy, through legislation,

through manipulation of language, through bullying, through censorship to try to deny the reality of male and female. We will never be able to do it. And I do think the attempt at doing that through legislation is extremely harmful. It always leads to the erasure, never of men, but of women, which isn't a coincidence. Of course, I believe that Satan has a special hatred for women that we have seen from the Garden of Eden and continues to manifest itself now. And in this bill that even though it's titled Women's Health Protection Act, they make clear that, hey, we're not trying to be bigoted by using this antiquated term, women,

the bill says this. I'm going to include, of course, a link to the whole text of the bill in the description to this episode because I want you to be able to read it for yourself. I never want you to just take my word for it. But here's one paragraph from the bill. The terms woman and women are used in this bill to reflect the identity of the majority of people targeted and affected by restrictions on abortion services and to address squarely the targeted restrictions on abortion, which are rooted in misogyny. However, access to abortion services is critical to the health of every person capable of becoming pregnant. Did you know that there are people that are not women who are capable of becoming pregnant?

Isn't that amazing? Cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with the different gender and others who are unjustly harmed by restrictions on abortion. So these people have the audacity to say that restrictions on abortion, which save the lives of unborn girls, by the way, is rooted in misogyny. And then they go on to say, well, it's not actually. just a women's issue. This is affecting men, transgender men, which is a woman who identifies as a man. It's nonsense. It's nonsense. Like, remember, God is not a god of confusion. Like, he did not mean for us to be

burdened with this kind of chaos. In his grace, in his creativity, he made us male and female. It's very simple. That doesn't mean that there are not genetic anomalies. That doesn't mean that intersex people don't exist, but those, that's a disorder. That's an exception that does not rewrite the rule in the same way that we call human beings bipeds, even though there are some people that are born with one leg. The exception, the exemption, or not really the exemption, but the exception does not change the rule. And yet, people have given in to this kind of confusion thinking erroneously that this creates order. It doesn't. It creates destruction. It creates confusion. It creates confusion. fusion. The bill goes on to say, reproductive justice seeks to address restrictions on reproductive

health, including abortion. Again, abortion isn't reproductive health because reproduction has already happened when there is a baby inside the womb. So it really doesn't have anything to do with reproduction except for the products of reproduction, which is a human being. So restrictions on reproductive health, including abortion. The bill says that perpetuate systems of oppression. Like, they just can't even get over themselves enough to be able to say, say what the bill is actually about. Lack of bodily autonomy. Again, abortion has nothing to do with bodily autonomy.

I mean, the human being is a human being that has DNA that is independent of the mother, white supremacy, and anti-black racism. This violent legacy has manifested in policies including enslavement, rape. Okay, so anti-abortion policies, it's on par with enslavement. Now, let's think about that for a second. slavery. Black people were dehumanized. They were made to feel and they were subjected as less than human, as subhuman, as property. Babies inside the womb are called clumps of cells by the anti-abortion crowd. We're told that they don't have rights, that they don't have innate dignity, that they don't

have innate worth. And they are also objectified, abused, and demonized in the same way that slaves were. And so they're saying the opposite, though, that anti-abortion restrictions are on par with slavery, when really it's abortion that's on par with slavery. And for some reason, that's controversial to say. But the reality is that we have all kinds of instances throughout human history of people being dehumanized and the dehumanization leads to their marginalization. It leads to their victimization. It leads to their death. That's just true. And yet all this kind of double speak, all this kind of double think, all this kind of newspeak, this Orwellian nonsense is trying to flip everything that is true on its head. That's of course what Satan does. These people who

write this legislation, they can't help but breathe out lies because. they serve the father of lies. That's who, that's, that's their nature. That's what they do. And so they go on to say in this bill, experimentation on black women for sterilizations. Of course, I'm against that. Medical experimentation on low income women's reproductive systems, the forcible removal of indigenous children. Of course, I'm against all of those terrible things. But they are saying that that's the same thing somehow as anti-abortion legislation. access to equitable reproductive health care, including abortion services, has always been deficient in the United States for black indigenous and other people of color and their families. Hang on. Hang on. The violent legacy of white supremacy is ending abortion? Let's look at some numbers. According to the CDC, the abortion rate among black Americans is wildly disproportionate to their population size. In several years, including in 2017, according to the CDC, there were more abortions.

among black women than among white women, despite black women, only making up about 8% of the American population. Since 1965, 18.7 million abortions of black babies have been performed. That's an estimated 42% of the current population of black Americans compared with only 14% of the white population that's been aborted in that time frame, 15% of the current Hispanic population that's been aborted since 1965, and 15% of non-Hispanic other as described. in this report. So it seems to me that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are actually carrying out the eugenicist legacy of the Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Singer, who said in a letter that she did not want the word to get out that they wanted to do away with the black population.

It seems like these abortion providers are succeeding in carrying out that mission still today. And the authors of this legislation have the audacity to say that the people who are standing against that killing, against that mass murder that they're the white supremacist, it's projection. It's evil. It is the darkest, most wicked thing that you can think of. Late term abortion, we hear, is rare. We alluded to that with Alexandra.

It's rare. It's rare. So it's fine that this bill wants to do away with any restrictions on abortion in the last trimester. It's rare. First of all, that's a bad argument. just because something is rare, it means that there shouldn't be any restrictions on it. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which is the research arm of Planned Parenthood,

rare is more than 10,000 times a year, more than 10,000 times a year. Babies who are developed enough to be able to live outside of the womb, and again, that doesn't mean that babies who aren't able to live outside of the womb independently are less valuable. But just to speak to this talking point, that late-term abortion is rare. more than 10,000 times a year. That would be the leading cause of death for children in the United States 10,000 times a year. Babies in the second and third trimester after 25 weeks. So that's after viability are aborted.

Now let's talk about, and this is explicit. We know this. But let's talk about how that happens. What goes on in those kinds of abortions that are happening? Thousands of times a year in the United States, the Democrats refuse to. to prohibit and not only refuse to prohibit, but they refuse to allow states to prohibit that is actually being celebrated by a number of organizations. That's another false talking point that no one is pro-abortion.

That's not true. That is not true. It is something that is celebrated now among mainstream Democrats. You can be in denial all you want to. That's reality. That's reality. Go check out shout your abortion. Go check out a dozen other organizations on Instagram that talk about how abortion is great.

Read the New York Magazine article from a couple of years ago that says abortion is actually a moral good. Why don't you ask someone that works at Planned Parenthood or Nairal? Why don't you ask, Nancy Pelosi, the devout Catholic, or even Joe Biden, the devout Catholic, whether or not abortion is morally good. They probably would have a hard time actually saying it's bad, even though they say they're personally pro-life, as if that's possible to be personally pro-life and yet still against the legal right of babies to live.

Okay, I'm going to talk about what a late-term abortion is from the words of an abortionist. It's going to be graphic. But I think it's really important. It's so important. Pro-life or whether you're still trying to decide, it's really important for us to know exactly what we're talking about. Okay, so I'm going to read you some of a testimony from Leroy Carhart. And he is an abortionist. He is still performing late-term abortions.

to this day and he had to give he had to testify in court in 1997 and he was asked a series of questions about what he does for a living. So the questioner said, are there times when you don't remove the fetus intact? Carhart says, yes, sir. Can you tell me about that when that occurs? So again, we're talking about second and third trimesters. Leroy Carhart says that occurs when the tissue fragments or frequently when you rupture the membranes, an arm will spontaneously prolapse through the cervix. And of course, if you are not entirely sure about what happens in a birth, the baby has to come through the birth canal, the cervix. And so that's what he is talking about. Rupuring the membranes means like breaking the water. And so he is having to deliver this baby

that he is supposed to have already killed through abortion. He's talking about an arm popping out. So the questioner says, what do you mean? Carhart says, my normal course would be to dismember that extremity and then go back and try to make the fetus out. I might start crying. Take the fetus out either foot or skull first, whatever end I can get to first. Questioner, how do you go about dismembering that extremity? We're talking about a baby here. Carhart, just traction and rotation. This is really hard to listen to, but I think it's, I think it's necessary. Just traction and rotation, grasping the portion that you can get a hold of, which would usually be somewhere up the shaft of the exposed portion of the fetus,

pulling down on it, and then you use counter traction and rotating to dismember the shoulder or the hip or whatever it would be. Sometimes you will get one leg and you can't get the other out. Questioner, in that situation, are you, when you pull on the arm and remove it, is the fetus still alive? Carhart, yes. Questioner. Do you consider an arm, for example, to be substantial portion of the fetus?

Carhart says, yes. questioner and then what happens if you remove the arm then you try to remove the rest of the fetus carhart then i would go back and attempt to either bring the feet down or bring the skull down and some or even sometimes you bring the other arm down and remove that also and get the feet down questioner at what point is the fetus uh does the fetus die during that process carhart i don't really know i know that the fetus is alive during the process most of the time because I can see the fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound. The court, counsel for what it's worth, it is unclear to me with regards to the intact

DNA when fetal demise occurs. Questioner, okay, I will clarify that. This is dilation and extraction. And the procedure of an intact DNA where you would start foot first with the situation where the fetus is presented feet first, tell me how you're able to get the feet out first. Carhart, under ultrasound, you're, You can see the extremities. Sorry, this is so hard to read.

So Carhart says, you know what is what? You know what the foot is. You know what the arm is. You know what the skull is. By grabbing the feet and pulling down on it or by grabbing a knee and pulling down on it. Usually you can get one leg out, get the other leg out and bring the fetus out. I don't know all the controversy about rotating the fetus comes from. I don't attempt to do that, just attempting to bring out whatever is the proximal portion of the fetus.

At the time you bring out the feet in this example, is the fetus alive? Carhart says yes. And then he goes on to explain what happens. He says that he has to try to cut the cord. And then the questioner says, let's take the situation where you haven't divided the cord because you couldn't. and you have begun to remove a living fetus feet first. What happens next after you have gotten the feet removed? He says you have to bring the shoulders down,

but you can get enough of them outside. You can do this with your finger inside the uterus. And then at that point, the fetal, the base of the fetal skull is usually in the cervical canal. What do you do next? Carhart. And you can reach that. And that's where you would rupture the fetal skull to some extent and aspirate the contents out. We're talking about a brain of a baby.

living baby okay at what point in that process does fetal demise occur between between initial removal of the feet or legs and the crushing of the skull or i'm sorry the decompressing of the skull um carhart says this is 1997 so this has been going on a long time this is where i'm not sure what fetal demise is carhart says i mean i honestly have to share your concern you can remove the cranial content and the fetus will still have a heartbeat for several seconds or several minutes. So is the fetus alive? I would have to say probably, although I don't think it has any brain function, so it's brain dead at that point. So the brain death might occur when you begin suctioning out of the cranium. And then Carhart says, you know, that he believes so. That's what happens in some DNA abortions. Now, there are abortions that are

supposed to occur in the way that you ensure fetal demise is what it's called before the baby is extracted. And live action went undercover in 2013 to talk to Leroy Carhart and to see what that entails again second and third trimester abortion. So I'm going to play you a little clip of that. So you don't see a lot of women like me? Well, it's all four this week. Okay. At 26 weeks? Wow.

All right. So I'm not unusual. No, not at all. And the baby... Will come through that. It'll compress down to come through that because it's not alive. So when you say compressed down? It gets soft, like mushy.

Oh. So you push it through. So what makes the baby mushy? The fact that it's not alive for two or three days. So I'll have a dead baby in me? For three days, yeah. Will it start to decay or something? Oh.

It's like putting meat in a crock pot, okay? It doesn't get broke. But it gets softer. It doesn't get infected. Okay. So the dead baby and me is like meat in a crock pot. Pretty much. Yeah, kind of much.

All right. All right. And what was it that killed it? The injection that we do it. The first one? The second one. Oh, the second one. I mean, I've done some women.

I can't have that shot if they're alive. I mean, it just, you know, I'm sure the baby feels a needle stick if the baby feels anything, and I truly don't believe that it does at 26 weeks. For some reason, I'm not able to deliver, you'll be able to get it out. Take it out in pieces. But that at 26 weeks is very, very rare. All right. So now we know what happens in a second and third trimester abortion over 10,000 times a year.

Now, of course, you'll hear from pro-abortioners as if this makes this better that they're supposed to insure fetal demise before they extract the baby. But as we heard in that 1997 testimony that is not, that's not always, that's not always the case. And just a reminder, that combination of chemicals that's used in the needle that goes through a woman's abdomen into the heart of the baby in her womb is the same chemical combination that's used in lethal injections for convicted murderers on death row. And so I, I never understood the people who are against the death penalty for convicted murderers, but for the death penalty for babies inside the womb. I'm sorry, you're not going to tell me that you've got a monopoly on empathy and compassion

if you're on that team. According to the Center for Medical Progress, publicly available information demonstrates that the University of Pittsburgh hosts some of the most barbaric experiments carried out on aborted human infants, including scalping five-month-old aborted fetuses to stitch onto lab rats, exporting fetal kidneys across the country and killing infants delivered alive for liver harvesting, funded by U.S. taxpayers via the National Institutes of Health, and in particular Dr. Anthony Fauci's NIAID office. Local Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania abortion providers supply the aborted fetuses, while Pitt sponsors the local Planned Parenthood's operations

and what looks like in a legal quid pro quo for fetal body parts, forbidden by 42 U.S. Code 289G2 and 18 Pennsylvania Statute 3216. Pennsylvania law also makes it a felony to experiment on a fetus or to fail to provide immediate medical care, medical care to an infant born alive. Now, we already know that Planned Parenthood has been trafficking the parts of unborn babies. David Delighton uncovered that and was punished for it by Kamala Harris when she was Attorney General of California. Now, this is the same woman who a senator refused to vote yes on a bill that would simply provide, provide doctors or would make doctors provide care to infants outside of the womb who

survived abortion. And you actually, it's just amazing. Like you actually had Christians celebrate when she became vice president. Oh, because she's a woman of color. Like that is going to save her when she stands before the judgment throne of God. I mean, what a horrifying depraved, corrupt wench. I mean, same goes for every single person who supports the legal killing of children. You heard what I just described to you. There is no nuance here. Like, yes, of course. Yes, and amen, there is grace. for everyone who has had an abortion, I have talked to so many of you who are pro-life and you are some of the most passionate pro-life advocates out there. Nothing makes anyone too far off for God's rescuing power and love and grace. But once we know better, once we know what abortion is,

we cannot pretend that it's possible to call yourself pro-all-life or holistically pro-life and vote for the party that exclusively advocates for the legalized killing of babies through nine months. Yes, we can talk about different policies and practices that we can do to help moms. I posted a link the other day. There are several pregnancy centers, pro-life pregnancy centers throughout the country, but especially in the state of Texas that are overwhelmed right now since Texas's law was enforced. Praise God, who are now choosing life. And I posted a link for a few minutes of a pregnancy center that said,

hey, we're desperate and we're desperate need of baby supplies and help for moms. Can you post our Amazon link? Posted it on Twitter, posted it on Instagram. Tens of thousands of items were sent to the center. I mean, that's going to clothe babies. That's going to help moms who chose life. Praise God. This idea that pro-lifers aren't for ways to help moms and babies, babies after they're

born is a lie. It is a lie. And we do not have to talk about policies or talk about strategies to support families in crisis instead of making abortion illegal. Like there's only one side, only one party that is talking about picking one or the other. The right doesn't talk about that. We say yes and amen. Let's talk about how we can create an entire culture of life.

But yes and amen, let's make this atrocity illegal. If you believe that babies in the womb are human beings, which is not a belief, it's fact. So if you accept that fact, then there is no logical reason why that human being shouldn't have legal human rights, the most basic of which is the right to life. So if you're someone who says, you know, I'm against abortion, but let's keep it legal, you are saying that you don't believe that baby has the same right to life as people outside of the womb, and you need to be able to answer why. You're drawing the same illogical distinctions that the pro-abortion side does.

If babies in the womb are human, they're made in God's image, and therefore they have dignity, they have a worth and beautifully in the West, we are supposed to believe that that worth means your physical life is worthy of protection. That's the very least that a government can do. And honestly, like, that's why I have a hard time with some organizations like the and campaign because even though, you know, I think that their mission is sincere and their faith is sincere. I've talked to Justin Gibney on this podcast, so I feel like I can talk about this without it just seeming like I'm not allowing them to defend. themselves at the end of the day, they vote Democrat. Like, at the end of the day, they are voting

for the representatives, for the, for the legislators that's crafting the kind of policy that is enabling the kind of grotesque procedures that we just described. And I have a really hard time understanding how you can call yourself holistically pro-life and still consistently be voting for the party that not just enables it, but celebrates it. I'm sorry. I just, I don't see it. Like making abortion illegal, legally protecting the fundamental right of babies to not be murdered is the baseline for being able to call yourself pro-life. Again, we can talk about all the things that we can do to create an entire holistic

culture of life. But let's start with just the basic legal rights to live, to not be murdered in the womb. You know, how we used to talk about abortion. it was different. Like, I don't know what made me think of this the other day. Um, but I thought of, you know, the Tim McGraw song, Red Ragtop, a red ragtop. I think, yeah, I think that's what it's called. I used to listen to that, probably not even knowing what it was talking about, like when I was in high school, because there was a day when, when kids were in high school, they really weren't thinking about politics and a bunch of different issues. But, um, I listened to it

the other day and I was like, wow, this makes me sad. It's a super sad song. And he talks about you know, committing a sin. He talks about how it kind of ruined their life and ruined their relationship or hurt their life, at least, and that there was regret. And that was obviously a mainstream song, sung by a mainstream singer. And then I remembered another song that was about abortion, Ben Folds. I used to be a huge Ben Folds fan, went to his concert and all of that, even though, you know, he definitely is not producing content that has God glorifying. But this song, Brick, I've heard it described as like the happiest sounding song with the saddest lyrics. Like it's got a very happy melody, but it's a very sad and heavy song.

And it talks about him and his girlfriend going to get an abortion and how she ended up. You know, they said that they were going to be fine, but she ended up not being okay. She ended up, we don't know the details, but she wasn't all right. And they had to confess the fact that they had lied and that they had covered this up. And, you know, this was in the 90s when these songs were coming out. And I can just see how culture has shifted so much to saying, okay, you know, abortion should be safe, legal and rare, which I'm not saying I agree with that. But it was understood that this was a moral travesty that, okay, no one, no one wants this to now where we are, it being so celebrated, at least by the radicals in the Democratic Party. I don't think that that callousness describes the majority. of people who identify as Democrats. I really don't. I don't think that that callousness and that celebration characterizes most of the country.

I think it's probably a very small percentage. And yet, there is an entire political party that supports it. I mean, when anti-shame is like our first priority, when we are so afraid of people feeling bad for their choices, when we're so afraid of stigma and we say that, oh, nothing should be shameful, nothing should, should be stigmatized. Every choice, every immoral choice has to be celebrated. Then we create this very morally confusing and honestly devastating and lost society. I'm not saying that we should drown people in shame who have had abortions. No, far from that. But we should be very clear in what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is evil. Abortion is evil. The abortion industry

is evil. We should be doing whatever we can to make sure that it is as illegal as possible. We want better for babies. We want better for women. We want better for society. And yes, we come alongside these vulnerable people and we help them absolutely however we can. But let's start in the womb. Let's start with that basic right to life. I can't even imagine that we're living in a country where someone like Leroy Carhart is not only allowed to be a free person and not go to jail, but it's actually celebrated, unfortunately, in his industry. I want to change that. I want to do whatever we can to fight for those babies, to fight for those potential victims,

and to fight for moms who, like I said, they deserve so much better. All right. Tomorrow, we are finally going to talk about the subject that you guys have been asking me to talk about for a long time. We're going to talk with the head of an organization Exodus cry who is doing so much good work. They are helping victims of sex trafficking. They are raising awareness about exploitation. So we're going to talk about the problem of porn and the access that unfortunately kids have to that. It's going to be a really good conversation.

And I think you're going to feel inspired to not just know about that subject, but also to do something about it. So I'm excited about that. Remember, Tuesday, next Tuesday, it's going to be a really awesome fun episode. it is going to be our 500th episode. We're going to be doing a lot of different things. One thing that we're going to be doing, though, is taking voicemails from you guys. And you're going to, if you want to leave a voicemail saying what relatable has meant to you,

if there have been, if your mind has changed at all on anything, I definitely want to hear about that. And the voicemail number, the Skype number for you guys to call to leave a voicemail is 682-503-1369. So call us. Tell us why Relatable has meant something to you. Tell us if anything has changed to your mind. And we will be excited to hear about that and play some of those on Tuesday. I'm super excited. All right. I'll see you guys back here tomorrow. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe

is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the new news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts.

I hope you'll join us.