WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Hillsdale Interview: Josef Lipp

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Josef Lipp, Chief Operating Officer of Live Action, one of the most well known pro-life organizations, shares his story, the work at Live Action, and the personal impact across the country. 

This is Michaela Estruth with Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Today I'm with Joseph Lipp, Chief Operating Officer of Live Action, a pro-life nonprofit organization that advocates for dignity and human rights. Joseph, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. This is awesome. Well, to start off, I was wondering if you could just tell us your life story, who you are and how you got to Live Action. Absolutely.

Like you mentioned, Joseph Lipp, Chief Operating Officer at Live Action. I grew up in Southern California, specifically Chief. So like an hour outside of L.A. and grew up going to church and was very involved in there. There's a couple big churches out there. Some people may be familiar with Calvary Chapalchino Hills and Pastor Jack Gibbs. My friends and I would go there. And then the home church was Calvary Chapalchino Valley, which is right down the road. And I was a football player in high school. And so I got recruited to play football to a few different schools. But when the University of Hawaii called, I said yes. to them in an offer they made on the phone before I can even go visit the school or anything. Oh my, wow. Because I, you know, Southern California, I love the beach, I love surfing, I loved all that kind of stuff. So it was a no-brainer.

My parents weren't thrilled because there were some really great schools that I passed up on. But I made the right decision. I was sharing with you earlier. That's where I met my wife. So I was there for four years, studied studio art because it was an easy major in my mind. It didn't turn out being that easy. but to be able to juggle that and full-time athletics. But I met my wife there, my sophomore year at a Bible study.

It was kind of this organic group of kids that just got together who were from all over the country, but going to school at the University of Hawaii and just trying to stay out of trouble. And it wasn't affiliated with any church or anything, just kids who kind of found each other. And you started planning stuff every night. Friday nights we'd feed the homeless and Monday nights we'd kind of Guys would get together Tuesday nights, girls would get together somewhere else. Tuesday nights we'd go to a movie at someone's house just every night to kind of keep us out of trouble. Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, thank the Lord for that because before that I was not making the best decisions. But that's where I met my wife. And she was born and raised in Hawaii. She's a pastor's daughter. And she really loved film production and making movies. And she was making all the YouTube stuff before anybody was watching YouTube. She was before her time. Yeah.

And she wanted to make films, so she got an internship with a company called Metanoia Films. Okay. They made a movie called Bella. Most recently, they made a couple movies, the same producers, at least Sound of Freedom. Yeah. And Cabrini, which is a movie that was just in theaters, but they're really talented group of filmmakers. And so she was interning with them and introduced me to one of the producers who happened to have a pro-life organization and amongst other things. He drilled water wells in Sudan.

And so when I was figuring out post-college, I followed her to California so she could pursue acting. I lived across the street from her in the middle of Hollywood. And I was getting ready to go to seminary looking at colleges applying. But I got this internship for one of the producers who, you know, I was interested in the fact that he was drilling water wells in Sudan. And then sort of got jiu-jitsued into pro-life work. Wow. Okay. And as a young man who for the most part stayed out of trouble in college and grew up in a Christian family, I had never thought about the life issue.

And I kind of knew what was wrong, but just, you know, was never something I personally encountered. And the more I learned about it, you know, the more I just, I was upset. And I was an offensive lineman in college. So my job was to protect the vulnerable side of the quarterback. I was always a big guy. So on the playground, I, you know, I always stuck up for whoever is getting bullied just because I was big and I could get in the way. And so it sort of was like this natural thing for me to protect the most vulnerable amongst us. Who's, you know, it's the greatest human rights issue of our day, abortion specifically.

And so I found out that this gentleman who drilled water wells in Sudan also made pro-life movies and did a lot of pro-life work. And I started working for him. And we started and found an organization called Movement. And it would market and promote and produce pro-life films, knowing that art is such, you know, this maybe ties back to that art major. But art is such an important part of culture in terms of telling stories and, you know, impacting culture. And so we knew that and we did a lot of work with some really great pro-life films. But around that time, you know, four or five years in, well, a couple years into that role, I was starting a family. I finally married my my girlfriend, my wife, my fiance, and we were looking forward to starting a family.

But with this new startup nonprofit, I couldn't quite pay the bills. So unfortunately, I left that organization and went to a startup that my friend had put together. He had this big idea for a software company. And I told him, if you ever raised the money, let me know. And maybe I'll come work for you. You raise the money. He let me know. And I worked for him for about five or six years, building a company.

company from scratch. And it was a great experience because I learned the ends and outs of business. And, you know, you wear every hat at a startup, especially at the ground floor and it scaled and grew really quickly. So I got to do a little bit of everything. And so a lot of great business learnings and understanding how things worked. And it was several years into that that Lila Rose called me. And she said, you know, you don't really like this for profit stuff, right? You want to come back to the pro-life space, and I had been praying about it, and it was divine timing. And so I left that startup and joined live action five years ago. So that was how it all came together, and kind of my quick glimpse into my pro-life journey.

Such a providential story. I love that. Yeah, Holy Spirit Action Plan, I call it, because every step of it was just divine and put in place by a power, not my own. So what exactly is your role at Live Action? And now what does your day-to-day look like? So my role at live action, I'm the chief operating officer, which I've learned means a lot of different things at a lot of different organizations, but specifically at live action, I sort of have the blessing to operate or to manage the entire team. So one way or another, you know, every department rolls up to me. And I get to work with Lila to set a lot of the strategy, but she's the visionary behind live action for anybody who doesn't know Lila Rose started live action.

while she was, well she started before she was in college, but got a 501 C3 status while she was a student at UCLA doing undercover video work at Planned Parenthood. And, you know, to this day, her pictures on the back of every Planned Parenthood, you know, don't let her in because she's had some really successful stings. But I have the opportunity to work with just about every department and ensure, you know, I joke and say, keep us out of, my job is to pay our bills on time and keep us out of prison. And at its core, maybe that's it. But it's a lot of fun because I get to do a lot of creative work with the team. I get to be in my sweet spot, which is sort of the operational execution side. You know, we have lots of great ideas between Lila and other creatives on the team. So I get to help make sure that those all become a reality.

Wow. That's a big job. Big role. It is, it is, but it's a lot of fun. It's exactly where it wants me to be. And I feel like, you know, all those experiences I just mentioned sort of put me in the, the perfect opportunity to be able to contribute in that way. Yeah, that's great.

This is Michaela Estruth with Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Today I'm with Joseph Lipp, Chief Operating Officer of Live Action, a pro-life nonprofit organization that advocates for dignity and human rights. So I wanted to kind of change the conversation a little bit to, I guess, even more personal, as a man in the pro-life movement. We have a lot of women in the pro-life movement. why would you say it's important for men to engage in this cultural debate? Yeah, I think it's critical.

You know, I think a lot of the opposition likes to say, you know, it's all these, you know, men who want to control women. And, you know, being a part of the pro-life movement, almost every leader of the different, you know, nonprofits and pro-life organizations that I know is a woman. And so many of the different teams that make up those organizations are women. and it's a very woman-centric place. So at times I do feel a little out of place just because, you know, being a man,

but I think that men have as much a role in all of this as anybody, you know, for every child that's conceived, there's two parties involved. There's a man and a woman. And, you know, there's a story that's been floating around social media right now, a father named Tommy whose daughter Clementine was aborted against his will at, I think, 22 or 23 weeks. And to see him talk about the heartbreak, you know, it hurts men just as much. And there's so many social stigmas and expectations. And, you know, I think men feel like they shouldn't have a voice. They shouldn't have a role in this, that it's all a woman's decision.

But ultimately, I think that's a part of the problem is the fact that so many men aren't stepping up and taking responsibility and plug for live action. We have a whole series right now called The Truth About Sex, where we outline and talk about a lot of this and the responsibility of men in these relationships and why the fact that they aren't as involved is why so many of these women feel like they have no support, they have no help, they have no resources, and they choose abortion. And so we have a whole contingency of men on live action, and we feel a sense of responsibility to figure out how to get men to step up and speak their voice, and they need to. It's equally as important as the woman's in this.

And obviously a woman will carry that child to term. And, you know, there's a beautiful difference in terms of the responsibilities of a man and woman. But they're both equally as important. And men need to be much more vocal on this. Yeah. I remember, I don't know how long ago this was at this point, but live action released a video. There was kind of a satire of a bunch of men saying why they were pro-choice. And it was extremely demeaning towards any woman in that situation.

So I was wondering if you could talk maybe a little bit about that video and also how live action approaches satire and getting the truth out through satire. Yeah, I'm glad you saw that one. To start, we use satire now only in the last few years as one of the different content type pieces we do. And that's mainly because it's really well received. I think this is a tough issue. Even before we did our first satirical video, we're like, this is such a heavy. topic can we poke fun at it and you'll notice we don't poke fun at abortion itself we poke fun at a lot of people who are advocating for it we did one video and all we did was take

headlines of of what different publications were saying after roe v wade came down and we we just had people saying them out loud and it was funny because that they were so comical sort of the the different takes that people had you know for men actually having to take responsibility for their choices in the bedroom and you know women who you know there was one line Amy Comey Barrett did this to me and you see a woman pointing at her belly you know just the the hilarious sort of mentality that that was taken and post Roe v. Wade but it's proven to be really useful it gets us access to a new audience you know some of these ads we run after you know if you watch a YouTube clip of SNL you'll get one of our satirical pieces but it's

it's a really unique way to get people to think critical about some of these things where they might not otherwise be willing to watch a more informative video or you know Lila Rose popping up on your screen they are more willing to watch something that's going to make them laugh you know we track everything at live action we're very data-driven and what we found is that the satirical videos even though we're placing ads for those with audiences who want nothing to do with the message that we're putting out there the play-through rates on those are way higher than anything else else we do so people actually watch those and watch more of them than they do our other content

pieces so that's why we continue to do them it seems to be something that resonates with people anybody can go to live action.org right now or go to our youtube channel and see some of those videos and you know the comments in there there are people who are changing their minds because of a funny three-minute video right so we're proud of those we're going to keep turning them out and it also allows us to hit we've they've been a great resource for us to talk about some of the just outlandish that different companies are the different positions they're taking as they're going woke or whatever it is you want to call it but you know they're they're less willing to give maternity leave than they are to pay for a woman to go get their abortion you know and and just the irony in that

and the craziness of it all you know every every company feels like they had to make a statement post-rovi-wade you know we talk a lot about you know all these diaper companies who all have these, you know, are all vocally in favor of abortion, whether it be on their social media, whether it be with their internal policies. And it's like, do you not realize that you're advocating to kill the very clients you're trying to serve? You know, the irony in it is just so crazy. So kind of related to the satire videos, but a different outlet of live action, you were telling me a little bit about live action news. What is that portion of live action? What do you guys do there? Yeah, live action news and a lot of.

of ways is kind of the backbone of so much of the work we do. You know, we, we, so through live action news, you'll see there's numerous pieces that we publish each and every day, you go to liveactionnachton, or any place you see live action, all the social media handles live at live action news. And we cover anything that's related to the abortion issue. You know, some of that is politically, there's always something going on, and there's always updates to the, that we're working on. So, you know, our aim is to be a single source so that you can be up to speed and up to date. And we, you know, take our journalistic integrity very seriously. We're a pro-life organization, but we're focused on just reporting the facts. And it's a great outreach tool

because, you know, Wall Street Journal, I think a couple days ago, linked to one of our articles talking about Planned Parenthood lawsuit that just came down, I think, in California. And, you know, Our goal is to just be a news outlet that happens to be focused on the life issue. And so you will read some human interest stories on there. You'll see some pop culture stories as it relates to the topic. But it also serves as fuel for a lot of the video content that we do. Pretty much all of it is cited and researched by our live action news team. And a lot of the human interest stories that we do turn into mini documentaries and things like that.

So in a lot of ways, it's the backbone of live action and allows us to have. have a team of dedicated researchers and writers focused on covering anything and everything around life. This is Michaela Estruth with Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Today I'm with Joseph Lipp, Chief Operating Officer of Live Action, a pro-life nonprofit organization that advocates for dignity and human rights. So a little bit ago, you alluded to post-Rovey Wade, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that day in particular and the response.

where your focus is now. Yeah, well, you know, it's a day I'll never forget. I joined the pro-life movement, you know, kind of officially in 2010. And so, you know, a dozen years into it to see that happen, it was, yeah, a day I'll never forget. It was, it was incredibly special. And, you know, to be honest, there were a lot of years where I never thought that I'd see that day. Yeah. And so to see this right to abortion removed at the federal level.

and it was exciting to know that, you know, all of these trigger laws were going to go into effect right afterwards, and there were going to be live saved immediately as a result. It was a really happy moment, but it was, you know, also short-lived because we knew there's another side to that. And there are going to be states who advocate and there's going to be a response from the opposition that will be unlike anything we'd ever seen. And that's what's happened. So, you know, what could have been described as, you know, a singular fight at the federal level is now a fight at every single state. And over the last couple years, we've seen a lot of states like Kansas and Ohio work to make it a constitutional right in the state constitution for

abortion. And it's been incredibly disappointing and tough to go through and tough to see. And, you know, it's it's a battle. It was never over when Roe came down and there's a lot more work to be done. We still advocate for complete protection of the human person at the federal level. We talk a lot. You can read on live action news or on the website. I think we released a video a couple days ago. Maybe it's just an Instagram post, but we believe that the 14th Amendment actually protects the child in the womb. And so, you know, we're pushing for that. It took 50 years to see Roe come down. Hopefully it doesn't take 50 years to see complete federal protection, but we're going to, you know, we're not going to fight until that's there. And I'm sure once it is there, the opposition is going to be just as riled up and work to remove it. So it's the unfortunate truth that this is just a battle that we're not going to be. We'll have to continue to fight, but I think what's encouraging is seeing, you know, through live action, the minds change on a daily basis. We get to, we do a lot of man on the street interviews where we show some of the different content pieces that we've done. And you see in real time somebody watch a three-minute video and their entire perspective on the issue change. And that's the power of what we get to do and what the power of the truth can do.

So we just need to get as many people as possible to see these videos to take part to think critically about this. and fill that knowledge gap. Have you received a lot more opposition post-dobs, the overturn of Roe v. Wade, in the past couple years? Do you think Live Action has grown in attention as well as in pushback from? I'd say so, you know, the opposition has always been there. I feel like Live Action's always had a target on our back, which I wear as a badge of honor. I feel like that means we're effective. Right. But at the same time, you know, post-Rovie Wade,

post-Obs, it's, there's just new complexities. There's new, you know, after that, a million of these abortion funds popped up all over the country. You know, the opposition raised hundreds of millions of dollars as a result. They got bigger and stronger. And yeah, we're up against a Goliath that feels like at times. And, you know, like I said, it does feel like we have a target on our back. But that's kind of the beauty of our team as we all see that as just, you know, a need for us to be more innovative, be more creative, to be more persuasive, and sort of use that as fuel to try and save as many lives as possible. So on that front, speaking to just an ordinary common-day person, how can they get involved

in the pro-life movement, whether that's through live action or just where they are? Yeah, that's a great question because I think a lot of people think that means they have to, you know, go outside of their local Planned Parenthood with a poster or pray all day long and Those things can be helpful, you know. But I think anybody can, you know, the most important thing is being bold in your convictions and speaking that. And that's one of the things live action has a lot of resources for, you know, any question you have or your friend has about a particular case or instance. We have a resource for it. You know, we have a series called Pro Life Replies, which debunks every single common pro-choice argument.

We have, we're releasing at least one new content piece a week that we're focusing on. address, you know, common arguments or, you know, there's a story we released at the beginning of the year that was really impactful. It was about a man named Stevenson, and his mom chose life for him. She was special needs. She was orphaned, and she was raped and found herself pregnant at, I think, 16 or 17, and the foster home she was at was forcing her to have an abortion, and she ran away because, you know, she, I think he said she had the sort of mental capacity of a young child, but she knew that life was precious and life was important, and they weren't going to take that away from her. So she ran away several states away and then a pro-life, Grace's Pregnancy Center actually found her, took her in,

helped her have this baby, helped her go through the adoption process. And now Stevenson, this amazing man is alive, has a beautiful family. of his own. We're actually giving him a life award later this year to just recognize his life, the value of it, and the impact he's making now telling his story. But, you know, that single story debunks so many, you know, homelessness, you know, rape, just so many of the common arguments that you hear each and every day and hear right in front of us is this beautiful man with a beautiful family who went against all of those things. And we have so many stories like that, so many different ways. So to answer your question, you know, sharing those stories.

stories, having those as a resource in your conversations with friends, being bold about those convictions is the easiest way to start and makes a much larger impact than you know. Some of our videos, many of our videos will test and, you know, we'll find that 30% of people find themselves to be swayed towards a pro-life position from a single video. You know, there's one, we did our abortion procedures or what is abortion videos, 20% of self-identified pro-choice women changed their mind after watching a single video. And so you can only imagine if more and more people are sharing this content, you know, that's just more minds change, more life saved ultimately. And so that's the easiest way.

There's plenty of ways to get beyond that. I mentioned, you know, there's great organizations like 40 Days for Life that will help you get plugged in and, you know, pray in front of your local abortion facility. There's Embrace Grace, a great group that works with local churches to partner with them to support pregnant women in their community. There's so many great organizations and great places to get plugged into. obviously all of this costs money, you know, the support, the financial support is always helpful to be able to go against that Goliath that I mentioned earlier, you know, Planned Parenthood with multi-hundred billion dollar endowment. That's always an important part of it.

And then just your prayers, I think, being mindful of this, keeping it in your prayers. God hears those prayers. And, you know, this, like I started the conversation off with, this is the greatest human rights issue over day. And it demands all of our attention. Well, Joseph, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate all the work that you're doing. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me, and I told you already, but I'm a huge fan of Hillsdale. I love everything you guys are doing and your stance for lives. This is Michaela Estreith with Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I've been with Joseph Lipp, Chief Operating Officer of Live Action, a pro-life nonprofit organization that advocates for dignity and human rights.

You can visit their website at Liveaction.org and see their work that they do. to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.