Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E87: The Most Effective Pro-Life Arguments and Witness with Stephanie Gray

Transcript

E87: The Most Effective Pro-Life Arguments and Witness with Stephanie Gray · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  What do you think is the most persuasive Pearl Life argument?
• 0:03
  What do we do with people are like, what's in the womb is a
• 0:05
  human and they're alive, but it doesn't matter because the
• 0:09
  rights of the mother are more important than this nascent
• 0:13
  human life, one that people get frequently.
• 0:15
  The cases of rape or incest. What's the Pearl Life response
• 0:18
  to that? If you're working your normal
• 0:20
  job, how do you even have conversations about abortion
• 0:23
  when it's so controversial? The starting point is that we
• 0:26
  need to speak out because there is a victim group that is
• 0:29
  entirely in case capable of speaking out for itself.
• 0:37
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the Lila Rose podcast.
• 0:40
  So much of the pro-life message today is about service and love.
• 0:46
  That is the whole core of the message.
• 0:48
  And so much of the pro abortion message is about what can I do
• 0:51
  for myself or how can I protect myself against this new and
• 0:54
  encroaching life I have today. We have today on the podcast a
• 0:58
  really special person, somebody that I love dearly is a close
• 1:01
  friend, but who also has traveled the world speaking
• 1:03
  internationally in life is an author has started
• 1:05
  organizations. Her name is Stephanie Gray
• 1:07
  Connor and she just wrote a book called my Body for you.
• 1:11
  She talks very personally about the experience of motherhood and
• 1:14
  how it's transformed her and giving up of herself for another
• 1:17
  for her child. And she also talks about the
• 1:20
  importance in our movement of understanding what's that really
• 1:23
  the core of the human experience that we are designed to give of
• 1:27
  each other, for each other. And how we can also winsomely
• 1:31
  communicate this to other people in our culture who maybe don't
• 1:34
  understand that there may be support abortion or they have
• 1:37
  this view of life that it's not so much about what we're giving,
• 1:40
  but about how we're protecting ourselves.
• 1:42
  And she unpacks all of that in this conversation.
• 1:45
  Going to talk about her book, her story.
• 1:46
  We're also going to talk about some tough objections if you are
• 1:50
  pro-choice or in support of abortion, tough objections that
• 1:53
  an abortion supporter would have for a pro lifer and how to
• 1:57
  answer them persuasively as a pro-life advocate.
• 2:00
  So this is a jam packed episode, a lot of great stuff, and it's
• 2:02
  just a great conversation I'm getting to have with somebody
• 2:05
  that I love very much. So hope you guys enjoyed this
• 2:07
  episode and without further ado. Let's welcome Stephanie to the
• 2:10
  show. Thanks so much for coming on,
• 2:12
  Stephanie. Thank you my sis, I just wish we
• 2:15
  were in person. I know it's been way too long.
• 2:18
  So the quick back story here, I Stephanie, how long have we
• 2:22
  known each other? I love how you always have check
• 2:25
  with me I'm your memory. You're you're the best memory.
• 2:28
  How long has it been? 2007 So 2017 eighteen, 1917
• 2:35
  years. Is that 17 years?
• 2:36
  I think that sounds right and we are both pregnant right now.
• 2:41
  Yes, and. A week apart and a week apart
• 2:45
  and then I just have to brag for a moment about you because you
• 2:50
  are someone that has inspired me from the beginning of my
• 2:53
  pro-life activism. I met you I think was I 1819
• 2:56
  years old and learning pro-life national activism.
• 2:59
  You were already on the scene. You started an organization in
• 3:01
  Canada, but now you're a United States person, not citizen.
• 3:06
  Are you a citizen yet? I am.
• 3:09
  I'm a proud green card holder and just awaiting the time
• 3:12
  required to become a citizen. But I am I'm going to take full
• 3:16
  responsibility for your pathway to citizenship because and you
• 3:19
  can just now you get to brag on me and what I what my my claim
• 3:24
  to fame for you. Absolutely.
• 3:26
  Well. You have made my life just so
• 3:28
  much better because you set me up with my beloved husband who
• 3:32
  is a living St. and my best friend and the joy of my life.
• 3:37
  And I also credit you with saving the life indirectly of my
• 3:41
  daughter Violet, and which is why Violets middle name is Grace
• 3:45
  for Lila Grace, because we lost our first baby.
• 3:48
  And when we were pregnant with her, I had my progesterone
• 3:52
  tested and found it was dropping and was worried we'd have
• 3:54
  another miscarriage. And I remember texting you and
• 3:56
  being like, do you know one of those pro-life doctors that that
• 3:59
  prescribes progesterone? And you got me in touch with
• 4:02
  Doctor George Delgado that hour. And then he prescribed me
• 4:06
  progesterone that night. And then I found a local doctor
• 4:09
  three days later to carry it on. So, but yeah, people, people
• 4:14
  need to know that in 2016, you tried to set me up with my
• 4:17
  husband and I was the defiant personality that shot you down
• 4:20
  and said no, I'm not going to. I'm not interested.
• 4:23
  It's long distance. I don't want an American.
• 4:27
  But in 2020, God orchestrated amazing, miraculous things, and
• 4:32
  I I credit you for connecting me to my beloved Joe.
• 4:36
  So there is an episode, by the way, for those listening, and
• 4:38
  this is not on YouTube, so it's an episode you can only access
• 4:42
  on the podcast app, Apple or Spotify or whatever, but it's
• 4:46
  about Stephanie's love story. It's really beautiful and
• 4:49
  inspiring and encouraging. Check it out.
• 4:51
  And then they're also some great relationship advice there too
• 4:54
  from Stephanie and her many years of prayer formation and
• 4:57
  study on it. So anyways, I'm I'm your biggest
• 4:59
  fan. I think you're the best, Steph
• 5:01
  and I am so happy. And now you have your beautiful
• 5:04
  Violet and now this new baby who were who I think is nicknamed
• 5:07
  Gio, right? Yes.
• 5:08
  So after Violet we lost three more babies and then we got
• 5:13
  pregnant with this one. We've named Gio and the first
• 5:16
  priest to pray over us was my parents pastor back in Canada
• 5:20
  where we were visiting and his name is Father Giovanni.
• 5:23
  And so of course we wanted this baby to stick so badly.
• 5:26
  And so we're like Father pray over us and we're like we will
• 5:28
  nickname this baby Gio for the duration of the pregnancy
• 5:33
  because of him as well as even though we don't know the sex
• 5:36
  yet, it's just the nickname until birth.
• 5:38
  But also because Gio in Italian is for John and Elizabeth and
• 5:43
  Zachariah received John the Baptist in their life in their
• 5:47
  old age and I am 43 and Joe is 48, so.
• 5:51
  Spring chicken. There's a few more after this
• 5:55
  one. You know, you know, Rachel
• 5:56
  Campbell Stuffy, I think we've talked about her before, but
• 5:59
  she's a Catholic mom of I think 9 kids now.
• 6:02
  She had her last. I always talk about her because
• 6:04
  she's beautiful and successful and I know this beautiful
• 6:07
  marriage and she has nine kids and she had her last at 48.
• 6:10
  So you've got a few more to go. I know everyone keeps talking
• 6:15
  about these friends of theirs. I know someone who's 48.
• 6:18
  I know someone who's 52. Someone just told Wow, yeah,
• 6:22
  yeah. My husband and I joke.
• 6:23
  If we had listened to you in 2016 and gotten married then
• 6:28
  even more kids. Yes, but God's plan is perfect
• 6:31
  and His timing is perfect and it's working out so beautifully.
• 6:34
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• 6:38
  The Amen App is a free prayer app that is a project of the
• 6:41
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• 6:44
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• 6:45
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• 6:48
  I actually have been listening to the Amen app for over a year
• 6:51
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• 6:52
  to hear the readings of the day. So I can hear from the older,
• 6:55
  the New Testament, I can hear from a Psalm, and then I get to
• 6:58
  hear from the Gospels and often the words of Christ.
• 7:01
  And then they have this great meditation session for a couple
• 7:03
  minutes that leads you through reflecting on the Holy Scripture
• 7:06
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• 7:09
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• 7:11
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• 7:13
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• 7:15
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• 7:19
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• 7:21
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• 7:24
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• 7:27
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• 7:29
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• 7:31
  There's a link in the bio for you to download the Amen app for
• 7:34
  free today. Well, listen, you're very busy.
• 7:36
  You've got your beautiful Violet.
• 7:38
  You're now pregnant, all of the things and you just wrote a
• 7:42
  book. So Love Unleashes Life is one of
• 7:45
  your books which is a pro-life apologetics book in many ways.
• 7:48
  This one is 2 to some degree, but just share quickly for folks
• 7:52
  why you wrote this new book. It's very beautiful and the
• 7:55
  heart behind it. Thank you.
• 7:57
  Well, yes. And you so kindly endorsed it.
• 7:59
  I'm so yeah, I wrote my body for you a pro-life message for a
• 8:04
  post Roe world. And this came on the heels, of
• 8:07
  course, of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision overturning Roe V
• 8:11
  Wade just about a year and a half ago.
• 8:14
  And I have been speaking and writing on abortion for multiple
• 8:19
  decades and felt and have always been convicted that I didn't
• 8:22
  want to write something new unless it actually was new.
• 8:24
  I was contributing something more.
• 8:26
  And I have felt in the last few years, having spent 20 years as
• 8:29
  a professional speaker and debater.
• 8:31
  But in the last few years now having experienced getting
• 8:34
  married and becoming a mother and both life as well as lost
• 8:38
  through pregnancies that succeed to birth as well as
• 8:40
  miscarriages, that there were experiences and insights I've
• 8:43
  now had as a mother that will complement my years of
• 8:47
  apologetics debate experience. And so I wanted to to put
• 8:50
  something down on paper to help carry the movement forward in
• 8:54
  this post row, post jobs world that really blends the
• 8:59
  intellectual, rigorous academic experience I've had with the
• 9:03
  more emotional heart experience of becoming a mother and
• 9:06
  experiencing pregnancy and motherhood, which is really at
• 9:09
  the heart of of this whole debate.
• 9:11
  And so I bring those two worlds together.
• 9:13
  And really, the title in a sense says it all.
• 9:16
  My body for you. I wanted to make it Eucharistic.
• 9:20
  I wanted to make it the heart of the Gospel message, which is
• 9:24
  Jesus laying down his life for us and then reflecting on how
• 9:27
  motherhood is an example of taking up a cross and following
• 9:31
  Christ and laying down our bodies for our children.
• 9:34
  I think that's such a profound starting place for your whole
• 9:38
  kind of it's like a meditation, your book in many ways, it's
• 9:40
  very beautiful. My body for you.
• 9:43
  But you know what is abortion? It's destroying somebody else's
• 9:46
  body for your own sake, you know, because of your fears or
• 9:50
  your own ambitions or your own concerns.
• 9:52
  And what is the pro-life answer the the the right you know, the
• 9:56
  beautiful act of love is to say no my body for you, which is
• 10:01
  exactly what our faith teaches us.
• 10:03
  Jesus's body given for us. The beautiful thing though,
• 10:06
  about pregnancy is and and you know, Jesus's sacrifice for us,
• 10:10
  though, is you get as mothers, you know, we have been given.
• 10:14
  I know this experience is true for you too.
• 10:16
  We've been given so much. Yes, pregnancy can be very
• 10:18
  challenging. It can be fraught.
• 10:20
  Delivery. Being a parent has its many
• 10:23
  challenges, but you get such an incredible gift of that
• 10:28
  beautiful new life that is so full of just amazing joy and
• 10:33
  potential. And you know, I look at my two
• 10:36
  sons and I know you've had this experience with Violet, your
• 10:38
  daughter, but I'm just like, you are just amazing.
• 10:41
  You're you do delight me at the deepest core of my soul more
• 10:44
  than I knew is possible. And my husband feels the same
• 10:46
  way. That experience is a gift for
• 10:49
  parents uniquely, and it's it's worth every sacrifice.
• 10:53
  Yes, absolutely. And it's this beautiful give and
• 10:55
  take. So we are so blessed by our
• 10:58
  children. And I can agree with what you
• 11:00
  say about just kind of being in awe of your children.
• 11:02
  Joe and I will constantly. And of course, it's hilarious.
• 11:05
  We both have Joes as husbands. The fast.
• 11:08
  Name for a husband is Joan. Mary did it first, Joseph, and
• 11:12
  we've got our Joes. Highly recommend.
• 11:15
  Exactly. So my Joe and I will just like
• 11:19
  Violet will say something or do something like the other day she
• 11:23
  was just repeatedly saying what sounded like body, body, body.
• 11:28
  So that I responded by saying you have a body and then I said
• 11:33
  you are a body and a soul. And the moment I said that I am
• 11:37
  not exaggerating. She's two years old, Violet
• 11:39
  responded. My soul proclaims the greatness
• 11:42
  of the Lord. And how old is Violet Two?
• 11:47
  That is awesome. That is awesome.
• 11:50
  That is because. Wait, do you guys pray the
• 11:53
  Magnificat? Do you guys write Mary's prayer?
• 11:55
  My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.
• 11:57
  Yeah, and there's. She, it's in her, it's in her.
• 11:59
  That's so beautiful. It's in her.
• 12:01
  It's God lies that. And so before bed, that's often
• 12:04
  there's a beautiful song version of the Magnificat.
• 12:06
  And so Joe and I will sing her that song and we've been singing
• 12:10
  that to her regularly. So it's not that it came out of
• 12:12
  nowhere, but that her little brain could compute what she
• 12:16
  hears at night and it be triggered by that comment.
• 12:20
  You are a body and a soul. And then she then repeat it
• 12:23
  back. So Joe and I were just both
• 12:25
  stunned. And we're like, Oh my gosh.
• 12:28
  But it's moments like that where we marvel at her growth, her
• 12:32
  development, her beauty, her the joy that she brings us.
• 12:36
  Are there hard times? Yes.
• 12:37
  I write about that in the book. You know, there have been very
• 12:40
  hard times when I was in labor with her.
• 12:41
  I start the book off by saying I should have been a nun, which
• 12:44
  you will find hilarious because all these years people would say
• 12:48
  you should be a nun. I'd be like, I want to get
• 12:49
  married. But when I was in the throes of
• 12:52
  Labor, I wanted to be a nun because it was so painful.
• 12:55
  And I thought the path without this pain is the nunnery.
• 12:59
  You know, breastfeeding was difficult, excruciatingly
• 13:03
  painful. She didn't latch for three
• 13:05
  weeks. And a turning point for me was
• 13:08
  when she was about 6 months old. And again, I write about this in
• 13:11
  the book, but she was six months old.
• 13:13
  We were at church, everything. At this point, we were in a good
• 13:15
  groove. Breastfeeding was fine.
• 13:17
  And Violet started fussing, and Joe was holding her, so he
• 13:20
  passed her to me. And I would, at that point,
• 13:23
  breastfeed on demand. So I just sat down in the Pew
• 13:26
  and began to breastfeed her at the exact moment it happened to
• 13:29
  be the consecration. And I'm looking down as she
• 13:31
  latches to my breast, as I'm listening to the priest say take
• 13:35
  and eat. This is my body given for you.
• 13:40
  And I just had this moment of of realization, like I am living
• 13:46
  the gospel through my motherhood.
• 13:48
  I'm being blessed by it and in getting to watch this beautiful,
• 13:51
  unique, unrepeatable human being grow and develop, but I get to
• 13:56
  be something for her. I get to be her source of
• 13:58
  sustenance. Like she is literally consuming
• 14:01
  my flesh. And and it's that life of self
• 14:05
  sacrifice that motherhood calls us to that is just so profoundly
• 14:10
  beautiful, even amidst the challenges.
• 14:12
  So yeah. That's so beautiful, Stephanie.
• 14:16
  How has motherhood? We're going to get to some
• 14:18
  probably apologetics here, Sue, but how has motherhood changed
• 14:22
  you? That is a good question in, in
• 14:26
  every way it has, it has softened me, it has slowed me
• 14:32
  down. And, and you, you know that and
• 14:35
  how much we both traveled and, and we're on the circuit and,
• 14:39
  and doing things. And of course, to a degree,
• 14:40
  we're both still involved in the pro-life movement, but having a
• 14:44
  more simple life and a simple day, just entering into
• 14:49
  relationship and being with more than doing.
• 14:52
  And that's one of the things because I was so focused on in,
• 14:55
  in my ministry work, doing, doing, doing, realizing so much
• 14:58
  of the time Violet just enjoys the presence of the other.
• 15:02
  Yes, she wants me to play with her, but even if I'm not
• 15:05
  directly playing with her from side by side, Joe and I both
• 15:08
  have the primary love language of touch.
• 15:10
  So we have created a child whose primary love language is touch.
• 15:15
  So, you know, she loves being in our arms and being cuddled,
• 15:18
  being next to us, even if she's looking at her own book and
• 15:20
  we're not actually reading it to her.
• 15:23
  So slowing down, being present and in the present moment, you
• 15:28
  know, realizing both the need to be more patient and growing in
• 15:32
  patients and then realizing how impatient I am and how easily I
• 15:36
  can can become frustrating. You and I talked about this.
• 15:39
  And you don't. I know.
• 15:40
  I was like, I never got impatient before kids.
• 15:43
  I was the most patient person in the world.
• 15:45
  And now I'm like, it's a daily struggle.
• 15:48
  It's a daily struggle. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 15:50
  Like when things are good, they're.
• 15:51
  They're great. And then when your child won't
• 15:53
  go down for a nap and they've repeatedly come out of the room
• 15:57
  and you're and you're trying to teach them, you know, routine
• 16:00
  but also obedience. Like, if I've told you to do
• 16:02
  this, it's for your grid, you should do it.
• 16:04
  Like, I have such a difficult time reigning in my temper.
• 16:06
  So. So motherhood continually then
• 16:10
  helps me grow as a person and helps me grow in virtue in ways
• 16:15
  I think not having Violet wouldn't have done.
• 16:18
  One of the things I found myself struggling with the most is now,
• 16:21
  because I have two and our thirds on the way, we have one
• 16:24
  in heaven, but they're two and four.
• 16:26
  And when they fight, you know, when there's they're usually
• 16:29
  best friends and they do love to play together.
• 16:31
  They really love each other, but they fight a lot.
• 16:33
  And when they fight, I, I cannot the conflict maybe, but I'm just
• 16:38
  like, no, no fight, you know, And then I start getting and,
• 16:41
  and the last thing of two fighting little toddlers, you
• 16:44
  know, little boys need is their mother to lose, lose her mind
• 16:46
  when they're fighting, because that's just going to escalate
• 16:48
  the situation. But obviously that's, you know,
• 16:50
  that's the struggles like being the calm 1, the peacemaker, when
• 16:55
  the fighting can be just so frustrating.
• 16:56
  It's like, stop fighting, you know?
• 16:59
  Yes. Well, and I've also heard, and
• 17:00
  maybe you can testify to this, that also when you see your,
• 17:03
  your children interact as siblings, they will start to say
• 17:07
  or do things to the sibling that the parent has said or done with
• 17:10
  them. And it's like, oh, shoot, I
• 17:13
  guess maybe I shouldn't have that tone of voice.
• 17:15
  You're using it on your siblings.
• 17:16
  So I'm sure that awaits me. Yeah, Peter, the older one.
• 17:19
  You're very naughty, Leo. Like I shouldn't.
• 17:22
  It's not good to say that to a kid.
• 17:23
  He can say that is naughty to do that, but the you're very
• 17:26
  naughty, you know, assigning that label to him.
• 17:28
  And I'm like, where did he learn that?
• 17:29
  He's like, oh, he's condemning his poor brother.
• 17:32
  How? Don't do that, Leo, that's so
• 17:35
  naughty. Like, OK, let's you're not the
• 17:38
  parent. I'll be the parent here.
• 17:41
  So so Stephanie, when when you were writing my body for you,
• 17:44
  you mentioned being in math and like having that moment of
• 17:47
  realization that Violet is you're giving Violet your body
• 17:50
  like work like Jesus gave his body for us.
• 17:53
  What have been some other moments for you that have been
• 17:56
  just I guess transformative and a new way to see your pro-life
• 18:01
  work is now most fully alive in your motherhood.
• 18:05
  And that's the beautiful thing, everyone listening and I've
• 18:08
  talked a lot of stay at home moms over the years and just
• 18:10
  moms who've had to kind of pull back career a little bit or dads
• 18:14
  who are, you know, doing their kind of everyday career.
• 18:16
  It's not like pro-life activism career.
• 18:18
  It's just actual, you know, working at a bank or, you know,
• 18:21
  working as a doctor, whatever it is.
• 18:22
  And you know, I say what you're doing, what you're living, if
• 18:26
  it's for your family, for your kids, that's pro-life.
• 18:29
  You know, that's the heart of being pro-life.
• 18:33
  Yes, you know, what comes to mind is actually time.
• 18:36
  I was on the Strong Women podcast, It's produced by the
• 18:40
  Coulson Center. I think you've been on them as
• 18:42
  well. And I was asked if I could have
• 18:46
  dinner with anyone in history, who would I want to have dinner
• 18:50
  with? And the time I was asked that
• 18:52
  question, I think Violet was about 8 months.
• 18:55
  And my immediate answer was Jesus is Mother Mary because I
• 19:01
  would want to talk to someone who made their child for mission
• 19:07
  like who built into them and spent quiet days and months and
• 19:12
  years for 30 years preparing their child for the epic mission
• 19:18
  of love that they were uniquely called to.
• 19:21
  And I find myself now overwhelmed would be maybe too
• 19:24
  strong a word, but deeply reflecting on how do I raise
• 19:29
  Violet well, how do I spend my days so that she fulfills her
• 19:35
  unique mission of love for God. And when I gave that answer, I
• 19:41
  then reflected on the fact that had I been asked that question a
• 19:44
  few years prior when I was single and doing my full time
• 19:49
  pro-life work, I would have said something like, you know, Martin
• 19:52
  Luther King junior or one of the suffragettes.
• 19:55
  Because in in that season of life in the activist realm I was
• 20:00
  in, I would have wanted to talk to another activist.
• 20:03
  OK, I want to have dinner with you.
• 20:04
  Tell me everything you did to to change the culture.
• 20:08
  And of course, there's still that lots of great questions I
• 20:11
  think I could ask of such individuals and learn from such
• 20:13
  individuals. But that realization that I have
• 20:18
  this incredible gift, responsibility and opportunity.
• 20:23
  To invest in the future through investing in the soul of another
• 20:28
  human person and forever impacting the world through how
• 20:33
  I impact her and, and really thinking through what does that
• 20:37
  look like and what did that look like for Mary as she raised
• 20:40
  Jesus? What were their simple days
• 20:42
  like? And how in a way do I emulate
• 20:44
  that in the year 2024? Yeah.
• 20:48
  So that just came to mind when. Yeah, when you asked me that.
• 20:52
  A big thank you to our sponsor 7 Weeks Coffee.
• 20:55
  sevenweekscoffee.com is a gourmet, delicious roasts and
• 21:00
  ethically sourced coffee company, but it's also a
• 21:03
  pro-life coffee company. You not only get this best in
• 21:06
  class delicious coffee roasts that are delivered right to your
• 21:10
  door, but you're also supporting the pro-life movement because
• 21:12
  10% of all the money, the revenue that Seven Weeks makes
• 21:16
  goes right back into the pro-life movement to directly
• 21:18
  support pregnancy resource centers that help moms and
• 21:21
  babies in need. So 10% is a lot.
• 21:23
  That's not 10% of their profits. That's 10% of everything.
• 21:26
  The people over at Seven Weeks are also just wonderful people.
• 21:29
  They're really motivated in service of others and the cause
• 21:32
  and the coffee is delicious. So stop supporting coffee
• 21:35
  companies, many that support abortion.
• 21:37
  Start ordering from sevenweeks.com.
• 21:39
  They have this new club on the website where you can actually
• 21:42
  become a monthly subscriber and your money monthly will go to
• 21:45
  the pregnancy resource centers and you'll get to enjoy your
• 21:47
  delicious cup of coffee. So go to sevenweekscoffee.com
• 21:50
  and use the code Lila at check out for 10% off your order.
• 21:53
  That's seven weeks coffee.com and use the code Lila at check
• 21:56
  out for 10% off your order. Why do you think so many mothers
• 21:59
  and would be mothers, you know, mothers who maybe are pregnant
• 22:04
  or maybe they're considering, you know, the path hood of
• 22:08
  mother motherhood in the future? Why do you think there's so much
• 22:11
  fear or negativity around motherhood?
• 22:15
  It's kind of seen as this place that dreams go to die, or
• 22:19
  boring, or just messy and painful.
• 22:23
  You know why? Why do you think that is?
• 22:26
  A few thoughts come to mind. I think in some situations
• 22:29
  people might not be in an ideal relationship, so they might not
• 22:33
  have the support that ideally we need to fulfill our motherhood
• 22:39
  and correspondingly for a, a man to be in a good relationship to
• 22:44
  really adequately fulfill his fatherhood.
• 22:46
  We are meant for relationship, we're meant for a communion of
• 22:49
  persons. We're not meant to do parenthood
• 22:51
  alone. So in some situations, I think
• 22:53
  people might not have found that right person or might be
• 22:56
  struggling in their relationship.
• 22:57
  And it might be hard to envision the, the daily self sacrifice
• 23:02
  involved with parenthood because it might be made harder than
• 23:07
  normal. It is hard, it is hard, it's got
• 23:09
  challenges, but it might be made more difficult if you don't have
• 23:11
  that, that support network. And the other thing that comes
• 23:16
  to mind is our culture has just become so self absorbed.
• 23:21
  Immediate gratification, quick fix.
• 23:24
  I mean, even like just with the Internet, not that the Internet
• 23:29
  is bad, it's kind of neutral and it's used for good things, it's
• 23:32
  used for bad things. I mean, obviously this is a
• 23:33
  great medium to use to use the Internet for, but it has, it has
• 23:39
  trained us to expect things instantaneously, that if you hit
• 23:43
  send on an e-mail that you expect someone else is going to
• 23:46
  reply ASAP, that if you text someone, they're going to
• 23:49
  respond back right away. And so this mindset of instant
• 23:54
  gratification doesn't go well with parenthood because there
• 23:59
  isn't always instant gratification.
• 24:01
  There are moments of pure delight when when Violet wakes
• 24:04
  from her nap, I often say it's like the price is right.
• 24:09
  She comes out of her room like come on down.
• 24:13
  And she's so she gives me a big grin and immediately crawls into
• 24:16
  my lap and just wants to cuddle. Like it's just like this moment
• 24:21
  of pure joy and delight. But then there are other times
• 24:24
  that things things are boring, you know, repeatedly playing
• 24:28
  with play DoH or blocks when you're an adult and you have
• 24:31
  advanced to more elaborate activities, it is hard.
• 24:35
  So there, there have been times where I have thought fondly of
• 24:39
  you're in my adventures of, you know, going on speaking trips
• 24:43
  and doing things together and just not that that was bad, that
• 24:46
  was good. It was beautiful.
• 24:48
  And there are times of motherhood where it's not as
• 24:50
  exciting as that once was. So I think that can be hard for
• 24:53
  people to to maybe let go of a life that in the moment was had
• 25:01
  experiences that were maybe more energizing and fun.
• 25:06
  And again, not that that's necessarily bad.
• 25:09
  And again, as I've pointed out with even how Violet wakes up
• 25:12
  from her nab, like there's beautiful and rewarding moments,
• 25:15
  but I think some people resist motherhood because of the times
• 25:17
  where it is challenging and where it's a long term
• 25:20
  investment. And people have said to me the
• 25:22
  days are long and the years are short.
• 25:24
  And I'm starting to see that with Violet already being almost
• 25:28
  2 1/2 and this next baby coming. And just thinking there were
• 25:32
  times when I was sleep deprived and just so exhausted thinking
• 25:35
  how am I going to do this? And now 2 1/2 years have already
• 25:39
  flown by. You know, part of our movement,
• 25:42
  so much of our movement I should say, is focused on those women
• 25:46
  who experience unplanned pregnancy and they are
• 25:50
  considering abortion, right? I mean, the whole pregnancy
• 25:53
  Resource Center movement, which is I think well over thousands
• 25:58
  now we have multiple thousands of these centers in this
• 26:00
  country, nonprofits who serve mothers, usually single mothers
• 26:04
  who are facing unplanned pregnancy considering abortion.
• 26:08
  And like you said earlier, you know, a lot of the reason maybe
• 26:11
  for the angster on motherhood is you're not in the right
• 26:14
  relationship or the time in your life and you're concerned,
• 26:16
  you're fearful, you don't feel you have the resources.
• 26:19
  What is the message? What's your message and what's
• 26:21
  the message of my body for you, for that woman?
• 26:26
  Often a single mother or a woman who is unmarried who is facing
• 26:32
  pregnancy was not planning on it and is tempted to abortion.
• 26:37
  Yes, that there are other people that are standing in the gap who
• 26:43
  are saying my body for you. And by that I mean what comes to
• 26:47
  mind is something I write about in the book, which is one of my
• 26:49
  all time favorite ministries to pregnant women, which is the
• 26:52
  Sisters of Life. And I also write in the book how
• 26:55
  I believe all human beings at our ultimate maturity are called
• 26:59
  to motherhood or fatherhood, whether that's biological or
• 27:04
  spiritual. We are all called at the height
• 27:07
  of our development to maternity or paternity, and the sisters of
• 27:11
  life fulfill that through spiritual maternity.
• 27:15
  And they invest in women who often have a lot of self doubt
• 27:21
  and who haven't been supported and don't have the father of
• 27:23
  their children in their life or even their extended family
• 27:26
  around them, who feel alone and for whom abortion seems like a
• 27:29
  good option. And these women have laid down
• 27:33
  their lives to become religious sisters and to become spiritual
• 27:37
  mothers. And they're saying by being a
• 27:39
  nun in this particular order, I give my body for you, dear
• 27:43
  woman, you know, I am giving you my body to teach you how to be a
• 27:47
  mother, to support you, to lift you up, to even open our
• 27:49
  convent, which they do. And in one of their convents in
• 27:52
  in New York, praying to women as well as mothers after they've
• 27:55
  given birth can live with them, with their children.
• 27:58
  And so these sisters invest in women to show that they too can
• 28:03
  be mothers, to empower them, to uplift them, to encourage them.
• 28:08
  And the fruits of that are just mind blowing.
• 28:10
  Like I am so inspired every time I get the imprint magazine of
• 28:14
  the Sisters of Life, where they write about the women that they
• 28:17
  journey with and how beautiful it is that these women are
• 28:21
  grateful for the lives of their children that they've given
• 28:23
  birth to and rejected abortion for because the sisters loved
• 28:27
  them. And it's it's often not until we
• 28:29
  are loved that we can love others we need.
• 28:31
  And that's why parenthood and family life is a school of love
• 28:35
  where we, you know, our parents are ideally our first teachers
• 28:40
  of Christ's example of this is my body given for you.
• 28:43
  And then we learn that and we give it to others.
• 28:45
  So the sisters of life, each in their own unique, beautiful call
• 28:49
  to religious life, have embraced that message.
• 28:53
  Then they impart it and show it and shower these women in love
• 28:56
  who are pregnant and alone. And those women are like, wow,
• 29:00
  you've given your body your life for me through serving me.
• 29:03
  I now think I can do that for my child.
• 29:05
  And then they give birth to these children and they love
• 29:07
  these children and they support these children and their lives
• 29:10
  are made better because they embraced their maternity rather
• 29:15
  than rejected it. It's such a beautiful example.
• 29:18
  I love the sisters of life too. And I think the kind of part of
• 29:21
  the core of what you're saying is isolation, you know, being
• 29:24
  alone, feeling that you have to do it on your own.
• 29:27
  It is a killer. I mean, it really is
• 29:29
  destructive. It's poisonous.
• 29:31
  And if that mother, that woman is feeling alone, she's feeling
• 29:35
  there's not resources to help her or, or, you know, what's
• 29:38
  worse than being alone is being alone in a crowd of people, so
• 29:41
  people around you or being in a relationship.
• 29:43
  And he's telling you to have the abortion.
• 29:45
  You know, he's encouraging it, which is worse than being alone
• 29:48
  because you're with someone who is making you completely
• 29:51
  isolated from help by telling you to get do the very thing
• 29:55
  that's destructive. And you know, there's so many
• 29:58
  women who experienced this. But the hope is like what you're
• 30:01
  saying is there are many resources out there and the
• 30:04
  first step is to know you're not alone and there are other people
• 30:07
  that want to help. But it's a matter of connecting
• 30:10
  those dots. How can we, as I mean people
• 30:15
  listening to, how can we foster in our own personal lives a
• 30:19
  culture of that connectivity and that invitation?
• 30:22
  Because there are many people, even people that are in our pews
• 30:25
  sometimes in our churches if we are church going, and certainly
• 30:28
  people in our communities who are not feeling in community,
• 30:32
  you know who, who do feel isolated and who themselves
• 30:35
  might be at risk for considering abortion.
• 30:39
  Yeah. So I mean, we need to 1st be
• 30:41
  very aware and be then very welcoming and opening open
• 30:45
  rather to the people around us, you know, forging friendships
• 30:49
  and relationships and starting to talk to people.
• 30:52
  One of the things, the many things I admire about my
• 30:55
  husband, but he was also raised in the pro-life movement, has
• 30:59
  very devout parents who were involved in a pro-life pregnancy
• 31:02
  center that they ran in their community.
• 31:04
  So it was just natural for him long before he met me to support
• 31:08
  pro-life pregnancy centers and, you know, financially give
• 31:11
  significantly to ensure locally women are supported through him
• 31:16
  supporting the center. And so that's one way people can
• 31:20
  make sure people are helped locally by focusing on their
• 31:24
  very communities. I mean, there's always a need at
• 31:25
  the state level and a national level to do things, but there's
• 31:28
  that, that local level where you can know your center and check
• 31:31
  it out and be like, yeah, you're worth investing in because
• 31:34
  you're helping, helping all these people in our own pews.
• 31:36
  You know, I've, I've just approached my own pastor and
• 31:38
  been like, I think it would be good to have a mum's group at
• 31:40
  the church because I know a bunch of mums and I
• 31:43
  intentionally hang out with them.
• 31:45
  But I keep noticing mums, I don't know.
• 31:46
  And maybe they need community. You know, even a friend of mine
• 31:50
  who is married and has support just had her second child, but
• 31:53
  they don't have extended family around and is really struggled
• 31:56
  with breastfeeding and some postpartum anxiety.
• 31:58
  And so we were able to have Christmas with them and do these
• 32:01
  unexpected, you know, interactions and gestures
• 32:05
  because we saw a need. But we only saw the need because
• 32:09
  we talked to people and forged friendships with people.
• 32:11
  And so it's really at that basic level.
• 32:14
  Are we paying attention to who is around us?
• 32:16
  And are we looking out or are we looking down, you know, on our
• 32:19
  devices? And so again, the device can
• 32:22
  connect us, but can also disconnect us.
• 32:25
  So it's about being so intentional about using things
• 32:29
  as a means to connect to people, not allowing the thing to become
• 32:34
  a person that we think we're connected to.
• 32:37
  Such a good point. And it is so tempting to walk
• 32:41
  through the world connected, glued to that device or just
• 32:44
  glued to your own agenda. You know, like if you're busy,
• 32:47
  you know, you've got kids, you've got work, this and that.
• 32:50
  And it's like not making space for that encounter with the
• 32:53
  person who might need to talk or the person who might need an
• 32:57
  extra moment of just grace and attention and love.
• 33:00
  I mean that in the modern world and the craziness and the
• 33:03
  busyness of the modern world, it's so hard to slow down
• 33:05
  sometimes and make space for other people.
• 33:08
  But that's the only way that relationship can grow is by
• 33:10
  making that space. Yeah, and the space can be
• 33:14
  really small, short and unexpected, but leave a positive
• 33:18
  impact. I'm reminded of a time I was at
• 33:20
  the grocery store with Violet, and I'm always asked, is she
• 33:23
  your first? And my answer is always.
• 33:26
  You're such a young mom, Steph. Yeah.
• 33:30
  I know you know it's all in how I part my hair, Lila, but the
• 33:33
  Grays are actually hidden in there.
• 33:36
  Hey, there's a there's something you can do for that.
• 33:38
  I'm just kidding. You're.
• 33:40
  Beautiful as you are. We've talked a lot about getting
• 33:44
  the exact right hair color, but I remember saying to this woman,
• 33:50
  actually, my first is in heaven. And Violet came right after.
• 33:54
  And the moment I said that, she said I've lost a child too.
• 34:00
  And then she opened up about losing her son, actually as an
• 34:03
  adult in his late 30s. And you could see that she was
• 34:08
  deeply saddened as she shared. But there was something in her
• 34:12
  that wanted to share. And my passing remark gave her
• 34:16
  permission not only to share but to have a moment of connection
• 34:20
  with another human being. And so instead of being in the
• 34:23
  grocery line, just looking at her phones or looking at
• 34:26
  magazines, there was just this brief encounter.
• 34:29
  You know, Pope Francis's throat as pontificate talked about the
• 34:32
  need for a culture of encounter. Are we really encounter entering
• 34:37
  the human persons that are in our midst, looking into their
• 34:40
  eyes, engaging them about their day and who they are and where
• 34:44
  they're from? And sometimes it's very
• 34:45
  elaborate, but sometimes it can be fleeting and yet still
• 34:48
  meaningful. And it was clear in that very
• 34:50
  brief exchange, it was meaningful, both for the woman
• 34:53
  as as well As for me. Well, the thing that was so
• 34:57
  beautiful too, about what you just shared stuff is that you
• 35:01
  practice vulnerability with that woman.
• 35:04
  You didn't have to say I have one in heaven.
• 35:06
  You know, like that's a big deal.
• 35:08
  Like sometimes I'll be honest when people ask me how many do
• 35:10
  you have? I'll say 2:00, I've got one on
• 35:12
  the way. And then I don't say I have one
• 35:14
  in heaven, although I do say that occasionally just to kind
• 35:16
  of depends, I guess on on the moment.
• 35:18
  But the beauty of of acknowledging the ones you have
• 35:21
  in heaven, even in the grocery store line, which can be an
• 35:24
  awkward place to bring up. I have had a miscarriage.
• 35:27
  Basically is that it gives the other person person permission
• 35:31
  if they have that desire, desire in their heart for connectivity
• 35:35
  to be vulnerable to. If you hadn't shared that, then
• 35:38
  there was no permission given for her to be vulnerable about
• 35:41
  something that was very heavy on her.
• 35:43
  Absolutely. And vulnerability breeds
• 35:46
  vulnerability. Pretty much anything clones
• 35:49
  itself. So anger is going to breed more
• 35:50
  anger. Kindness will breed more
• 35:52
  kindness, vulnerability will breed more vulnerability.
• 35:56
  And I've often said that when we do share and we are vulnerable,
• 36:03
  that we should share to the extent it helps the other
• 36:05
  person, not to the extent it helps ourselves.
• 36:08
  Now, having said that, in certain settings we want to
• 36:11
  share to help ourselves in a counseling setting, spiritual
• 36:13
  direction, talking to our spouse or a good friend, we might have
• 36:16
  something in our heart we need to share for them to give us
• 36:18
  advice. But I have found that I think
• 36:22
  through the grace of God, through the grace of working in
• 36:24
  the pro-life movement for so many years before I ever
• 36:27
  experienced pregnancy, I had many years to think about
• 36:31
  handling miscarriage because of people who would consult me when
• 36:34
  I had no experience of what miscarriage was like.
• 36:36
  But because I was a pro-life speaker and people wanted to
• 36:39
  know what to do that our own loss of children, while being
• 36:43
  profoundly brutal and emotional and devastating, I had been
• 36:50
  prepared to really work through it in a way that has made me
• 36:54
  very comfortable and being vulnerable and very comfortable
• 36:57
  and being open. And so that when I talk about my
• 36:59
  children in heaven, although I have had moments of tears, I can
• 37:03
  be in the grocery store and not turn into a bubbling mess and
• 37:06
  can speak of my children. So that in sharing about them,
• 37:09
  it's not about me. It's about the person I'm
• 37:11
  speaking to. Who then, indeed, like the
• 37:13
  number of people who, when I say I have children in heaven, have
• 37:16
  said, oh, me too. And sometimes it's like that
• 37:18
  woman who has lost the adult child.
• 37:20
  But other times, people have now spoken to their miscarried
• 37:23
  children in a way they haven't before because someone else was
• 37:27
  willing to do that first. It's such a good point because I
• 37:30
  mean, it's, I think people confuse maybe vulnerability
• 37:34
  sometimes with sort of emotional mismanagement.
• 37:37
  I don't know if that's the right term, but it's like, well, I
• 37:40
  don't want to just share my stuff with whomever.
• 37:42
  And, and what you're saying is like, you need spaces and
• 37:45
  relationships where you can just be raw.
• 37:48
  Like that is so necessary. Someone doesn't have that in
• 37:51
  their life. It's extremely painful if they
• 37:54
  maybe consciously experience that pain or it's subconscious,
• 37:57
  but we all need those faces. And first and foremost, we
• 38:00
  should be able to have that with God.
• 38:02
  Just be raw before God and trust that he loves us and he hears us
• 38:05
  and he's, he's actively working in our lives.
• 38:08
  Of course he is. But you know, that's different
• 38:11
  from, okay, I'm just, you know, full of this vulnerability and
• 38:15
  it's just kind of gushing out of me because I don't have that
• 38:18
  safe space for it, right? Or I'm in a such a raw place in
• 38:22
  my life. I just had a trauma or I just
• 38:24
  had, you know, some, you know, difficult thing happen or just
• 38:26
  I'm having a really rough day. And so you're kind of just like
• 38:29
  letting that rawness spill out onto whoever it might be.
• 38:33
  And you know, that's the human condition partly.
• 38:34
  Like sometimes that just happens.
• 38:36
  So don't be like hard, too hard on oneself.
• 38:38
  But at the same time, what you're saying is that the
• 38:40
  perfect, you know, that the goal here is to have the space for
• 38:43
  the rawness to be raw, but then to practice sharing in a way
• 38:48
  that, yes, you're controlling the sharing in order to invite
• 38:51
  other people to share too. And I think that those things
• 38:55
  together, if people can practice both of them in the right
• 38:57
  context, you know, just makes for so much beautiful
• 39:00
  connectivity that's needed. Right, which again, we're made
• 39:04
  for. We're made for a communion of
• 39:06
  persons and that's a giving and a receiving.
• 39:09
  I remember hearing a great speaker at an event I spoke at
• 39:13
  and this presenter was he teaches one of the most popular
• 39:17
  courses at Harvard on on happiness and and human
• 39:20
  fulfillment. And one of the things he said
• 39:23
  was his favorite name is any. His original language was
• 39:28
  Hebrew. He said his favorite name is
• 39:31
  Natan, which is a palindrome. It's spelt the same forward and
• 39:34
  backwards NATAN either way. And he goes, it means
• 39:38
  essentially to give us to receive.
• 39:40
  And he loves that. The name kind of reflects that.
• 39:42
  You know, it goes in One Direction, but it goes back the
• 39:44
  other way. And this idea that when we give,
• 39:48
  we receive and that a communion of persons is about this giving
• 39:52
  and receiving. It's the overflow, the Holy
• 39:54
  Spirit, the love of the Father and the Son pouring out on each
• 39:57
  other and, and manifesting in the Holy Spirit, which pours out
• 40:00
  even more. And we are meant to model that
• 40:03
  in human relationships and. The spousal relationship is a
• 40:06
  powerful way to do that. The parenthood relationship is a
• 40:10
  powerful way to do that. But all human relationships are
• 40:13
  meant to be a communion of persons of giving and receiving.
• 40:18
  Did you know that some diaper and wipes companies support
• 40:20
  abortion? In fact, most of them do like
• 40:22
  Huggies and Pampers. It's pretty crazy.
• 40:24
  That's why I love every life.com.
• 40:27
  You've heard me talk about them on the podcast.
• 40:29
  But this is a best in class diapers and wipes company with
• 40:31
  high quality products for your baby that is also a pro-life
• 40:35
  diaper company. They just had this great
• 40:37
  billboard up in Times Square that said make more babies.
• 40:40
  They had this whole campaign celebrating babies and we can't
• 40:43
  have too many babies. They're gifts and they also put
• 40:46
  their money where their mouth is and donate some of your proceeds
• 40:48
  back to the pro-life movement, including your own live action.
• 40:51
  So go to everylife.com today. You can get a subscription for
• 40:54
  diapers and wipes for your little one and you can know that
• 40:56
  you're supporting the pro-life movement.
• 40:58
  That's Everylife. Dot com and you can use the code
• 41:00
  Lila at checkout for 10% off your order.
• 41:03
  That's Lila at checkout for 10% off your order.
• 41:05
  So alongside the, you know, these kind of deeper, I would
• 41:10
  call them really spiritual messages of how to invite people
• 41:14
  in, having that practicing that spirit of encounter with other
• 41:18
  people to be welcoming and, you know, vulnerable and sharing.
• 41:22
  I want to talk a shift a little bit and talk about, you know,
• 41:25
  those conversations that are difficult that we may have or we
• 41:28
  may need to have with people that we know about abortion,
• 41:33
  about the protection of life. I think, you know, the culture,
• 41:35
  as you know, we've talked about this a lot is very broken
• 41:39
  politically speaking. After Roe V Wade fell, a lot of
• 41:44
  states enacted trigger laws which banned abortion, thanks be
• 41:47
  to God. But then you have these state
• 41:49
  referendum, these battles where they're actually voting to
• 41:52
  enshrine abortion in their constitution.
• 41:54
  That happened in California, It's happened in Kansas and Ohio
• 41:56
  and other states. It's just devastating.
• 41:58
  So in the whole world of kind of public discourse on abortion,
• 42:03
  there's so much confusion and I think a lot of fear people even
• 42:06
  have for how do I engage and be bold?
• 42:10
  I want to start with even just a willingness to engage and be
• 42:13
  bold on abortion, and I'd like to hear you share why that's
• 42:16
  important. You've written books about it.
• 42:18
  My Body for You is yet another book encouraging engagement on
• 42:21
  this. And then I want to go to some of
• 42:23
  the tough questions that people get or answers that people get
• 42:27
  from people who are in support of abortion and how to respond.
• 42:31
  Sure. Yeah.
• 42:32
  I mean, I think that the starting point is that we need
• 42:35
  to speak out because there is a victim group that is entirely
• 42:38
  incapable of speaking out for itself.
• 42:41
  You know, when when civil rights activists would March in the
• 42:44
  streets with signs that said I am a man, they were the victims.
• 42:49
  And although there were white people who would partner with
• 42:52
  them, the victims were able to speak up for themselves.
• 42:57
  But preborn children cannot March in the streets and say I
• 43:00
  am a person. They are entirely incapable of
• 43:03
  that. And the ones that are mature
• 43:04
  enough when the abortion is happening to scream in so far as
• 43:08
  their mouth opening in a scream forum, that scream is never
• 43:11
  heard. That's why Doctor Bernard
• 43:12
  Nathanson's The Silent Scream Film is such a a brutal and
• 43:16
  powerful title, because the these children cannot even be
• 43:20
  heard audibly. Even if their body
• 43:22
  physiologically would make a gesture of a noise, no noise
• 43:25
  comes out. So quite simply, we simply need
• 43:28
  to speak out because these children have no one are are are
• 43:32
  incapable rather of speaking out for themselves and lives are on
• 43:36
  the line. If we were incapable of speaking
• 43:38
  out for ourselves and our lives were on the line, would we want
• 43:41
  someone to do it for us? Yes.
• 43:42
  Then it's the golden rule to unto others, as you would, you
• 43:45
  know, have done unto you. And so absolutely we can look at
• 43:48
  the the post jobs, post row world and say some states have
• 43:52
  done wonderful things in protecting preborn children.
• 43:55
  But without a doubt, there's other states as you've
• 43:57
  mentioned, like Ohio that are are broadening access and
• 44:01
  support for the killing of of the youngest of our kind.
• 44:05
  And so we need to speak out in their defense because they can't
• 44:08
  speak for themselves. OK, so people listening, I'm
• 44:11
  going to start to this, go to this next.
• 44:14
  I mean, if you're working your normal job, you know, you're not
• 44:17
  in like ministry per SE or pro-life activism, you know,
• 44:20
  you're working in kind of corporate America or you're
• 44:23
  working in retail or whatever it is starting there.
• 44:26
  How do you even have conversations about abortion
• 44:29
  when it's so controversial? You know, I think by being
• 44:33
  Socratic, Socrates, in his quest for truth was always asking
• 44:37
  questions. And so the more we are
• 44:40
  compassionately curious about other people, their views, their
• 44:44
  passions, how did they get to that view?
• 44:46
  We can have these conversations with them actually initially
• 44:51
  even doing more of the speaking than we do, but we've initiated
• 44:55
  it through our question. So if, if you know it's someone
• 44:59
  at work makes a reference to a new story, like I, I know you
• 45:02
  covered you, you did a whole podcast on the, the horrible
• 45:05
  story of Kate Cox, the woman in Texas who wanted to abort her
• 45:10
  baby because her baby had tries to be 18.
• 45:13
  And as we understand went out of state to do that.
• 45:17
  You know that examples like that that are in the news are going
• 45:21
  to prompt conversations, potentially at the workplace
• 45:24
  over the lunch table in passing conversation.
• 45:27
  If there's a newspaper in front of someone and their colleague
• 45:29
  and they happen to see a headline And so to say, oh, what
• 45:34
  do you think about that? And then when the person tells
• 45:36
  you what they think, you know, had, have you always held that
• 45:40
  view or is that something you've only recently adopted?
• 45:43
  Oh, it's oh, it's a new view. When did you adopt that view?
• 45:47
  What influenced you to come to that conclusion?
• 45:49
  And it's those open-ended questions that are going to
• 45:52
  cause people to share, perhaps even quite personally, or they
• 45:55
  might say they've had an abortion or they drove a friend
• 45:58
  to a clinic. And then we can ask them, well,
• 46:01
  how is your friend doing? Or does your friend ever talk
• 46:03
  about the abortion? And you know, what is your
• 46:06
  experience been? What is Someone Like You who's
• 46:09
  had an abortion want someone who's not had an abortion to
• 46:12
  know? And again, these open-ended
• 46:14
  questions are going to cause more and more revelation.
• 46:16
  And so you can start to eventually through the back and
• 46:19
  forth because they're going to ask questions back in part
• 46:22
  pro-life apologetics and different perspectives that are
• 46:25
  affirming to life. But you do it in a way that is
• 46:29
  respectful and reasonable and a natural progression for what is
• 46:33
  being shared by the other party. What do you think is the most
• 46:37
  persuasive pro-life argument? I mean I think at the end of the
• 46:41
  day that pre born children are are equals, that they are living
• 46:45
  human persons with a right to life that all of us have by
• 46:49
  virtue of our membership in the human family.
• 46:52
  Not based on a function, not based on popularity, not based
• 46:57
  on some political decree, but that we have a right to life by
• 47:01
  virtue of being members of the human family.
• 47:04
  And because science has established preborn children to
• 47:07
  be members of the human family, having a human mother and
• 47:09
  father, because they reproduce sexually to begin their lives at
• 47:13
  fertilization, because that's how beings which reproduce
• 47:16
  sexually begin their lives. That they therefore have the
• 47:19
  same right to life that all of us have.
• 47:23
  And that if we believe in human equality and if we reject age
• 47:26
  discrimination, then we ought to protect the youngest of our kind
• 47:31
  who are humans like us. I think.
• 47:33
  I think that's the kind of the the strongest point we can make.
• 47:36
  Does abortion hurt women? Yes, Physically and emotionally,
• 47:39
  yes. I think those are a supplemental
• 47:41
  arguments that can be made. Do some abortions cause an
• 47:46
  experience of pain in some preborn children?
• 47:48
  Yes, but not all. And so again, that's a
• 47:51
  supplemental argument I think that can be made.
• 47:53
  But the the human life of the preborn child and the human
• 47:58
  right to life that all of us have, I think is what we need to
• 48:02
  primarily impart while realizing there's other things that we can
• 48:06
  draw on. So what do we do with?
• 48:09
  I think this is increasingly common.
• 48:10
  You and I have talked about this and your book, your new book, My
• 48:13
  Body for You, I think gets into this too.
• 48:15
  But this cultural, I don't know, postmodern phenomenon, we'll
• 48:20
  call it that, where people are like, yeah, it's a human.
• 48:24
  Yeah, it's human, OK, you know, kind of potential, but it's
• 48:26
  human. Yeah, it's human.
• 48:27
  I give you that. What's in the womb is a human,
• 48:30
  and they're alive, but it doesn't matter because the
• 48:34
  rights of the mother to not be pregnant, to not be burdened, to
• 48:39
  make her own choices, are more important than this human, this
• 48:43
  nascent human life. Yeah.
• 48:46
  So when people say that, there's two kinds of people who say it,
• 48:48
  those who believe in those who don't.
• 48:50
  So those who who don't believe that the moment you, you make
• 48:54
  some analogy to a born individual being killed who's
• 49:02
  maybe 2 years old and and saying, well imagine someone
• 49:05
  said I can kill a 2 year old because my right to not want to
• 49:09
  parent that 2 year old supersedes the 2 year olds right
• 49:11
  to life. They're going to respond and say
• 49:14
  no, but wait a minute, it doesn't matter.
• 49:15
  The 2 year old's a human being. So you don't have a right to end
• 49:18
  the two year old's life. Then we simply respond back,
• 49:20
  well the preborn child is a human being so we don't have a
• 49:23
  right to end their life. And they'll say no, it's not a
• 49:25
  human. So then we catch them.
• 49:27
  They don't, but. They might say, but they might
• 49:29
  say, well, you can drop the 2 year old off at the state, you
• 49:32
  know, department for child services, for foster care and
• 49:36
  you know, abandoned your parental responsibilities.
• 49:39
  Now, there might be criminal neglect involved in that, but
• 49:41
  you can you can do that without killing the child.
• 49:44
  When you're pregnant, there's only one way out.
• 49:46
  And if you expel that baby too early, that's going to kill that
• 49:48
  baby. The point is, you know, there's
• 49:50
  something so special. It's like pathological about
• 49:52
  pregnancy is so bad. It's like it's pathology.
• 49:55
  And so we shouldn't burden them with pregnancy.
• 49:58
  And I think that's what I hear them go back to like, well,
• 50:00
  yeah, but the woman is pregnant. Why are you forcing her to stay
• 50:04
  pregnant? Yeah, so a couple things.
• 50:07
  When when they would make the example that we could just drop
• 50:10
  a born child off in the arms or the safety of someone else and
• 50:13
  therefore walk away, I would ask them what if there was a set of
• 50:17
  circumstances such that we couldn't drop the child off
• 50:20
  right away and be guaranteed their safety?
• 50:22
  There was no fire station. There was no other person around
• 50:25
  for five days. Could we justify starving the
• 50:29
  child for five days until help would come?
• 50:31
  Or would we have a duty and a responsibility to meet the needs
• 50:35
  of the toddler four or five days until alternative help could
• 50:39
  take over. And if they would say, well, we
• 50:41
  have a responsibility for the short term window until
• 50:44
  alternative help could come, then we would say well then the
• 50:47
  same is true for pregnancy in the preborn.
• 50:50
  Pregnancy doesn't last forever. It's a window of time longer
• 50:53
  than five days. But nonetheless, we could find
• 50:56
  circumstances where born people need to be cared for, you know,
• 50:59
  for longer than five days before other help can come.
• 51:02
  And the point is that in the case of pregnancy that we have a
• 51:05
  responsive stability until alternative help can can step
• 51:10
  in. And I think the other point we
• 51:12
  can make is that when they focus on the fact that pregnancy is
• 51:16
  different because only the woman could keep that child alive,
• 51:20
  whereas a million other people could care for a 2 year old.
• 51:24
  And so that's why you can't kill the 2 year old.
• 51:28
  I would cut. I would ask such an individual
• 51:30
  to think through what they've just said.
• 51:33
  When only one person is capable of helping another, does that
• 51:39
  lessen that person's responsibility or does it
• 51:43
  actually heighten it? So, you know, if you are part of
• 51:46
  a crowd of 10 paramedics and you don't jump in to help the
• 51:51
  drowning person because there's nine other paramedics, you're
• 51:56
  one of the 10, there's nine other paramedics that are
• 51:58
  responding. And in fact, you realize if you
• 52:01
  did jump in, it would probably complicate the situation that
• 52:05
  there's many other people that can help.
• 52:07
  You realize the more people that are available to help, it
• 52:09
  actually lessens your individual responsibility.
• 52:13
  But that if you were the only paramedic present who knew how
• 52:16
  to respond to a drowning situation and no one else was
• 52:19
  around except the person drowning and you noticed them
• 52:23
  drowning. That your responsibility to jump
• 52:26
  in the water and save their life would actually be heightened by
• 52:30
  virtue of the fact you're the only one who can help.
• 52:32
  So therefore, when a woman is pregnant and the only one whose
• 52:36
  body is capable of keeping the preborn child alive, she's
• 52:40
  actually got a a heightened responsibility to meet that
• 52:44
  child's needs, not a lessened responsibility.
• 52:47
  Well then people might respond to that and say OK.
• 52:50
  Well, does the paramedic, let's say you have special skills as a
• 52:52
  paramedic, someone's drowning. But let's say that this is very
• 52:55
  fraught situation. You're, you know, jumping into
• 52:57
  the deep sea, ocean, it's a storm, there's a storm
• 53:00
  happening. You're risking your life to save
• 53:02
  another person. Are you morally required to risk
• 53:06
  your life to save another person?
• 53:07
  And in this scenario, of course, I'm speaking to a high risk
• 53:09
  pregnancy. And this is used by, you know,
• 53:12
  pro abortion advocates to justify legal abortion saying,
• 53:15
  listen, sometimes a woman's life is at risk.
• 53:18
  It's a high risk pregnancy. So why should she have to choose
• 53:22
  the child's life over her own life?
• 53:24
  So a couple thoughts in response the. 1st is if we look at the
• 53:28
  analogy to yeah, the, the paramedic now in a different,
• 53:32
  more intense and threatening situation, you know, what we
• 53:37
  want to ask is, well, who is the party at risk and who is the
• 53:42
  party who could help them and what is their relationship?
• 53:47
  And therefore that's relevant because when a woman is
• 53:49
  pregnant, we want to know who is she?
• 53:52
  And when the child is also in jeopardy, who is that child?
• 53:56
  And these are not strangers. This is a mother and a child.
• 54:00
  What responsibility do parents have for their offspring that we
• 54:05
  don't necessarily have to strangers?
• 54:07
  So we need to live the golden rule for all people.
• 54:10
  We have to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
• 54:13
  The scriptures teach us. But there is a special
• 54:15
  responsibility that parents have for their children.
• 54:20
  And so therefore, we have to look at any even in, you know,
• 54:23
  any pregnancy, but particularly even these these life in danger
• 54:26
  scenarios as not forgetting about what relationship is
• 54:32
  involved here. It's a parent child
• 54:34
  relationship. So therefore, whatever we do
• 54:37
  needs to bear in mind that we have to value both lives as
• 54:41
  unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable individuals, as
• 54:44
  well as value the nature of that very sacred bond, which is a
• 54:49
  unique connection between two people where one has total
• 54:54
  vulnerability and the other one has total responsibility by
• 54:57
  virtue of parenthood. One of the things I write about
• 55:01
  in my book is that there are ethical ways of intervening when
• 55:06
  a woman's life is in danger. And, and one of the frustrating
• 55:08
  things post row post Dobbs has been some media outlets
• 55:12
  misrepresenting stories where women have been in complicated
• 55:17
  health circumstances and claiming they need an abortion
• 55:21
  and couldn't get an abortion. Well, we don't ever need an
• 55:24
  abortion because abortion is ending the life of our children,
• 55:27
  so that's never ethical. But we might need medical
• 55:30
  intervention, and there are ethical ways of intervening when
• 55:35
  a woman's life is in danger that don't have to involve abortion.
• 55:39
  I do think when these stories make the news, and this is one
• 55:43
  of the points I write about in my book, there is a more
• 55:46
  fundamental point that we need to get across.
• 55:50
  And that is our ultimate goal is not length of life.
• 55:55
  Our ultimate goal is heaven. If someone were to ask me if
• 55:59
  there was a situation, and I say this is a pregnant woman right
• 56:03
  now, if there was some situation that arose where my life was in
• 56:07
  danger and the only way of saving my life was to directly
• 56:13
  and intentionally end the life of my child, would I choose that
• 56:17
  path? No, I wouldn't.
• 56:19
  I would give up my life. I would rather die and live a
• 56:23
  shorter life then live a longer life riddled with guilt because
• 56:29
  I'm essentially alive at the expense of of harming my own
• 56:32
  child. And I share a powerful story in
• 56:34
  my book of a woman back from where I'm originally from in
• 56:39
  Canada. My my my former diocese when she
• 56:42
  had a 2 year old boy, got pregnant again, happily married.
• 56:46
  Her doctor discovered that she had very advanced metastatic
• 56:50
  cancer and told her and she was about 16 weeks along and told
• 56:55
  her that she needed to have an abortion and start immediate
• 56:57
  treatment for the cancer. And she said, I'm I'm not going
• 57:01
  to do that. And he said, no, you don't
• 57:03
  understand, like we need to do immediate intervention on this
• 57:07
  cancer. Now, it can be ethical if it's
• 57:11
  life or death for you to receive cancer treatment, but just not
• 57:14
  do the abortion first. And it's possible that your
• 57:17
  chemotherapy or radiation or surgery even wouldn't harm the
• 57:21
  child. If it did harm the child, one
• 57:24
  would argue that according to the principle of double effect,
• 57:26
  you're not administering cancer treatment to harm the baby or
• 57:29
  administering it to kill the cancer.
• 57:32
  So she could have received treatment if it was life or
• 57:35
  death in that moment. But what she said was, I want to
• 57:38
  wait until full term. I want to give this child the
• 57:41
  best chance of living. And then I welcome all and any
• 57:45
  aggressive interventions to try to kill this cancer.
• 57:48
  So she proceeded through with a pregnancy.
• 57:50
  Pregnant birth came along around 40 weeks, and she gave birth to
• 57:53
  her baby. And then they started cancer
• 57:55
  treatment and she lived for two years, but ultimately succumbed
• 57:59
  to the cancer. And her husband gave me the just
• 58:03
  the most beautiful interview that that I write about.
• 58:06
  But I was so moved by his attitude and what he conveyed
• 58:10
  her attitude was which was my life is to be a life of love.
• 58:15
  And I'm to pick up my cross and follow Christ.
• 58:18
  And as Christ was willing to lay down his life for us, I'm
• 58:22
  willing to lay down my life for my child.
• 58:25
  And that's what Lorraine did. And you know, like, I think the
• 58:30
  most important take away from her story is that she had the
• 58:34
  right attitude. And the attitude is I am a
• 58:39
  Pilgrim on a journey and this earth is not my home and my goal
• 58:43
  is heaven. So what, how do I have to live
• 58:46
  to get there? I, I embrace Christ, but who is
• 58:49
  Christ? He is a God who loved us so much
• 58:53
  that he laid down his life so that we might live.
• 58:57
  That's what Lorraine did. That's what all of us are called
• 58:59
  to do. And I think when you hear a
• 59:02
  story like that, you can't help but be moved by the beauty of
• 59:05
  such self sacrificing love. It is so moving, and it's also
• 59:10
  the story of. Cara Carbella, Who's another, I
• 59:14
  think on her way to canonization Italian woman, similar story
• 59:17
  about delaying cancer treatment because she was pregnant.
• 59:20
  And there's all of these, you know, Gianna Molla, who is it
• 59:24
  similar St. Gianna.
• 59:26
  And it's just, you know, you hear these stories and I, you
• 59:30
  know, I want to play devil's advocate for a moment on 2
• 59:32
  fronts because this is, you know, the culture we're in
• 59:35
  obviously struggling to see the truth here.
• 59:39
  And first of all, there is the devil's advocate argument of,
• 59:42
  OK, well, you left behind it. In the case of your friend
• 59:45
  Lorraine, you left behind a 2 year old.
• 59:47
  She died two years after the baby was born.
• 59:49
  And then I guess a four year old or other baby would have been 4
• 59:52
  at that time with her passing, Why didn't you just start the
• 59:57
  chemotherapy? Maybe your baby would have
• 59:58
  survived, you know, even despite the chemotherapy.
• 1:00:01
  Maybe you could have had a shot. At living, maybe, And that's
• 1:00:05
  why. If the cancer is serious enough,
• 1:00:08
  it would be ethical too. And I think her heroic decision
• 1:00:12
  to go even beyond was leaving behind for her children, in the
• 1:00:17
  absence of her physical life, a legacy of what the purpose of
• 1:00:21
  their lives was for. And both Aaron and Michael, her
• 1:00:26
  children, love the Lord, have married, have beautiful
• 1:00:30
  marriages. Parents, too.
• 1:00:32
  I think they each have four children.
• 1:00:35
  One of them is a Catholic missionary, a man so, and he
• 1:00:38
  has, he has. Said that he believes.
• 1:00:40
  Even like his his own experiences throughout his life
• 1:00:45
  is he was almost spared from a lot of difficulties because he
• 1:00:48
  believes the intercessory prayer of his mother.
• 1:00:51
  Wow, that's beautiful for. Him from heaven so.
• 1:00:56
  Again, these are. These are, they're not tangible.
• 1:00:59
  They're not physical. We live in a world that wants
• 1:01:03
  everything to just work out as a happily ever after.
• 1:01:06
  And the reason why I actually think Lorraine's story is so
• 1:01:09
  important is from the worldly perspective, it's not a happily
• 1:01:13
  ever after, right? You do leave a man as a widow
• 1:01:16
  and raising two children without their mother.
• 1:01:19
  That's that's heartbreaking, but it's the world we're living in
• 1:01:24
  is a heartbreaking world because we're in an imperfect world.
• 1:01:27
  It's not the world we're meant we were meant to be in.
• 1:01:30
  When sin entered it, it became fractured and broken.
• 1:01:33
  And so that's why God's got this other world waiting for us where
• 1:01:36
  the Book of Revelation tells us there will be no more tears.
• 1:01:40
  So I, I'm just in my own experience even of loss, you
• 1:01:44
  know, of, of losing 4 babies, I had to come to terms with the
• 1:01:48
  fact that this world is not the end result.
• 1:01:53
  Because, you know, as we said at the beginning, I have this
• 1:01:55
  beautiful marriage with this most amazing man that you set me
• 1:01:57
  up with. And, and there have been moments
• 1:02:00
  that are so idyllic that you can sometimes forget, wait, this
• 1:02:04
  isn't, this isn't the goal. Heaven's the goal.
• 1:02:07
  And, and so losing four children to miscarriage, I struggled with
• 1:02:13
  at times thinking what was the point of those pregnancies,
• 1:02:17
  especially the last one where I went through a, a very
• 1:02:20
  challenging first trimester and was very sick and then the baby
• 1:02:25
  died. So then it was like, well, what
• 1:02:27
  was the point of that? What was the point of the
• 1:02:28
  sickness? What was the point of laying on
• 1:02:30
  the couch and not the playing with my 2 year old as much, Oh,
• 1:02:33
  she wasn't quite 2 yet, you know, because the baby just
• 1:02:37
  died. And then I, and as a result of
• 1:02:38
  asking that question, I had to realize, Oh my gosh, the value
• 1:02:42
  of my children is not in the length of their life.
• 1:02:47
  The value of my children is not in how much time I get with
• 1:02:52
  them. It is that they are made in
• 1:02:54
  God's image, that they were willed into existence by a
• 1:02:58
  loving God who wants to spend eternity with them.
• 1:03:02
  And Oh my goodness, I can celebrate the fact that my
• 1:03:05
  children have achieved the goal that they are in heaven and that
• 1:03:09
  I now have 4 intercessors praying that that I achieved
• 1:03:12
  that goal too through the cross of Jesus Christ, the blood being
• 1:03:15
  shed. And so my own journey of having
• 1:03:20
  to realize, don't get too comfortable here, Heaven is the
• 1:03:23
  goal is something I think stories like Lorraine's also
• 1:03:28
  help us wrestle with as well, that there are inconveniences to
• 1:03:32
  this world. There are sicknesses that don't
• 1:03:35
  get solved. There are cancers that don't get
• 1:03:37
  cured, but do we have a right ordered perspective for why
• 1:03:44
  we're here, which is to know, love and serve God in this world
• 1:03:47
  and to be happy with him in the next and then to make sure we we
• 1:03:52
  get where we're supposed to go. So beautiful stuff and the.
• 1:03:56
  Other part of it is for someone who is not a Christian, you
• 1:03:59
  know, they don't, they don't believe in heaven.
• 1:04:03
  And this is, you know, back to public policy for a minute.
• 1:04:05
  This is why a Christian or a non Christian can together agree
• 1:04:10
  that yes, public policy, even in the case of a risky pregnancy or
• 1:04:15
  challenges during pregnancy, you choose ethical options.
• 1:04:17
  But abortion, intentionally killing the baby should never be
• 1:04:20
  permitted. It's never a medical treatment.
• 1:04:22
  Why is that the case? Even if the person themselves is
• 1:04:26
  not a believer, they don't believe in a heaven.
• 1:04:28
  Yeah, it's still the case because all.
• 1:04:30
  Humans are equal and I think one of the best examples I can give
• 1:04:34
  is 1 I give in the book of when I debated a late term
• 1:04:37
  abortionist several years ago and during cross examination I
• 1:04:42
  asked him a question that seemed disconnected from abortion but
• 1:04:46
  was actually entirely connected. And I cited for him a news story
• 1:04:50
  where there were reports that in China, practitioners of Falun
• 1:04:55
  Gong, which is a spirituality, some people over there practice
• 1:04:58
  were being arrested and their organs harvested illicitly taken
• 1:05:02
  from these people and then transplanted into someone who
• 1:05:06
  needed a heart or a kidney or whatever.
• 1:05:07
  And of course, these people were left, do you know, to die or
• 1:05:10
  died right away or whatever. And I said to the abortionist,
• 1:05:14
  would you agree that the removal of a Falun Gong practitioners
• 1:05:19
  organs was a medical act and required medical expertise as
• 1:05:25
  well as the transplantation into someone else's body?
• 1:05:28
  And he, he agreed, as anyone reasonable would, that yes,
• 1:05:31
  those are medical acts done by medical people.
• 1:05:34
  And I said, would you agree that although it's a medical act done
• 1:05:37
  by a medical person, that it was an unethical act?
• 1:05:41
  And he agreed. And the point then was to get
• 1:05:43
  him to to admit that some acts can be done and we can put a
• 1:05:49
  medical, you know, fingerprints all over it, but it doesn't mean
• 1:05:53
  it should be done even if it can be done.
• 1:05:56
  And the reason it should not be done is because the other party
• 1:05:59
  was an innocent human person. So in the same way, when a
• 1:06:03
  woman's life is in danger, the path that is not open to us is
• 1:06:08
  the path of abortion, even if it's done by a medical doctor,
• 1:06:11
  even if it's done in quote, UN quote, sanitary conditions,
• 1:06:15
  because what is being done to try to help someone else, just
• 1:06:19
  like the person who needed a transplanted organ, What is
• 1:06:22
  being done if it's an abortion, is the direct killing of an
• 1:06:25
  innocent human person's life to try to benefit someone else.
• 1:06:29
  And if it's wrong in the case of the practitioner, Falun Gong, I
• 1:06:32
  would say it's also wrong in the case of the preborn child and
• 1:06:34
  abortion. Awesome.
• 1:06:36
  Yeah, very well said stuff. OK, I want to do one more of
• 1:06:40
  these because it's one that people get frequently.
• 1:06:43
  And it was used in some of these state battles, like in Ohio and
• 1:06:47
  other places as a reason for making abortion legal.
• 1:06:50
  And that's the cases of rape or incest.
• 1:06:52
  You know, these heartbreaking cases.
• 1:06:54
  Usually there's an 11 or 12 year old girl who's made the, you
• 1:06:59
  know, the basically mascot for the pro abortion side of why you
• 1:07:03
  need to enshrine abortion on demand.
• 1:07:05
  What's the pro-life response to that?
• 1:07:08
  So when people bring that up, we need to.
• 1:07:10
  Have profound compassion and sympathy for victims of sexual
• 1:07:13
  assault and acknowledge that what has happened to them is a
• 1:07:17
  terrible evil that we need to respond to with justice.
• 1:07:21
  The guilty party where justice needs to be done is with the
• 1:07:25
  rapist. Any child that is conceived is
• 1:07:28
  an innocent party. Much like the rape victim
• 1:07:31
  herself. We could ask the question, is it
• 1:07:35
  fair to give the death penalty to the innocent child, a
• 1:07:38
  consequence we don't even give to the rapist for the act of
• 1:07:42
  rape? I think another angle that we
• 1:07:44
  can come from is to share the stories of people who have been
• 1:07:49
  down that path and experience that brutality and have
• 1:07:53
  nonetheless chosen life. And I know that that you've
• 1:07:56
  recently interviewed a friend of mine, Liana Rebelito, whose
• 1:08:00
  story is just mind blowing of how she was raped and became
• 1:08:03
  pregnant at the age of 12 and nonetheless carried through with
• 1:08:06
  that pregnancy. And doctors offered her an
• 1:08:09
  abortion. And remarkably, at that very
• 1:08:11
  tender age, she had the wherewithal to ask, if I have an
• 1:08:14
  abortion, will it take away all my feelings that no matter how
• 1:08:17
  many times I shower, I'm dirty? Will it take away my memories
• 1:08:21
  and all of these experiences that are making it hard to sleep
• 1:08:24
  at night? And when the doctor had to admit
• 1:08:26
  that technically an abortion wouldn't do that, she said in
• 1:08:29
  her one of her interviews, And I just didn't see the point.
• 1:08:31
  She said all I knew was that I had a life inside of me that
• 1:08:34
  needed me and I needed her. And she carried through with
• 1:08:39
  that pregnancy. And what's I think especially
• 1:08:42
  powerful about it is that she talks about how, and other rape
• 1:08:46
  victims might have the same experience, how she became
• 1:08:48
  suicidal and was tempted to kill herself.
• 1:08:51
  And she told me when I first met her that she decided that she
• 1:08:56
  wouldn't kill herself precisely because she was pregnant.
• 1:08:59
  And she knew if she ended her life, it would end the baby's
• 1:09:01
  life. So it was the very existence of
• 1:09:04
  the child conceived in rape that saved her own life from a
• 1:09:10
  self-destructive act. And so I can say abortion is
• 1:09:15
  wrong in cases of rape, but someone like Leanna Rebelito,
• 1:09:18
  who's lived through that trauma, saying it's wrong.
• 1:09:22
  And this is how choosing life looked for me and how grateful I
• 1:09:26
  was for my daughter. And that has a lot of power to
• 1:09:32
  it, You know, to also have the example of people like your
• 1:09:35
  friend of mine, Ryan Bomberger, a pro-life speaker who was
• 1:09:38
  conceived in rape and his mom, who was the rape victim, placed
• 1:09:42
  Ryan for adoption. She did not feel that she could
• 1:09:45
  raise him. And that's OK.
• 1:09:46
  She waited until, as we talked earlier, there was the safety
• 1:09:50
  net of someone who could care for him.
• 1:09:51
  And once she gave birth, found an adoptive family and and then
• 1:09:56
  he was raised in a beautiful family that had adopted, I think
• 1:09:59
  like 10 other children. So Ryan is grateful for his
• 1:10:03
  life. He's grateful for the example of
• 1:10:05
  his birth mom. And he has paid it forward by
• 1:10:07
  adopting children of his own. So these are the stories that we
• 1:10:11
  want to put forward. When the news media puts forward
• 1:10:14
  other stories saying abortion is needed in cases of rape.
• 1:10:17
  The reality is when that terrible evil occurs.
• 1:10:20
  And if a rape victim gets pregnant, at that point, the
• 1:10:23
  baby has to come out of that woman's body or that girl's
• 1:10:26
  body, dead or alive, the baby has to come out.
• 1:10:29
  But if our option is dead or alive, then what's the most
• 1:10:33
  ethical, ethical approach? The dead approach, which would
• 1:10:37
  be inflicting death or the alive approach.
• 1:10:41
  And I think whenever we choose life, although there's
• 1:10:45
  challenges and we talked about this, the beginning, it's
• 1:10:47
  there's hard times in choosing life and in parenting, but life
• 1:10:52
  always wins and is the most fulfilling and rewarding choice.
• 1:10:56
  As you say, life love unleashes. Life and love is that that extra
• 1:11:02
  force that changes everything, the willingness to choose the
• 1:11:05
  good for the other, even when it's difficult.
• 1:11:08
  And yes, of course, laws should ensure that we can't choose I'll
• 1:11:11
  for each other in certain cases, like abortion or any sort of
• 1:11:15
  destructive act against a neighbor, but or another person.
• 1:11:18
  But at the end of the day, what you're working towards, what we
• 1:11:21
  want to build is that culture of love.
• 1:11:23
  And it starts with us individually, you know, and how
• 1:11:25
  we do everything that we're trying to do in all of our all
• 1:11:29
  of our imperfections. OK, everyone listening, please
• 1:11:33
  get Stephanie's book. Stephanie, where can people find
• 1:11:35
  your book? It's also going to be LinkedIn
• 1:11:37
  the bio of this or LinkedIn the description of the of the
• 1:11:40
  episode. Yes.
• 1:11:41
  So once again, the book is my body for.
• 1:11:43
  You and by going the best way to go is Saint Paul
• 1:11:47
  center.com/mybody for you. And in fact, any of your
• 1:11:51
  listeners that go there can put in the coupon code Lila 15 and
• 1:11:55
  then they will get a special discount.
• 1:11:56
  Nice. So Saint Paul center.com/mybody
• 1:12:00
  for you and yeah, I just pray. It's a blessing to people.
• 1:12:04
  It is a blessing. You are a blessing.
• 1:12:06
  You are the best. Thank you for still making the
• 1:12:09
  time for writing and speaking and podcasting in the midst of
• 1:12:12
  all the busyness of motherhood. And I, I want to end with that
• 1:12:16
  because, you know, to kind of close out the conversation we
• 1:12:18
  started here about just changes in our lives.
• 1:12:22
  You're sharing about changes in yours post motherhood and how it
• 1:12:25
  does change us. But you know, there's a raging
• 1:12:28
  debate right now. We just did an episode called
• 1:12:30
  Being there or on Being there, Motherhood in the first three
• 1:12:34
  years with Erica Commissar. I know you and I have texted
• 1:12:37
  about this already, but maybe just a last word for especially
• 1:12:41
  moms listening or women listening who you know, are
• 1:12:44
  engaged in really meaningful work that they love and they
• 1:12:47
  feel like, OK, I do feel called to motherhood or they are
• 1:12:49
  mothers and they still feel called to the meaningful work.
• 1:12:52
  And I believe it is possible to do both, just not, you know, you
• 1:12:56
  can't be the same intensity level before kids that you are
• 1:13:00
  after kids. Things have to change to put the
• 1:13:02
  child first. But what are any kind of final
• 1:13:05
  thoughts you have on that? Yeah, for sure.
• 1:13:07
  Well, first of all, to listen to that episode, because as I
• 1:13:09
  texted. You I've been listening to Erica
• 1:13:11
  Kamasar for about a month or two before hearing you interview
• 1:13:14
  her. And your interview was one of my
• 1:13:15
  favorites of all the ones I've listened to.
• 1:13:17
  So to, to really take it to heart that this woman has a
• 1:13:22
  lived experience. She has a a study experience, is
• 1:13:25
  her professional job is is a psychotherapist.
• 1:13:29
  So that there is merit to the idea actually, which I quote in
• 1:13:34
  at the start of my book to the the old poem.
• 1:13:37
  It's like over 100 or 200 years old.
• 1:13:40
  But the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules
• 1:13:42
  the world. And if we have brought the life
• 1:13:46
  into the cradle, then we ought to be the hand forming and
• 1:13:51
  influencing that child. As I said earlier, as Mary
• 1:13:53
  influenced Jesus and made him for mission, obviously God made
• 1:13:57
  Jesus and God was Jesus for the mission of love.
• 1:14:00
  But he entrusted Mary as his mother to form him and nurture
• 1:14:05
  him and to be in a relationship of attachment and communion with
• 1:14:09
  him as preparation for when he would go out to the world.
• 1:14:14
  And we as mothers of of our children have the great joy to
• 1:14:19
  be able to do that as well. And there are still things we
• 1:14:23
  can do outside of the the daily role of motherhood.
• 1:14:26
  And my own experience of motherhood has made me think of,
• 1:14:28
  oh, now I understand why there was like Mary Kay makeup and
• 1:14:33
  Tupperware parties and different things where we now we
• 1:14:37
  understand MLM. Stephanie.
• 1:14:41
  Yeah. But we're that's what I love
• 1:14:45
  about writing. And podcasting.
• 1:14:46
  And I'm, I'm so grateful for my work at Live Action because of
• 1:14:49
  the flexibility. But it's like, you know, after I
• 1:14:51
  know what we're both going to do after we wrap in a second here,
• 1:14:54
  your nap time's almost up for you.
• 1:14:55
  I'm going to run, run home to my kid, my kiddos.
• 1:14:57
  And, you know, but that flexibility for many women, it
• 1:15:00
  is possible. They can make it work.
• 1:15:02
  Sometimes it's not possible. There are jobs that are much
• 1:15:05
  harder for women to do and be the present mother that they are
• 1:15:08
  called to be. And, you know, I think that's
• 1:15:10
  where I just feel very, you know, humility and a gratitude
• 1:15:14
  that we have these opportunities to write and podcast and do the
• 1:15:17
  things that we're doing in a way that can and still make that
• 1:15:22
  primary space for our our littles.
• 1:15:24
  It's not it's not everybody's path, I know.
• 1:15:27
  So I just want to call that out. And I tried, I tried to set in
• 1:15:29
  the episode with Erica because there was something about like,
• 1:15:30
  you work hypocrite. And it's like, well, there's
• 1:15:33
  different kinds of work. And, you know, I think that
• 1:15:36
  there is nuance here. And I know that we've talked
• 1:15:39
  about this a lot on and offline, but I think the core message
• 1:15:42
  you're given, which is so beautiful, is that the work of
• 1:15:45
  motherhood, which is work which has supreme dignity, that is
• 1:15:50
  work that is world changing. It is world changing, not only
• 1:15:54
  for us. Which helps us grow as as human
• 1:15:57
  beings, but for the very children, you know, that we're
• 1:16:00
  mothering. And I think the key is that any
• 1:16:02
  choice we make. I married an economist.
• 1:16:04
  And so I have learned from him, everything comes with costs.
• 1:16:08
  There's always cost. And so we have to decide what we
• 1:16:12
  want the cost to be. And you know, Matthew Kelly, the
• 1:16:17
  speaker and author, once said the only way to say no to
• 1:16:19
  anything is to have a deeper yes.
• 1:16:21
  So are, are both of us very lucky to have the, the type of
• 1:16:25
  outlet that we have. You know, our version of Mary
• 1:16:28
  Kay makeup or, or Tupperware parties is, is we can podcast
• 1:16:32
  and write and, and speak around a very flexible schedule.
• 1:16:36
  And those other programs also are generally very flexible
• 1:16:40
  schedules. But we have had to say no to
• 1:16:43
  things. I used to travel all the time.
• 1:16:45
  I am frequently like 50% of the time the travel used to be.
• 1:16:50
  And I like never travel anymore and when I.
• 1:16:53
  Do then I set parameters up like my whole family has to come with
• 1:16:56
  me. So so there there is a lot of
• 1:17:00
  nose, but a a deeper yes. And so for anyone struggling
• 1:17:06
  with well, that isn't my reality.
• 1:17:08
  Should it be my reality? Can it be my reality is to enter
• 1:17:12
  into prayer and ask yourself, what do you want your deeper yes
• 1:17:14
  to be? And what do you have to do to
• 1:17:17
  make that deeper yes come to fruition And to be OK with nose
• 1:17:22
  being part of the deeper yes and realize not only to be OK with
• 1:17:26
  it, but again, as my economist husband would say, that's a
• 1:17:29
  normal part of life. There's always knows when we
• 1:17:32
  make yeses. I love that.
• 1:17:34
  I love that sis, you're the best.
• 1:17:37
  Let's do this again, writing your book, Everyone together.
• 1:17:41
  We would have been together, but because we're both.
• 1:17:42
  Pregnant. I know we better do this
• 1:17:45
  together. Things soon though.
• 1:17:46
  I miss you. It's been too long.
• 1:17:48
  It has been. Come to California.
• 1:17:50
  Come to Florida. We shall see.
• 1:17:53
  We'll see. I mean I.
• 1:17:54
  Guess after the babies come, when can be the next soonest
• 1:17:57
  time We'll we're going to have to get this on the books because
• 1:17:59
  otherwise life is going to go by.
• 1:18:01
  So we got to make it happen. Very true.
• 1:18:03
  Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you.
• 1:18:05
  Love you, miss you. We love you too.
• 1:18:08
  Thanks so much for listening to this.
• 1:18:09
  Episode with Stephanie Gray Connors I hope you enjoyed it.
• 1:18:12
  As always, do not forget to subscribe to the podcast if you
• 1:18:16
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• 1:18:19
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• 1:18:21
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• 1:18:59
  see you next time.