The Daily Signal - BONUS: Sen. James Lankford Says Conservatives Shouldn't Shy Away From Life Issue

Episode Date: June 23, 2024

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., speaks with Mary Margaret Olohan on this a bonus episode of The Daily Signal Podcast. Each year, the Faith & Freedom Coalition hosts the Road to Majority Policy Conference with political leaders and other newsmakers. Lankford delivered a speech Friday and spoke with The Daily Signal about the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. He also discussed his RESTORE Act related to in vitro fertilization (IVF). Stay tuned for more interviews from our Daily Signal team, which is on location at the Washington Hilton. And be sure to visit DailySignal.com for additional news from the conference. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. Each year, the Faith and Freedom Coalition hosts the Road to Majority Policy Conference with political leaders and other newsmakers. Our team was on location at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. for this year's event, and we're bringing you their interviews with some of the speakers. Be sure to visit DailySignal.com for additional coverage of the conference from reporters Mary Margaret O'Lahan, Fred Lucas, Elizabeth Troutman, and Olivia Perro. Stay tuned for the interview right after this. We get it. With big media bias,

it's hard to find accurate honest news. That's why we've put together the Morning Bell newsletter, a compilation of the top stories and conservative commentary. To subscribe, just head to dailysignal.com slash morning bell subscription or visitdailysignal.com and click on the connect button at the top of the page. Senator Langford, thank you so much for joining us. You bet glad to do it. Glad you all are here. So we wanted to ask you, it's been two years now since Roby Wade was overturned in this historic Dobbs decision. Are we in a better place now than we were in 2022? Yes, we are actually.

It's interesting. There are lots of folks to talk about the politics or what's happening. There's never a bad time to protect the life of a child. And so people push this issue into a political issue, which of course has become a political issue. Right. But the first part of the issue is a baby that's there in the conversation. So for about 180 years, we as a country determined that the issue about when life begins is going to be determined by legislatures, by state, federal, whatever it may be. And then the Supreme Court steps in 50 years ago and says, no, the Supreme Court's going to decide when life begins.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court says that was a terrible idea. The Supreme Court doesn't have that right to be able to decide this issue. It's going to go back to the people through their elected representatives. Well, great. Let's have that dialogue. For me, now I'm seeing some conservatives back away from the conversation about life. that's the absolute worst thing that we could do. We should lean into this conversation and say, let's talk about it more.

And let's not just talk about the mom, let's talk about the mom, the dad, and the baby. Because the reason we're talking about abortion is because there's a baby in this conversation. So let's talk about all the people that are involved there and actually engage in a reasonable conversation. Now, what do you think about the people who say that abortion is going to cause us to lose elections? Well, there have been elections that we've lost because of this issue of, abortion. I think it's often because people don't engage in the dialogue. They just don't answer the issue.

They don't have a position on the issue, and so other people define what the issue is going to be for them on that. People have got to be able to think through, where are they on that? And we're not all in the same place. On either side of the aisle, there are some conservatives that are life is a life at conception. There are some that

are there saying it's when a heartbeat or at viability. You've got the same thing with Democrats. You've got a lot of Democrats. They're like, no, they want abortion all the way up six seconds before delivery. They want a late-term abortion, fully viable child. And you've got others that will say, well, personally, I'm opposed to abortion, but I don't want to impose that on other people.

So for me, let's keep talking about this, because, again, when the topic shifts from that child, we've lost the conversation. So what's the best messaging when it comes to this issue? Well, President Trump's been very focused. He believes the best messaging is states are going to determine this. We're going to have the argument in every single state because we don't have a federal engagement on this. Right now what we really don't have is a way to get a

federal vote on it. We can't get 60 people to agree on the Senate. The House could have a vote. They could pass several things, but we can't get 60 people to agree in the Senate, so we're in a very difficult spot to be able to move anything on life. So what I'm trying to do is find areas where we can move things on life. Where can

we agree? For instance, conscience protections. Should a physician be required to perform an abortion when his conscience says, no, I went into medical care to save life not to take So should the hospital be able to say, I'm going to fire you if you don't do an abortion? Well, the left says yes. I don't think it's where most Americans are.

They may say you may agree or disagree with abortion, but I don't like compelling people to carry out an abortion if they don't want to do that, if they don't agree. So that's an area we should have common ground. The Born Alive Bill that John Thune has, that bill should be common ground for us to be able to say if a botched abortion happens and a late-term abortion occurs and a child's actually born rather than killed in the womb, what happens? Well, current practice now is you just allow that child to die on the table. Well, I think that's abhoran, and I think most Americans would think that's abhorrent.

Right. And so let's find the areas where we can get agreement, make some movement on that, while we've got conversations across every state in the country. Now, another thing I wanted to ask you about, we've seen so many physical attacks on pregnancy centers over the last two years since the Dobbs League, but also a lot of legislative attacks, you know, a lot of rhetoric from people like Elizabeth Warren, Kathy Hochel, the governor of New York. Do you think that this type of rhetoric and the DOJ is targeting a pro-lifers with the FACE Act is putting pregnancy centers and pro-life activists at risk? Yeah, it is, actually. And here's what I'm trying to do to everybody. Everybody needs to take a deep breath.

We disagree, strongly disagree on these issues as Americans. So let's talk about it and let's work it out. When there are threats of violence, that's out of bounds, especially for people of faith, that's out of bounds. That's not who we are to be able to carry that out. We speak out on these issues, but we also make sure that we're protecting the innocent, whether that's an innocent child or whether that's someone who's speaking out for the value of every child. We want to make sure those people in places are also protected. So we're pushing to the Department of Justice to say you need to have the same tenacity to protect those pregnancy resource centers

as you do every other place as well, because if they're under threat, let's make sure they're in a threat. I want every synagogue protected. They shouldn't face anti-Semitism. Jewish students on campus protected. I want every pregnancy resource center protected. I want every mosque protected. That should be basic of who we are. Now, I know you recently signed on to a letter calling for more information about the fertility industry.

Can you fill us in on what's going on with that? Again, there hasn't been a lot of oversight on IVF, and this is not anti-IVF. IVF is allowed everywhere and should be allowed everywhere in the country on it, but there's not been a lot of oversight. Health and Human Services has a responsibility to be able to say, is this working well? So, for instance, is the agency harvesting more eggs for profit and then creating more embryos for profit when they don't really need to do that? Is that happening? When they actually are caring for those embryos, are they in a secure spot? This became an argument from Alabama because they weren't securing those embryos in a secure location.

And a patient just went in and pulled a vial out and smashed it. That's where all this debate actually came from was from a lack of security. HHS has a responsibility to be able to do that. There's multiple other instances, including instances where actually we had an embryo implanted in the wrong mom. And they had to come back later and tell them, oops, we implanted this in the wrong person. Well, that's chaos for that family. So that's something HHS should be doing oversight on, and they're currently not. So we're saying, let's make sure there's good oversight in this area.

And one of the areas Cindy Hyde Smith and I are working on is Restore Act and saying, hey, let's not just say it's natural pregnancy. and I'll let everyone talk to their mom and dad about natural pregnancy and how that happens. And then IVF, those aren't the only two options. There's lots of other fertility treatments in between that that we seem to be ignoring. We've not advanced some of the medical research in that area. We're not doing a lot of medical education on that. We're not doing a lot of information out to other people. And so there is some benefit to talk about.

Let's just talk about fertility, period, because IVF is not the issue. IVF is one of the solutions of many. So let's make sure that we're getting that out. not just the most expensive, the most invasive, one of the fertility treatments. Let's see if we can figure some other things out as well. It's really great. Now, we wanted to ask you one more question. This is a little more off topic, but with Mitch McConnell stepping down as Republican leader,

what are your expectations for his successor? Yeah, so one of the key things that we need to see is a lot of engagement in the committees and engagement with leadership. It's no grand secret Mitch McConnell's been the longest serving leader, but he's also very close to the vest in his leadership. that's been his style and his model. But I think the conference is very ready for, okay, how do we get more engagement to be able to determine the direction of leadership, what we're going to do, where we're going, and for the committee chairs, especially to be empowered,

to be able to bring legislation through the committee, build the coalition that it takes to be able to actually get it passed on the floor, then get it to the floor, have amendments. That's a very different way. That's not how Chuck Schumer is running it at all right now. We want to make sure that is a path that we can do. All right. and would you support term limits for someone like Mitch McConnell? So this has been an interesting conversation.

I think it's fascinating. I'm not sure yet on that. I'm still trying to be able to think it through. We have term limits for every other role in Senate leadership except for the top role. But that's the same as it is in the House of Representatives. There's not a term limit on the Speaker of the House either. It's just the conference votes. Clearly the House has shown you can change leadership at any point in the House of Representatives,

though there's not term limits there. We can do the same thing in the Senate. as well at any point to be able to change leaders in the Senate. So it's the decision to make is we're going to put someone who's a majority or minority leader and make them short term as soon as they get there. Or are we going to say you serve at the will of the conference? That's the real debate. But definitely people have term limits one way or the other. Well, Senator Langford, we're so grateful that you sat down with us. And we hope you have a great rest of the conference. Great. Thank you.

And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. Twice a day, we keep tabs on the biggest story shaping American culture. Each morning, learn from leading conservatives about what's happening in Washington. And every weekday afternoon, stay informed of the day's top headlines at 5 p.m. Please subscribe to The Daily Signal wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. And help us to reach more listeners by leaving a five-star rating in review. We appreciate your feedback. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you.

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