The Daily Signal - #442: Born at 29 Weeks, This Young American Talks About Late-Term Abortions

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

Zach Mettler was apparently in quite a rush to see the world--he was born unexpectedly when he was just 29 weeks old, and a mere two pounds. The recent college graduate and Heritage Foundation intern shares how that shaped his views on abortion. Plus: We analyze a new video on the Green New Deal by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.We also cover these stories:•Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a big change for US-Cuba relations.•Federal prosecutors indicted 60 doctors and pharmacists on Wednesday for illegally giving out opioid prescriptions.•The British government has announced that beginning July 15, only those 18 and older will be able to access porn onlineThe Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, April 18th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, this year, Congress can't bring itself to pass a bill banning infanticide, even though nearly 80% of Americans support that policy, according to a poll conducted by UGov. While all of that comes at a time when medical technology

is giving newborn babies a better chance at life than ever before. Zach Metler is a living testimony to that. He was born at just 29 weeks, and now interns at the Heritage Foundation. He'll join us in today's episode. Plus, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez goes off the charts woke with a new film on climate change. And if you're enjoying this podcast,

please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating on iTunes and encouraging others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a big change for U.S.-Cuba relations. Here to announce an important decision regarding the United States policy towards Cuba. In 1996, Congress passed the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, also known as Libertod. Under Title III of that act, the United States citizens who had their property confiscated by the Castro regime were given the right to file suit against those who traffic in such properties.

But those citizens' opportunities for justice have been put out of reach for more than two decades. For now more than 22 years, every president, every Secretary of State has suspended Title III in the hope that doing so would put more pressure on the Cuban regime to transition to democracy. But just as we did in regard to moving our embassy to Jerusalem, the true capital of Israel, or designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for what it is a terrorist organization, the Trump administration recognizes reality. We see clearly that the regime's repression of its own people and its unrepentant expectations, of tyranny in the region has only gotten worse because dictators perceive appeasement as weakness,

not strength. President Obama's administration gave a footsy with the Castro's junta did not deter the regime from continuing to harass and oppress the heroic ladies-in-white, a group of women dedicated to peacefully protesting the regime's human rights abuses. More broadly, the regime continues to deprive its own people of the fundamental freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association. So now, starting May 2nd, it will be legal for people to sue Cuban businesses. Well, major news on the opioid front, federal prosecutors indicted 60 doctors and pharmacists

on Wednesday for illegally giving out opioid prescriptions. Some of the doctors are accused of exchanging opioids for sex, giving opioid prescriptions to friends as favors and even unnecessarily pulling teeth in order to issue pain pills. According to the Cincinnati Inquirer, the accused are scattered across five states, an arrest have already been made in rural parts of Appalachia, a region heavily hit by the opioid crisis. Prosecutors say these illegal prescriptions put up to 32 million pain pills in the hands of patients. They say this is the biggest crackdown of its kind in U.S. history. A young woman reportedly obsessed by Columbine and who,

who had reportedly traveled from Florida to Colorado is now dead, according to the FBI Denver Twitter account. The woman, whose name I'm not using because we don't want to glorify would-be shooters, was described by the FBI as armed and dangerous. Reportedly, most public schools in the Denver area close Wednesday over concerns that she could mount an attack. Well, the Boeing 737 Max could be one step closer to hitting the skies again after an FAA panel found that a new software up and training revisions made the plane operationally suitable. That's a key milestone in returning the plane to service. Over 300 737 max planes have been grounded worldwide following two crashes that claimed over 350 lives,

one in Ethiopia last month and one in Indonesia last October. Boeing says the new software update will prevent erroneous data from triggering an anti-stall system, which has been under scrutiny following the two accidents. Well, I still don't want to be on one of those lines. The British government has announced that beginning July 15th, only those verifiably 18 and older will be able to access porn online. In a statement, Minister for Digital, Margo James, said, Adult content is currently far too easy for children to access online. The introduction of mandatory age verification is a world first,

and we've taken the time to balance privacy concerns with the need to protect children from internet. appropriate content. We want the UK to be the safest place in the world to be online, and these new laws will help us achieve this. That's the sound of cathedral bells ringing in France in solidarity with Notre Dame, just two days after a fire engulfed the historic cathedral. As France mourns the devastation from the fire, debate has begun over how to rebuild. Should they recreate the burn structures exactly as they were, or should they change some things? At issue in particular is how to recreate the spire, which tragically collapsed in the fire. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe surprised many on Wednesday when he announced a competition for

proposals to replace the spire, and he showed some openness to a new design. Quote, this is obviously a huge challenge, historic responsibility, he said, questioning whether we should recreate the original spire or, quote, as is often the case in the evolution of heritage, we should endow Notre Dame with a new spire, end quote. Well, the cathedral's former chief architect, Benjamin Mouton, chafed at that possibility, saying, The Spire is a masterpiece. It must be rebuilt as it was. As the funds continue to pour in for Notre Dame, a GoFundMe drew attention to three more churches that needed to be rebuilt. St. Mary Baptist Church, Greater Union Baptist Church, and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church,

all in Louisiana and all black churches, which had been burned down recently. A man, Holden Matthews, has since been charged with. with hate crimes and arson. And now, in good news, the GoFundMeet to rebuild these churches is at over $1.3 million. Up next we talk to Zach Metler, who was born at just 29 weeks. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? If you want to understand what's happening at the court, subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast,

breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. So our guest today is Zach Metler, graduate of William Jessup University, getting a master's at Regent University, and most importantly, currently an intern for the Digital Media Department at the Heritage Foundation. Zach, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Okay, so we've seen in 2019 a lot of extreme abortion laws have either been proposed or even past. Instead of becoming more like other nations, where abortion is often very restricted in the later months of a pregnancy, the U.S. seems to be going in the opposite direction, becoming more liberal. We're now allowing more abortions to be legal right up to the moment of birth. So, Zach, you have a personal story that relates to this. Tell us about your own birth and how that affected your views. Yeah, absolutely. So I was actually born at 29 weeks. My parents were on a road trip Easter weekend to South Dakota to visit my family. And on the way, my mom began having contractions. And so they stopped in Minnesota at a hospital. And the doctors realized my mom was in labor. And they delayed the pregnancy for two days just to allow me to develop.

and to grow. And, you know, two days later, I was born at two pounds, 15 ounces. Yeah, 11 weeks early. I was born at 29 weeks. He's grown a little since then. Just a little bit, yeah. And yeah, so I was 11 weeks early, and that's just always affected my view of abortion. And it's why I'm pro-life, because there's many states, like you mentioned, that I just allow abortion up until the point of birth. And so babies that are more developed than I was when I was born can be aborted. And that's just crazy to me. So after you were born, I assume you were in the hospital for a while? Yeah. So I was in the hospital for about five weeks. In about three or four of those weeks, I was actually on a feeding tube because babies, when they're born that early, they just don't know

how to suck. And so they're fed with a feeding tube. And so I was born in the hospital. I had no other problems in that, though. Yeah, it was pretty much a miracle. So I was there for five weeks. and then my mom was able to take me home and went back to Illinois where we were living. Wow. So, yeah. So what do your parents remember about the day? I mean, I'm assuming this was before, you know, smartphones and all. How did they even find a hospital in Minnesota?

And were you the first child? Yeah, so I'm the first of four. That's a great question. I'm not sure how they found a hospital. I'll have to ask them. But yeah, my mom tells me that when I was first born, I'm sure as a young mother, having your first child's got to be nerve-wracking. I'll never know that.

But, yeah, it's got to be. I think dads go through a little tail. Probably true. That's fair. So, yeah, it was super nerve-wracking for her, and she said that she would just stay up and I'm watching, watch me breathe just because she was so nervous about my well-being. So, yeah. So you were just over two pounds.

Two pounds, 15 ounces. How big the size? So I was two pounds and 15 ounces. And then I was, I fit in, like, baby clothes. Yeah, pretty much in a palm. They had, like, baby clothes that they would fit me in, so. And do you know how big you were when you left the hospital? So actually I lost weight for the first about weeks.

So I went from 2 pounds, 15 ounces to about 2 pounds and 9 ounces, super small. And then as I kept feeding me, I would grow more. And I think I left the hospital about 4 pounds. And dear parents, have they shared other memories of, I mean, I can't imagine, you know, the first birth, obviously the first experience of labor and going through all that. And then, you know, having all these weeks in an out-of-state hospital, you know, I know you mentioned your mom checking your breathing. Have they shared other memories of those weeks? Just other than that one, not that I remember now. So as you were saying that, you know, babies a lot older than you were when you were born are allowed to be aborted.

I mean, that's a pretty surreal thing to think about. I mean, that seems to kind of obliterate this idea of an arbitrary point in which you are a human, right? So much of the debate is about, you know, when are you viable? Well, that keeps getting earlier and earlier, and you're proof of that in 29 weeks. So, I mean, you could sort of, it's arbitrary to draw the line. Right, right. Yeah, it definitely gets earlier and earlier as science develops more and more. And it's interesting to me, because the left, it used to be when they talked about abortion,

even when Hillary Clinton was running for president in 2008, the talking point was safe, legal, and rare. So even abortion wasn't always viewed as this good, you know, sacrosanct, thing. But recently we've seen kind of a shift in that Bernie Sanders in his town hall two days ago on Fox News. He was asked about late third trimester abortions, abortions where babies are more developed than I was when I was born. And he said that should be left up to a woman and her doctor. And that to me is just crazy. So were you always pro-life? Or did you come to it gradually? And how is your own experience affected your views? I mean, was there a point where you suddenly realized, like, oh, I, you know, it would have been legal to abort me.

Yeah, I think I probably realized that in middle school, kind of when I was just learning about these ideas. And I remember there was one time in high school where we chose a political topic and had to give a 10 to 15 minute presentation on it. And I chose abortion. And so one student took the pro-life position. One student took the pro-choice position. And the other student did a, he did a decent job representing the pro-choice position. But then I went and just told a little bit about my story and just presented scientific facts about how, you know, the same DNA that's in a newly conceived child at one week is the same DNA that's in you today. And I remember a couple of students came out to me afterwards and just said, wow, I was pro-choice before

them, but your testimony just really convinced me. So that was really just meaningful to me. It's amazing how personal experience like that can really change the way you look at an issue. even with the abortion issue at large, you know, when Roe v. Wade happened, everyone in America had been born into a country where abortion wasn't really a legal option. But now, I mean, the year I was born in 92, and that was around the peak of abortions since Roe v. Wade. And if you think about, you know, one in three babies or, you know, around that in the country just being aborted, like I would think that our genera, I would think that our generation. would be more attuned to the fact that, hey, you know, we actually were fortunate to make it through. And, you know, there's just a personal angle there. Right.

Yeah. So at the same, when we've seen, you know, states like New York, you know, approve the new abortion bill, I think Illinois and Virginia have tried to do the same. At the same time, we've seen other states like Mississippi kind of realize, you know, that we need to stand on our principles and be pro-life. And you're right. The numbers of abortions have actually been, you know, dropping recently. We're under a million where it used to be in the 1900s, or yeah, in the 1900s above, you know, above a million a year. Now we're about 900,000 a year. And I think a lot of that is due to just different crisis pregnancy centers that have really just invested in women and babies that are born

early that their mom doesn't know exactly how to take care of them. So I was, you know, something I think of is a lot of people call themselves pro-life. But to them, it's really just a political issue. If you say your pro-life, you know, sometimes that just means voting R on the ticket, and you don't think about it until the next November. And so I just encourage people to really think about what they're actually doing that might be pro-life, whether that's volunteering in a crisis pregnancy center, as I've done, or going to see the movie unplanned that just came out, or supporting focus on the family, they have an operation ultrasound where they put ultrasounds in different pregnancy centers, you know, you can go there and, you know,

$60 saves the life of a baby. So that's, you know, 10 cups of coffee for one baby. So I just encourage people to take action on that. So it's interesting you mentioned ultrasounds because I think one of the most discouraging things about these recent months has been, I think, the pro-life movement thought not unfairly that with the advance of technology, you know, abortions would become rare and rare. And that certainly we would, you know, see that a third trimester baby, you know, who's essentially fully developed, just small, is very very. much a baby. And yet we seem to be seeing the opposite. It seems that the left is hardening on this issue and pushing it even further. And yeah, do you have any thoughts on what the pro-life movement should be doing now or how to reach people your age on this issue? Yeah. So like I mentioned,

focus on the family. They're actually putting an event called Alive from New York in New York Square next month. And they're going to do a live ultrasound of a woman who's pregnant. And they're going to try to do something that's a 4D ultrasound. So really you can see the baby in the womb moving. And I think that just really destroys the narrative that this is the mother's body. There's really another body inside the woman. And so while it is discouraging that some states

are pushing more abortion-minded legislation, I think as a whole, millennials and younger people are actually more pro-life than adults have been in the past. Well, Zach Metler, really appreciate you being in and check out his article. on the Daily Signal. Thanks for having me.

Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. In the Agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research. The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online as well as media interviews from our experts. Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today. Well, the Green New Deal didn't get a single vote in the Senate last month.

Most Democrats voted present while some voted no. But that's not stopping the bill's key supporters from pushing ahead, at least on the messaging side. New York freshman Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is out with a new narrated film published by The Intercept, which she calls a message from the future. In the video, she imagines the next decade if the U.S. takes the path that she wants. Here are some clips from the seven-minute video. Lots of people gave up. They said we were doomed.

But some of us remembered that as a nation, we'd been in peril before. The Great Depression, World War II. We knew from our history how to pull together to overcome impossible odds. And at the very least, we owed it to our children to try. She envisions a decade of massive change. And launched the decade of the Green New Deal, a flurry of legislation that kicked off our social and ecological transformation to save the planet. It was the kind of swing for the fence ambition we needed.

Finally, we were entertaining solutions on the scale of the crises we faced without leaving anyone behind. That included Medicare for all, the most popular social program in American history. We also introduced the federal jobs guarantee, a public option, including dignified living wages for work. And looking back from the future, she says this. Those were years of massive change, and not all of it was good. When Hurricane Sheldon hit Southern Florida, parts of Miami went underwater for the last time.

But as we battled the floods, fires, and droughts, we knew how lucky we were to have started acting when we did. And we didn't just change the infrastructure. We changed how we did things. We became a society that was not only modern and well. wealthy, but dignified and humane too. By committing to universal rights like health care and meaningful work for all, we stop being so scared of the future. We stop being scared of each other.

And we found our shared purpose. So, Kate, some would call this video visionary. Others might call it narcissistic. What do you call it? I mean, I don't think it's narcissistic. I think, you know, Representative Ocasio-Cortez, clearly has this vision that she wanted to share, but I found myself while watching it, thinking of rebuttals to a lot of her points, among other things, you know, the Green New Deal itself,

Heritage Foundation's Nick Loras, who studies these issues, says it would barely change the Earth's temperature if enacted. So actually, I guess Miami would go under for Hurricane Sheldon or whatever if this is all true. So, I mean, I just thought it was very detached from reality, from the good faith arguments made by the other side. You know, I thought some of the inspirational stuff, like, yeah, it would be great to have a shared purpose. But I think, unfortunately, this kind of persuasion, which literally ignores everything the other side is saying is exactly the reason we are so polarized right now.

Right. And there's one part of the video, which we didn't include, is where she portrays all of these think tanks and free market groups being just totally in the pocket of. these oil companies or energy companies that are trying, they're basically using all their money to try to disprove climate change, like that that is the goal of the entire conservative ecosystem. And at least that's the impression you get from the video, which is just totally unfair.

Which, so the other thing that really irritated me is if she truly thinks the world is going to end in 12 years, a claim that she reiterates in this video, Why is she insisting that we accompany climate change reform with every proposal the left has ever wanted? Like, surely if the world is going to end in 12 years, maybe instead of trying to get through Medicare for all guaranteed jobs and everything else that she has thrown on this program, maybe we should just focus on the climate change side. But the fact that she doesn't do that, I think shows that she is fundamentally unsurious. She wants to have this scaremongering rhetoric, but she doesn't actually believe it, frankly. Yeah, and you saw that the Democratic Party doesn't really believe it either because they all voted present in the Senate when this bill actually came up for a vote.

And the people, her and Senator Markey, who also co-sponsored it, like they were actually upset when Republicans decided, hey, we're going to vote on this so that you all can kind of go on the record. Right. And if they were genuinely serious and thought the world was going to end, they were. They would have presented a stripped down bill that would have only affected the climate change side of things and they would have pushed for it. I don't think it would have passed, but I think not even trying for that suggests, yeah, fundamental unsiriousness. Well, aside from that, the video was very well produced, extremely well produced.

It's posted on Twitter by The Intercept, but I guess it kind of gets to how, you know, the left is very good at messaging. I don't really know, to be honest, and I know that, you know, we were talking about for this podcast and we had some disagreement, I would be very curious if someone did a focus group of people, you know, left, right, center and played this video and what people would actually think. I don't actually, I didn't personally find it persuasive at all.

Obviously, I'm on the right and I've thought about this, but I thought, I always think it's more persuasive when you engage with the other side's arguments, and she didn't engage with them at all. It was like this alternative universe where there no facts existed except the ones that were convenient for her. And it was like, yeah, I'm sure people who already agree with her are going to be like, yeah, yeah. Or people that don't have the alternative, I was going to say alternative facts.

But people that don't have the facts won't be able to. So, you know, a lot of people don't. So you could just see the video and be like, oh, okay, this is an urgent thing. Right. And they actually, you know, I don't think it's the inters credit that they really published a video that was this one cited. Well, we will leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert

Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or a five-star rating on iTunes give us feedback. And we'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis,

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