The Michael Knowles Show - Fighting for Life | Lila Rose

Episode Date: May 23, 2021

Lila Rose joins the show to discuss her new book Fighting for Life: Becoming a Force for Change in a Wounded World. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our president is about a thousand years old. The birth rate has fallen to the lowest level ever after having been below replacement for 50 years. People are getting married at the lowest rates ever recorded. And we kill a million babies a year through abortion. We are living in a culture of death. If a conservative said that 30 years ago, 40 years ago, people would have written him off as a cook as a hyperbologist, as some kind of radical. Now it seems undeniable. How do we get out of it? I am joined right now by my dear friend, one of the great pro-life activists ever, you know, not even just right now, but in the history of the country. Lila Rose, Lila Rose, the head of live action, and the author of

Fighting for Life, Becoming a Force for Change in a Wounded World. Lila, thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me, Michael. So Lila, after that cheery introduction, how do we fix it? How do we get out of it? Well, it's funny, I end fighting for life the book. It's this guidebook for activists or change makers. And I end it saying, you know, have families. Embrace family life. Embrace marriage.

Embrace kids. And if you don't feel called to that yourself, support other people who are. Because ultimately, the change is made in our own families and how we commit to love and commit to responsibility. That's really the deeper cultural change that's necessary. The reason we have all these political excesses and the most pro-abortion administration and our history. I mean, even worse than under Obama, Joe Biden stepped into the most an even more radicalized version of himself when he partnered with Kamala Harris,

who's going after, you know, our friends, David Delighton and Sandra Merritt in California when she was attorney general to try to prosecute pro-life journalists. In despite all of that, what's the end game for, I think, not just conservatives, but people of conviction and truth, people who care about the future of this country. It's really rebuilding in our communities. And that, that's primarily through the family. Yes. I'm on my second kid. I know.

We're expecting number two. And I know that you're married, Michael. And that's a whole daily wire thing is the family and promoting families. And that's really the future, I think. It is. You can see the effect of my first child on my under eye balance. You can see that that is really deepened. And I can't wait for number two.

And then I want to have three, four, five, and six. I want an army of little Michaels to spread around this country. But a lot of people are not doing this. that. And I think a lot of, you see it reflected in the data, a lot of millennials in particular are just putting off getting married. And they'll cohabitate and they'll have long relationships. They're putting off having kids. They'll get a little puppy that they drag around on a thousand dollar stroller, but they don't want to have babies. And, you know, I say this from some personal experience. I, like you, Lila, am a mackerel snapping papist and Catholic. And so I expected to, to have a kid nine months after my wedding day. And it didn't happen. You know, it actually, sometimes it takes a little while. And so it, you know, it's just so, so sad to me that there are some people who can't have kids. There are some people for whom having kids is a very difficult thing. And there are some people who can do it. And they just throw it away. They describe

having children as basically as a venereal disease. They describe the problem of overpopulation. You notice the people who talk about overpopulation never want to take themselves out of the population. They always want to take somebody else out of the population. So how do we push back against that movement that seems to have so much momentum? Well, it's funny because, I mean, even British Vogue, there was a couple of that article a few weeks ago saying it's having children environmental terrorism. And there is this push that's saying having children is a bad thing. And there are economic struggles and all sorts of concerns that millennials have about kids, which I think are important. to discuss and explore. But what I did in fighting for life is I walked through, how did we get here?

I mean, it's built the story of live action and starting at age 15 and building it into this global pro-life movement. But it's also, how did we get to the point, as you described, where we're nearly a million abortions a year? And why do we have this negative attitude about kids? And what I explore and what I think is so incredibly important to talk about Michael, which I know you've discussed before, but it needs to be talked about more, is it really goes. back to two things. Number one, something called the sexual revolution in our country where we divorced, we separated sex from children and marriage. So now sex is about one thing only, consent. Basically don't rape other people. That's the morality today around sex. Don't rape. Have fun if you can. Whatever you want to do, as long as it's two adults, you're good to go. And that's not the way sex works. I mean, sex can create new life, sex bonds people together.

very powerfully, emotionally and spiritually, I believe. And it's not something that is just about moments of pleasure. It's about a relationship ultimately. And there's a reason, I mean, I discussed inviting for life how even Planned Parenthood admit, I mean, it's the biggest abortion chain. And the Gutmacher Institute is their research arm. And Gutmacher Institute admits the pro-abortion people admit that 50% of the women who have abortions today in our country, and that's 2300 abortions a day, 50% of those women were using contraception in the month that they got pregnant with this unplanned pregnancy. 50%.

So this idea that contraception, safe sex will protect against abortion is a myth and a lie. And it's one of the reasons we have so much abortion be because people societally, we expect that sex is without responsibility. And that really is part of the solution is changing our mindset on relationships, changing our mindset on sex. and encouraging younger people. I mean, I think the message that abortion is a solution if you get pregnant, but you should just have sex freely. You know, it's not, sex is not about love and responsibility.

It's a completely backwards message. Instead of saying, celebrate children no matter how they're conceived, and sex is actually precious and involves responsibility, that's the message we should be sending people. So I think that's part of the change that's needed, that cultural, educational shift for our country to have. Right. And I love this focus on consent.

I think you're totally right. Consent has now become the only thing that matters whatsoever when you're talking about sex. However, you'll notice that when sexual matters go awry, when the sexual revolution leads to bad consequences, the left needs to put this in the language of consent. So what they'll say is, well, yes, this looked like a totally consensual sexual act, but actually the woman was drunk. And now the man was probably drunk too, but they'll say, too, but they'll say, say, well, if you're drunk, you can't give consent, which means that basically any sexual union between single people under the age of 30 is de facto rape, mutual rape, right? Because most people are having a couple of cocktails before they make these sorts of decisions. Okay. Now, let's say that alcohol is not involved or drugs or any sort of impairment. You've seen this now with some allegations against rock stars like Marilyn Manson, where a woman will say, look, I was in an ostensibly consensual relationship. And no, we weren't drinking a lot or using drugs or anything. But it was still, it still wasn't really consent because he manipulated me.

He groomed me when I was 20. He just, I don't know, he warped my mind into consenting to things that I've now come to regret. And it seems to me what they're grappling with is the fact that, as you describe very well, these virtues are ha. habits. You know, you've got to, the more you practice virtues, the easier they become. And vice is a sort of habit, too. And when we engage in vice and sin, we compromise our free will. And, you know, so the heroin addict is a heroin addict and all he wants to do is shoot up heroin. He can't consent even when he's sober, he can't consent because he has this vicious desire. So I'm so with you. I really wish we would take the conversation beyond these, you know, shallower talking points

into another area. But, but how do we do it? You know, So much of your work is focused on abortion. This is one of, if not the greatest scourge in the country. But the pro-life issue is about more than that. The culture of life would be about even more than the issue of abortion. Right. It's about ultimately who we are individually and how we love others. I mean, that sounds so fundamental, but it is the truth.

It's about how we see the dignity of every single person we encounter. And so a lot of my book Fighting for Life is about, just that. It's not just the story of me starting this organization at 15 and how you get started as an activist or how you, if you're a young mom at a school and you want to get involved in the school board or if you're a student or whatever you are, how you get involved in the pro-life fight or really any cause. But it's also this journey of personal transformation, a journey that I'm still on, which I think is the ultimate solution to the crises today. I mean, how do you solve the problem of abortion? Well, it goes back to a problem of personal relationship and really how we see

ourselves and our own sexuality, right? Just this cheapening of sex, as you were describing, addictions around sex and dysfunction around sex. And where does that come from? That comes from a misunderstanding of who we are as people, of what love is, of what really we should be aiming for in life. What makes us happy? Does short-term sexual pleasure make us happy that leads to an unplanned pregnancy and then we go have an abortion? Does that make you happy? No. Statistically, women who have abortions are up to 100 times more likely to commit 100% more likely. to commit suicide in the following year because of the trauma of that decision. So we know that these things actually don't bring happiness. I mean, mental health crises are sky high right now. Every year,

addiction increases, pornography use increases, mental health, anxiety, depression increased, suicide rates increased. So whatever we're doing around how we treat our bodies and how we relate to other people, the abortion rate, it's not working. And so my biggest, in the book and I show these 27 principles and some of them for me are, first of all, knowing your worth, this is a really important message. If they're young women listening or you have young women in your life, knowing your value as a woman, respecting yourself as a woman or as a man, I mean, as a human being made in the image and likeness of God. I mean, that's an idea that we're endowed by our creator in our Declaration of Independence, right? It's

not just a religious belief per se that you have to subscribe to the entire religion, but it's actually fundamental for how our whole legal system is built. Our whole idea of human rights come from a God who gave them to us. And it's this idea that we have the, we're like God or human nature. We have the ability to love, to choose. And that's why we have rights that should protect certain freedoms of how we are, how we operate, how we want to live our lives. And so if we can know our value and respect the value of other people, then we have higher standards. We have higher standards for our dating relationships. We're not going to go sleep with Marilyn Manson, as you were talking about earlier, Michael. I mean, the women are now saying, you know, he, it wasn't consensual, whatever.

I mean, we're going to have higher standards for who and how we love for what our life is about. I also talk about the importance of, for those that are still wrestling with faith or don't have a faith, letting God find us. So I should actually share my faith journey because I do think that's very important. You know, I respect anybody where they are in their journey with God or what they believe on that. But I share how really understanding, you know, what are we aiming toward? Is there a God in our life? Everybody has some sort of religion we hold to, whether we realize it or not. What is yours? You know, is it based on absolute truth? Is it based on a God who is loving? Or is it based on, you know, this idea of science. Maybe science is your God or maybe you're

your own God. You decide morality. You're kind of the end all be all. But who we put our admiration in, what we put our trust in really affects who we are. too. And I talk about the power of heroes. You know, if you're going to make a difference in the world, if you're going to stand up in these cultural or political battles, knowing who your heroes are, your models are, and having good one is so powerful and important. So these are some of the principles I share, but I think that is actually key to building the culture of life is ourselves, allowing ourselves to be changed as much as we want to change the world around us. Certainly, a culture is defined by what it worships. Cult and culture come from the same root word.

And, you know, where you put your time, where you put your focus, where you put your money, that is what you're going to worship. Now, what you're saying is that the culture of life is coherent and it has integrity. If you respect a culture of life over here, it's going to express itself over there and over there and over there. If you have respect for the human person and your dealings every day with people, then you're going to have respect for unborn babies. Then you're going to have respect for this person and that person. Okay. For people who are older, for instance.

you're going to oppose assisted suicide. Okay. But the left, and I use that term specifically, because they might have different views on certain issues, but they consider themselves on the left. They'll come in and say, okay, you crazy pro-lifers, you want less abortion. The way to get less abortion is not to have a coherent culture of life. The way to have less abortion is to have a ton of sex ed in schools. It's to have condoms everywhere. It's to get every girl on the pill. It's to have people having casual sex, but where they're really focused in on the timing and the risks. And okay, so those two things can't be true at the same time. You're shaking your head, which makes me think you've got an answer on which one's right. Well, as I said earlier, it's a feeder system.

And I mean, I've been investigating Planned Parenthood for over 10 years now. And it's absolutely a feeder system for abortion. I mean, there's a reason that Planned Parenthood's abortion rates have gone up over the last 10 years, but the national abortion rates have gone down. So this is what Planned Parenthood does. They want to sexualize our kids. They want our kids to sexually experiment. They don't want kids and young people to see sex as something sacred or connected to responsibility or commitment. They want to ultimately have kids be sexually experimenting because they know that contraception has a failure rate.

And that is, I mean, I mentioned earlier the statistic, 50% of women who have abortions, We're using contraception the month they got pregnant. So contraception, every kind, even sterilization, getting a vasectomy will give you a failure rate. There's a failure rate there. The only thing that has no failure rate for unplanned pregnancy is the responsibility and the choice to say, I'm not ready to be a parent yet and I respect you so much. I'm not going to have sex with you unless we're going to get married and have a family together. I mean, that's the ultimate proper path.

And to say, oh, kids, you know, Planned Parenthood is a line as, well, that's not going to work because kids are kids. you know, people are people and they're just going to act on their biological impulse. We're more than that. We're more than just our biological impulse. We do have the power to make decisions. We do have the power to have self-control. And yes, does that mean mistakes are sometimes made? Yes, they are. And I actually share in my book the story for our family. I mean, my sister is one of my heroes, my little sister, Katarina. I had her ultrasound picture growing up when I prayed to God for a little sister on the fridge. And her, she shares her story. She allowed me to share story. She's very open about it. She went through a really hard time. She struggled with things.

And a lot of, I talk about mental health challenges in my book and, and her struggles there. And then she ends up having an unplanned pregnancy. And the pressures of friends, not our family, thankfully, but friends around her, that she should just, she could just take care of this. You know, that was the message. I mean, they weren't telling her when she was having sex and not ready to be a mom. Don't do that. They were when she gets pregnant, then it's go have an abortion. And she bravely chooses life. It changes her life. And, you know, my nephew, this amazing kid, changes my sister's life, transforms her, she ends up marrying the guy, they have another child now. And her story is, yeah, in a society, mistakes are made. I mean,

we're not trying to be prudes here about sex. But the bottom line is this, where are we directing people? What is the moral code that we're pointing to? And if there's no moral code and Planned Parenthood is in the schools teaching kids pornography, masturbation, sexual obedience and now trans ideology. I mean, Planned Parenthood is setting up shop with hormones in our communities to secretly give them to little boys and girls. A lot of parents don't know this, but that's their new thing, their new gig. That's a culture of death right there. You're creating death cycles for those people. You're feeding the abortion market. I love this idea. We're not we're not the prudes. I think what the sexual revolutionaries want to say is, oh, you fuddy-duddy conservatives, look,

We're the world-wise radicals here, and we really know what's going on with sex. And I think, hold on a second here. You're the people who say that casual sex has no consequences and that rampant abortion has no psychological consequences and that the contraception always works and that little boys can become little girls. And you're accusing me of being ignorant and naive. Actually, maybe it's the pro-lifers who have a little bit more of a keen sense of how life really works. only have a few minutes left, but I would like you to address what I have found to be the most honest argument for abortion I've ever heard. This is from Naomi Wolf. Naomi Wolf is a feminist. She's actually seems to be having some disputes. She's changing. Yeah, she's changing before

our very eyes. But she infamously said some years ago, she said, look, all this talk about how abortion doesn't take a human life and it's just a zygote or a fetus or that's all bunk. That's ridiculous. Yes, abortion does take a human life. However, women and men are not the same. Women have this disadvantage. They got to deal with something men don't have to deal with. And so for there to be true equality between the sexes, women need to be able to kill their children in all their humanity. And she got a ton of blowback for it. And I, I mean, what she's saying is ghastly. But I felt the blowback was undeserved because that woman, unlike virtually every other abortion supporter I know, was being honest about the stakes.

So how's her argument wrong? Yeah, there's honesty to her argument in the sense that she's admitting the reality of the humanity of those children and just saying, yes, it does kill them and that's okay, that's my right. But listen, what is equality? Equality is not saneness. If I had the right as a woman to be equal to every other man, then I have the right to have your same strengths physically, to have your same attributes. I mean, equality is not sane. the fact that I can bring life into the world and you can't, Michael, doesn't mean that we're not equal in dignity.

Thanks for rubbing it in. But it means that we're different. And that's good. I'm glad we're different. You know, I'm glad we're everyone's different. So what are the differences are actually gifts. And to say that our ability to bring children into the world means that we have the ability to then kill them.

It's like saying because a man has the ability to be strong and be oppressive over another individual that's physically weaker than he. then he has the right to somehow oppress that weaker individual. We will all have the ability to be stronger than others and have others even dependent on us. But another person, especially a child, our child, dependency, biologically, emotionally, their weakness does not give us the right to take their life. And I think that's the key. The natural place for our human life to begin their life is in the body of their mother.

That's how we all start our life. And so we should have a profound respect for that bond and fight to support those mothers. Men should be supporting those women. If they're the father, that should be 100% their focus is helping her and helping that child. Instead of saying, because I have another human dependent on me, I have the right to conquer them and kill them. That's not morality. That's not justice. Well said.

And you've rubbed it in, but you make the point, no one ever confuses me for Lila Rose. nobody, I try, I do my hair up, I try to look nice, nobody, nobody ever does. You're great the way you are. Embrace your, like my book, know your work, Michael. I will know my worth, I will not try to identify as other people. I really, really strongly recommend it. Well, one, I mean, just go follow Lila. Well, Lila, where can people follow you on social media? Thank you. So I'm all over wherever you are on socials. Lila Grace Rose, Lila Rose official, on Instagram, on Facebook. And then it's liveaction.org and live actions all over.

So we're the leading educational leader for the public movement. So check us out and get equipped. And then fighting for life is anywhere you get your book. So I hope it's inspiring and helpful for you. There it is. Go get the book. Fighting for Life, becoming a force for change in a wounded world. Read the book, do the stuff, and help repair the world just a little bit,

make it a little bit less wounded. Lila, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Michael.