Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep986: #986 - Responding to the Roe V. Wade Reversal with Dr. Scott Rae

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

Dr. Scott Rae (Ph.D. USC) is Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Philosophy and Christian Ethics at Talbot School of Theology. He’s also a consultant for ethics for four Southern California hospitals and is a fellow of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and a fellow of the Wilberforce Forum. Scott has authored 10 books in ethics including The Ethics of Commercial Surrogate Motherhood; Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics; Brave New Families: Biblical Ethics and Reproductive Technologies; Beyond Integrity: A Judeo-Christian Approach to Business Ethics; and Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics. Scott also co-hosts an engaging podcast with Sean McDowell called “Think Biblically,” which tackles many hot topics including abortion. In this conversation, Scott and I talk about Christians should respond to the reversal of Roe V. Wade, how we should think through abortion as a whole, what are the best pro-choice arguments, when does life begin, when does personhood begin, how to respond to some of the environemtal factors that actually contribute to high abortion rates, and whether the recent ruling will actually lead to fewere abortions.  –––––– PROMOS Save 10% on courses with Kairos Classroom using code TITR at kairosclassroom.com! –––––– Sign up with Faithful Counseling today to save 10% off of your first month at the link:  faithfulcounseling.com/titr or use code TITR at faithfulcounseling.com –––––– Save 30% at SeminaryNow.com by using code TITR –––––– Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review. www.theologyintheraw.com

Hello, friends. Welcome to a special episode of Theology in the Raw. This episode is not part of the normal routine of Theology in the Raw, which typically drops on Monday and Thursday. But in light of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, I really wanted to have a conversation about how Christians should think through that reversal on a political level, on an ethical level? How should we think through things like abortion? And so I reached out to my friend, Dr. Scott Ray, because Scott is a resident expert in this area. He's been doing work on medical ethics for decades. Scott has a THM from Dallas Seminary, MA from USC, PhD from USC, postgraduate study from the American Institute for Holy Land Studies. His primary interests are in medical ethics and business

ethics. And he's the author of at least 10 books in ethics, including The Ethics of Commercial Surrogate Motherhood, Moral Choices, Brave New Families, Biblical Ethics and Reproductive Technologies, and Beyond Integrity, A Judeo-Christian Approach to Business Ethics, and many, many other books. Scott's become a friend over the years, and he is just super, just wise and sharp and thoughtful. He is a dean of faculty at Talbot School of Theology and professor of philosophy and Christian ethics at Biola University. Also, I do want to mention that Scott and Sean McDowell co-host a really good podcast called Think Biblically. Think Biblically. And they do address the question of abortion. They have an episode coming out, I believe, if it's not dropped

yet on the Roe v. Wade decision. And if you go to Think Biblically, you will see lots of other really, really helpful things that Scott and Sean address. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Scott Ray. All right, friends, I'm here with Dr. Scott Ray, whom I consider, well, I mean, for a while, somebody who I admired from a distance as an evangelical ethicist. And over the last few years, I think can call you a friend, which is really, it's always shocking when you read some of these books for years. And then now we have connected several times. So I reached out to you, Scott, short notice and Hey, can you help us think through this Roe v. Wade thing? Because I'm getting asked a lot of questions. I've got a lot of thoughts. I don't know if they're

good and accurate. But you're, this is kind of your area, especially kind of the, the public sphere of Christian ethics is a world you've been swimming in for decades. So what are your thoughts on the reversal of Roe v. Wade? You can go any direction you want, but how should Christians think through this? The big question is where to start. So maybe I'll start with what I think is the obvious part of good news about it is I think it was a very good day for the unborn when Roe v. Wade was reversed. Now, did it, you know, did it take away abortion rights? You know, the answer to that is clearly no. And you wouldn't know that from looking at a lot of the protesters that were out who claimed that, you know, a woman's right over her own body had completely disappeared.

And that's not that's not true. All the decision did was turn it back to the states, take it out of the hands of the federal government and turn it back to the states. And so states, you know, I mean, most states were prepared for this one way or another. And so states, you know, I mean, most states were prepared for this one way or another. I mean, my state of California had already months ago declared itself a sanctuary state for abortion, regardless of how the decision came down. But, you know, roughly half the states will have nothing. Nothing will change. And I mean, a few things might change. I mean, they might there will be no residency mean, they might, there will be no residency requirement, for example, like there is in some states. Some states will actually, you know,

pay for women to travel to their state for an abortion. Companies in those states are now going public saying that, you know, they'll pay for their employees to go to a state that allows it if they want to have an abortion. And about half the states have already indicated that they will have some sort of significant restrictions on access to abortion. What exactly that's going to look like will vary from state to state. exactly that's going to look like will vary from state to state. For example, the law in Mississippi that was under, it was the law under question that Roe v. Wade was reviewing, says that after 15 weeks, abortion would be prohibited. And there are other states who have, will have much tighter restrictions, but states, I think, will have to reflect the will of their voters. And we'll see, I think what the voters have indicated, you know, in surveys that have

been taken is that most people, they're uncomfortable with either of the extremes, but, you know, complete abortion on demand or, you know, a complete restriction on abortion. And so most people have some sort of nuanced view. And I think what we will find is that as characteristic of the arena of public policy, it'll be an area of negotiation, compromising, limited objectives, where if you want all the pie, you probably won't get any of it. But if you're willing to take a decent slice of it, it may not be everything you want all the pie, you probably won't get any of it. But if you're willing to take a decent slice of it, it may not be everything you want, but you'll make significant progress.

So that may be a hard thing for both of these polarized sides to come to grips with, because I think particularly on the pro-choice side, I think particularly on the pro-choice side, any deviation from this sort of abortion on demand is seen as betraying the cause. And I think increasingly the pro-life side is being seen in that way too. But once you enter the realm of public policy and leave the realm strictly of morality, then the idea of extremes, I think sort of goes out the window because it's just the nature of the beast. We're in public policy. It is a realm of negotiation and normally not getting everything you want.

And I would expect that in the states that have indicated that they're going to put restrictions on access to abortion. So even those states, I would assume there would be red states. Even those red states probably won't categorically 100% make all forms of abortion illegal. They might make exceptions if the health of the mother is at stake or maybe rape or incest. I know those are very, the percentages are extremely low there, but they might still have some exceptions like that. I think, you know, there may be a couple of states that are exceptions to this. I think it will be difficult to get anything enacted into law

that doesn't have some exception for sexual assault and some exception for when the mother's life is genuinely in danger. Like an ectopic pregnancy, for example, where the, you know, the embryo implants in the fallopian tube and not the uterus. You don't take care of that really quickly. It's a double catastrophe because the mother's going to die and the baby's going to die also. And so normally what they will do is just snip a little incision in the fallopian tube, allow the embryo to come out, and it's just absorbed into the body as a, quote, natural miscarriage. Okay. So, I mean, it's an induced miscarriage, to be sure.

But if you don't do that, you lose everything. Okay. And there are other cases. They're becoming more rare, I think, because we're just getting a lot better at managing really problem pregnancies. So the number of cases where the mother's life, outside of ectopic pregnancies, where the mother's life is genuinely endangered, are not, it's not nearly the same as it was in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was passed. And for myself, if I were a pro-choice advocate, which I'm not, but if I were a pro-choice advocate, I would admit that most partial birth abortions ought

to be outlawed. Those are, in my view, those are heinous violations of the baby's right to life. those are heinous violations of the baby's right to life. And the pro-choice movement gains nothing, in my view, by holding the line so hard against third-trimester abortions. Because it's not like the pregnant woman has been caught off guard that she's pregnant by that time. She's had plenty of time to process this and to make arrangements. The one thing that really – and we're dealing with something that's been so highly politicized. It just makes it – it just so hinders an actual discussion, conversation. From the little I've looked into it, it's not just like a religious ethical perspective that would be pro-life.

But it seems like most – I mean, correct – and please correct me if I'm wrong. I read a survey the other day that if you ask the average biologist, you know, when does life begin for mammals? I mean, I think 90% or something said at conception by just the standard definition of life. Now, is that, I mean, or somebody says, no, life doesn't begin at conception. Then what's the rationale for determining when life begins? Is it something like when they can breathe on their own when they're independent of their mother when they're there's a heartbeat but all of these are terribly inconsistent um i mean if you what's the best argument for the pro-choice side yeah yeah. Let me sharpen the question. Okay.

If I might. Because I think if you frame it in terms of when does life begin, then it's a biological scientific one. Okay. And you don't have any other option but to say life begins at conception. Okay. The embryo is alive and it's fully human right because it's got a full you know complement of human dna it has human parents i mean that's the definition of a human being biologically is if it's alive and if it has human parents okay so real quick

everything you're saying there an evolutionary biologist who's not religious who doesn't have a have a dog in the fight, are you just repeating what a standard biology – you're not making an argument here. This is just what – That's just a fact. Okay. Look at any textbook of embryology and it will say the same thing. Okay. So the question we're really asking is when do you have a person in the moral sort of metaphysical sense? Okay.

And there, that's a different question. Now, for myself, I'm skeptical of anybody who distinguishes between a human being and a person. Yes. Because I think that's a dangerous thing to do. And lots of people have done that to very you know, very harmful, if not catastrophic effects on human beings. You know, in Nazi Germany, for example, Jews, gypsies, the mentally handicapped were considered human beings, but not full persons. And some of the arguments for longstanding abortion rights, not to mention euthanasia and assisted suicide, make that same distinction between a human being and a person.

And I think then you have to ask yourself now on what basis do we decide when somebody is actually a person? Right. And usually, usually, it's not along that continuum between pregnancy and birth. Because I think most people admit that those are arbitrary restrictions, I mean, arbitrary guidelines. For example, to say that the child is a person once he or she is viable to survive outside the womb. Well, that's really nothing more than, one, a change of location. And it's a commentary on medical technology,

not any commentary on what kind of a thing the unborn child is. And, you know, viability has changed significantly since 1973. You know, I mean, it was at the end of the second trimester in 1973. Well, we've got, you know, babies in neonatal intensive care units at 22 weeks that are, you know, have a long way to go, but are alive and surviving outside of's body. Now, we also ought to point out that, you know, any baby born at 22 to 26 weeks goes from a natural life support system to an artificial one. So, the category itself is even misleading because they don't, you know, they are not capable of surviving independent of every technological substitute we have for the mother's body. Yeah. So, yeah, go ahead.

That just seems so, I mean, so, and I always want to take whatever arguments we made and say, okay, is this going to be an absolute principle? So any human being who's dependent upon another human to live, we can end the life of that human being for whatever reason? Like that gets a little bit eugenics on me. Well, yeah. And I mean, think about it. I won't ask you, but if you had your wife on here who's actually carried several children, I think she would tell you that there's only a very slight degree of difference in the degree of dependence between a child she was carrying in the womb and a newborn that she's holding in her arms.

You know, that's just not a huge difference. So anyway, what most pro-choice advocates will do, they do one of two things. One is they will concede that you have a person and then make the argument that women still should have the right to take the lives of their full-person unborn children. Based on? Based on the rights of a woman over her own body, her own bodily integrity trumping the life of the unborn child. I just think that really does not help the pro-choice – the irrational – because it came from – it's not some appendage. It's an independent – let's just say it is a human life. a human life. I mean, what they're trying to do is to, to take seriously what, you know, ultrasound and especially 4d ultrasound technology is giving us today. It's making it more and more difficult to look at the unborn child in the womb and say that this is not a person to say that this is a

clump of cells or a piece of tissue. That's a much harder argument to make. And so I think the pro-choice movement has recognized, and understandably so, that they are better off not making the argument at all about what kind of a thing the unborn child is and instead focus on the woman's rights about the integrity and autonomy. So is that why so much rhetoric is about women's rights and everything? Because if they dig into the real heart of the question of life and personhood, they don't have much there. Is that fair to say? I think that is fair to say. And it turns out, in my view, that medical technology, maybe even more so than morality, philosophy, and theology, has helped change the narrative on this.

The other way they come at it is to say it's not a medical thing. It's a philosophical thing. It's not a medical thing. It's a philosophical thing. And you are a person when you are able to perform a certain set of non-negotiable sort of the four functions that we say are crucial to being a human person. So things like self-consciousness, awareness of one's environment, the ability to have some sort of relational connection some maybe a moderate sort of elementary

form of rationality it's the way I summarize it is I call it it's the look in the mirror test where you can look in the mirror and recognize that hey that's me I recognize myself so Or you can look in the mirror and recognize that, hey, that's me. I recognize myself.

So it's more as a functional view of what a person is. And, of course, the difficulty with that is that people who are in reversible comas, people who are under general anesthesia, some people I know who are in a very deep sleep. You know, none of those things apply. And so, you just run aground when you start digging a little deeper. So, the pro-choice person will say, well, those, the loss of those functions in those situations is only temporary. But that's true of the unborn child, too. In fact, it's perfectly normal for the unborn child not to have those functions at particular stages of maturity. In fact, nobody's surprised by that. We expect that. Yeah. And so I think, in my view, putting the definition of personhood on a functional basis is doomed to fail.

Yeah. What do you say about, I'm trying to think of other things I've heard to say kind of around this issue, like if you outlaw abortion, it's going to lead to a lot of back alley abortions. There's going to be a whole unintended negative effect that's going to come from this. Do you have any thoughts on that? Is there any validity to that? I don't. There may be some anecdotal things that we'll see. But if you look back statistically, before 1973, the vast majority of abortions that were done were done by licensed physicians in licensed facilities. They were just done illegally. This idea that there were huge numbers of back alley abortions with unsanitary, untrained, unlicensed physicians performing them I think is a bit of an urban legend.

There were some. There were some that were done that way. But to pretend that that's the norm that we'll go back to, I think there's no basis on which to say that. Okay. There's one, another thing that comes up that does resonate with me, you know, quite a bit that, you know, some, the push pushback is some Christians, conservative Christians, are so focused on ending abortion, but they're not focused on the more structural environments that are fostering abortion. And the one that really gets me is I read somewhere,

I say that a lot, I read somewhere, but I really did. Okay, so it was something like 20 to 30% of women who have had an abortion were raised in an extremely conservative religious environment where getting a secret abortion was chosen because of the profound shame and lack of grace and forgiveness that would have came about because of the religious environment. And that's and forgiveness that would have came about because of the religious environment. And that's where I'm like, oh, yeah, that's on us. Doesn't justify the abortion. But yeah, can it not be a both and?

There are certain environmental things that we should address while also saying no to abortion. It's kind of my two cents on that kind of environmental. Well, that is absolutely right. And I admit what's been a little disturbing to me to see the reactions of some in the Christian community who are pro-life is there's been a lot of dancing in the end zone and a lot of spike in football and celebrating the win when we recognize that though this was a win, it's not the whole thing because the goal is to make abortion not illegal, but to make it

unthinkable. That's the goal. And to do that, you can't do that without attending to these other things. You have to attend to, you know, desperate women who are in dire straits. You have to attend to people who were raised in, you know, in various forms of honor-shame cultures where this brings profound disgrace on the family. where this brings profound disgrace on the family. You know, and you have to take into account that you have, you know, you have terrible situations that women find themselves in where, you know, teenagers are pregnant and watching the trajectory of their life sort of dramatically change. This is, on Monday, there was a front page piece in the Los Angeles Times.

There was a challenge to churches and other religious groups, pro-life religious groups. And the question they put, it was the headline said, will churches now help women? And I think they raised the right question. I don't often agree with what's in the Los Angeles Times, but I think they were spot on. Because it's one thing to celebrate that the unborn now have greater protections. It's another thing to make sure that the conditions that drive women to get abortion, the things that we're actually giving attention to. And that, in my view, is the bigger part of the battle. And that's that making abortion unthinkable can't be done without giving attention to these other systemic things. providing, you know, better subsidies for child care, better child care options, you know, better care for pregnant women, more adoption opportunities. You know, maybe churches will actually set up

ministries where they will house and fund unwed mothers who have unwanted pregnancies. Yeah. You know, maybe the churches will finally put their money where their mouth is and recognize that we have to dig into these conditions that are driving women to get abortions. This is one thing I appreciate about Andy Stanley and his church in Atlanta. They've had a ministry for some time, which a couple hundred women that I'm aware of at last count, they had sort of taken under their wings and provided financial support, provided housing, you know, whatever their needs were through their pregnancy

and then helped facilitate adoption proceedings. That's great. And I think that's right. Yeah. This is a step up your game moment for our churches. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's good.

That's got to be a both, both and. And I guess I have seen, and I try not to pay too close attention to all the culture war stuff because it just kind of drives you crazy and is distracting. But I guess I have seen a little bit some Christians who don't want to be that right-wing conservative Christian. They have maybe more progressive values. And yet they're still not on the pro-choice side. They're kind of like, if you ask them in private, like, yeah, I'm still kind of opposed to abortion.

But they're almost like so worried about being seen as a right-wing Christian that there's almost no like concern there. And yet they'll be very concerned about justice here, justice there. To me, I'm like, I just hard, is this too strong for me to say? It's hard for me to take anybody seriously in their justice mantra

when this is the epitome of injustice, the most innocent form of a human to say, for whatever reason, we're going to end the life of that human. That just seems to be like if you care about justice at all this shit should be at the front of those eat low-hanging justice fruit so for people who are justice justice justice i don't want to be that fundamentalist christian but privately yeah i'm kind of against abortion but let's only talk about the environmental stuff leading to it it's like no can't we do it all like are you that scared of being targeted

as some tribal you know right winger or something? Have you seen that kind of hesitation? I don't know. It's just kind of frustrating to me, but. Well, that's gotten worse in the last five days. Yeah.

Decision was handed down. I mean, I felt for a long time that even in Christian circles that are so concerned with justice and rightly so. Yeah. That now where are the unborn? You know, the unborn,

they never get included in the marginalized and the oppressed. Yet they are easily the most vulnerable among us. Yes. Easily. But yet, you know, the fate of the unborn is not a cool justice cause. Why is that? Just because it's become such a right-wing talking point and most people that are justice-oriented grew up in that environment, they don't want to be of that anymore?

Well, yeah, some people are reacting to that. But I think there is a part of the justice movement that I think, even in Christian circles, is somewhat captive to cultural trends. And you're not part of the cool kids if you've had strong feelings about abortion. And you don't fit in the justice world, you know, unless you, you know, unless it's all about, you know, the vulnerable women. I think it is in part about the vulnerable women, but the unborn are by far the more vulnerable group. Right, right, right. Yet, you know, mom's the word on the unborn.

Does anybody ever – does a question of motivation ever come up? Like if someone says, you know, I'm pro-choice. You know, women can do whatever they want with their body. They can get an abortion. you know, I'm pro-choice, you know, women can do whatever they want with their body. They can get an abortion. I'm like, what if a woman had a white woman, had a black boyfriend, got pregnant and says, Oh, I don't want to have a black baby. I'm going to kill it. Or what if somebody, um, what if somebody found out they're having a daughter and they're like, I don't want daughters. They're not as valuable as men. I'm going to kill this because it's a

daughter. Does that ever come up? And I mean, I don't know how theoretical that is or real, but it's like, it can be at least like, whether you say abortion is right or wrong, say, well, does the motivation play a role here? Because that seems kind of anti-women to say, I'm going to kill a female fetus, but not a male. I mean, I don't know. Well, certainly the motive matters in the moral assessment of it. Sure. And in my view, the phenomena of sex selection abortion is the dirty little secret of the abortion industry. And that's been going on, Preston, since the 1960s. And it was an integral part of efforts at population control in the 1960s and 70s. And they would, you know, throughout the developing world, funded by, you know, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation and all

the folks that funded Planned Parenthood, the way to control population in the developing world was to – I mean they had mobile ultrasounds and mobile abortion units. And you could get abortions done. If the ultrasound indicated it was a girl, you'd end up in pregnancy. And for some couples, that would happen over and over again because they wanted to keep trying until they got a boy. And if they had all these girls, then, you know, what happened? Our population control efforts went out the window. This turned out to be, it's well documented. This was one of the primary means to foster controlling explosive population growth in

the developing world in the 60s and 70s. And I mean, I've heard other people refer to this as, you know, Planned Parenthood's original sin, which I think there's something to that. And it was all based on gender. Was it in the history of Planned Parenthood? There was some kind of eugenics background that's really eerie. Is that? Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood in the 1920s, was an unabashed advocate, as were most intellectuals in the 20s, around the turn of the 20th century.

Unabashed proponent of eugenics. Golly. And eugenics – actually, eugenics didn't get a bad name until World War II, until the Nazis took it way off the rails. But it had a very respectable origin in history for a long time in the highest intellectual circles in Europe and the United States. But you even see it kind of implied in some of the rhetoric today of the few interviews I've watched this week. There was one lady, I don't even remember her name, but I shouldn't laugh. It was so like, you should go listen to yourself. Like she was saying, really a passion about abortion as a woman's right.

She's like, I have family members and look, I have a niece that had Down syndrome and it's really hard to raise. members and look i have a uh like a niece that had down syndrome and it's really hard to raise and another person she starts listing these like people with mental disabilities in the context that women should be able to get an abortion i'm like oh my word like that's said out loud and people like yeah yeah green i'm like this is this is eerie i mean so it doesn't seem like it's gone away maybe maybe it's just more buried in the logic of some people. I don't know. That was – Yeah, the ironic part is that we're supposed to be celebrating diversity more than ever.

Yeah. But that diversity doesn't include people with genetic and other kinds of challenges. I know in some parts of the world, they brag about having eliminated Down syndrome. Well, I think, you know, if you give me the power to eliminate all the people who have a certain disease, I can eliminate that disease pretty easily. You know, there's no particular virtue in that. And I remember, I can't remember where I read it, but, you know, to quote the scripture, someone has said somewhere that, you know, if you came into, like, this pro-choice advocate caught herself going to the grocery store and saw a woman with a Down syndrome

child in their grocery cart. And she caught herself thinking to herself thankfully she didn't say it out loud but thinking to herself you know don't you know you could have aborted that pregnancy and and thankfully she caught herself and it was sort of a gasp moment you know i said i can't believe i actually thought that you know i'm glad i didn't say it out, I can't believe I actually thought that, you know, I'm glad I didn't say it out loud, but I can't believe I actually thought that. And again, that's sort of the other side of this, you know, functional view of a human person, which is a good reason why we ought to reject it. Yeah. Yeah. Last question, Scott, just a general, how do you think Christians should process this decision? Like, what is the Christian response to the reversal of Roe v. Wade?

Well, I think one is, I think we have to recognize that, you know, most people don't think of this in terms of the extremes. Most they have, they have a bit more nuanced view of it than I think is being widely presented. Certainly than is being presented in the various protests that are being done. And I think, I think there's, there's definite cause for celebration. I think the unborn are better off today than they were a week ago. And I think that the change in the law will have educational value, even if nothing on the ground actually changes. That was the big takeaway from Roe v. Wade being passed. The educational value

that had about the moral acceptability of abortion, I think was the big pro-choice benefit from Roe v. Wade being passed. My hope is that the overturning of that will cause a similar type of educational impact. But I think, you know, I think it's one thing to celebrate that the unborn are safer today. I think I think I, you know, I'd recognize that, you know, the jury's still out on what various states are going to do and what those laws are going to look like. Uh, and the third, you know, we have, we, we cannot forget pregnant, desperate women in the process because they are, you know, however we weight those conflicting interests, you know, they have a place at the table. You know, their needs deserve to be seriously considered,

and the church has got to step up its game in ministering and serving to, you know, there are a lot of women who are feeling a lot more desperate today than they were a week ago. Do you think that this will reduce the number of abortions? Or is it, are you like, ah, it's hard to tell? I mean, because people could just be flocking to blue states to get the abortion they would have had? Or do you think, no, at the end of the day, it probably will reduce the number? I mean, I think at the end of the day it probably will reduce the number i mean i think at the end of the day it probably will reduce the number how much i think the jury's still out on that yeah um you know i mean i don't i don't agree with the way the state of texas passed their law uh the

way they enforced it with law with law enforcement basically opting out of enforcement. I think that was a terrible thing. But the number of abortions was reduced dramatically in the state of Texas. Now, I suspect that a lot of women who wanted abortions in Texas traveled to New Mexico or somewhere else. So I think it's hard to say, and it may actually be hard to measure. We won't be able to track women who go out of state, and privacy laws probably prohibit that anyway. Yeah, yeah, okay. Scott, thanks so much for your grace and your wisdom. That's super helpful, super informative,

and I'm sure it was helpful for our audience to at least in agreement, disagreement, maybe there's some things said that people want to chase down further. So yeah, thanks for taking the time. I know you're a busy man. So many blessings to you and the whole Talbot Biola family down there. Appreciate that.

Thanks, Preston. All right. God bless. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm