The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | Herbie Newell on How Men Play Irreplaceable Role in Creating Culture of Life

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Herbie Newell and his staff at Lifeline Children’s Services journey with many women through unplanned pregnancies.  Over the years, Newell has come to see that “abortion isn’t about liberating women." "It is the sexual ‘liberation’ of men,” he recently wrote for The Washington Stand.  For too long, the role of men has been ignored or minimized in the conversation about abortion, Newell says. Men can play a critical role in furthering a culture of life in America. In fact, their role is irreplaceable.  Newell joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the negative effects abortion has on men, and to explain how men can become empowered to support women facing crisis pregnancies.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, September 28th. I'm Jillian Richards. Today will feature an interview with my colleague Virginia Allen and Herbie Newell. Herbie Newell is the president of Lifeline Children's Services. He discusses the ways abortion harms not only women and children, but men as well. As Newell explains, abortion has allowed men to shirk their responsibilities to uphold the dignity of women. You'll also hear how marriage, as an institution meant to protect children, is essential to all of this. We'll get to Virginia's interview with Herbie Newell right after this. For over 35 years, the Heritage Foundation Job Bank has been helping conservatives at all professional levels find employment in key positions in Washington, D.C. and across the country. We can help connect you with positions in the administration, on Capitol Hill, in public policy organizations, and in the private sector. To learn more about the Heritage Foundation Job Bank, go to heritage.org slash job bank. For decades, we have heard that abortion is a women's issue. Herbie Newell is the president of Lifeline Children's Services, and he's here with us today to challenge that notion.

Herbie, welcome back to the show. Virginia, thanks for having me again. It's always a privilege. Well, Lifeline Children's Services, you all are doing such critical work of journeying with families through adoption, through foster care, and through crisis pregnancy situations. And you all really step in to offer that emotional, spiritual, and practical support to moms who are facing crisis pregnancies. But you say that it's, it's not enough to just talk about the issue of abortion and the issue of life and how it affects

women, but we also need to talk about the implications on men. You wrote in a recent piece for the Washington standard that when we call abortion a women's issue, we do a great disservice to men. So explain what you mean by this. How does abortion harm men? Yeah, I think one of the things we do, and if you look at the pro-abortion side and abortion advocates, you know, they make this a one singular person issue. It's a women's health care. It's a woman's right to choose. And they neglect the child. I think a lot of pro-life people want to bring the child in and say, well, it's a mother and a child.

But I think what both miss is that it, in fact, takes three in order to result in this pregnancy. It takes the man, the woman, and the child. and just, you know, traveling in over the last 19 years, I've seen so many men who have equally been hurt by abortion, who have equally been hurt by the missed opportunity to raise a child to be active in that child's life. And statistics show that of the women that are getting abortion, 50% of them are in a long-term committed relationship. It might not be a marriage relationship, but a committed relationship. And I've met some of these men who, you know, know exactly when that due date was. And 20 years later, we'll say, I could have a 20-year-old child. And so they're psychological.

But I also think in our culture, we're robbing men of the opportunity to stand up, to take responsibility for their family. And we have a crisis in our country that we're not asking men to stand up for their family, to stand up for the rights and the dignity of their women. We're actually allowing them to skirt that responsibility. and the responsibility they have both to the woman and the child through abortion. Yeah, you go so far in this piece to say abortion isn't about liberating women. It is the sexual liberation of men.

Wow. Explain what exactly you mean here. Well, I think for so long, and this is what I continually hear even from men, is that they see abortion as birth control. And, you know, they're able to, you know, fulfill their desire. And in short, they don't show any dignity or respect. They see instead of women as co-equals, co-airs, image bears of God, they see them as a destination, as someone to conquer. And abortion is becoming birth control. And it allows men to shirk any responsibility. It actually,

it's the exact opposite of what the culture would have you to see is that, oh, well, we have to protect the dignity of women by protecting their abortion rights, wherein in all truth, what would protect the dignity of a woman is to see her, not as a sexual object, but to see her as a co-equal, an heir, someone who has made in the image of God with extreme dignity and worth, and to protect their honor. You know, I don't want to get off on a tangent, but one of my favorite documentaries, we do a lot of work in Liberia, but was a documentary called Pray the Devil back to hell. And basically, all the women went into a field and they said, we will not have any conjugal visits with a man until they solved the civil war in Liberia. And the civil

war was solved in less than a week. And so, you know, there's a piece of it going, what if women raised up and said, you know what, I'm not going to experience intimacy with this man until he treats me with worth until he makes a commitment. Like, abortion is liberating men from from taking responsibility and from doing the things that they want to do. And don't get it wrong, men, most men, especially these deadbeat men, who don't see women as who they are and who they are created to be, abortion is one of their best friends. Well, you would think that the feminist movement as a whole would be shouting this message from the rooftops, would be calling men to higher standard. But why do you think that what we see from the modern feminist movement and really, honestly,

from society as a whole, that this isn't being talked about, that in many ways, you know, abortion has, in the minds of so many Americans, it's just a women's issue. Why aren't we talking about the men being involved here? I think a lot of it in a lot of our culture right now is the co-opting of terms. And we also are very, you know, very scared. We don't want to be on the wrong side of history. We are so scared. scared that, you know, if we make a statement that's tough or that's hard or that could be controversial, that we will be labeled or even nowadays canceled. And I think a lot of things is we've seen these movements co-opt terms that are not meant to be co-opted. I mean,

abortion is not women's health care. You know, women's health care is screenings. It's, I mean, it's a plethora of other things. Abortion is not health care. It is the taking of life. And in most cases, right, there's no medical reason for an abortion to be performed. And obviously, we're not talking about miscarriage and, and, you know, other types of health care like that. Most abortion is, it's a choice. It's not health care. It would be called an elective procedure, if anything. But we've co-opted these terms and the cultures co-opted these terms. And, you know, as a man of faith and someone who reads God's word and study God's word, I look. back at the prophet Isaiah who said, woe to those who will call good evil and evil good. And I think that's

really what we've seen in the modern abortion movement. And when we're not grounded in any type of absolute truth, when we're not grounded in what's really right and wrong, then we will fall for anything. Yeah. You know, I think we can't have this conversation without bringing up marriage. And I think for some people that is a little bit of a new factor maybe to have in this. And I think we're conversation because it's often not talked about right in in the midst of an unplanned pregnancy a lot of people don't bring up the marriage conversation but you went there in a recent piece for the Western Journal and you talk about the role that marriage plays in the conversation of unplanned pregnancies and this can actually be pretty controversial in society today I think

people can say you know that's kind of antiquated it's old fashion to say that you know just because a couple makes a baby together, they then have to get married. What's your response to this? Yeah, well, I don't think it's antiquated. I think it's foundational to society and to culture that goes back thousands of years. And, you know, I think a lot of people think that it's some Judeo-Christian founding is the reason that marriage was ever even legalized in the United States of America. But if you really look back to the legalization of marriage in our country, it was for the protection of children. It had nothing to do with religious beliefs. It had nothing to do with a religious founding or fervor. It truly had to do with how do we protect children. How do we make

sure that we know what happens to a child when their biological parents pass away? And so legal marriage really was never for a man and a woman. It was for the child. And vis-a-vis, you know, today in the United States, if you are a Christian and you get married in a church, you know, you'll have a pastor that'll do a wedding, your true legalized marriage happens at the courthouse when they signed the marriage certificate. And so we need to remember that society was built on the stability of family. As a matter of fact, our own country was built on giving those inalienable rights, not only to individuals, but to families, that families had their right to choose what was best for their children, that families had the right to train up their children, even in their home in the way that they should go, and that we realized as a

nation, the backbone of who we were. And if you look at it, the backbone of every civilization has always been on the family. And when the family starts to splinter and when the family starts to be corrupted, we start to see all matter of disarray happen in our society. And I really believe that's where we are today. But because we have separated the conjugal act and procreation from marriage, we now have the highest rates of fatherlessness. We have some of the highest rates of drug abuse and suicide. We don't see children that are being raised in instability. And that's what our children need. Even look around, and this is the last thing I'll say, but there's so much, there's so much therapeutic need right now in our country. As a matter of right, if you need a counselor

today, you'll go on a two to three month at the least waiting list because so many people are needing counseling and needing therapy. And I believe a lot of that is because of the instability of the homes that they were in and maybe not even being raised in a home where marriage brought that stability. Marriage brings stability to children and children need stability in order to become well-adjusted adults that help change the society. So what do we do? How do we go about actually calling men forward to be men and to take ownership? And how do we bring marriage back into kind of the conversation of bearing children. Yeah, I think first and foremost, it means that for those of us on the pro-life side, we have to stop hiding behind only one option, which is single parenting.

But we have to make sure that every woman going through a crisis pregnancy realizes on the life side, she has a plethora of options. So obviously, she could be a single parent. And certainly, I want to make it very clear, we would never encourage a woman to get into a marriage relationship with a man that's abusive or a man that is not going to support her. But where it's possible, we do need to encourage marriage. We need to encourage that two people come together and bring stability to that child. There's adoption. Adoption is a great option for a woman to place a child into a stable family and a stable home. We also have intermediate options where women can look at what they need while providing some stable, anywhere from six to eight weeks support for her child,

in a safe place, a safe family, where she can explore what are the best options for her. So on the pro-life side, we've got to start with making sure that these women know that they have so many options. And then I think as well, especially for those of us with faith, on the faith side, and those of us who believe in marriage, we've got to start teaching our young men to be responsible. We've got to start teaching them a sexual ethic that talks about, sex is sacred in marriage and it talks about that women are co-equals and women have dignity and worth and that relationship is not about the physical, but it's about the mental and the spiritual and the emotional. And we've got to start getting our young men out and working. We've got to get

them doing hard things. And we've got to be training them to be the leaders and to be the instigators of a culture where marriage is celebrated. Yeah, that's so critical, I think, to really actively be calling men into manhood, to be actively sanctity ourselves, you know, in whatever sphere of society that you're in, but especially in the church, to be strategizing, okay, how do we empower men today, especially men who have been raised without a father themselves? And they so need that model, right, of what manhood looks like in order to step into it, themselves. That's so, so foundational. Yeah. And I think just to add to that, too, there's so much we can do, too, as families to step up for kids in foster care, to look at that child who doesn't

have an intact family, who maybe is growing up in a fatherless home or a motherless home and wrap around these families with love and support. And then also, right now, especially in a post-road world, we need families who are willing to foster, who are willing to adopt, and who are willing to wrap around these moms and show them love to show them an opportunity. And so now is the time for pro-life people to step up and put our rhetoric to action. Herbie, before we let you go, I would love to ask you just to share a little bit more about what you all do at Lifeline. And for those who are thinking, you know, maybe I've thought about fostering or, you know,

I would be interested in, you know, supporting an organization that is on the ground, working with moms facing crisis pregnancies, just share a little bit of y'all's heart and your mission. Yeah, absolutely. For the last 41 years, we have been working with women who are going through crisis pregnancy, who want to explore what their life options look like. We help them look at, like I said, temporary opportunities for them to really get their feet under them. We encourage them to look at that birth father and to see if that's a man that's worthy of a relationship and a long-term relationship, but we also provide adoption opportunities. And so, we have facilitated many adoptions and we are looking for families that want to come alongside

and not just provide a safe shelter for a child, a family for a child, but also will have a heart for a woman and that are going to love on that woman and care for her in a very tangible way, but also in a way that is affirming of the life decision that she make. We also work internationally. There's 153 million orphans in the world and so we're equipping both the global church to adopt domestically. So Colombians, adopting Colombians and fostering Colombians, but we're also providing international adoption services where there are children who need the love and support of a family, and they can only find that here in the United States. We also do provide foster care and family reunification. So how do we get families back together through our

foster care program here in the United States, as well as how do we provide a safe place for a child? And then the biggest thing right now that we have seen in growth is our counseling and education programs. And so helping children, especially they've come from trauma backgrounds who may have lived in foster care for a good bit of their life or lived in an institution and orphanage, providing the counsel and the support they need to get through some of the trauma that they've experienced. And so we've seen a huge increase in our counseling and education services as well. Wow. For those who would like to learn more to get involved, you can visit a Lifeline Child. dot org. Herbie, thank you so much for your time today and for joining us. And we'll put links to your articles in today's show notes and of course to the website lifelinechild.org. But thank you for your

time. Absolutely, Virginia. Anytime. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. If you haven't done it already, please be sure to subscribe to the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, IHeartRadio, or wherever you listen. And be sure to give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. The executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Rank.

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