The Eric Metaxas Show - Alexandra DeSanctis

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

Eric is joined by Alexandra DeSanctis to discuss her book Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m.investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. They say it's a thin line between love and hate, but we're working every day to thicken that line, or at least to make it a double or triple line. Now here's your line jumping host, Eric Mattaxas.

Folks, welcome to the program. We are this week celebrating the first anniversary of the overturning of a horrible thing that I like to call Roe v. Wade. The Dobbs decision came out June 24th a year ago. We need to celebrate that and talk about one of the most important issues of our time, the battle to save the lives of the unborn human beings. beings among us. I have as my guest, I'm very happy to say, Alexandra DeSanctus, who is the author, along with Ryan Anderson, of a book titled Tearing Us Apart, How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing. Alexander, welcome.

Thanks so much for having me. Good to be with you. And congratulations on writing a very important book and on a spectacular title, Tearing Us Apart. Wow. That says it all. How did you find yourself, I should mention, by the way, for anyone who's interested that you're a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and your work has appeared everywhere, National Review, Human Life Review, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and on and on. And this is something that, you know, to write a whole book about it. What led you and Ryan, obviously, to want to write this book? Well, I've been a writer at National Review since I graduated from college. And when I got there, I was given a lot of freedom to write about what I wanted.

And pro-life issues have always been top of mind for me. And so I've been writing about this now for about, I guess, seven years in a very, very dedicated fashion. And by the time I got around to thinking about writing a book, you know, Ryan was kind of helping me workshop the proposal a bit. and the Supreme Court was considering Dobbs. And so Ryan suggested, why don't we co-write this book? And so we worked together on the proposal and the framing of it. So I kind of got to bring this expertise I had developed to working with Ryan and at a very timely moment. And did the book come out around when the Dobbs decision went down?

Yeah, we actually tried to time it and it ended up coming out just four days after the decision last summer. It's extraordinary. Did you anticipate the decision in the writing of the book? we did and of course you know no one can can read the future but we thought we knew where where five the justices were going to come down so we wrote it not predicting that certainly but aimed towards a a post row country and that's thankfully what it came out in you're you know you're significantly younger than i and it's interesting that when something stands for as long as roe v way did it's very hard to imagine

a world in which Roe v. Wade is no longer a thing. I just have to say that it is part of the reason we have to celebrate is it is an

absolutely extraordinary thing that we were able to get a Supreme Court that was willing to overturn this terrible law and in a sense to repent in the in the true sense of the word repent, to turn away from something that was wrong and to turn in the right direction, to be willing to do that.

I don't, you know, I don't follow the machinations of the court, and I don't mean to make their deliberations sound pejorative by saying machinations. But it's just interesting how, you know, stare decisis is so heavy that I really wondered whether they would be, willing to do this. What was it that gave you the optimism to think that they might over a year ago? Yeah, well, I certainly grew up not very optimistic about this. I really didn't think I would ever see Roe overturned, but by the time we got those justices, I mean, it was six to three of justices that you would hope would vote that way, right? Six justices who at least claim to be

originalist or to care about the text, the tradition, the history of the Constitution. And I think it's pretty clear if you're just looking at straight legal reasoning, the text, the meaning that the tradition of the Constitution, there's no right to abortion in there. And so regardless of how the justices might feel about abortion or abortion policy, this wasn't a conservative or pro-life justice versus liberal pro-abortion justice thing. It was, do these justices really believe that the Constitution means what it says and that that's how they ought to rule? And if those six justices did follow through, I thought that they would, you know, realize that Roe was wrong and overturn it.

So if somebody is not settled on the issue, of abortion. I imagine there are people listening to us right now who have mixed feelings about it. What in your mind is the major harm of abortion? I think the simplest way of thinking about it is, you know, people have a lot of feelings and opinions about abortion and whether women need it or whether our society needs it. But the matter of what happens in an abortion is not a matter of feelings or emotion or situation, right? There's a human being growing inside his or her mother. This is a human being whose life is intentionally ended in every abortion procedure. And I think we know as human beings that killing other human

beings is gravely unjust. And so for decades now, we've justified this. We've legalized this, you know, on the argument that somehow we'd all be better off. But I don't think we can have a really successful society if, you know, we kill our most vulnerable members as a supposed way to solve a problem, right? I think that's the fundamental lie of abortion that we can solve our problems or, you know, pursue our own happiness and freedom at the expense of other people. But you, I mean, you realize, as I do, that there are many people who say, well, you know, six or eight or ten weeks in, maybe it's technically a human being, but somehow it's not a human being in the way that you are or I am. I mean, I know that there are people who think that, that they just say, you know, I know what you mean, but it's not the same thing. Yeah, there certainly are in our chapter.

So we break down, you ask what's the fundamental harm of abortion. I say that it kills a human being. We go through all the different harms of abortion throughout the book. You know, the harm to women, the harm to our culture, the harm to our legal process. But the first chapter we really take a deep dive into the types of arguments you're talking about, where we argue the fundamental harm of abortion is that it kills a human being. And here are the responses to the common arguments for abortion. So the biological argument, say, this is just a clump of cells or not a human being,

or then we talk about the philosophical arguments. This is not a person or the, the, the, Unborn child becomes a person later on because it has, you know, more consciousness or fingernails or whatever the argument might be. And what we point out, just to respond to the argument you raised is personal does not depend on our abilities. It depends on the kind of being that we are. And we are, human beings are the kind of being that we are from, you know, second one of our life. We don't become a human being simply because we're slightly larger or have fingernails or have a heartbeat. We're a human being all along.

Well, that's what's interesting to me is how, you know, if you follow the, logic, what you just said is true and makes sense. But I'm to some extent fascinated by how emotion has over the decades really gained more and more power so that emotional arguments, which of course are not arguments, seem to carry more weight in the cultural conversation. And if you feel really strongly about something that somehow outweighs, you know, X plus Y equals Z, and there it is, it's almost like a willfulness against reason and against logic. And I feel that's part of how we've gotten to where we are in the culture, is that that has been, those things have been undermined in various ways. I mean, we can talk about the various ways, deconstruction, critical race theory.

A lot of these, it's like an acid drip through the decades. that has undermined the most fundamental thing is the idea that we are going to follow logic. We're going to reason with each other. I think you're absolutely right. And that's a very evident problem in the abortion debate. I mean, if you look at the argument for abortion, very rarely are you going to find someone who says, I think this is not a human being or I think it is a human being we can kill it? Usually people just disregard that question entirely.

Abortion supporters don't want to talk about what happens in an abortion. They want to talk about women. that's the number one thing they want to talk about. What's going to happen to women? Women are suffering. Women are in these difficult situations. Of course, I never think that's an argument for abortion, but something we're trying to do in the book is say, look, a lot of people sincerely believe this. They're coming from this place of fear or emotion or desire to support women.

And so we as pro-lifers have to learn how to respond to that too, right? We can't just keep shouting, this is a human being and human beings have rights until we're blue in the face. We have to hear where the other side is coming from and learn how to reject their arguments, too, or kind of empathize with them and still reiterate. right, this is not the right thing to do. Folks, I am talking to one of the authors of tearing us apart how abortion harms everything and solves nothing. We'll be back with Alexandra DeSanctus. Don't go away.

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decision. And I'm talking to the author, one of the two authors of tearing us apart how abortion harms everything and solves nothing. Ryan Anderson and Alexander DeSantis, and I'm talking to Alexander DeSantis. Alexander, why do you say in the book that in fact abortion harms women. I could make my own arguments along those lines because just what you said, people always talk about, we care about women, we care about women, we care about women, and you know, you want to say, great, so do I, so does God, and abortion actually harms women. So if you care about women, you should not be on board with abortion. But what are some of the arguments for why abortion, in fact, harms women? Sure. So we kind of break this down into two categories in the book.

we talk about first women who've actually had an abortion in the way that abortion harms them. So we go through the many types of short-term, long-term physical complications that can come about as a result of abortion. And there are plenty, although the other side would like to claim otherwise. And we also talk about the psychological after effects of abortion. And unfortunately, we don't hear about this very much because abortion supporters like to quiet this down. But many, many women who have an abortion, first of all, many women don't really want to have an abortion, right? They do it because they feel like it's their only option or someone's pressuring them or they don't have any other choice, don't have any support.

And they find themselves, you know, regretting this deeply for many, many years after the fact. A shame to talk about it. You know, oftentimes they suffer from drug abuse, alcohol abuse, even suicidal ideation, all these horrible psychological complications as a result of having had an abortion. So that's the women who've had an abortion. We also talk about how abortion kind of fosters this anti-woman society. So the idea that that pregnancy is a disease, for example, is deeply embedded in the concept of abortion, that a child doesn't belong inside his or her mother, right, or the child is an enemy.

All this kind of fosters a culture where the male mode of being human, you know, not becoming pregnant, is the ideal or the normal mode of being human. And the fact that women become pregnant or have children is somehow lesser than or strange or something we need to kind of suppress and put aside or at least be able to put aside when it's inconvenient or problematic. I mean, it's so sick when you put it that way. I mean, really it is, I can't, I increasingly, you know, resort to using the word satanic or demonic. Because when you think about that, that idea of trying to divorce a woman from one of the most beautiful aspects of what makes her a woman in the image of God and to say that she would be at odds with the life inside her, it really is a dark thing.

to say. It's somehow creepy. And I guess you can see how vulnerable women would be freaked out by this idea. And many of them are freaked out by this idea that somehow they're afraid of what might happen inside their own bodies.

It's repulsive to them. It's an amazing thing to be at that place and to be giving vent to that as though somehow that's a legitimate point of view. Yeah, it's a really unfortunate situation. And I think we certainly as pro-lifers shouldn't minimize the fact that, you know, pregnancy having childbearing is a

unique thing women have to deal with, right? Contrary to what some might say today, men don't become pregnant, right? Only women become pregnant. It's a unique thing that women go through and have to deal with. And it certainly causes health problems sometimes or inconveniences or difficulties. But the answer to those difficulties is not to say that we should kill unborn human beings, right? The answer is to have a society that's more responsive to the needs of women that, you know, encourages men to step up. And unfortunately, I think abortionist helped to normalize male abandonment, right? Rather than saying that men should step up and support women and children, particularly when they're unplanned pregnancies, we've just said, oh, well, if a man doesn't want to step up,

women can just go have an abortion, right? And so women are left to choose between either being abandoned and on their own or going and committing an act of violence against their own child in order to save themselves. And we're supposed to believe this is female empowerment. And obviously this all comes from the sexual revolution, this idea that we can somehow divorce. sex from marriage and family and childbearing, which is itself preposterous and wrong. But that's obviously where this has led us. Those ideas have led us to a place where men are encouraged not to be responsible, not to be men. Let's be blunt. At the same time, they're encouraging women not to be women by having an abortion. Yeah, yeah. I think that's exactly right.

And you're exactly right to point to the sexual revolution. I think for the last year, we've talked about, you know, how do we prevent abortion? How do we as pro-lifers kind of step up and support women? What kind of laws do we need to try and prevent abortion? But the root of it is that we live in a culture where casual sex is normal, right? Where unplanned pregnancy is normal, where male abandonment is basically accepted, right? And in that context, women are always going to think they need abortion or some women are always going to think they need abortion. And so unfortunately, I think to get rid of abortion ultimately, we're going to have to get to the root of all of that and untangle all those.

lives. It's interesting because I think part of you mentioned it earlier, and I talk about it all the time over the years, but, you know, there are two things about abortion that you never hear. One is that oftentimes it is men bullying women into abortion, one way or the other, that it is not an empowering choice, but that's in fact selfish men bullying them into this. You hardly ever hear that because it doesn't go along with the reigning cultural narrative that says abortion is a wonderful thing. And you also don't hear of the tremendous harm, emotional, psychological harm that abortion does to women. You simply don't hear about that. And if we lived in a normal culture, you know, Oprah Winfrey would have had these women on show, we want to hear your stories. And they would tell

the horror stories of walking around with this wound and this pain and wanting to know what to do about it and where to go with that. And, you know, if you're a Christian, you know, you can go to go to God and get 100% forgiveness and love. But if you don't know that, naturally, you would say, I just can't even acknowledge that I've done something wrong. But that idea that abortion harms women, it seems to me that strategically, as we try to make it less normal for people to have abortions and try to make people understand that it's a bad thing. We have to be clear, and I know in your book you get into this, about how it really harms women. In other words, if you're thinking about having an abortion, you need to be aware of what this might do to you in the future.

You need to know, you need to hear the stories so that you understand there is very likely a high price. This is not like getting a mole removed. No, and of course, a moral price, too, as you mentioned, right? There's always mercy available. There's always forgiveness if you know where to look. But this is not like going to get a mole removed, as you say. And I think unfortunately, the abortion industry, promoters of abortion, abortion advocates, they really have a lock on what our culture hears, as you pointed out. And so women, even when you go to get an abortion, abortion providers have lobbied for decades now not to have to tell women about the physical and psychological risks of abortion. They sue in court constantly not to have to have to have. to give the kind of information women would really need in order to give informed consent. And you talk about, you know, hearing stories of abortion regret on Oprah. All we hear is stories of women who are so glad they had an abortion. Or even sometimes you'll see these articles of women saying, I didn't have an abortion and I wish I had, right? As their living child is out here in the world. And it's, it's heartbreaking and awful and, you know, horrific kind of satanic, as you say, that this sentiment is out

there and normal and celebrated. But if a woman comes along and says, actually, I had an abortion, I wish I hadn't, you know, ruin my life or it's been awful. I wish I hadn't done it. Women like that are sidelined by abortion supporters. As much as they talk about, you know, sharing your story of having an abortion, they really only mean the story of being happy that you did it. I believe, at least I have the optimism to believe that this is changing and that because of the change in the media landscape, stories can get out that weren't able to get out in previous years. But I want to ask you also. You talk in the book about how abortion, the issue of abortion has harmed politics and harmed the rule of law.

Talk about that for a moment. Yeah, so we definitely, one chapter we dedicate to talking about the history of Roe v. Wade. And essentially what we talk about there is how the justices who ended up in the majority, the seven justices who wrote Roe v. Wade, they knew before they wrote that ruling before they even heard arguments that they were planning to legalize abortion. They wanted to do that all along. They had a political agenda, an ideological agenda. go back and look at the documents as many scholars have done, they thought that they could just settle this for the entire country. They didn't think they had an obligation to read the Constitution and see what was in it. They worked backwards from the conclusion they wanted to reach.

And that's why I think, you know, the Dobbs decision does a really good job of showing this if you go and read it. But the decision was not real. It was not grounded in anything. It was not legal reasoning. It was a political, ideological decision masquerading as law. So we go through all that. And we talk, too, about our politics and how, in particular, the Democratic Party is just totally inthrall to the abortion lobby now. And we go into a bit of the history of how that happened. But the conclusion we draw is, look, this is a sad situation for Americans, right? That we have a choice between one political party that supports this grave moral evil,

you know, lock, stock, and barrel. It completely supports it. And another political party that doesn't, right? And how great would it be for us as Americans to have a real choice between parties or politicians, all of whom know that abortion is a grave moral evil? And unfortunately, we just don't have that. We're talking to Alexandra DeSantis, who's one of the authors of tearing us apart, how abortion harms everything and solves nothing. We'll be right back.

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We need both law and culture. We can't just be focused on changing policy. We can't just be focused on building pregnancy resource centers or staffing them. We have to think about it from all angles. And so I think we've seen great success over the last year that a number of states have passed pro-life laws that they've wanted all along, that they weren't able to get in place because of Roe. We've seen some states in the middle come up with, you know, something like a 12-week bill or a 15-week bill, which is certainly not ideal, and we hope they'll keep having more pro-life laws over time.

But there's definitely been a lot of positive progress at the state level. I think we need really a Republican Party that's willing to step up and support pro-life laws vocally. You unfortunately see a lot of Republicans at the federal level who've called themselves pro-life, now saying, you know, go talk to your state legislature. it's not my problem anymore. I don't want to talk about it, you know, Rose over. And I think we need a really different message from the top level. We need Republican candidates who are committed to talking about being pro-life in a compassionate, convincing way, supporting pro-life policy. So I think it's going to have to be a kind of wide-ranging strategy. Just to help us understand what happened a year ago

when the opposition came down and Roe v. Wade was overturned, what are some states, in other words, you know, Roe v. Wade found, you know, this phantom right in the Constitution for abortion for every state. Okay, that's overturned. So suddenly the states get to decide. They get to argue amongst themselves about this issue. So what are some of the success stories in states around the country? I was talking to Abby Johnson recently, who was telling me that in Texas, it's virtually impossible to get an abortion. And I really couldn't even believe what I was hearing. I thought, really? Is that possible that we have succeeded to that extent over the decades to where it's possible for a state like Texas to rule to effectively outlaw abortion?

I believe it was in Houston. Every time I was driving in Houston when I would visit there, people would say, That's the largest plant parenthood facility like, you know, in the country's gigantic place where thousands of babies are killed. And so what is Texas like now and what other states do you know of where it is very difficult or if not impossible and illegal to get an abortion? So there are about, I would say, a little more than a dozen states between 12 and 20 states, you know, states like Texas, like you mentioned. Florida is another one, South Carolina, I believe Kentucky, but there are many, I don't know off the top of my head, most of them have rallied around heartbeat bills. So these are bills where a woman can't get an abortion after the point where a fetal heartbeat can be detected during an ultrasound. And that means somewhere around between six and eight weeks of pregnancy. And so typically most women find out they're pregnant a little bit before that. So there is still some time to have an abortion, but you're almost always not going to be getting an abortion before that point. So in these states, and in a few, others, abortion is essentially illegal afterconception. And so I think it is true that in plenty of states, women, unless they're getting some kind of male order abortion from an abortion

provider online, they're mostly not getting abortions anymore. But that's just such a big victory. It's just so amazing to me. That's why it's a little bit hard for me to take in, you know, because I've lived most of my life under the gloomy penumbra of Roe v. Wade. Let's talk about the penumbra for a second. What does the Constitution, in your mind, actually say about abortion? Nothing. I mean, there's nothing about abortion in there. It was never mentioned the idea that if you look at the case history, and this is what we do in the book, to get the details, but essentially it grew out of birth control court cases. The court started out by trying to legalize the use of birth control for married couples. Then they kind of gradually expanded that to everybody under

this so-called right of privacy. And that's the right they look. to when they ended up trying to justify abortion. But none of this, in my opinion, was ever very well grounded in the Constitution. So I think Justice Thomas's concurrence on this point is very helpful and illuminating. In what sense, refresh us on that? In the sense that he kind of looks at how all of these cases are on the same legal grounding. So while he's not saying we should go back and overturn Griswold or these other cases having to do with birth control, they were all kind of invented out of whole cloth by the justices, basically for political reasons.

and abortion, the legalization of abortion in Roe kind of grew out of this faulty logic. So, and just tell my audience, you know, when I refer to the penumbra, talk about that for a minute so people can understand what it was that these justices in 1973 were talking about or how they twisted one's ability to read the Constitution. Right. So you asked me the question, where is abortion in the Constitution? The answer is that it's not anywhere. but the justices who identified the supposed right to abortion as falling under the right to privacy, which they alleged was in the Constitution, one of them wrote that it was you could find the right to privacy in the emanations of a penumbra within, I believe it was the Ninth Amendment. So the idea being that this right is kind of in there somewhere in the shadow of a shadow would be the layman's way of putting that.

That's how faint of a right. The emanations of the penumbra. Right. So a shadow's shadow. That's emanations in the penumbra. should be put on a t-shirt, right up there with indelible in the hippocampus. There are certain times when words tip you off,

like, something's fishy here. Sounds a little fishy. Eminations of the penumbra. We'll be right back. We're talking to Alexandra DeSantis, the new book, or I should say, the new reissued book, the paperback, tearing us apart,

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who can run your report and help remove companies paying for abortion travel today. Go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. That's inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Advisory services are offered through Inspire Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Welcome back. We're talking to Alexander. DeSantis, one of the two authors with Ryan Anderson of tearing us apart how abortion harms everything and solves nothing. It's an important book.

What do you say to those genuinely misguided Christians who seem to think that it's the duty of a Christian to support a woman's so-called right to abortion? Where do you think they get that idea from? Well, I think, unfortunately, there are plenty of churches and religious leaders who, tell people this, right? I've read about, you know, not in my denomination. Thankfully, I'm Catholic, but I have seen plenty of Christians who claim Christian leaders who claim that this is a Christian thing. So perhaps that's where people are picking it up. But I also think there's this kind of misguided notion that conscience, so to speak, is just the guide for all of us. And our conscience is whatever we kind of feel like doing. We've lost, of course, the conscience is real,

right? We should care about that. But we've lost the notion that one has to form their conscience and that a conscience could be malformed or that you could be, you know, doing something out of your own conscience and still be wrong. And so I think we have this idea that, well, if a woman has decided it's right for her, who am I to say otherwise? And if she's in need, I had better help, as opposed to thinking that, you know, someone might decide to do something gravely harmful to themselves or someone else. And the Christian thing to do would be to help them see that that's wrong, right? And to support them, of course, if they've been harmed by it and to kind of direct them to mercy and forgiveness, but never to justify it. a grave moral evil simply because someone thinks it's the right thing for them. Well, once again, as I say over 50 plus years, we've seen the slow evaporation of the idea

of right and wrong and the emergence, the deification almost of feelings, which is really horrible because I'm sure Hitler felt strongly that he was doing the right thing. I'm sure most people doing the wrong thing feel strongly they're doing the right thing. And our inability to say that and to advocate for what is right, you know, somebody referred to it a couple of years ago as a lack of cultural confidence. It's part of the same thing. It's this really subjectification of everything. And so when you subjectify everything, you cease to believe an objective truth in a moral order. And we've been dealing with this for many decades, but it's interesting to see it bearing fruit now so that people, they just become confused.

They don't seem, even if something seems to them wrong, they think, well, it's wrong for me, which we've been hearing for some time. But it's preposterous. You couldn't, you can't function that way. But that, which we touched on earlier, really has led us to this place where people are constantly dithering, unable to say, I need to help this woman understand that this is bad, that this will hurt her, that this is a moral wrong. The idea that it's a moral wrong, we seem unwilling to state that anymore. And I have to say, you know, you mentioned your denomination. The Catholic Church has evidently taken that position with regard to the pride stuff. it's really horrifying to me because I do think of the Catholic Church in some ways as a firewall

when it comes to basic issues like this, certainly abortion. But the idea that the Vatican would be suddenly not just waffling, but kind of promoting a pride agenda or tolerance. I couldn't be more horrified and confused. I'm not sure what to make of it, frankly. Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. And when I mentioned my denomination, I should say, the church's teaching has never changed on this, right?

In the same way, a church's teaching hasn't changed on marriage or on gender. But the things that certain people say, particularly Catholics who are not in the hierarchy say about abortion are very wrong. I mean, look at President Biden. He's been claiming for decades now that he supports abortion and good conscience because, you know, women need to be able to decide for themselves. And it's not his place to impose his religion, which is an argument we debunk very thoroughly in the book. But I can believe it's his religion, if you really want to be clear.

I mean, my goodness, what a joke. But I want to, I know I'm interrupting, but I just, I also to understand how bishops and priests can give communion to public figures who are espousing views that are openly against the magisterium of the church. It's just baffling to me. No, I completely agree. It's a very hot debate in Catholic circle, certainly. And I think there are some, bishops, some cardinals who've come down. in the right direction, but many, I think, are too afraid or, you know, feel it isn't their place for whatever reason to say something. And my fear is that it really gives scandal, right, the idea that Joe Biden could be allowed to call himself a practicing Catholic in good

standing while so publicly supporting something like unlimited abortion. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the late governor Cuomo was in a similar situation, but he was a little bit more nuanced about it. I think we have folks like Pelosi and Biden somehow able plausibly to claim that they are Catholics. It's just absolutely mystifying to me because, you know, it's like saying I'm a pacifist, but I'm going to kill some people today. But, you know, what can I tell you? That's just my interpretation for today. Well, when I asked you a moment ago what we can do, what the pro-life movement can do next. I want to talk a little bit more about that. What are the things we can do to encourage women to have the children inside them.

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the big things that's been proven very successful is pregnancy resource centers, right, a place where a woman who's considering abortion or has an unplanned pregnancy can go and find support, you know, not just diapers or, you know, financial support or whatever it might be, but also kind of a team of people saying, look, we think you can do this, right? Many women who choose abortion, it's because they're being told, I'm not going to support you, you can't do this, you won't be able to finish your education, et cetera, et the whole culture screams that at women, right?

So to have a place where a woman is actually told, look, your child is not your enemy, you can do this, we can help you, I think is very, very successful. So to expand that model is really big. I also think it's something I talk about a lot when I speak with pro-lifers is the importance of telling men to step up, right?

And you mentioned the coercion or the pressure. A lot of women, a lot of men just kind of shrug and say, you know, it's your decision. And they think they're saying something pro-woman or supportive, but it's your decision just shoves the entire issue on the woman's plate, right? The correct response is, I will support you. I will be there every step of the way as you have this child.

And I think we need to have a culture where more and more men are taught that is their responsibility to say something like that, if their partner, if their wife or whoever it is, gets pregnant. Right. And instead of saying when you have this child or your child, when you have our child, because it is inescapably our child, and it really becomes a human being when you put it in that way. And I think that that's the idea. We're going to go to a break. Final segment coming back with Alexander DeSantis.

The book is tearing us apart. Hey there, folks. Final segment with Alexandra DeSantis, who has written the book with Ryan Anderson, Tearing Us Apart, How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing. One of the things we haven't talked about is the dramatically disproportionate number of abortions among minority communities. Talk about that. Yeah, so our third chapter,

we talk a bit about how we put it is abortion harm social equality. And we look at how among minority populations, there's just a completely disproportionate abortion rate as compared to among white women. And unfortunately, what you'll see is if you look at the way abortion supporters talk about this, they almost celebrate it, right? They'll point to the fact that there's, you know, more than 80 percent of Planned Parenthoods are within, walking distance of black or Hispanic neighborhoods. And they celebrate this and say what a great service they're providing. But to me, if you have such a high rate of abortion in particular communities,

knowing that abortion is killing an unborn child, right? You have to ask yourself, what's wrong here, right? What's wrong in these communities and how can we support them? So they don't feel like they have to do this at such high rates. Well, it seems to me like this is genuine racism in action. In other words, that liberals, talk a good game, but the reality is that they are themselves convinced that darker skinned people are less capable of succeeding, and we have to help them by helping them to kill their kids,

because we don't want them to be saddled with a lot of kids. They're not capable of having stable families, the men run around. In other words, they're completely avoiding the fact that they have helped create that dysfunction. I mean, Senator Moynihan in the mid-60s, Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote about the breakdown of the black family at the very heart of all kinds of difficulties. And so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. And you have typically white liberals say, well, that's why it's wonderful that, you know, they can do whatever they're going to do, but we want to make it really easy for them by giving them access to abortion. So it feels like the, I can't remember the phrase, the soft racism of low expectations or something like that.

No, I think that's right. And we look to it the history of the abortion rights movement. It really came out of the eugenics movement where the progressives were very much in favor of, you know, trying to legalize contraception, mainly to hand it out to what they would have called unfit populations, right or feeble-minded populations. Margaret Sanger herself, the founder of Planned Parenthood, this was her big agenda. And this has slowly morphed into the people who promote abortion today. Yeah, it's interesting that, you know, back then in the 20s, 1920s, you know, they talk about follow the science. The science is there is no God.

We evolved out of the primordial soup. Some of us are more evolved than others. The lighter races are more evolved than the darker races. And wouldn't it make scientific sense? to take the science that we have to make it possible for us to eradicate those populations. That's exactly what the eugenics movement and Margaret Sanger was doing, obviously through birth control, but also through abortion. And it is so evil, of course, but it's also interesting to my mind that the abortion industry,

they have never been able to face where they come from. That's where they come from. No, that's very true. And it was only just a couple years ago that Planned Parenthood was willing to acknowledge that Margaret Sanger was eugenic. They just completely ignored it and handed out the Margaret Sanger Award to Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. To Hillary Clinton. Congratulations, Hillary. I wonder if she has that on her mantelpiece.

I wonder if she has a mantlepiece. It's just wonderful that we got the time to talk to you, Alexander DeSanctus. Thank you. Congratulations on the book, Tearing Us Apart, How abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing. Thank you. Thanks so much.