The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 349 - What The Alabama Law Actually Says

Episode Date: May 15, 2019

Alabama passes major anti-abortion legislation that all but outlaws the practice. We will analyze the legal and political fallout and examine the question on everyone’s mind: will we see the overturning of Roe v. Wade in our lifetimes? Then, Stanford University deans don’t want Andrew Klavan to speak on campus, and the U.S. birthrate falls to its lowest level in 32 years. Date: 5-15-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alabama passes major anti-abortion legislation that all but outlaws the practice. We will analyze the legal and political fallout and examine the question on everyone's mind. Will we see the overturning of Roe v. Wade in our lifetimes? Then another Democrat announces that he is running for president. This one is number 728, I think. Stanford University deans don't want Andrew Claven to speak on campus. We will examine the rot on our American universities. Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles show. There is so much BS going around about this Alabama law today.

I have read the law. I have read the analyses of the law. I have read the history of this law. We will separate fact from fiction. We've talked a lot recently about the ethical and moral questions of abortion. So we're going to focus on the legal and political consequences. This could be one of the most consequential moments in American law in American history. We'll see the likelihood of that. But first, let's talk about something much more important than the total changing of American law, going back to foundational principles. Let's talk about how I look so good. I think that's more important. Dollar Shave Club has everything I need to look, feel, and smell my best.

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the last week, but I think there's a reason that we've done it. This is the pro-life moment. We are at the pro-life moment. And so now we're past the ethical discussion. Now we're talking about the legal and political consequences of these laws. So this law in Alabama, it's called the Human Life Protection Act. The entire purpose of this law is to challenge Roe v. Wade. It's true. It will restrict abortion in Alabama.

It will almost eliminate it. That's good. I actually don't think that's the primary purpose. The primary purpose is to pose a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion throughout the United States. Alabama Senator Platt Chambleau opened up the debate on this by asking a series of questions that gets right down to the heart of Roe v. Wade. He asked, when is a person a person? When does a life become a life? I believe if we terminate the life of an unborn child, we are putting ourselves in God's place.

Simple as that. When does a person become a person? when does a life become a life? This abortion law is being so misrepresented by the media and on social media. This is a landmark law. That's why. I mean, this does pose a real threat to Roe v. Wade. That's why. Just to begin, what does the law actually say?

If you just read social media in the mainstream media, they'll tell you that this law is going to put women in jail for getting abortions. No, it will not. this law explicitly does not punish women who get abortions. I'll say that again. This law very explicitly does not punish any woman who will get an abortion. Anybody telling you otherwise is lying. Here it is right in the text of the law, Section 5, quote, No woman upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed,

shall be criminally or civilly liable. Furthermore, no physician confirming the serious health risk to the child's mother shall be criminally or civilly liable for those actions. So even in the case of abortion providers, if there is a legitimate risk to the life of the mother, that doctor will not be held liable. Now, that doesn't mean a risk to the mental health of the mother. doesn't mean a risk to the financial health of the mother. It means a serious risk to the life of the mother. If she has this child, she will die. Or even if she has this child, she's so mentally ill that she will kill herself or kill her or kill the baby or end her pregnancy later on.

Then you can get an abortion. The doctor won't be held liable. And in no case will the woman getting the abortion be held liable. However, in all other cases, according to this law, abortion performed in violation of this act is a class A felony. And an attempted abortion performed in violation of this act is a class C felony. So doctors who perform abortions, not in the very, very rare case of a risk to the life of the mother, all other abortions could receive up to 99 years in prison. Now, the example that people are using on the internet now is they're saying, you're telling me that a doctor who performs an abortion will spend more time in prison

than the rapist, incestuous person who rapes a 12-year-old girl and impregnates her. That's the meme that's going around. They're using all of those parts. The doctor goes to prison longer than the incestuous, rapist of a 12-year-old girl. First of all, this is a very rich analogy coming from people who just in the last presidential election voted for a woman who literally defended the rapist of a actual 12-year-old girl in litigation, in a case.

She, Hillary Clinton defended the rapist of a 12-year-old girl, even though she joked about how she knew he was guilty. We have it on tape that she joked about, that she knew. he was guilty. So that's okay. You can you can vote for the person who defended the rapist of a 12 year old girl, but now you're going to demagogue on that issue to save a million babies per year. First of all, by the way, on the question of abortion, rape, incest, life of the mother. Those, the three that the left always wants to

talk about make up less than 1% of abortions annually. And in the case, the awful case of rape or incest, that's terrible. But what about the baby? If the logic of abortion is that the baby is not a baby, as that gentleman that I talked to in Philadelphia the other day said, a baby is not a baby, that's the logic of abortion. The logic of pro-life is a baby is a baby. So if a baby is a baby,

then in the awful case of rape or incest, the logic doesn't break down. Now, I mean, I think we should kill the rapist. I think it would be perfectly fine to use capital punishment to kill all the rapists in the country. That's fine by me. It doesn't change the question of the baby. Also, they say that the doctor will be punished more than the rapist. Right. In our legal system, murder is considered a more serious crime than rape.

So if abortion is morally equivalent to murder, then right, that's what will happen. That's what the law says. Right. Now, the law goes further. The law in the text of it says, quote, it defines a person for homicide purposes to include an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability. And it was at this point reading through the Alabama law that I realized, this is the opposite of the New York abortion law. That New York abortion law that was just passed, the Reproductive Health Act, goes so extreme in the other direction that it says,

you can kill a baby at any time up until the moment of birth. And it actually changes the penal law to say that if you kill a pregnant woman, it's no longer double murder. Now it's only a single murder. And what this does is it defines a person for homicide purposes as including an unborn child. Now, of course, when the New York law passed, the mainstream media thought it was just fine and dandy. The Empire State Building was lit up pink. the World Trade Center was lit up pink. There were celebrations. Oh, it was perfectly fine. This,

of course, not. There's an interesting phenomenon that's going on right now that is even beyond the abortion question, which is that the liberal states are getting more liberal and the conservative states are getting more conservative. And specifically on this question of abortion, the pro-abortion states are becoming radically pro-abortion. Kill a baby while he's being born. Kill a baby after he's been born if you take the governor of Virginia at his word. That's on the one side. On the other side, babies are babies and you can't kill them regardless of the reason that you want to kill them. The irony here is that Roe v. Wade was supposed to stop this. Before Roe v. Wade, the public opinion in the United States was moving in favor of abortion. If you had not had this blanket Roe v. Wade

decision that invented a constitutional right to abortion and legalized abortion throughout the United States, you would have what you had before. Some states you'd have legal abortion, some states you wouldn't have legal abortion, and at that time, states were moving in the direction of legalizing abortion. Now, maybe that would have changed over time. This is one of the features of our system of self-government, is as circumstances change, as our understanding of the law changes, as our understanding of ourselves change, we can change. We can change. the laws. Now, Roe v. Wade stopped that. Roe v. Wade halted that entirely. They said, we can't keep having this state-by-state debate over abortion. We need one federal law for

everybody. So they did that, and guess what happened? The debate only got more intense. Guess what happened? Public opinion began to turn in favor of pro-life. This is the case for federalism here. The attempts to quash federalism, the attempts to have a blanket rule for everybody don't work. We'll see why they don't work in a second. But now let's talk about the numbers. Let's get into our numbers. If you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business. And the problem growing businesses have that keeps them from knowing their numbers is they have this hodgepodge of business systems. They have one system for accounting, another system for sales, another system for inventory, another system that their great Aunt Martha told them they had to use. I don't know.

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NetSuite.com slash Knowles, KNOWLES. So, Roe v. Wade was going to stop this debate over abortion. What happened? The abortion debate got even more intense. Now, I think conservatives here basically need to be in favor of federalism. The argument here for the abortion law in Alabama or in Georgia or wherever else, Missouri, wherever else there are going to come is, states need to be able to decide this for themselves. Roe v. Wade is a made-up, it creates a totally fictitious constitutional right.

There should not be a blanket permanent. for abortion throughout the whole country. It doesn't make any sense. We need to support federalism. We need to support states' rights here. In no small part because the attempts to stop federalism, the attempts to stop the states from doing what they want, just don't work. New York is very different from Alabama. And I know that the Supreme Court really wants to make New York exactly like Alabama. They're not. They have different values in many cases. They have different cultures, they have different people, and they want to live differently. And you shouldn't force Alabama to live like New York. You shouldn't force New York to live like Alabama. And regardless

of should or ought to or the which side is more right, I'm just telling you as a fact, a historical fact, it doesn't work. It's so ridiculous to try to make New York into Alabama. It's just a fool's errand. It's never going to work. Now, by the way, the last time, that we tried to quash federalism here. The last time that we faced a question like this was slavery. This was the last time we faced

an intense moral question of the level should we kill a million babies a year. And it's true. We solved that problem by the top down and by saying no, there's going to be a blanket rule now for the entire country. Good thing that we did it.

It did cost us five years of war and the deaths of 600,000 Americans. that's the stakes that we're talking about here. If you honestly think that we're going to go into a civil war, rip the country apart, and kill now much more than 600,000 Americans, okay, but that's the stakes. Otherwise, federalism does provide another option here on this question, at least for now. The bill then goes on. So it talks about, look, we're not going to punish women for getting abortions. We are going to punish doctors, except in this one case.

then the bill invokes explicit moral language. So the bill then invokes the Declaration of Independence, the Holocaust, the communist gulags, and genocides throughout history. This is very serious stuff. This is a bill that is meant to be read by the Supreme Court to challenge this question. They write, quote, in the United States Declaration of Independence, the principle of natural law that all men are created equal, was articulated. The self-evident truth, found in natural law, that all human beings are equal

from creation, was at least one of the bases for the anti-slavery movement, the women's suffrage movement, the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and the American Civil Rights Movement. If those movements had not been able to appeal to the truth of universal human equality, they could not have been successful. It is estimated that six million Jewish people were murdered in German concentration camps during World War II. Three million people were executed. by Joseph Stalin's regime in Soviet gulags. Two and a half million people were murdered during the Chinese Great Leap Forward in 1958. One and a half million to three million people were murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the 1970s.

And approximately one million people were murdered during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. All of these are widely acknowledged to have been crimes against humanity. By comparison, more than 50 million babies have been aborted in the United States. since the Roe decision in 1973. More than three times the number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin's gulags,

Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined. This is not just a dry matter of the law for these Alabama legislators. They are putting this issue into stark relief. We talk about awful genocides throughout history. The numbers are unfathomable, 6 million, 3 million, 1 and a half million, all these numbers.

50 to 60 million babies since Roe v. Wade. 50 to 60 million people who would be alive, who would have lived, who would have been born, who are not born. Just to think about that. We're a country of 330 million people about. Imagine an extra 50 or 60 million of them. By the way, this is just since 1973. Virtually all of them would still be alive.

Imagine how many more people we do. have. That's what this law is making explicitly clear. And that's what the law actually says. You can read it yourself. It's not a very long law. Fortunately, the Alabama legislators have some common sense on them, and they don't need to write 300-page laws like some of our federal legislators do in Washington. So you can read it. I encourage you to go read it because you can tell on Twitter which pundits have read the law and which haven't read the law. You can tell very clearly because the law is explicit. and if someone is telling you it's going to punish women or something, it just is not true. Now, the left largely has not read the law, so they're losing their mind on this.

Here is the Democrat representative from Alabama, Bobby Singleton, who's trying to stop this bill before it's passed. So I don't think that Bobby Singleton has his metaphors quite right, because he said you aborted the state of Alabama. And then he says, Alabama was pregnant with this bill. you aborted her. But if it was the abortion, it would be that someone else was pregnant with the state of Alabama, right? It would be, or if they rejected the bill, they would have aborted the bill. But they didn't abort the state of Alabama. Look, this is obviously not the brightest bulb in the

pack. But something worth noting here is this guy's entire diatribe is you've aborted the state of Alabama. You've committed an abortion on the state of Alabama. What he's implying, here is that abortion is a very bad thing. Right? He's actually in his rhetoric, he's undercutting his entire argument. Because what he's trying to say is that abortion is really good and we should protect abortion. And the way he's doing that is saying, you guys have just done something so bad, so indefensibly bad that you've committed an abortion by outlawing abortion. Okay. Maybe he should have thought that one through or given it to a staffer or somebody to read beforehand. Other people media figures are up in arms about this.

John Fugel sang, who is a left-wing comedian and radio host, he tweeted out, quote, Alabama rapists thank the state GOP for finally giving every one of them the option to pick the mother of their next child. Okay, again, the case of rape accounts for virtually no abortions per year, far less than 1%. per year in the case of rape. And also, I mean, just what he's saying is not true. There are 36 couples for every one baby who is given up for adoption, who want to adopt that baby. So, no, the rapist does not get to pick the mother of his next child because that baby can be given up for adoption. And there are many, many, many people in this country who want to adopt that baby. Amnesty International, sort of ironically named organization, just tweeted out, quote,

Bans, like the one passed in Alabama, are a violation of human rights. These bans will be deadly. They will endanger pregnant people's lives. We must not go back. So, abortion bans are a violation of human rights. Killing a million babies a year, not a violation of human rights. Abortion bans, violation of human rights. The bans will be deadly.

So this law that they just passed, not deadly. The law is deadly. Killing a million babies a year, not deadly. It will endanger people's lives. Well, it actually says it will endanger pregnant people's lives. There's just no justification for that at all. This is based on a lie that came out of the pro-abortion movement. They said that before Roe v. Wade,

five to 10,000 women per year were killed from illegal abortions. That is completely made up. The guy who invented that number, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who was one of the founders of NARAL, the pro-abortion, organization. He has admitted in later years after he became a pro-life advocate that the number was plucked out of thin air to just be useful propaganda. We actually know how many women were killed the year before, Revi-Waid from illegal abortions. It's not 10,000, it's not 5,000. It's 39 people. 39 people killed from illegal abortions that year. 24 women killed from

legal abortions that year. And then even more. When you factor in how many states abortion was legal in and how many states it was illegal in, you find out that the likelihood of dying from an illegal abortion that year was exactly the same as the likelihood of dying from a legal abortion. There was no difference whatsoever. And virtually no women, a very, very small number of women actually died from either of them. So it won't endanger pregnant people's lives at all. That's just a total lie.

The only thing endangering people's lives is abortion, which again, kills us. a million babies a year. So what does this mean for Roe? What does this law mean for the landmark decision? I don't think that this law is going to lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I don't think, I really wish it would. I do not think that the Supreme Court is going to overturn Roe v. Wade. I will tell you why in a second, but first we got to go to dailywire.com. and so much more to get to him. We have this new Democrat in the race, and he launched his campaign unfortunately with one of the most cringe-inducing videos of the entire race, which is really saying something. Then poor Andrew Claven, our buddy, is being accosted by the administration of

Stanford University. We'll get to the heart of what's going on there. And also, did you hear that? Did you hear, it sounds like bells chiming or birds singing, and that's because it's almost time for our next episode of the conversation featuring little old me. I will give you pearls of wisdom tomorrow at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, I will be taking all of your questions every query that has burned in your hearts. I will answer them live on the air. Plus, Elisha Krause will also be there. So, you know, that'll be nice. As always, this episode will be free for everyone to watch on Facebook and YouTube, but only subscribers can ask the questions. Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by me tomorrow, 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific and join

the conversation. Dailywire.com. You know, you get everything. Most importantly, you get the leftist tears tumbler. You're going to need that because of this abortion law because we're not going to keep killing all those babies every year in Alabama. Drink up. The left is furious. We'll see you in a few seconds. I wish that this law would eventually lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I don't think it's going to. Why? So Roe v. Wade, for those of you who don't know, is the landmark Supreme court decision in the 1970s, which legalized abortion throughout the country. How did it do it? It justified this abortion right in the Constitution under the general right to privacy. So this is what the court found from Roe v. Wade, quote, this right to privacy, whether it be founded

in the 14th Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. We need not resolve the difficult issue of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary in this point in the development of man's knowledge is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. This is really rich coming from this Supreme Court. Because on the one hand, they're saying, we're going to invent a new constitutional right. And where is it? I mean, we can't really find it, but I don't know, it's in the 14th

Amendment or the Ninth Amendment. It's in one of those amendments, right? Somewhere. So they say that on the one hand. And then they say, when does life begin? Gosh, we could never, we could never know that. We would never presume to tell you when life begins. Well, you just presume to invent a completely new right in the Constitution. So I don't know, I figured you could answer the simplest question ever. Let me give you a little biology lesson, Supreme Court. When mommy and daddy love each other very much and then the sperm and an egg meet and the sperm fertilizes. the egg, that's when life begins. Meets every scientific definition of life, and it's obviously the case. No, they won't answer that one. So they say that there's this right in the 14th or the 9th

or whatever. Let's say that there is that right. Certainly, the right to privacy is trumped by the right to life, right? Now, the court knew that. That's why the court had to include that extra language, but we don't know when life begins. Yes,

we do. We do know when life begins. But the court wanted to invent a national right to abortion, so they invented it. Now, there was a great dissent from Justice Byron White here. Byron White was not mincing words. He wrote, quote, I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the court's judgment. The court simply fashions and denounces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. Now, Justice William Rehnquist also dissented here. And Justice William Rehnquist, who went on and becomes the chief justice of the court,

he pointed out what Justice White was implying, if the 14th Amendment protects abortion, as the court starts to say, this was apparently unknown to the people who wrote the 14th Amendment and also to the people who enacted the 14th Amendment, who ratified it. The first state law dealing directly with abortion came in 1821. It was enacted by the state of Connecticut. The 14th Amendment was adopted 47 years later. At the time that the 14th Amendment was adopted, at least 36 laws by states or territories limited abortion.

And 21 of those laws were still on the books at the time of Roe v. Wade. So there's just no argument at all for the 14th Amendment argument or for Roe v. Wade. And that's why there are 20 cases right now on their way to the court that challenge Roe v. Wade.

In Indiana, there was a bill signed into law by then Governor Mike Pence. This required an ultrasound and an 18-hour waiting period before you could get an abortion. There's a case before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that involves a challenge to the health and human services policy that prevents illegal aliens in U.S. custody from getting abortions. Alabama previously had included a personhood clause in their state constitution to recognize the rights of babies who haven't been born yet. West Virginia stripped abortion rights protections from its state constitution.

And in Iowa, the governor, Kim Reynolds, signed a heartbeat bill into law. You heard that name right, Kim Reynolds. This is another funny aspect of the abortion debate here, is you hear the left talking about how awful this Alabama law is. It's going to destroy women. It's anti-woman. It's meant to punish women. I can't wait for those left-winger's to find out that the governor of Alabama is a woman.

Nobody seems to know this. The governor of Alabama is a woman. The woman who is going to sign this law into effect is, in fact, a woman. Now, don't get too excited. Because everyone's thinking, now is the time. The pro-life movement has momentum. We can do it. We've got rallies.

We've got laws. We've got state legislators. We've got everything, right? Trump is in office. We've got a bunch of good judges. We have two new judges on the Supreme Court. We have a conservative court, right? Doesn't matter.

I don't think we're going to overturn Roe v. Wade. Republican appointees on the court disappoint their parties and their presidents. all the time and specifically on this issue. We've already seen this happen before. We saw this happen in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This was a case regarding the constitutionality of Pennsylvania restrictions on abortion. And remember, 1992, we're coming just out of the Bush era, we're coming before that just out of the Reagan era, the Reagan Revolution. We're at the height of conservatism at that time. Years of Reagan and Bush appointees on the courts. And we're What happened? The court upheld, quote, matters involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime.

Choices central to personal dignity and autonomy are central to the liberty protected by the 14th Amendment. The court upheld the right to an abortion. It permitted some exceptions and restrictions, gave time periods when you could have restrictions, for some reason. I don't know. I don't think the drafters of the 14th Amendment said, You can only have abortions before 25 weeks or something. But they just invented that. Because if you start with a bad decision, then the only way to uphold it is to write more bad decisions. If you start with a mess, you're going to keep the mess going. And so they upheld this right to an abortion in here. And it wasn't just liberals.

It was Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Ronald Reagan. It was David Souter appointed by George Bush. it was Sandra Day O'Connor, appointed by Ronald Reagan. Three GOP court appointees voted to uphold Roe v. Wade and the right to an abortion. And I think we're in for this again. I think Roberts is a total squish. I think Kavanaugh has intimated that he's something of a squish.

And let's not forget the court follows election returns. We like to pretend that the court is this totally removed body, totally dignified. I wish that were the case, but it's not true. true. The court follows the election returns and, especially Justice Roberts, wants to maintain the integrity of the court, which ironically means not having any integrity on the court and just going with popular opinion. That's what he did on the Obamacare decision. There's no real argument to uphold Obamacare. He just kind of, he said, oh, well, it's a mandate for this purpose and a tax for this purpose, and basically I just don't want to be really unpopular in people to hate me. Well,

we're headed for it again. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 67% of Americans do not want the court to overturn Roe v. Wade. That's not a simple majority. That's two-thirds of Americans. Even among Republicans, only 53% of Republicans support overturning Roe v. Wade. 43% oppose overturning Roe v. Wade. So what's the likely legal and political outcome? Probably they'll whittle away at Roe v. Wade. They'll come up with some new restraining that are permitted for some reason in the 14th Amendment or whatever. I think this is a mistake. I think that we should return this issue entirely to the states. The Constitution doesn't weigh in one way or the other. There is no prohibition of abortion in the Constitution. There is no

right to abortion in the Constitution. It's just not there. Antonin and Scalia used to say, not everything hateful or odious is covered by some provision of the Constitution. There are plenty of things that are SBC, stupid but constitutional, such as the ability of states to make their own abortion laws, sure. But it's just not in the Constitution. So we have to return this to the states. Probably it's most prudent not to pass a federal ban on abortion either. I'd like a federal ban on abortion.

If I were the king, I would have a federal ban on abortion. But I'm not the king. And if you have a federal ban, you basically keep this issue in the exact same state of flux, don't you? It's just the opposite of Roe v. Wade. So if the court found abortion is prohibited by some provision of the Constitution, you'd have the same thing in the other direction. Or even one step further, let's say that the court finds what is correct, which is that abortion is not covered by the Constitution.

Should we then enact a constitutional amendment? I suppose I would be in favor of one, but you are risking that the same issue that we've had with abortion for the last 50, 60 years, which is if you return it to the states, if you return it to the laboratories of democracy, I do have faith in the people that they will come to the correct conclusion eventually. I'm a little wary of a constitutional amendment to prohibit all abortions because I do have faith in the people and I have faith in science. And as scientific advancements progress, we're realizing earlier and earlier, oh, a baby really is a baby. People are realizing this. Public opinion now, unlike at the time of Rovey Wade, is all in favor of the pro-life side.

If we just trust in our foundational institutions, our system of government, our people, I think momentum is moving in our direction. But I'm not too excited. I'm not that hopeful. I think we're going to get more squishes on the court. I think very likely we're going to see a repeat of 1992 and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. we're just going to have to wait and see. Alabama is doing exactly what they should be doing. The pro-life movement is doing exactly what they should be doing. And let's hope and let's put a little pressure on our Supreme Court justices to do what they should be doing as well. This is related to another story today.

I mean, this is a pretty simple story. The U.S. has hit the lowest birth rate in 32 years. This is part of a decades-long trend. We are now down in the year 2018, down in births, down in births, 2% from the year before that. It's a pretty big drop. We now have only 1.73 births per 1,000 women of child-bearing age. I only bring up this story to point out, if you overturned Roe, if you got rid of abortion,

that problem would be over. Countries require about a 2 or 2.1 birth rate. We're now at a 1.73 birth rate. If you get rid of Roe, that problem is fixed. There were 3,788,000 live births in 2018. We killed a million babies that same year. You could have had 4,788,000 births. Think about that year over year after year.

You'd also have a lot more black people, by the way. Just as a side note. This is one reason why a lot of white supremacist types actually support abortion is because black babies are aborted between three and four times as frequently. as white babies. So if the left wants to end white supremacy, which does not exist in this country, but let's say that it did, if the left wanted to end that, you'd think that they would want to overturn Roe versus Wade. They don't. It's just words, words, words. The other thing that would happen if you overturned Roe versus Wade and you stopped killing

a million babies a year, you'd solve the immigration problem. The reason why neither political party actually wants to solve the immigration problem is that economically we need the immigrants. our population is dying. We have 1.7 birth rate. We're not replacing ourselves. The only way that we keep this economy growing is by bringing people in from the third world or from wherever.

Republicans acknowledge this too. The Chamber of Commerce knows this. I mean, the Wall Street Journal Republican types. They all know that. But if you stopped killing a million babies a year, that need, that economic need, would go away. It would be vastly diminished.

It just reminds us abortion is not just a social issue. That's how some people want to portray it. It's an economic issue. It's a demographic issue and it's a legal issue as well. Completely changing topics from the Alabama abortion law, which is basically the only news of the day, but we have to cover this guy. He's not in the news and he's probably never going to make it into the news,

but I hope he does. He's the newest Democrat in the 2020 primary race. His name is Steve Bullock, and he is the governor of Montana, and he's not ever going to be president. But I hope he makes it to the debate stage. I'm considering donating money to him because I want him on the debate stage. He was asked on C-SPAN, after being governor for seven years, almost seven years, what he was most proud of.

Here's what he said. This ma'am. What have you been proudest to achieve this governor? I am happy that, hopefully my kids still know, my most important job is being their dad. I think the things where, you know, as governor, it's not like Attorney General when you know you won or lost a kid. It's so awkward. What are you proudest of? Ah, ha'm gonna, howma, how many, well, I'm a, well, I, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a dad. I guess we are back to the Robey Wade question.

Everything leads back to abortion this week. That's what you're proudest of? No, she said, what are you, you been governor for seven years or what are you proudest of? I don't know. That's a softball, governor. You're supposed to know the answer to that one. She's not grilling you here. It's so brutal.

The guy can't name one thing that he's proud of doing is governor. so he's going to run for president. What this shows you is that this presidential nomination for Democrats is any man's race. What this shows you is there's no actual obvious nominee. It shows you that the field is pretty weak. If guys like this are getting into the race, if you've got now what, 22 people in the race, it shows you this field is really, really weak. and I assume he's going nowhere, but it, you know, people are talking about Joe Biden a lot now.

The president is talking about Joe Biden because he's leading over the other candidates. He's weak. If he were the obvious nominee, all these guys wouldn't be getting into it. Hopefully, he can come up with an answer to what are you proud of accomplishing before he gets onto the debate stage. Another one, governor, just a little bit of advice. People are going to ask you what you want to do as president. You should also probably have an answer for that. Presumably, if you don't have an answer for what you've done, you probably won't have an answer for what you want to do,

but you've got a little bit of time before the debates. Also got to point out here, our pal Andrew Claven, that vicious, Islamophobic, bigoted monster is not very welcome at Stanford University right now, one of the nation's leading universities. He has caused chaos and mayhem on campus. He was invited to give a talk on America's Judeo-Christian,

values, pretty basic stuff, and he's facing staunch opposition, not from the students, by the way, from the administrators. The administrators, there's Susie Brubaker Cole, who's the vice provost of the university, and Tiffany Steinward, Dean for Religious Life, wrote a letter strongly opposing him. They wrote, quote, while our university welcomes discussion of all aspects of America's religious diversity were deeply troubled by views Claven has expressed in the past in relation to Islam. We believe it is possible to affirm one's own faith traditions without denigrating or distorting those of others. What has Drew said about Islam? What do they not like? They obviously don't give any specific examples because they can't. I mean, Drew's talked about Islam. He's talked about a whole

number of issues. But they can't give the specifics. They just say he's Islamophobic, which is a completely made up word that means nothing. And then he says, it's possible to affirm one's faith traditions without denigrating or distorting others. First of all, Drew hasn't distorted Islam ever. Show me an example of one. But what they're saying is, you can say some nice things about Christianity, but you can't discuss other religions. Because if I'm going to extol the virtues of Christianity, then I am necessarily contrasting the views of Christianity with other religious systems. just to use a simple example, the God of Christianity is pure logic. He is the Logos, is the divine logic of the universe. The God of Islam, Allah, is pure will. So the great Muslim

theologian, Ibn Hasam, writes that the God of Islam, Allah, is so purely will that he is not bound by any sort of logic. If Allah tells you to worship an idol, you would be bound to do that. Those are different views of God. Those are very different views. And one of them is correct and one of them is incorrect. So if I say God is the God of logic, that necessarily means that the God of Islam is not really God, that the Islamic view of God is not true. You actually cannot affirm your own faith traditions without necessarily claiming that the others are false. But then they go on, they get even more intense about this. They say, we understand it can be frustrating and painful, deeply frustrating and painful, to see speakers invited to campus whose ideologies disparage members

of our community. Again, show me an example. Drew's never disparaged any member of the community. Acknowledging this pain, we nonetheless encourage you to look beyond the sensationalism of speakers whose currency is controversy to the examples of people joining together across difference and standing in solidarity in the face of hatred and slander. Hatred and slander,

you're the only one promoting hatred and slander. Also, people whose currency is controversy. Andrew Claven, I hate to say nice things about Drew. Andrew Claven is a best-selling novelist who's written about a zillion books. He's an award-winning writer of fiction. He's written a lot of very big Hollywood movies. What have these women ever done?

Susie Brubaker and Tiffany Steinward. The only thing I know about them is they try to stir up controversy from their completely useless positions in the bloated administration of Stanford. What they're accusing Drew of is what they are doing themselves. And then this is pretty troubling. They say, well, they accused Drew of violence. They say violence has shattered many communities, but nonetheless we stand together. They imply that he's being violent.

And then they say, as you decide how to respond to this speaker and others who may follow, we encourage you to have hope in the communities of solidarity as you decide how to respond. They sound like mobsters. Listen, sure would be a shame if somebody came up and responded to your speech, huh? She would be a dirty, right and shame. The way to respond to a speaker at a university that you disagree with is that you listen to what he has to say and then you express your opinion. There's one way to respond. The idea that she's pushing, that there are multiple ways to respond implies that students could shout him down,

students could drown him out, students could get violent, as has happened to me and other people at universities. That's the implication here. And it's obviously the implication. The reason I bring this up, not just to defend Drew, he's a big boy, he can defend himself, the administrators of the problem.

You know, there are those kind of childish idiots, like the girl at Yale who was shouting, you know, this is a safe space. You're screaming the effing. worded her professor, who hired you, all this kind of stuff. This is not an intellectual community, she shouted. It's easy to vilify the students, and the students are complete idiots, that's true, and that girl in the Yale video is a privileged bratty little child. Students are ignorant and uneducated and badly behaved by

definition. That's what a student is. The issue is the administration. The issue is Susie Brubaker Cole and Tiffany Steinward at Stanford. The issue at Missouri, is that jerk chancellor, Molly Agarwal, who, after I was physically assaulted, smeared me as a bigot and defended the heckler's veto. That's the issue. There are the problem, because they should know better and they don't. So what we should do is defund these universities that tolerate this stuff at a public level. We should stop donating as alumni at the private level, and the demand should be clear. Fire the administrators. Stop the bloat. I get why they cowtow to the students. I get why they cowtow to the students. The students are paying

70, 80 grand a year to go to these universities. Stop the bloat. That will reduce the cost of tuition. Stop the federal guarantees. That will reduce the cost of admission. Stop donating all of your money. That will reduce the cost of admission. It will stop this bloat that's going on at these universities.

It will make them respond to you because the problem. Don't blame the Marxist professor. Professors are Marxists. This happens almost all the time. Don't blame the students. Blame the administrators. and call for their jobs to be surrendered. Call for them to be fired.

Call for them to be defunded. All right, we got a lot more to get to, but it's a big day, and we have that big Alabama law, so we will have much more to talk about tomorrow. Don't forget, get your mailback questions in for Thursday. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

See tomorrow. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz and directed by Mike Joyner, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Danny Domeco.

Audio is mixed by Dylan Case. Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera. And our production assistant is Nick Sheehan. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019. Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall show today, a law in Alabama would outlaw abortion in almost every case, making no exceptions for rape.

The left, of course, to put it mildly, is not happy about this. I sense that maybe the tide is turning in America in favor of the pro-life cause. Am I being too optimistic? Well, that would certainly be a first, but we'll talk about it. Also, someone emailed me

and asked whether conservatives are putting their heads in the sand when it comes to gun violence. Is that true, are we? Well, I'll address that question today over on the Matt Walls show.