Tangle - INTERVIEW: Texas Right to Life's John Seago

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

John Seago is the legislative director of Texas Right to Live, the group that recently helped shepherd Texas’s anti-abortion law into existence. We sat down for a wide-ranging, 45-minute discussion about the bill, why it was crafted the way it was, and some of his thoughts about the ethical nuances of the pro-life position.Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, who conducted this interview. The transcript was edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and reasonable debate without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we have a very interesting guest, a man named John Segoe, Isaac Saul. And on today's episode, we have a very interesting guest, a man named John Sego, who is the legislative director for Texas Right to Live, the group that recently helped shepherd Texas's anti-abortion law into existence. John, thank you so much for joining us today.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. So before we jump in, I think there are some basics to get to. And one of them is just what you do, what your role is at Texas Right to Life, and how some basics to get to. And one of them is just, you know, what you do, what your role is at Texas Right to Life and how you got into this work. Yeah. So I serve as the legislative director for Texas Right to Life. We're the largest pro-life organization here in the state. And I run our legislative department that has five kind of lobbyists and researchers. And we kind of work with elected officials and government agencies to pass pro-life legislation and pro-life policies. During our legislative session, we're in the Capitol every day meeting with elected officials

and their staff, you know, officials and their staff, testifying on legislation, testifying against legislation. That's one of the most important things we do, is stop bad ideas that are moving through the system. And then whenever we're not in session, we're dealing with lawsuits. We have a strong patient advocacy department at our organization that my team helps with. And we research and write, we actually write policies and proposals to give to the legislature. So it kind of changes depending on what season we're coming out of our legislative session. And so we're kind of kicking into that research and writing phase now, which is more enjoyable than the session.

Yeah, I believe it. So, you know, I'm curious just about you personally. I mean, I saw on your Twitter bio, which caught my eye, you described yourself as a reformed Protestant Christian. I'm curious, I mean, how did you get in this kind of work? What was your motivation to get into sort of the anti-abortion movement? Is it a religious background into sort of the anti-abortion movement? Is it a religious background that sort of motivated that? I have a religious background. My dad's a pastor. I grew

up as a pastor's kid. If your audience knows the significance of that, we have a bad reputation. I grew up in the church. I'm still a Christian and that shapes a lot of my perspective and a lot of my ethics. However, I started studying philosophy in high school and was really interested in ethics and how do we come up with the norms and laws that, you know, we agree to shape our society with. And so I was kind of studying philosophy going down that route. And I kind of came into contact with Texas Right to Life and offered just like, I wanted to find out what they did. And I wanted to find out how they lobbied and made it, you know, what that was all about. And so I shadowed them when they were working in the legislative session and two of the kind of two of our leaders, they were working in the Capitol and I followed them and really just was astounded at how dangerous the legislature could be and how these elected officials were

actually debating really deep philosophical things about human flourishing and human nature when they made a policy recommendation or argument. Yet these elected officials depended on others to kind of give them that content, give them the policy specifics. And these elected officials were out there, and I kind of saw like they were kind of out there floating without any tie to good moral arguments or a good moral vision that these policies came out of. And that's where Texas Right to Life was kind of supplying that for a couple of these elected officials, where here's the arguments of why this is good for pregnant women. Here's the arguments for why we oppose something like embryonic stem cell research. And they knew all the philosophy and the ethics,

but these elected officials didn't. So I was really captivated by that missing piece in our system, that we would have these politicians who are not coming up with these bills on their own, not coming up with their arguments and their talking points on their own, but really dependent on lobbyists and nonprofits. And so I volunteered for Texas Right to Life to help them do that. My first project was to help the organization compare what pro-life laws Texas had compared to other states and just saw how we matched up whenever it comes to supporting pregnant women and decreasing elect abortions and just fell in love with it. I kind of saw that this was these bioethics issues are kind of the intersection of philosophy and our daily lives. And so I volunteered and worked with them as much as possible and then started working full time with them in 2011. So I'm curious to just jump into this law that is obviously the reason we're talking

and why you guys have been in the news so much, which is SB8. I've written about the bill a couple of times in my newsletter. And so I don't know that we have to totally rehash all the details here, but I'll just show my cards, I guess, and say that one of the reasons

I'm interested in speaking with you is because I fall in the pro-choice camp. And when I read about this bill, my sort of gut reaction was honestly that I found it a little bit repugnant. I mean, I didn't like how it seemed to deputize citizens. And, you know, I thought that calling it a, you know, a bounty on people who participated in abortions struck me as appropriate. And I've been reading and consuming a lot of news since then and trying to sort of be skeptical of my own views and look inward. And now here I have a guy who participated in helping craft this bill. And so I'm so fascinated just to hear from you. I mean, why construct it this way? What were you guys trying to accomplish with the way the bill was framed? You know, my read on it and

what I sort of told some of my readers was it struck me like it was hoping to avoid enforcement, you know, under Roe v. Wade, which it seems like you guys did successfully. I don't know that that's the whole story, though. And I'd love to hear from you about, you know, how this bill came to be the way it is. Yeah, the Senate Bill 8 definitely did not come out of a vacuum. There are some trends whenever it comes to pro-life legislation and some developments that really led us to kind of this specific approach. One of the most frustrating things for the pro-life movement has been when you get to law enforcement and whenever you get to the courts, how judicial norms are just thrown out the window. All you have to do is read the Hellerstedt opinion to see that the courts, even the Supreme Court, really

kind of suspends all rules when they get to this issue of abortion. That's also happening on the law enforcement side. We have district attorneys and attorneys general that do not enforce the law. Back in October, Washington Post published a letter from hundreds of district attorneys and attorneys general around the country saying they refuse to enforce pro-life laws. So they are saying even if Roe is overturned, they will not enforce any legislation that restricts abortion or regulates abortion. It's complete lawlessness. I mean, you've got these people who were elected in Texas. We elect our district attorneys to enforce the law.

And they're saying it doesn't matter if it's a legitimate policy. It doesn't matter if it's clearly constitutional. We're not going to do it. That has been a problem for the pro-life movement for years, that we collect data or we collect information about a practitioner who's breaking the law, and we turn it over to our district attorney, and the rules go out the window. And because it is a politically sensitive issue, and that district attorney runs on a pro-life platform, they don't investigate or they investigate and dismiss. We have a long history of that. So that's been really frustrating for the pro-life movement for the last decade. What we started doing is adding civil liability to all of our bills. So Texas

Right to Life, we would add civil liability to every bill we filed. Usually it gets stripped out in the legislative process. Republicans, especially here in Texas, are very focused on lawsuit reform, making sure we're not opening up certain areas of the economy to frivolous lawsuits. And so usually it gets stripped out. But you can see in our chapter, in our code, health and safety code, chapter 171, where all of our abortion legislation is, you can see civil liabilities in there on several different things. Whenever that letter came out in October, we kind of figured out, okay, this solidifies what we've thought about district attorneys, but things are getting worse. If

they're going to be that blatant about it, there were four district attorneys from Texas on that letter. And so we thought about, okay, if the most effective way to get a pro-life policy enforced is not slapping a higher criminal penalty on it it is it is to enable civil liability and then the other part the second part so that's the first one the second part is just federal judges uh even if a bill we you know we pass a law that we think we can win in court, it gets enjoined by these district judges, federal district judges who are very politically motivated. And we can win the case. Being in the Fifth Circuit, we can eventually get a good ruling. But we've had these judges who will give an injunction against any pro-life law off the bat. That was the case

with the dismemberment abortion ban that we passed in 2017. It was upheld by the Fifth Circuit. It's being enforced now today in Texas, and it has a criminal penalty on it. But it was up in the judicial system back and forth for four years. So that's a legitimate act of the legislature, passed a piece of legislation. That's controversial a legitimate act of the legislature, passed a piece of legislation that's controversial, but still, it's built on a state interest. And you have four years where because a judge, you know, enjoined it right off the bat, it wasn't being enforced. So with those two things, we were motivated to look at a different route than the typical back and forth in the judicial system, federal

judicial system, and fully relying on district attorneys to do the job of enforcing the bill. And that's how we came up with Senate Bill. No, that was one of those factors that led to Senate Bill 8, where we don't have criminal penalties. We don't have administrative penalties. You can't lose your license. In fact, we prohibit any government official from enforcing the bill and allow for private citizens to bring suits. I mean, that's not new. We do that in other public policy areas. It's interesting. It's called bounty hunting now when stopping Medicaid fraud is not called bounty hunting. And you can actually make a lot more money by finding somebody guilty of Medicaid fraud. So those are kind of some of the factors that led to the unique provisions in Senate Bill 8. Got it. And so, I mean, obviously,

that element of the bill is something that I think drew maybe the most criticism from the skeptics of this and the pro-choice movement. I mean, I'm curious for you, reading some of the reactions to this, seeing people sort of understand the bill as being an invitation for maybe these frivolous lawsuits or people coming for, you know, whatever, the Uber driver who took somebody to an abortion clinic, you know, has any of that criticism giving you guys pause? I mean, do you see the validity to some of those critics? Do you think that the bills being taken out of context are overblown or that element of it is being, you know, framed in a way that's unfair? I mean, what's been your reaction to that

element of the criticism that's been out there? Yeah, I mean, a lot of this criticism is entirely baseless. And it's very frustrating to see. Because take the Uber example, the Uber driver, courts deal with this all the time. I mean, there's kind of the, maybe it's not understanding how the judicial system works, but there's kind of this distrust or this kind of undermining a judge's ability to have good judgment of what is aiding and abetting and what's not. I mean, if you hire an Uber right now to take you to the bank and you go in there and you rob the bank, well, how would a judge treat that Uber driver in that case? Obviously, you didn't tell the Uber driver you were going to go commit an illegal activity,

right? So a judge has discretion to make these determinations and he does it, they do it every day. And so I think some of this is just mischaracterizing the law. Aiding and abetting is a defined legal, you know, it's a defined legal criteria. It's in Texas law and judges deal with it. It's not new. We didn't create that. And so I think a lot of this rhetoric is overblown and it's baseless because we actually look at the end of the day, anybody who tries to bring one of these suits is going to have to stand in front of a judge and convince them that, you know, one, a violation did occur, two, there's credible evidence to get there. And then three, you know, if there were any individuals who intentionally materially assisted in that illegal activity, you know, what were they

guilty of aiding and abetting, but judges weigh that all the time, determining culpability levels of culpability for people involved in illegal activity. So I really think it's unfortunate that that's been the rhetoric around this. But, you know, that's just kind of what has taken off. And, you know, but again, this is not unique. You know, there are other public policy areas, environmental regulations, for example, we, we kind of use pop public policy to enable individuals to go monitor an industry that they would have a better perspective on making sure that industry is following government regulations. And so kind of civil, you know,

private causes of action, that's not a new, new invention. I think aside from this, That's not a new invention. I think aside from this, the criticisms around the, you know, the quote unquote bounty system or whatever that got traction, probably the second most common criticism that I saw in reaction to this bill was that there was no provision or carve out for victims of rape or sexual assault who became pregnant or that it seemingly wasn't addressed directly in the legislation. Can you speak to that a little bit? Is that true? How did the bill address that? How does the bill address that? What's that look like in the legislation that you guys brought forward? Yeah. So the bill does say that if you commit sexual assault,

does say that if you commit sexual assault, you, yeah, you are not, you don't have standing to sue anyone if an abortion is pursued after that crime. So it doesn't, you know, there have been some mischaracterizations about that. It does not have an exception that you can, that a woman is allowed, or sorry, an abortionist is allowed to perform an abortion on a victim of rape or incest after, you know, there's a heartbeat detected. That's, you know, to have that exception would be intellectually contradictory. I mean, it would be, it would really be violating the very principles that are motivating this bill. And it would be, it also would hurt the legal case for this because we're acting on a state interest to protect innocent human life. And we're acting in the state interest that abortion, the state conviction that abortion is not good for women. It doesn't lead to the flourishing of society. And so when you talk

about exceptions, that kind of contradicts these real basic moral principles that are motivating this law. And whenever you have those exceptions in court, the court uses it against the state to say the state doesn't obviously have a compelling state interest in this case because they've made exceptions to their state interest. So for both of those reasons, I mean, there's a moral reason and a legal reason that victims of sexual assault are protected, are treated the same as other individuals under the Heartbeat Act, except for those lawsuits. An individual who's committed sexual assault cannot bring one of these cases against an abortionist or someone aiding or abetting. I mean, I know this sort of crosses a little bit from the legal space into the

bioethical space, but obviously that's an area that you have some expertise and background. I mean, I'm curious just to flesh that out a little bit, the moral motivations, the ethical motivations for this bill being violated by an exception for someone who's the victim of rape or incest. Because like you said, I mean, the case that you guys are making is that abortions are not good for women. But I think a lot of people who are listening to this conversation would probably be pretty outraged at the prospect that, you know, a woman can't have an abortion after being raped and that, you know, the state's telling her that they know whether the decision around that abortion is good for her or not. I mean,

what is the ethical case? Because for me too, personally, I mean, that's something that I really struggle to see. I mean, I find it hard to understand how the state would have a better understanding or idea of what is good for a woman who's the victim of a sexual assault in an instance where she gets pregnant? Yeah. I mean, the primary moral principle is about the value and dignity of human life. So the primary principle, motivating moral principle, is that it is unethical to introduce the cause of another human being's death. So we don't have that authority. And so we don't, you know, for society to work to protect vulnerable classes of individuals that would be prey to injustices, you know, we have to make sure our laws reflect that moral imperative that, you know, we do not introduce the cause of the death of

another individual. So that is, that's the primary moral principle. Unborn children are a vulnerable population. They're a smaller, they're a weaker, you know, class of individual human beings. They don't have a voice. They are easily overlooked. And usually the violence that ends their life is done, obviously, in private. So any, any model of justice, you know, Aristotelian, Rawlsian, whatever you want to look at, it fits that definition of a bigger, stronger party using violence to take the life of a smaller, weaker party. violence to take the life of a smaller, weaker party. That's the primary moral principle that we're acting on. You know, embryologist, marine conduct has some great work explaining what's happening in those first few moments of human life. And she's a great embryologist that explains

that at the sperm egg fusion before the embryo is even implanted in the uterine wall, at that very moment, that's less than a second of sperm egg fusion, the egg actually begins to act differently. Chemically, behaviorally, and structurally begins to act differently than an egg. It becomes an organism, self-directed, and it begins to grow. So there's some really interesting science about why we think this moral principle applies to embryos and single-cell embryos. It doesn't stay single-cell for very long, but at that moment of sperm egg fusion. So there's not scientific confusion around this. We have a moral principle about human beings and we have a scientific definition of what is a human being. You put

those together and then we have, obviously we believe elective abortion is unethical. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney Plus. That's the primary motivation. The secondary moral principle about what is best for women, yeah, sure, that can be argued about.

We can discuss who has the authority to make that determination, but that's a secondary issue. We have a moral obligation primarily to protect innocent human life, just like a state interest in protecting infanticide. You have a single mother and it's very difficult for her to raise her two-year-old. No one's defending that she has the rights to take the life of that two-year-old for what is best for her. Now, do I think committing infanticide, homicide of an infant or a toddler is in her best interest? No, I don't think that's in her best interest either. But the primary motivation is being consistent, that principle about what we believe in

human life. Well, I'm curious, I mean, I guess that that kind of begs the question, then, you know, about that consistency and the moral consistency of why not make this bill prohibition on abortion after the moment of conception? I mean, why six weeks then? Excellent. Yeah. So so this is the difference So this is the difference between ethical and moral clarity and legislative prudence and legal prudence. So politically, we have to be prudent. We live in the shadow of Roe v. Wade. We have a legislature that to pass a bill, we have to have a certain amount of votes. And so passing incremental know, passing incremental bills that do, you know, do restore some justice, that's not a compromise of your principles,

that's politically prudent. And the alternative being nothing passing a bill that banned every single abortion tomorrow is not legally prudent. It's not politically prudent. I don't know if there would even be the votes for that in one of our chambers. But that doesn't compromise punish women in the sense that they're not the ones being held, you know, liable civilly. I think obviously there's an argument that women are being punished or restricted in some way, but you're targeting the abortionists, the people performing the abortion. So again, I think, you know, I'm hearing you speak now. I'm struck by that a bit. I remembered in an interview you did with The Atlantic, you were asked a question about this and you said, you know, is it ethical to penalize women seeking abortion? We have categorically argued that women need to

be treated differently than abortionists. Even with civil liability, we say that women cannot be defendants. That's not the goal. So to me, I'm hearing two things. On the one hand, you guys are arguing that any abortion after the moment of conception is this taking of a human life, this defenseless soul, but also that a woman who might want this abortion or go get this abortion performed should not be punished. So again, I'm left with this question of, I mean, is the answer the same? Is that another politically, legally prudent decision that you guys are making? I mean, why not punish the women for getting an abortion if the belief,

the fundamental belief is that these women are opting to, you know, kill an unborn child? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a great question. So no, it's not political prudence. It's kind of ethical. Our position on this is ethical. Now, there's a ton of politicians who they are motivated by the political prudent aspect of it. They don't want to be, you know, primary or rather facing a general election where that's on a, you know, postcard against them. But from our standpoint, our position on this is an ethical one. We make ethical distinctions about individuals' culpability related to a death. I mean, think of an individual who is suffering

and physical pain and asks a doctor to end their life. Well, asking for that is not as unethical as the doctor doing it, right? So there are different levels of culpability. Being in a car whenever someone runs off the road and hits someone at a sidewalk is different than driving the car. Even being in the car and encouraging the doctor to do it is treated differently ethically and legally. So our law, our criminal code reflects these different grades and these different levels of accountability or culpability. And we think ethically that's appropriate. With the woman, we have to think of the context that a woman is seeking abortion, maybe like a suffering patient asking for a doctor to end

their life. What are the circumstances that have led them to that, to request that illegal activity or that unethical activity? That is not solely the woman's fault. There are circumstances that are outside of her control that have led her to believe this is the best decision for her. We have 40 years of our Supreme Court, the highest court in our country, saying that this is not just allowed, this is a constitutional right that's at the center of your personal identity and future. I mean, reading that quote from Casey is just phenomenally broad about how important this is. So we have our highest court telling our society for decades that this is necessary for you to compete socially, to compete economically, for you to finish your education. And now I don't think it's ethical for us, for us to turn around and to prosecute a woman who believes us, who has believed society that has lied to her for decades and decades. So I think it's unethical for us to treat them the same. The law also has kind of provisions about intentionality and knowledge.

kind of provisions about intentionality and knowledge. What did you know? You driving your best friend to the bank, he asked you to drive him to the bank, you drive him to the bank and he robs the bank, but you didn't know he was going to do that. Your culpability is different than somebody who recruited him to do that, right? So the knowledge is important as well. And ethically, we don't think our society is in a place where, you know, women should be treated at the same culpability level as the individual who's making money off of the procedure, who advertises it, who, you know, kind of promotes it as what's in her best interest themselves, we think those individuals are easier and more directly to prosecute. I'm conscious of the fact that we're, you know, two men having this conversation about the societal pressures on women to have an abortion

or to go, you know, seek out the termination of a pregnancy. But I mean, isn't there an element of that, though, that's like, you know, you are adopting the position that the state knows better than these women do, that you're, you know, that you're taking away an element of choice for the women. I think, you know, that as someone with some pro-choice for the women. I think, you know, that as, as someone with some pro-choice beliefs is a really hard thing for me to get past. I mean, I, I oppose all sorts of, you know, prohibitions and restrictions on choice from the government that I think are also sort of, you know, embedded in a lot of modern conservative culture. Uh, and, and hearing you describe it, that like, you know, it's these women who have been impacted

by the societal pressure to believe that they need an abortion to have economic freedom or whatever, I mean, there's sort of this presumption that the women don't know any better, that they can't make that decision for themselves. And that is how this bill feels to me in some ways. And I don't know, I don't know how to square that. I don't know how that can fit into the position that you guys are holding. Well, this is what law does,

though. Law takes choices out of the hands of individuals. I don't have a choice of whether I'm a parent or not right now, right? I have two children and the law has taken choices off the table that I could into their life to make my life more convenient. Right. So the law does prohibit individuals, especially when it comes to protecting others. Right. I don't have absolute freedom. I don't have absolute autonomy, even in medical care for myself. I don't I can't go and try every experimental drug that I want to deal with chronic pain or something like that. I don't. I'm limited by laws. That's just the reality. And so I don't think what you're advocating for, I mean, you can't possibly be advocating for absolute autonomy. That's not

a society of order. So we do that. And especially whenever another's life or another's health is in jeopardy. And that's what is going on here. So if it was just a choice about the woman's body that doesn't affect another individual human being that science confirms is its own self-directed organism that, you know, and us putting in the ethics of that has moral worth, then you're absolutely right. That would be an inappropriate use of the government to legislate someone's body. But the reality is, biologically, we're talking about two bodies.

We're talking about an entirely different human being. In society, whenever you have someone who is more vulnerable, we give those classes more protection. Think of the ADA, the Americans with Disability Act. We put in law. Because these individuals are more dependent upon us, we give them more protection. But that's the opposite of what the morality argument is in abortion. Abortion is if you're more dependent on your mother before viability, you get less legal protection. Once you hit that stage of viability, then states can start protecting you. That's completely backwards from our logic, our moral logic that we use in every other area of law.

what it means to be human just came out last year. Professor Sneed argues this, that to have these public bioethics debates, we need to look at what it means to be human, specifically to be in a body, a physical body. And the modern idea, especially this idea of autonomy, absolute autonomy, really ignores what it means to be human. At our core, we're dependent on others. And that means that we have obligations that we didn't sign up for, for others. Okay, so there's a bigger vision of what it means to be human. And unfortunately, our society has shaped it where we're saying absolute autonomy is what is what we deserve. But none of us have that. And that doesn't lead to human flourishing. That's not actually a reality. I don't have that. And in that, and I also think, I mean, there's some, once you look at it in that perspective, there are other questions involved, like the responsibility

of the male involved, the responsibility of the unborn child's father. Legally, we've completely ignored him. And we've let him off the hook because we framed this as a choice, a fully autonomous choice. He is the one that is out of the picture and he shouldn't be. A truly moral vision of how to handle this would be to say, yes, the consequences of this pregnancy should not be asymmetrical, all of the consequence on the woman. We completely agree with that. But by framing this as a question of autonomy, we've kind of cut ourselves off from even looking at these types of things, which we don't in other areas, kind of like requiring fathers to pay, to have some kind of economic accountability to their partners. I mean,

we do this in other areas. But in abortion, it's been framed in such a way that it leads to this very asymmetrical consequence. I completely agree with that. Yeah, I mean, I think that that certainly something that comes to mind for me is kind of the disparity in how a pregnancy impacts a woman versus how it impacts a man. And, you know, how that inherently, to me, from an ethical and moral perspective, should also change the way that we, you know, who has the power in making these decisions, which I think is, you know, for me, it kind of strikes me as a pro-choice argument. but we could do this. I mean, this stuff's fascinating. We could do it all day, but you just sort of opened the door to a segue to another question

that I wanted to be sure I asked you. I mentioned at the top of the show or before we came on the air that I gave some readers an opportunity to submit questions. And there was a certain genre of question that came through in my newsletter today that I think was probably more prominent than anything else. One reader, I'm going to quote their question directly because I think it was very representative of this specific genre. They asked, when will you advocate for policies that support all these children being born into Texas? Policies like universal kindergarten, mandatory parental leave for employers? Will the state be picking up the hospital bill for pregnant women that would otherwise choose an abortion, which they will be denied access to? And I think this question sort

of encapsulates the genre of question that I'm talking about, which is, you know, if the state is trying to be truly pro-life or if your organization wants to be truly pro-life, you know, why aren't you also advocating or are you also advocating for these laws that is trying to be truly pro-life or if your organization wants to be truly pro-life, why aren't you also advocating or are you also advocating for these laws that will objectively benefit newborn children or women and instances like that? Yeah. Yeah. So you have a massive injustice that has to be addressed first. So clearly, that's not an excuse that the system is not perfect, cannot be an excuse to ignore an injustice. I mean, I think your audience would approach that whenever looking at the issue of racism, there's a lot of systemic issues in racism, but we focus on the most immediate of deaths, right? How do we actually address people dying at the hand of our law enforcement? Like in public policy,

you triage, right? We have 53,000 elective abortions in Texas every year. Okay. So we can't ignore that injustice while there are other injustices that need to be addressed. So that, it can't be an excuse not to look at abortion. You know, look at the numbers of gun violence in Texas versus abortions. It's 53 times more in, you know, on elective abortion. So just doing some public policy triage, we can't ignore abortion. But we also advocate for these other things that lead to a flourishing society that values innocent human life. We don't ignore those other issues.

to a flourishing society that values innocent human life. We don't ignore those other issues. We are, you know, we're the leader in our patients' rights. Texas has one of the worst patients' rights laws in the country. We have a patients' rights advocacy department that actually helps families when they have a disagreement at the hospital. These are another vulnerable population. We work on expanding medical access for pregnant women. Like they did this session, they expanded the coverage up to six months after birth. We were advocating for one year after giving birth. We've expanded women's healthcare, half a billion dollars in this last budget. We expanded social services for pregnant women and expecting families of $100 million. So I understand the sentiment of the question. And unfortunately, it's not really reflective of the reality.

There are public policies on the table that a Republican legislature is not going to entertain, like certain expansion of certain health programs. But the pro-life movement has been there. The pro-life movement doesn't just advocate for these things in the Capitol, which we do. They also personally invest in social service programs like pregnancy centers around the country, at personal sacrifice, economic sacrifice, starting these nonprofits that are intended to be there for women before and after this abortion decision. Even women who decide to get an abortion benefit from these social services from pregnancy centers. So I would argue, yes, there is more that we need to do. But this is

one of the areas where the two sides really don't talk to one another. They just, you know, accuse the others. I would argue that the pro-life movement needs to do more. But there is a lot of evidence that they're doing a lot and that they're seeking to live up to that moral vision for society. society. But yeah, I mean, nobody disagrees that we need to do better for these families that are struggling. We have to. However, we can't ignore a big injustice in the meantime. It's interesting. I mean, one of the questions that I came out of this whole episode of passing this bill in Texas for me was about the Republicans in the state legislature and their commitment to the pro-life movement. I mean, I, you know, I'm a political reporter, you talk to a lot of people off the record. One of the themes that comes up nationally that I hear is that there are a lot of Republicans who are sort of, you know, pro-life during election season, but not necessarily when the actual vote comes down. I'm curious, I mean, what's your read

on that in Texas? Is that how you see some of the politicians in this arena that they are, you know, sort of posturing as pro-life in order to, you know, conserve their vote and keep their vote on the right because they know this is an issue that matters to a lot of Republicans? Because, you know, there does seem to be some really inherent contradictions in how, you know, the Republican side of the legislature is legislating on this specific issue on how to treat the unborn and how to treat children. Yeah, I mean, you've got you've got politicians who are not genuine and all all we have is their vote on the floor. But you have a lot of elected officials that are very genuine in their beliefs. A lot of it goes down to that pro-life vision of what is best for society. is best for society. And there are fundamental differences about what they think is best and leads to individual flourishing. So I don't know if you have something specific that you're thinking

of a contradiction. But yeah, I mean, the elected officials, they're politicians, they got to get a vote at the end of the day. And right now, the Republican Party is the only party that's embracing an anti-abortion stance. And there have been many pro-lifers who were in the Democrat Party for the last five years have been kicked out of the party, but no longer have a space because the Democrat Party is now advocating for taxpayer funding of abortion up until birth. I mean, this is amazing. The fact that President Biden switched his position on the Hyde Amendment is really significant. After you look at his entire career saying we shouldn't, he's for abortion access, but he doesn't believe that federal dollars should be

paying for it. He's reversed that after decades and decades of openly defending it and letters and speeches. I mean, that's why the Democrat Party, you know, and personally, you know, we in very many policy debates, me and my wife, we feel homeless, because we do agree with the Democrat, we think that the Democrat platform lives up to the pro-life vision in certain areas more than the Republican. But when you have a party that is so hostile to our view of abortion and patients' rights, then there's no home for us there. So I think that's part of it as well, is if there was a party that would fully embrace the pro-life vision that was anti-abortion and was pro-human flourishing in these other areas that your, you know, your audience is interested in, that would be a more comfortable political party to affiliate with. But right now, like I, you know, the Republican Party is the only, the only date

we have to the dance, so to speak. Yeah, I mean, I actually have a lot of readers and listeners who are pro-life Democrats who sort of have written in and reached out to me, you know, with expressing their frustrations about a sort of sense of political homelessness as well. I mean, I guess when I think of the contradictions, I'm sort of talking back to the questions from before about, you know, expanding healthcare, expanding maternity leave. I think capital punishment might be an interesting, you know, ethical conversation, the difference between capital punishment and abortion. So, I mean, that's, we could probably do a separate podcast on all of that. But I guess sort of a closing thought, closing question, looking ahead, you know, one of the things that's come out recently in the news in the last few days

is this Texas doctor, Alan Braid, I'm sure you're familiar with, who penned this piece in the Washington Post, basically admitting to and telling the world that he has violated the new abortion law in Texas. I was reading and referencing the newsletter, a pretty fascinating story in the Texas Tribune about, so far it sounds like, last I checked, there were these two lawsuits being brought forward against him. Both of them seem to be from people who were not members of the pro-life movement. One was intentionally filing the lawsuit in hopes of, you know, having a ruling on the SB8 that it was unconstitutional. And the other basically said he wanted $10,000 or the law to be, you know, abolished. And so he viewed it as a win-win. Are you guys going to bring charges

against Alan Braid? How does this impact where you are? What's the plan? What happens now? I mean, so we have somebody who's saying, yes, I broke the law and sort of seems to be begging for confrontation in the courts. I'm curious what the play is for you guys now. I'm curious what the play is for you guys now. Yeah, no, that's exactly what he's doing. It's a legal stunt. And we're very dubious about this approach. Dr. Bray does not admit to performing an illegal abortion in that op-ed.

When you actually read what he writes, there is only one sentence. There's a lot of talking about why he's an abortionist. There's a lot of talking about why he doesn't like the bill. There's only one sentence that would be presented as evidence that he broke the law. He mischaracterizes the law as a limit-based law saying like no abortions after six weeks. The bill is not structured like that. It requires you to do a series of things. And if you hear the heartbeat at the end of that series of requirements, and then you perform the abortion, that's illegal. He doesn't admit to doing that. And so we don't believe that he's broken the law.

All we think he's doing is posturing to get lawsuits against him. There are 16 lawsuits filed right now against the bill, the law itself, the Texas heartbeat act or filed against us pro lifers. There's two lawsuits filed against him and they're frivolous lawsuits. They're going to be thrown out. They're not active controversies between two parties. Those are going to get thrown out. So the abortion industry in Texas is getting very desperate for legal avenues to make their constitutional arguments. They've failed in all of these other 16 cases. And that's clearly what this op-ed was about, was to get set out as bait for us to sue him, when in reality, we don't believe he actually broke the law based on the vague terms and mischaracterizations of the law that he uses.

But he's clearly just looking for another avenue to make his constitutional arguments. And we're looking into it, but all the things that we've been able to come up with, it does not seem as if this is a credible evidence to bring into a court. Understood. John Sego, thank you so much for the time. I know this is not an interview with Home Court Advantage, so I appreciate you sitting down and talking about this bill and what you guys are up to. We'll certainly be keeping an eye on it and continue to cover the story. And I hope we can keep in touch and make sure some of your perspectives are represented because I know my own personal biases aside,

I'm striving to facilitate some more conversations across the aisle and, and all that good stuff. So I appreciate you sitting down and taking the time with us today. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the conversation. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75.

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