February 21, 2024 Show with Jason Storms and Scott Klusendorf Debating “Abolition vs. Incrementalism: Which is the Wisest Approach for Christians Seeking to End the Slaughter of Infants through Abortion?”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
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Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
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Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 21st day of February 2024.
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And today, I am excited that we here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio are having another debate.
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It's not a regular occurrence. In fact, I think I should start making it a regular occurrence, maybe even a weekly occurrence or at least a monthly occurrence to have a debate on the show.
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But we have a fascinating debate today that far too often has created far too much heat and not enough light.
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And it is my hope and prayer that today we will reverse that and provide for our listeners far more light than heat over a highly contested issue that divides
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Christians who are seeking to bring an end to the slaughter of unborn children through abortion here in the
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United States and even across the world. But we have two individuals who strongly disagree with one another, although they recognize each other as brothers in Christ and they recognize each other's value in the fight to end abortion.
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But they still have very strong disagreements over the actual approach within our legal system to accomplish that goal of ending abortion.
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We have, first, Jason Storms, who's been a guest here before. He is the national director of Operation Save America and an avowed abortion abolitionist.
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Welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jason Storms. It is good to be with you,
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Chris. Thank you for having me on. And why don't you quickly tell our listeners about Operation Save America?
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Yes, sir. We have been on the front lines of the fight to end the holocaust of abortion for 35 years, formerly the organization
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Operation Rescue, started by Randall Terry. And I took over leadership from a good friend and mentor,
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Rusty Thomas, who ran the organization for many years and have been running it for three, the last three years.
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And we are committed to awakening the church, mobilizing the church to our duty to protect life and to engage prophetically as a voice against injustice in this culture and exalt the name of Christ and to strengthen the foundations that are crumbling in this culture.
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So that is that's who we are. And so we do we have conferences and events all over the country, a network of faithful believers and families and churches across the nation and partners and ministry partners we work with and just trying to be a voice for the voiceless.
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And what is your website? Operation Save America dot org. Great. Well, today,
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Jason's opponent in this debate is Scott Klusendorf, who is an author.
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He's the president of Life Training Institute and an avowed pro -life incrementalist.
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And welcome back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Scott Klusendorf. Chris, Jason, it's good to be with both you brothers, even despite our disagreement.
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I love chatting with both of you. And why don't you tell our listeners about the Life Training Institute? We exist to equip pro -life
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Christians to make a case for life in the public square where public truth claims are often dismissed as mere opinions.
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And we equip pro -lifers with arguments that resonate with unchurched people. We do debates.
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We do presentations in Catholic and Protestant high schools. We go on secular campuses and make a case for life and do it with arguments that are not easily dismissed.
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We hope to equip Christians to be disciples who can make a case for the biblical worldview on the issue of life.
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Well, why don't you provide your website for our listeners? Pro -life training dot com is probably the best place to get me, or they can go to Scott Klusendorf dot com and watch some of the podcasts, including one
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I recently had with Jason. Great. And we'll be God willing, repeating that towards the end of the program. Well, today, the debate thesis is when do incremental attempts to limit evil fall prey to unjust or counterproductive compromise?
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And for opening remarks to affirm that thesis is
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Jason Storms, who is the abortion abolitionist in this debate. Jason, you have 10 minutes.
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All right. Excellent. So a question of when does incrementalism go bad?
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And so I would argue initially, route the gate, incrementalism is not inherently evil.
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It is not necessarily even a biblical term. I don't really like the term incrementalism. I don't typically even use the term.
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I think we should we should couch our language and our rhetoric more in biblical terminology. And so I would ask the question, are we advocating for justice?
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Are we working towards justice or are we subverting, whether intentionally or unintentionally, justice?
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And in this case, justice for our pre -born neighbors. And so my my my central thesis would be this, that the pro -life movement by and large, in terms of especially its legislative policies, has been an abject failure at defending pre -born children in this culture.
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And I would say in large part, that's due to not just incremental strategies, but due to,
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I would say, a lack of properly grounding ourselves theologically in the gospel and in the work and life of the church through the spirit and power and grace of God.
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And so as a result, I think what we have is a muddled mess of all sorts of things within the pro -life movement.
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I have been a part of the pro -life movement for 25 years. And so there has been much good and much to praise and much to applaud, much to commend within the pro -life movement.
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But sadly, so many of particularly the bigger organizations that are engaged in political lobbying and setting forward the political agenda simply are not grounded theologically.
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And as a result, I believe there is a moral confusion that emerges and also a political compromise that emerges and a cowardice that emerges that has led to 50 years of the slaughter of pre -born children.
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Let me give some examples of this. So during the Roe era, it is clear that there was not one substantial policy victory for the pro -life movement.
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Fifty years, pro -lifers won elections. Pro -lifers, in fact, dominate many states politically.
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And there have been many times in the last 50 years where pro -life Republicans have held all three branches of our federal government.
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And yet just as many babies continue to die under their leadership as under pro -abortion leadership.
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Well, what in the world then does it mean to be pro -life? Think, for example, during the George Bush era, George W.
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Bush Jr., he was president for eight years.
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For six of those eight years, pro -life Republicans, which he considered himself, controlled all three branches of the federal government and had a majority of state governments.
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And yet just as many babies died under George Bush and those pro -life leaders. In fact,
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President Bush and the Republican Congress in those six years did not even defund
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Planned Parenthood. You'd think that's a bare minimum, that they could defund Planned Parenthood. Fast forward to Donald Trump, who in many ways was much more of a fighter.
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And there's a lot of things that I liked about Donald Trump. The first two years of President Donald Trump's administration, 2016, 2017,
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Donald Trump and pro -life Republicans, again, controlled all three branches of the federal government and 32 state governments.
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And yet just as many babies died under Donald Trump. And in fact, that pro -life
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Congress continued to write $500 million checks to Planned Parenthood in the budget that Donald Trump signed.
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Donald Trump claimed he was going to end abortion. Pro -lifers applauded him for claiming he was going to defund
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Planned Parenthood. He didn't. He didn't end abortion. He didn't defund Planned Parenthood. Now, I'm thankful that he overturned
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Roe, the overturning of Roe and the appointment of three Supreme Court picks, I think, is something to celebrate, though in many ways the
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Dobbs decision fell short of establishing what they could have and should have done, which was providing recognition of the full humanity of pre -born children as human persons protected under the
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United States Constitution. That would have been wonderful and that would have been something to truly celebrate.
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But the reversal of Roe was good. And we have now seen that the
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Dobbs decision has gone forward. We are seeing now just exactly how weak and anemic so much of the pro -life movement actually is.
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As we see, there are 14 states that presently have passed, quote unquote, bans on abortion. A great number of pro -life states have not even done that.
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But even in those 14 states, take Texas, for example, babies are still being murdered.
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Every one of those 14 states, they grant legal immunity to mothers. Mothers are not held accountable for killing their own children through self -managed abortion.
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Mothers in Texas, in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, they can order pills, have them delivered to their home.
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They can take those pills and abort their child right at home. They could film it, do hashtag, shout my abortion, and they could boast about killing their own child live on the
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Internet. And that's legal in every single pro -life state in this country.
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And so statistically, in Texas, the latest statistics we've seen, the abortion rate has dropped from I think was around 55 ,000 abortions down to just under 50 ,000.
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So some would say as many as 58 ,000 abortions. So there's a debate in the numbers. Somewhere between 5 and 10 ,000 babies have been saved in Texas, and we rejoice for that.
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And that is good. And we should certainly say that that's a good thing. But there are pro -life organizations running around the country,
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Students for Life of America, who I think they do a lot of good things. But there's claiming that Texas is an abortion free state.
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And yet 19 ,000 self -managed abortions were done in Texas, 30 ,000
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Texas mothers left Texas to go to a different state to get an abortion and come back to Texas. So almost 50 ,000 babies,
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Texas babies were murdered, have been murdered since. The Dobbs decision.
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Now, that's just absolutely unacceptable. And I would say in large part that as a result of the failure of the pro -life movement to think and act consistently and courageously and biblically on this subject.
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So the duty of those states prior to Dobbs would have been, and we were arguing for this, to defy the federal government, to defy the lawless
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Roe versus Wade opinion. We see this as a longstanding precedent where states governors have a rightful jurisdiction to say no to bad federal court opinions or laws or policies or executive actions.
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And many did this during the COVID era and were applauded for that. Of course, liberals have done this.
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They did this with gay marriage. They started to legalize in their states gay marriage in defiance of the
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DOMA Act. And so why were pro -life governors not willing to do this? Well, they were not being asked to do this by pro -life leaders and pro -life organizations.
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And so that's a problem. So the 50 years of what
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I would say is, again, abject failure politically. The inability to achieve one single substantial political victory is what really gave birth to the abolitionist movement.
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And so we were involved from pretty early on in the abolitionist movement about 10 years ago. Prior to that, we were involved in the personhood movement.
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And prior to that was the rescue movement. Our organization was involved in both of those movements, which were movements within the pro -life movement to reform and revitalize and bring moral consistency to the strategies and rhetoric and tactics of the pro -life movement.
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The rescue movement, of course, under Randall Terry, who simply said, if babies are being murdered, then let's act like it.
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And that was a profound statement that motivated a lot of people, energized a lot of Christians to take action.
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The personhood movement also built on much of that and tried to ground the policies of the pro -life movement in first principles, in the recognition of life beginning at conception and life being made in God's image.
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And thus, our political policies should follow suit in establishing those things without compromise or without undermining that.
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And so much of the incremental legislation that goes forward, in contrast to that, it in fact undermines our core principles and our core premises.
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To set forth, for example, a bill that says that you can't kill a baby after 15 weeks or you can't kill a baby once there is a detectable heartbeat undermines our core principle, our core premise.
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We're actually undermining our very foundational arguments. Not only are we undermining our very foundational arguments and thus miseducating the population, we are also actually giving cover to the bad politicians that are actually preventing actual abortion bans from taking place.
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In many states, even right now, post Dobbs, states have passed heartbeat bills.
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Georgia, for example, South Carolina and Florida have passed heartbeat bills. Those states all had the opportunity with pro -life leadership to pass outright total bans on abortion, giving full legal recognition to preborn children.
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Instead, they settled for a heartbeat bill. The leadership of the Republican Party in those states basically acknowledged that they didn't want to do anything about abortion, that they believe it's a losing issue.
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They only were willing to do the bare minimum to satisfy their pro -life base. And my goodness, how easily satisfied the pro -life base is to accept that it's
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OK to kill these babies, but we'll protect these babies. That's unacceptable and largely was the result of simple cowardice.
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And we're out of time. And now and now, Scott Klusendorf, who is the pro -life incrementalist in this debate, has 10 minutes.
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Well, thank you, Chris. Thank you, Jason, for your opening remarks. I would like to start off by saying that I'm not totally satisfied with the language of abolitionist versus incrementalist.
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I think it's unclear and kind of clouds the true debate. Three quick reasons for that.
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First of all, all principled pro -lifers are abolitionists in principle, and we would vote to protect all humans immediately if we could.
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The real debate is about what to do in a fallen world when we can't immediately do that good justice act.
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To that end, I think we need to distinguish between prudent lawmakers who are committed to protecting all unborn children, all unborn children, and some of their colleagues who hide behind a pro -life label but have no intention of actually banning abortion.
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I agree with much of what Jason said. We've got some pro -life, allegedly pro -life politicians out there that I doubt have any real interest in protecting children, either because they're cowards or because they're determining it's not politically feasible for them to do it.
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Secondly, though, I would say that historically, Christians have always been forced to live with a troubling tension between moral principles and the reality of a fallen world.
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Here's a few examples. If you were a Christian in Congress in 1776, should you have signed the
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Declaration of Independence, even though the language condemning slavery was intentionally removed to keep slaveholding states in the
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Union? Or imagine it's 1860 and you're an abolitionist Christian. Should you vote for Abraham Lincoln, even though he campaigned saying that he would not go beyond his constitutional authority, meaning he would not seek to abolish slavery in states where it currently existed?
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Even today, we face this. Those against abortion face this question, for example, is it morally permissible for us to practice geographical incrementalism by introducing a bill to ban abortion in one state instead of protecting children and all of them at once?
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Then we have the issue of IVF embryos. What if a bill is put forward that would ban all abortion but leaves
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IVF babies unprotected? Is that a moral compromise? Christians have to wrestle with this.
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Even at a high level of abstraction, there's tension. Suppose we could end abortion in 10 years,
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Chris, with an incremental strategy or in 100 years with an abolitionist one. Should we opt for the 10 years over the 100?
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If we answer yes to any of the above, we've just ruled out incrementalism as being wrong in principle.
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And my point here isn't to convince abolitionists to become incrementalists. My point is that all of us already are incrementalists at some level.
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We can't help but be. It's not the practice of incrementalism that is wrong. It's the intention behind it.
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That's where the moral crux lies. For example, to cite another one, when abolitionists introduced an abolition ban in one state, but not all of them at once, they are working incrementally.
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They are practicing what we call geographical incrementalism. Or when they introduce a bill protecting embryos from abortion, but not
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IVF embryos from destruction, they are practicing strategic incrementalism. Either way, though, it would be unfair to say they are consenting to the deaths of those unborn humans in other states or in test tubes that their bill does not protect.
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So I guess I would say if abolitionists aren't consenting to the deaths of embryos, they are not in a position to save.
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Why are pro -lifers guilty of consenting to the deaths of children? They aren't in a position to say, put simply what this comes down to.
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Is it OK to practice? If it's OK to practice geographic incrementalism based on longitude and latitude, why is it wrong to practice it with gestational age if you don't have the votes to protect all of them?
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And I think this leads to the third reason I'm troubled by the abolition versus incrementalist paradigm.
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We don't have to choose between unprincipled pragmatism that downplays evil and unrealistic purism that allows the political status quo to go remain unchecked.
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We don't want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. I think there's a third way and it's called political prudence that does not compromise our principles, but seeks to limit evil and promote the good insofar as we can, given current political realities.
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We should never compromise on our principle. I totally agree with Jason on that. But we can compromise on tactics and legislation, as Lincoln and Wilberforce reminded us.
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Politics is always going to be the art of the possible. There's no way of getting around that. I think that the idea that abolitionists versus incrementalists is the proper framing is a false choice.
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It's not either or. In fact, I don't think pro -lifers who are committed in principle have to choose between incremental legislation that saves some children now or total abolition that saves them all at a later time.
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Rather, I think we should advance both strategies at once and save as many lives as we can in the process.
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So while unborn humans ought to enjoy the protection of law, political realities may sometimes make that unachievable.
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In other words, we won't be able to immediately do it. When that is the case, enacting the most pro -life law realistically possible is justified.
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We shouldn't let the perfect become the enemy of the good. However, we must never stop with imperfect bills.
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And this is where I think Jason was spot on. When we hear politicians start talking about settling for a 15 week ban or settling for a 20 week ban, no, we can never settle for anything less than full protection for all unborn humans.
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We've got to practice what I like Doug Wilson labels as smash mouth incrementalism.
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We are never going to quit until all babies are protected. We're unwilling to we're unwilling to sacrifice the lives of babies who could be saved right now through incremental bills.
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But we're not stopping until we can protect all of them. And you do have four minutes left,
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Scott. Well, I'll conclude with this. We can vote for an imperfect bill if no realistically achievable alternative would give unborn children more protection.
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Pro -lifers have not wronged babies. They were never in a position to save in the first place. They do wrong babies when they settle on a limit and say, we'll quit there.
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That's very disturbing to me. I would also add that I point a disagreement with my friend and colleague,
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Jason. I don't think that the pro -life movement has been an abject failure for 50 years.
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I think that's an overstatement, an oversimplification, and it doesn't have the nuance it needs.
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For example, the Dobbs decision was an incremental victory. But without the Dobbs decision, you don't even get the federal ability to limit abortion congressionally or or to limit it at the state level because Roe and Casey were the law of the land and that superseded all other bills.
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So that incremental step opened up the possibility of curtailing abortion nationwide.
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The Hyde Amendment, according to several sources I looked at, has saved at least two million lives since 1976.
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I think that's a significant legislative victory. Clinics have closed in many states.
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Some states have none or only one. And if you look at Texas, who Jason mentioned a moment ago, it's true that abortion is still legal at six weeks and we should keep working to where that's not the case.
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However, you look at the birth rates in Texas and according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, they're up a thousand per month.
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And that I think is and they point to the new law as being the source of that. I think, too, that it's an over and it's an oversimplification to say that it's pro -life incrementalism that has caused the problem.
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The worldview premises that make abortion plausible to millions of our fellow citizens are deeply entrenched in culture.
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In fact, we can trace them all the way back to William of Ockham, who in the 13th century was arguing we should quit looking at objective principles and look only at the particulars.
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And then you get to the Enlightenment, where all non -material truth was dismissed as personal opinion or subjective experience.
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And you start to understand why the culture today is deeply entrenched with the moral relativism that makes abortion plausible to so many.
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The problem isn't pro -life incrementalists in the main. It's a worldview challenge we face, whether we're abolitionists or whether we're pro -lifers.
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The culture does not agree with us that the intentional killing of an innocent human being is wrong.
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And the worldview premises that make that plausible to them have been deeply entrenched in our culture for several hundred years.
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And to think we're just going to get rid of them overnight, I think, is wishful thinking. It's not going to happen. OK, we are going to go to our first commercial break.
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And when we return, each of our debating opponents is going to be providing a seven minute rebuttal to his opponent's opening statement.
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And we are going to be taking listener questions for the very final segment of our program today, likely somewhere around 530 or so.
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Go to RoyalDiadem .com today. Mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with our debate between Jason Storms, an abortion abolitionist, and Scott Klusendorf, a pro -life incrementalist.
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Both of these men are not happy with those terms, but we are trying to use the vernacular that is fairly well known amongst
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Christians and specifically those involved in the battle to end infanticide in America and across the world.
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And just like when we have debates between Calvinists and Armenians, there are participants that don't like those terms.
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We're just using a language that hopefully will be understood by the majority. And now we've reached a point in our debate when both of our opponents are going to give seven minute rebuttals to the opening statements that they heard by their opponent.
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And Scott Klusendorf, it's your time to have seven minutes of rebuttal. I thought you said
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Jason. Did I get that wrong? I'm sorry, Jason Storms. I'm sorry. Oh, OK.
36:34
All right. So you're switching it up on me there. Well, I would say, yeah,
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I was getting back to sort of some of what I had opened with there. And I don't disagree with some of the things
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Scott said. I do agree and appreciate him saying that we do need a biblical worldview to fight this battle.
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And I think he and I are very much in agreement with that, that this is a spiritual battle that we are in. We need to utilize all the spiritual weapons that God has given us and.
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To this issue and speak truth plainly and persuasively and passionately, and so to your your concern,
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Scott, that with my statement that the pro -life movement has been an abject failure, the reason
37:17
I say that, you know, I certainly recognize there's been a lot of good that has been done by pro -life people all over the country. I, as a pro -life person for many years, was very active preaching the gospel on the streets, college campuses and at abortion clinics and seeing hearts and minds changed and and seeing babies saved and many good things happening.
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But the reason I say that is because we have 62 million dead babies as this as the track record.
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Now, that's obviously not all to be placed at the feet of the pro -life movement. The pro -life movement is not the reason why abortion was legalized.
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The pro -life movement was a response to the legalization of baby murder. But I would say it's largely been a poor response, in many ways, a poor response.
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And it's been a poor response, as I said, insofar as it has abandoned the proper theological foundations and the vehicle of the church that God has established to be the the instrument through which he brings justice and has established,
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I would say, this nation and its foundations. The the this country was built upon a
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Christian worldview, and insofar as we've abandoned that Christian worldview, we're going to continue to plummet into moral chaos.
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And we cannot fight that with a Christless conservatism, but we must fight that with the full weaponry that God has given us and the spiritual truth that he has revealed to us in his scriptures.
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And we must be unashamed of that. And for too long, the pro -life movement has been dismoored from that foundation.
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And I think that is why the pro -life movement failed to properly stand up to the lawless
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Supreme Court in 1973. Roe was an absurd and unlawful court opinion, and it should have been resisted by every governor in this country.
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There is a longstanding precedent for this. Roe is not the law of the land. Courts do not make law.
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And so every state government has a proper check and balance role to play in our system of federalism.
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And every state government has a right and duty to stand up against unlawful, unjust federal court opinions or executive orders, whatever the case may be.
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Abby Johnson, of all people, rightly pointed this out when Governor DeSantis and Governor Abbott were defying the
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Biden administration over lockdowns and mandates regarding the COVID crisis. She said,
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I am so happy to see Governor DeSantis and Governor Abbott defying the unlawful and unjust actions of the federal government.
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But then she said, you know, then I realized I was listening to these abolitionists calling for defiance of Roe, and I thought that was crazy.
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But I realized, well, hey, if they're doing it over lockdowns and mandates, how much more should it have been happening over the killing of babies for decades?
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And so she agreed and affirmed, yes, these states should have defied Roe. But regardless, I'm thankful that it has been overturned now.
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But here's the reality. Under Roe, if you submit to Roe, if you bow to Roe, if you say, yes,
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Roe is the law of the land, what Roe and then Casey, which strengthened and expanded it in 1992, what they claimed is that you cannot do anything that poses an undue burden on a woman's right to an abortion.
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So if you're accepting that at the outs, if you're saying, okay, we accept Roe and Casey, the law of the land, then any legislative policy that you begin to advance is starting from the very premise that you cannot do anything that poses an undue burden on a woman's right to an abortion.
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Thus, whatever you achieve politically, it's guaranteed to not do anything that will pose an undue burden to a woman's right to an abortion.
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And that's why I would say it's an abject failure. That was a terrible premise. If the pro -life movement had been properly grounded in the robust political theology of the reformation and a proper grounding theologically and biblically and understanding the nature of proper resistance to corrupt government, we could have seen many states defy
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Roe 20 or 30 or 40 years ago and thousands of lives being saved.
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So that's all in the past, but here we are now. And I would say this with my two minutes here.
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Here's the downside of now that Dobbs is out of the way, now that we don't have Roe as a covering and the reality is,
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Scott, I know you'd agree with me that many politicians hid behind Roe. They were hiding behind Roe as an excuse for why they wouldn't really take substantive action and stick their neck out and act with courage in defense of preborn children.
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And now that that excuse is out of the way, we can see the emperor has no clothes on him.
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What we're seeing in many conservative pro -life Republican states, these guys that have been telling us that they're pro -life champions, that they love preborn babies.
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They're showing up and speaking at our banquets. They're making donations to pro -life organizations. We're finding out that they are like the emperor with no clothes on.
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They're naked and it's not a pretty sight. They're cowardly. They do not care about criminalizing abortion. They've been playing the pro -life movement.
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They've been playing the pro -life vote. And so now we're at a phase where we have to recognize that the incremental incrementalist strategy is what these
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Republican leaders are utilizing to maintain their cover, their political cover.
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And so when we allow for incremental legislation, what we are allowing for is the very bad guys who do not want to fight to end abortion, who want to maintain the status quo, we're allowing them to get the political cover that they need.
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They can still get the pro -life rubber stamp and they can get on the campaign trail and say, I'm pro -life.
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We have to stop that. We must begin by asserting our core fundamental principles. Abortion is murder is the killing of a human life.
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We then must act like that. And our legislative policies must follow and be driven by the force of that argument.
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Abortion is murder. Every single human life made in the image of God deserves full legal protection.
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And that, that argument and the science and the reason and the scripture behind it must drive our political strategy.
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To do anything less, we're undermining our very arguments. We're undermining our core principles and we're giving political cover to the bad guys.
43:33
Okay. Now we have seven minutes for Scott Klusendorf to provide his rebuttal.
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Agree with everything, Jason. I agree with everything Jason just said about squishy politicians.
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We should call them out. Let's vote them out. Let's get people in office who will stand for what we believe in.
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No argument there at all. Totally agree. I do have a thing though that I think will be helpful here.
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I think it would be helpful to do the history of the pro -life movement post Roe. In other words, 1973 to 1983 in particular, the pro -life movement did not start off with an incremental approach that we've stuck to like glue for the last 50 years.
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What happened was on the heels of Roe v. Wade, the immediate response of the pro -life movement was to advance human life amendments and human life bills.
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And I've got a summary of all those bills here in front of me. And when you look at them, it's very interesting what they say in the main.
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Number one, they say there is no right to abortion in the constitution and that persons applies to unborn children at every stage of development.
44:42
In other words, the pro -life response to Roe v. Wade was not incrementalism.
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It was a frontal assault, asserting our principles and settling for nothing short of saying all unborn children deserve protection.
44:56
Then, of course, we learned that we got nowhere with that. And I might add we got nowhere with that when we had bishops actively campaigning for human life amendments.
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We had the Catholic Church in the main, even at the lay parish priest level doing that. We had evangelical leaders pushing for that.
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We had cultural things going our way. In fact, we had pro -life representatives in both parties.
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People forget that there were a lot of pro -life Democrats in the day. They all ended up proving themselves not worthy of the title, as Jason has pointed out.
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But they were there. You had people like Ted Kennedy saying in 1970, in the early 1970s, that while he sympathized with women facing crisis pregnancies, abortion on demand conflicted with the value of our civilization in prioritizing human life.
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Here's his exact quote. It's instructive. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at the earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized.
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The right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old. Dick Gebhardt, who, of course, we know is a pro -abortion
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Democrat in the House, in 1981 voted for a human life amendment that said life is a process which begins at conception.
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Joe Biden, our wonderful president, said in 1981 that he would vote for a human life amendment.
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And he did one that was specifically designed to give states freedom to reverse row.
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Al Gore in 1984 voted for an amendment to the Civil Rights Act that would have protected unborn children from conception.
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That amendment defined unborn children as, quote, human from the moment of conception and as persons who were entitled to full protection of federal civil laws.
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Now, you also know of Jesse Jackson, who told the National Right to Life News in 1977.
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He said, what happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts that abortion of the life of a baby can be done without a pain of conscience?
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Now, these are pro -life Democrats. My point is simply this. At a time when pro -lifers commanded much more of the cultural landscape than they do today, we could not get our frontal assault to work.
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When our frontal assault that was designed to abolish abortion failed, we then adopted an additional strategy that said,
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OK, we can't ban abortion outright. We can't protect children from conception. We will begin to work incrementally limiting the evil done so that we make the situation better.
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We don't give up our principle that all humans deserve protection. But we do embrace another strategy that allows us to protect those children we can.
47:47
Now, I do want to take issue with a couple of points my friend made that I differ from a little bit with him.
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He says that we will never have a pro -life consensus in this country.
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We will not be able to move forward without grounding the pro -life fight in the gospel and in a biblical worldview that a secular approach is not going to work.
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I actually think this is another example of having either or reasoning that is not correct.
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The truth is we need both. We need Christians who are born again and because their hearts have been changed, come to recognize the value of the unborn human being.
48:25
But God has also given us another way to limit evil. He's given us two, not just one. The other way is through the practice of civil law.
48:34
Civil law limits the evil done and it restrains heartless individuals. It's exactly what
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Martin Luther King said. He said, the law cannot make the white man love me, but it can sure stop him from lynching me.
48:47
And that matters. And I quite agree. We are going to need to have both or both methods used.
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We need secular pro -lifers who may never come to faith in Christ, who even though they don't have a biblical worldview, they can ground ontologically, at least at the epistemic level, they recognize right and wrong.
49:06
So I'm happy to work with groups like secular pro -life and others who will never come to Christian gospel truth, barring a miraculous move in their soul by the
49:15
Holy Spirit, but who nonetheless will join us in opposing the evil we see today.
49:23
I think it's important to remember we did not end slavery in this country through religious revival or through gospel proclamations.
49:30
We didn't end racial segregation that way. These things were ended by broad and large coalitions of people from various worldviews who, even though they would have trouble grounding their moral claims against slavery, against segregation, nonetheless recognized they were wrong because God has put that recognition in the heart of everybody.
49:50
So I think we're going to need both a secular and a Christian based pro -life movement. I don't want to bifurcate between the two.
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Let's do both is my answer to that. Regarding Roe being or not being the law of the land,
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I think we need to distinguish here between pro -lifers having moral authority and having political and legal authority.
50:12
We have certainly the moral authority to declare Roe null and void, but declaring it null and void is not the same as making it null and void.
50:23
You have to have political power to do that. And we don't have that. We didn't have it then right after Roe when the cultural landscape was even better than it is today.
50:32
And we certainly don't have it today. In fact, you look at where we are today, even in red states like Montana, Kentucky, Kansas, Ohio, we have lost and we've lost decisively.
50:44
And there's a reason for that. The culture is convinced that the pro -life movement hates women and wants them to die.
50:51
And even if they have pro -life sentiment, they aren't willing to vote in favor of pro -life legislation or ballot initiatives that would protect the unborn as long as that fear is there that pro -lifers just want to punish and harm women.
51:05
That's a real world reality situation we have to deal with. And it is not wrong to say we should work accordingly within that that problem we face.
51:15
And we were out of time. And by the way, just as a point of clarification, when you were citing the quotes by Democrats who earlier on in their political careers appeared to be staunchly pro -life, you referred to them as pro -life
51:36
Democrats and you said that they are. Did you mean were?
51:41
No, they were. They were. Yeah. I was using the word are in the context of that present time.
51:46
I should use the word were. Sure. They clearly turned on us. There's no doubt. OK, we have to go to our midway break.
51:53
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01:07:44
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01:07:59
Before I return to our debate between Jason Storms, an abortion abolitionist, and Scott Klusendorf, a pro -life incrementalist, we just have some important announcements to make.
01:08:12
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01:10:51
Very quickly, I want to promote my interview tomorrow, since it's so timely and hinges directly upon our discussion today about abortion.
01:11:01
We have George Grant on the program tomorrow to discuss his book, Killer Angel, a short biography of Planned Parenthood's founder,
01:11:11
Margaret Sanger. That's tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Well, welcome back to our debaters, and now, this time, we have
01:11:21
Scott Klusendorf beginning our session with a 10 -minute cross -examination of Jason Storm's, and we ask of you,
01:11:32
Scott, to only ask questions, and we ask you, Jason, to only answer questions.
01:11:39
Don't ask questions of your own unless you're just asking a clarifying question like, exactly what did you mean by that, or can you repeat that question, etc.
01:11:47
So, Scott, you have 10 minutes. Jason, good to have you, and good to chat with you.
01:11:52
Thank you for what you've contributed thus far. I do have a question that I'd like to be. Suppose there's an incremental law that protects some children, but not all.
01:12:03
For example, suppose we had a bill that would ban all abortion, but left IVF embryos unprotected.
01:12:10
How would you advise Christians to respond to that? That's a good question.
01:12:17
I think there would be a lot of context that would need to be given. Generally, our position, of course, is we have our own bills of equal protection that we work on in advance, and we have a whole network of guys that we do that with around the nation.
01:12:32
My good friend, Bradley Pierce, the brothers down in Texas, Foundation to Abolish Abortion, they have crafted some phenomenal legislation.
01:12:40
For us and others around the country, and so we advance bills of equal protection, and what those bills simply say is that we should treat pre -born children, pre -born children being a human person, beginning at the moment of fertilization.
01:12:55
They should be treated as we treat born children, consistent with what the
01:13:00
Alabama State Supreme Court Chief Tom Parker just articulated in a decision down there regarding IVF and embryos that were created in IVF, and his assertion that they are human beings, valuable human beings.
01:13:13
I think that's the starting place for me. I want to know the context, then, of what's going on in that state, and why are these babies being left out of the legislative piece?
01:13:27
That's a fair point to make, but I think it also applies to pro -lifers who approach incremental legislation on abortion.
01:13:35
Context does matter, and we can't just say it's a compromise. I guess the question I'm getting at is, if incremental laws that protect some children but not all harm our witness and undermine our principles, why isn't supporting a bill that bans abortion but leaves
01:13:50
IVF embryos unprotected also compromised and also harming our principles? Yeah, well,
01:13:57
I would say that it would be. I think what you're getting at is, is it morally permissible to settle for something that's less than what we want if it is, in fact, the best we can get.
01:14:11
Is that correct? Is that what you're getting at? Yeah, that's fair, and my point is that pro -lifers are doing the same thing often.
01:14:16
If they're committed to principle and they settle for making the situation better permanently, that's a problem.
01:14:23
But if they vote for a bill that's imperfect to make the current situation better while they continue to work for full abolition, they haven't compromised any more than you would be if you voted for a bill that banned abortion but left
01:14:36
IVF embryos unprotected. Yeah, so what I would say is
01:14:41
I do not think that incrementalism is inherently wrong or that advancing a particular issue that's seeking to undo great injustice is inherently evil.
01:14:56
I do think that it can be and often is, and certainly in the pro -life movement most often,
01:15:05
I would say it is. And here's why I would say is because I think, one, I don't believe the vast majority of times that it is, in fact, the best that we can get, quote unquote.
01:15:15
I think that - And that is a fair point. That is a fair point. I think that we have to be very discerning as to what the best we can get actually is.
01:15:29
And I think that the problem is we get played by the Republican leadership so often, the GOP leadership, they control much of the money and they have the power in most pro -life conservative states.
01:15:42
And they typically, as we are hearing now very frequently, you and I talked about this just recently, they are saying we need to distance ourselves from the life issue and so they do a lot quietly behind the scenes to undermine efforts to provide full legal protection for pre -born children.
01:15:58
And I do agree that's a problem. I don't mean to cut you off, but I want to make sure you get a chance to give your thoughts on a couple of other points.
01:16:06
Suppose you and I lived in 1887, how would an immediatist counsel congressional
01:16:12
Christians in that year regarding the U .S. Constitution? Should they vote to ratify it even though it did not ban the institution of slavery?
01:16:22
And what historical evidence is there that an immediate approach would have ended slavery back then? That's an interesting question.
01:16:31
I'm not a historian of that time period, but certainly the issue of slavery was was a blight on our nation and the acceptance of it by so many even professing
01:16:41
Christians is a sad and tragic blight. Let me ask that in a way that doesn't put you in a box to know history necessarily.
01:16:49
John Adams knew he didn't have the votes to abolish slavery, so he allowed the southern states to retain slavery in order to pull them into the
01:16:58
Union, where the principles of the founding documents, namely the Declaration of Independence, would eventually abolish the practice.
01:17:07
In other words, if those southern states weren't pulled into the Union, they'd remain separate slaveholding nations with no hope for emancipation.
01:17:15
So in principle, Adams was an abolitionist, but in practice he was an incrementalist. Do you see a problem with that approach?
01:17:23
Well, contextually, if I if I understand the time frame properly, I think that was when Boston was under siege by the the
01:17:30
Redcoats and the British. I mean, war was upon the colonies. I think in a time of war, you have to unite to fight and combat a greater evil, a greater power, debate over the
01:17:41
Declaration and the Constitution. The more general question, I think, as it relates to this,
01:17:46
I would say is, yeah, I think that when there is a greater bully or a greater evil in the room, those that we disagree with on lesser matters, we certainly should be able to lock arms with to beat the bigger evil, to defeat the greater evil.
01:18:00
And so to me, the big the big evil in the room is the political establishment in this country and in many states locally.
01:18:07
It is the it is the Republican leadership in conservative states. If I could ask you to address this as a pastor, which you have served very faithfully as one for a number of years now,
01:18:19
I think over two decades, suppose you and I are both pastors in 1860.
01:18:24
How should we advise our congregants to vote? Should they vote for Abraham Lincoln, even though he campaigned saying he would not go beyond constitutional authority and would not seek to abolish slavery in states where it currently existed?
01:18:38
Or should we encourage them to sit out the vote? Well, again,
01:18:43
I don't, I'm not an expert on that time period of history. I think that there was a lot going on in the country and I don't think
01:18:51
Abraham Lincoln was a good president in many respects. But he did eventually put an end to slavery in this country.
01:19:00
So that's commendable, but you know, I wasn't, it's hard for me to say affirmatively, yes or no, that I would encourage people to vote for him.
01:19:07
I can say I did vote for Trump. You know, if you want to use bring a modern parallel to that, I did vote for Trump too much to the ire of some of my abolitionist brethren.
01:19:15
And and I think that, you know, God did use him to see that Roe versus Wade was overturned. And so I think even though Trump was a deeply flawed man and, uh, you know, was for exceptions on abortion into various positions, pro homosexual, uh, pro homosexuality, uh,
01:19:30
I still voted for him. So he was the guy that was going to believe in that he was the guy that was going to fight the political establishment, the bigger evil, the bigger force in the room.
01:19:39
So to put this in our current timeframe, suppose we have a ballot initiative that bans abortion from conception, but it exempts mothers from being prosecuted for murder.
01:19:49
How do you think a Christian should vote? And could you explain why a media test should be willing to sacrifice the lives of children who could be saved from that bill in order to attempt achievable or attempt a policy that may never come about?
01:20:07
Yeah, great question. So I, you know, we don't have to speak of that hypothetically. That is actually what has happened in states like South Carolina and Georgia, where we've been working.
01:20:16
Uh, South Carolina, uh, there was a bill, um, of equal protection that we had there. And then, uh, that was a little too extreme because of the penalties for mothers that we had in there, the full equal protection aspect of that, that says, if you kill a child and you've got to be held accountable, whoever you are.
01:20:33
Um, so they, they wanted to water that down and just have a life at conception bill that didn't really have a whole lot of punishments, but even that was too extreme for the political establishment in South Carolina, they put the political establishment put forward a heartbeat bill to counteract even the watered down week life at conception bill.
01:20:53
So, you know, again, I would go back to, I think you have to assess the lay of the land and say, um, you know, what is the political establishment doing here to suppress justice for preborn children and how do we fight?
01:21:07
How do we, how do we fight them? And we have to make sure that however we fight them, we're, we actually are in giving it our best effort, right?
01:21:15
I agree. And we're not just capitulating to them or cowering to them. And also that our actions and our rhetoric are not undermining our bigger arguments.
01:21:24
So the danger of say vote voting for a life at conception bill that doesn't have penalties for mothers at that point, um, while it's commendable and I wouldn't necessarily condemn a legislator who voted for that versus the heartbeat bill.
01:21:36
Cause the heartbeat bill was going to do nothing. That was the bare minimum. That was what the political establishment wanted. So they could do as little rocking of the boat as possible.
01:21:44
Um, a life at conception bill at least would have shut the abortion clinics down in South Carolina and saved lives, I believe, but the problem with, with.
01:21:52
You know, because I want to make sure you get this last, get to comment on it. By the way, we were out of time, folks.
01:21:58
I'm sorry. Uh, we have, we have to go to the next segment where Jason now cross examines
01:22:04
Scott Klusendorf, you have 10 minutes. Okay. Well, that was good,
01:22:09
Scott. And, um, to just answer that question briefly, I would say, you know, I think what you were getting at there, the, the, the, the danger there's, there's, there's a long -term potential danger, right?
01:22:20
In an incremental strategy that you say, well, we did the best we could here and it's going to save lives.
01:22:26
But will it undermine the long -term fight to abolish abortion? Will it actually give strength and political cover to bad guys who are actually going to undermine the longer term efforts and make it harder to get them out of office or change their position?
01:22:42
That's a fair question. And then the other thing to consider is, is our rhetoric actually then undermining and confusing our base?
01:22:49
Because what's happened is we have a pro -life base that is woefully confused on so many issues. We have, you ask 10 pro -lifers what that means.
01:22:56
You can get 10 different answers. Some would say they're pro -life, but it shouldn't be criminalized. Some would say they're pro -life, but there should be exceptions.
01:23:02
Some would say it's pro -life, but criminalize all abortion, but don't punish the moms and leave the door open for moms to continue to kill their babies with impunity.
01:23:10
And so, again, that muddy headed thinking within our own camp, within the pro -life camp is largely a result of,
01:23:15
I would say, the lack of clarity in our rhetoric and in our legislative policies, our legislative policies.
01:23:24
Oftentimes they're very confusing to people, but they confuse our own people. You know, we're not centering our arguments on sound principle, making our core arguments and our core principles.
01:23:33
And like I said earlier, our core principles, I think, should be what drive our legislative strategy. We shouldn't be saying, we believe that every human life is made in the image of God and that they're being murdered, but then we're going to allow murders in these certain situations where we are giving up an awful lot of the game and undermining, contradicting our own core principles, and that's a problem.
01:23:53
And I think that's a fair question about undermining our core principles in the mind of the public. That's fair.
01:23:58
Is that the question you were asking? I didn't want to... No, I was clarifying a little bit of just your last question. Let me get an answer.
01:24:04
So my question to you on the heels of that would be, do you agree with the statement that a pre -born child is of the same value and deserving of the same protection as a born child?
01:24:13
Absolutely. 100%. Good to hear. I figured you did. I wouldn't be calling you my friend and giving you the respect that I do give you, because I know that you do believe that.
01:24:23
I know that if you... I would ban your chair at my fire pit if you differed from me on that. Yeah. Yeah.
01:24:30
And so in 14 states that have passed quote unquote bans on abortion, as we've talked about, mothers can still kill their children with legal impunity.
01:24:38
It's explicitly written into the laws that moms cannot be prosecuted for murder. And as I said earlier, in just Texas alone, 19 ,000 babies were killed since Dobbs, one year after Dobbs, through self -managed abortions with legal immunity in the state of Texas.
01:24:57
Groups like Students for Life of America are claiming Texas is an abortion -free state. Charlie Kirk recently claimed that Texas has dropped their abortion rate 90%.
01:25:05
Both those claims patentedly false. Do you see that as a problem? And is it a problem that, how do we fix that problem?
01:25:15
How do we fix this problem that 19 ,000 babies are killed in Texas with legal immunity, and is it a problem that pro -life groups are claiming these states are abortion -free?
01:25:25
Well, I would say this. It is certainly not a problem to say that there should be consequences for intentionally killing an innocent human being.
01:25:34
I mean, after all, what is wrong with a law that says you can't intentionally kill an innocent human being, and if you do, there should be consequences?
01:25:41
I agree, there should be. The question is, what should those consequences be? And there are reasons why moving directly from a culture that sanctioned abortion on demand, told women it was a positive good, gave them money to get it done, where every institution in the country applauded their decision to have an abortion, to go immediately from 50 years of that messaging, to saying to a woman, you knew what you were doing, so we're going to prosecute you for murder.
01:26:09
I think that's going to be problematic. You're going to have trouble finding DAs willing to enforce that. You're going to have trouble finding juries willing to convict on that.
01:26:17
And that would mean you have a law with no teeth, even though that's not what was intended. I think a better way to go would be to say, let's take a gradient approach to this, the way
01:26:27
Wilberforce did in England. In other words, their bills suffered from enforcement.
01:26:33
They got the slave trade ban, but then they struggled for many years for enforcement. And that's because of the cultural realities that had been in place for all those years leading up to it.
01:26:43
I would say this, let's prosecute women for solicitation of an illegal act, which is decisively less than murder.
01:26:51
To prove murder, you have to prove willful intent. You have to prove malice toward the subject.
01:26:57
These are things that are very difficult to prove when you want to have a charge of murder.
01:27:03
And I don't want a law on the books that has no teeth and can't be enforced. We should have laws that are based in reality where we can enforce them realistically in the fallen world we live in.
01:27:16
Okay. So I agree with you. It's going to be very difficult to enforce it. But one of the ways, one of the reasons that's the case is because the culture has been miseducated.
01:27:25
No doubt that many young people are victims of gross propaganda in our culture, but that doesn't remove culpability, right?
01:27:34
A young person who's been propagandized extensively in our culture and joins a gang and goes out and shoots somebody, he's still going to be held accountable, correct?
01:27:41
Yes, he is. But that's because our laws for 50 years, longer than 50 years, since the nation's inception has said that you can't go intentionally murder people.
01:27:51
But that's not been true of abortion. Abortion has not been treated the same way that murder has in our country.
01:27:59
So I get it. The cultural mindset, its ethos on this is going to be very different than its view toward gang killings.
01:28:07
Right. And so don't you, would you agree then that one of the ways that we need to begin to re -educate the culture is to begin to state plain fact persuasively and give the arguments, and some of that should be saying something as simple as if you kill another human being, you will be, you will be held accountable.
01:28:25
Isn't that something that the law should do? Absolutely. I totally agree. There should be consequences. I'm not like some pro -lifers who think there should be none.
01:28:33
So you agree, mothers do need to be held accountable and we need to begin saying that. But what that accountability looks like,
01:28:39
I think can be different. It does not entail from the fact that abortion is wrongful killing, that we have to charge someone for murder to politically send a message through the culture that it's wrong to intentionally kill.
01:28:53
Sure. So would you agree that if a woman, a mom, let's say in the state of Texas or another state like that, a conservative pro -life state, if a mom knowingly, and she absolutely knows what she's doing, she, let's say she was a former abortion doctor or a nurse in an abortion clinic handling the baby body parts, went through medical school, she kills, she gets an abortion, should she be held accountable, what should she, what should be the punishment?
01:29:16
Well, as you mentioned a moment ago, context matters. And here's a contextual point I think we need to consider.
01:29:22
It is certainly nothing wrong with saying intentionally killing an innocent human being should have consequences and even murder being charged with murder perhaps.
01:29:31
But suppose we have a culture like I believe we do today, where the culture is convinced pro -lifers hate women, want them to die and want to inflict suffering on women such that even if they have a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy, we can lock them up in prison.
01:29:48
A lot of people believe that today. That's the cultural mindset. So suppose we pass a bill that prosecutes women for murder in Georgia.
01:29:56
We pass an equal protection law and we are, the media jumps all over it.
01:30:01
Pro -lifers want women charged with murder, want them in the gas chamber, executed, or at least locked up, throw away the key.
01:30:08
What does that do in other states where bills are being advanced to protect unborn children? I think that could harm the lives of unborn children in other states because it's scaring skittish pro -lifers.
01:30:20
You and I both agree our politicians have no spine. They have no backbone. They won't protect children.
01:30:26
They have the votes to protect in many cases. You and I agree on that. Is that going to help them vote courageously where now they have constituents convinced that if they vote pro -life to protect unborn children, the net effect of that is going to be locking women up?
01:30:41
I think that actually ends up harming our efforts to save the children. Well, I think only insofar as we elect cowardly leaders.
01:30:48
Right. And I think that's something we have to stop doing in the pro -life movement has to stop giving endorsements to cowardly men that don't actually care about protecting preborn children.
01:30:58
Right. We've done far too much of that. Um, so back to that question, understanding leniency can and will be granted by prosecutors.
01:31:05
You know, should, shouldn't we write our laws? Shouldn't the law simply say, if you're going to write a law about abortion, shouldn't just simply say that preborn children are going to receive the same protection as a born children.
01:31:16
If you kill everybody involved in that's going to be held accountable. Right. So, so if there's really two questions here, one is protection.
01:31:24
One is prosecution. Uh, I agree. They deserve equal protection as every other human being does.
01:31:32
We're just, we're disputing the prosecution side of this. Sure. And yeah, and leniency can always be granted and that's all of our, all of our laws, you know, just to clarify, and you know, this guy, cause we've talked about it, you know, we, we don't believe in retroactive punishment.
01:31:45
It's not in there. We're not going to try to go back to people who've had abortions in the past. It's just from that point forward, we're setting a clear standard.
01:31:51
And so to those squishy Republicans that are going to say, oh my goodness, look, what's happening in Georgia. They're freaking out while they're doing that now,
01:31:58
Scott. Right. So, you know, the, the, even in our state, Wisconsin, where moms can still get abortion pills and kill their babies, they're still running commercials talking about how, you know, a 14 year old girl who was raped can't get an abortion in Wisconsin.
01:32:12
So the pro -abortion, they're going to freak out and lie regardless. Right. So don't you think we should not cater to that, but rather stand up against it?
01:32:21
I think there's a difference between catering and recognizing cultural realities. Here's the problem
01:32:27
I'm having. What is the rationale? And I'm not asking you this to interview you.
01:32:32
You've already answered my questions. I'm just putting it out there as my concern. What's the rationale? How would an immediatist convince a woman who's had an abortion that they should vote for a law that would make their previous activity a felony and implicate them?
01:32:47
I'm sorry. We're out of time. That's going to be a tough sell. We're out of time now. And give a 30 second answer real quick.
01:32:53
Okay. Go ahead. Yeah. It was, and so like, I don't like the term immediatist, so I don't even use the term immediatist for incremental.
01:33:01
So I'd say for, you know, for as Christians, you know, we would say, of course, that what we don't want to punish any mothers.
01:33:07
We don't want any mothers to go to jail. The law is a tutor though, right? As the scripture says. And so we want to teach the way that that mother's going to learn.
01:33:14
And if she has the guilt, the proper guilt of having been a, uh, of having killed her own child, right?
01:33:22
The law should bring conviction of sin, repentance, and then grace. And she should recognize, yes, I don't want anybody to do what
01:33:28
I did. I want to be a voice and an advocate for these babies and tell these moms don't do it. And I want to put up as many deterrents as possible.
01:33:35
And so the law is not only a teacher didactic function. It's also a deterrent. It has a deterring function.
01:33:41
We don't want to see any moms go to prison. We don't want to put any moms in jail at all. We hope that if the law is passed, no moms will perform, will go and pursue an abortion because they're going to recognize the law will be a great deterrent to that behavior.
01:33:52
Okay. We were out of time and we are going to our final break right now. And when we return, both of our debaters will provide five minute closing arguments.
01:34:02
And if you haven't already sent in your question to chrisarnsonatgmail .com, we'll try to read as many questions as possible before the show is over.
01:34:11
Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. We'll be right back. Do not go away. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor.
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1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. Please remember to mention Iron Sharpens Iron radio. We're now back and we are allotting now to Jason Storms five minutes for your closing statement.
01:43:01
Well, thanks. Well, I appreciate the opportunity, Scott, to be with you and to discuss this and Chris for having us on. And I hope this has been edifying brotherly discussion that stirs up and provokes our brethren to love and good works.
01:43:14
This isn't just theoretical, of course, for us, but this is real life. Babies are being murdered. Babies will be murdered today in every single state in this country.
01:43:23
And so this is significant and we need to all be thinking deeply and acting rightly about it.
01:43:29
So, I just want to thank you, Scott, for having the discussion. I do believe you are a brother in Christ and we're members of the body of Christ and working together in abortion.
01:43:40
Yeah. And so I know you can make a lot more money in the private sector without the death threats and harassments and your kids being harassed by crazy pro -aborts, so I appreciate the work that you're doing to defend these pre -born children.
01:43:51
I would say this, that in this fight, we need to do a lot of educating, a lot of mobilizing and waking up the body of Christ, the church is asleep at the wheel, the pro -life movement is not really the reason why abortion continues to be legal in this country.
01:44:05
It is, of course, we are living in a culture under the judgment of God. And we have a church that has largely accommodated itself to great wickedness and evil, and that is asleep at the wheel more often than not.
01:44:16
So the number of Christians actually engaged in this fight who are actually standing up, speaking out, changing hearts, changing minds, and standing up to protect these pre -born children is tiny, and so Scott and I both are committed to awakening the church, educating the church, and also engaging the culture, and that's what needs to be done.
01:44:32
In terms of legislative strategy, I think, again, I would say, I think the pro -life legislative strategies have been an abject failure because they've deviated from our core principles.
01:44:41
I would argue that our legislative efforts must be driven by the force and the strength of our principles, that namely, human life begins at the moment of conception.
01:44:51
These human beings are made in the image of God, and God has declared, thou shalt not murder. And there is no exception to that.
01:44:57
We must stand firmly upon the logical and the moral reasoning of those core principles, and the logic and moral reasoning of those core principles must be what drive our legislative efforts if we are not to see many unintended four consequences, which we have seen.
01:45:14
Namely, the election of cowardly, unprincipled men and women who hold positions of power and office, who wear the pro -life label, and yet allow and oversee and even protect the murder of pre -born children in their state and in their community, the low -hanging fruit here, right now we have abortion clinics operating in states like Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, despite pro -life majorities, that is absolutely atrocious.
01:45:41
We need to hold our quote unquote pro -life leaders accountable for the fact that they oversee and protect the killing of pre -born children, and we need to advance legislation that demands full, equal protection for all of these children.
01:45:54
We have 14 states that have closed their abortion clinics. And yet, while I praise that, and I'm thankful for that, babies are still being murdered with impunity through self -managed abortion in every single one of those pro -life states.
01:46:05
That is a major problem. In fact, that is not pro -life. Shame on the pro -life leaders that are calling this a victory as thousands of babies are being murdered.
01:46:14
We must take action. That is the low -hanging fruit right now for the pro -life movement. Why are thousands of babies still being murdered with legal immunity in pro -life supermajority states?
01:46:26
That is absolutely unacceptable, and that needs to be shored up immediately.
01:46:32
And we need to begin to speak about this, call people to consistent moral action. And so that's what we are attempting to do.
01:46:39
We have bills of equal protection in, I forget how many states now. I think Jeff Durbin, who we work with in abortion now, our friends over there,
01:46:47
I think he said 21 states now, we've got a coalition of different organizations around the country all working together.
01:46:52
And Scott, we'd invite you to come and work with us. I would love for you to come and invite you to join us at one of our rallies and one of our meetings in support of equal protection, and I would give you the invitation here to actually endorse one of our bills of equal protection.
01:47:08
Every smash mouth incrementalist friend of mine, which there are many, my good friend, AJ Hurley, the guys, of course, in Moscow, Doug Wilson, as you mentioned, and many more, they've all endorsed our bills of equal protection.
01:47:19
So, Scott, I would love to give you the invitation if you'd like to endorse our bill of equal protection in your home state of Georgia and help us pass that.
01:47:27
That would be fantastic. But we absolutely need to work and labor tirelessly in this field to under to to prevent what's happening now, which is the undermining.
01:47:39
Of of what it means to even be pro -life and we're professing pro -life leaders. And Scott Klusendorf, you have five minutes.
01:47:47
Well, first of all, amen to our political leaders needing to grow a spine, I agree completely.
01:47:54
I hope the listeners to this program today observe something that is very important to observe.
01:47:59
Here you have two pro -life guys who disagree on a few things, but we don't have to make enemies of each other.
01:48:06
And one of the things that has happened in some of my conversations with abolitionists they poison the well by saying things like you're sinfully motivated.
01:48:15
You've got to repent, brother. You don't treat scripture as being primary. You don't believe the
01:48:21
Bible is authoritative. And these things are not helpful. They don't help at all. And I think what we need to do is sit down and have a conversation in a post -war world.
01:48:30
There should be stricter laws that guard the lives of the unborn. I'm all for that.
01:48:36
Let's have a good discussion about that and do it in good faith. And I appreciate my friend Jason and look forward to your brother visiting this summer, as I'm sure you will, like last summer.
01:48:46
That chair in my fire pit is always open for you. I want to conclude with this. Robert George makes a great observation and he says politics is the art of the possible.
01:48:56
And no less an abolitionist than Frederick Douglass reminded us of that in his tribute to President Lincoln.
01:49:03
Lincoln was very frustrated, or I should say Douglass was very frustrated with Lincoln's incremental approach to ending slavery.
01:49:11
But Lincoln understood that he had a problem. White supremacy was rampant in the northern states and especially in the border states with the south.
01:49:20
And Lincoln knew that to keep those states in line fighting against slavery, he would have to be incremental in his approach and he would have to bring them along slowly.
01:49:30
So he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which did nothing to end slavery outright.
01:49:36
It simply declared that slaves in the southern rebellious states were free. That's an incremental step.
01:49:42
William Wilberforce in England went after the slave trade before he went after total abolition and emancipation.
01:49:50
Neither man did wrong because they didn't use incrementalism to obstruct justice.
01:49:56
They used it to limit the evil insofar as they could, given the real world realities they had to face.
01:50:03
And I would say this, as long as incrementalism is used to limit evil and is not being used to obstruct justice the way that Wilberforce's opponents did in England, they suggested incremental approach when full abolition was a political reality.
01:50:20
And the reason they did it is they wanted to obstruct. They wanted to milk some more profits out of their slave business for a few more years before it was outlawed.
01:50:30
That's evil. But when pro -lifers act to limit the evil and promote the good insofar as possible, given the realities they're facing, incrementalism can be entirely honorable.
01:50:43
And I think the pro -life movement, though not perfect, and I do agree with my friend Jason, it does have some issues that we need to correct.
01:50:51
Namely, let's get some politicians that have backbone all with you on that. But I do think we have accomplished way more than has been let on here.
01:50:59
Saving two million lives since 1976 is not a small accomplishment.
01:51:05
We've got clinics that have closed, as I mentioned earlier. The Dobbs decision was an incremental step.
01:51:11
And without it, you don't advance an equal protection bill. So that is an incremental step. I don't think those are compromises necessarily if they help us build on future wins.
01:51:23
I would also say that the pro -life movement has succeeded in keeping the abortion issue alive.
01:51:28
You look at places like Europe and other places, Eastern Europe, the abortion issue is a non -issue.
01:51:34
There's this not even talked about. In fact, a British friend of mine once said to me, why is abortion even something that matters to you?
01:51:40
He was a Christian pastor. He didn't even understand why it was an issue. Well, at least here we have kept abortion on the front burner.
01:51:48
It's still a contentious issue. It divides and polarizes. And believe it or not, that's a good thing, because our opponents would love nothing better than for the issue to just go away.
01:51:58
And we've made sure it hasn't gone away. We can do better. But I wouldn't say we failed outright.
01:52:04
We have certainly had some good successes. We need to build on them. And I agree with my friend that we do need to do better at building on them.
01:52:10
I would conclude by saying this, incrementalism that is aimed at limiting evil is entirely honorable.
01:52:19
Incrementalism that wants to obstruct it or is born out of cowardice, that's problematic and pro -lifer should oppose it.
01:52:26
All righty, we have a listener question, either Jolanda or Yolanda from Newcastle, Long Island, New York.
01:52:34
And the question is for Scott Klusendorf. And you can follow up after Scott's answer,
01:52:41
Jason, and vice versa when the question is for you, Jason. We have the question,
01:52:49
Scott, I know that you are an incrementalist when it comes to the murder of unborn children.
01:52:56
Would you also be an incrementalist when it comes to the sexual mutilation of children as is going on due to the transgender insanity?
01:53:07
If I were in a state where I did not have the ability to protect all children from transgender mutilization, but I could save some,
01:53:17
I am going to vote to save the some. I am not going to sacrifice the lives of children who could be saved for what may be a future that may not be realizable for decades.
01:53:28
So I think it's wrong to overlook children who could be saved in favor of an ideal future that we may not realize for years.
01:53:38
So, no, I'm going to do the greatest good I can in that situation. I will be an abolitionist against mutilation in principle, but I will act incrementally if I have to, just like Wilberforce did, just like Lincoln did, while never giving up on my principle.
01:53:54
And Jason, I think there's a lot of issues in our culture where we obviously have to take incremental steps because that's the nature of where we're at.
01:54:03
But I would say for that issue, I've been watching the descent into sexual perversion for twenty five years.
01:54:09
And I can remember when we were debating whether it was even OK to be an out of the closet homosexual in the workplace. It's how old
01:54:16
I am. And Chris, you're older than me and Scott, you're older than me. So, you know, we've seen a lot. I got plenty of gray hair, though, so I've seen a lot change.
01:54:26
And one of the reasons why we've seen a change is because conservatives were afraid to stand upon sound, pure biblical principle.
01:54:32
Right. And so because we didn't want to talk about sin, we didn't want to make the argument for biblical sexual morality and defend it, which
01:54:42
I think it is very defensible. It is sound and it makes sense. And it's at one time pervaded our culture.
01:54:48
But because we didn't want to stand upon that, there's been this slow incremental decay to where we went from first to saying tolerate homosexuals to then accept homosexuals.
01:54:58
So now we're mutilating children. And, you know, but it shouldn't be a surprise because we're mutilating children in the womb.
01:55:04
And so it's been a slow, gradual descent into the moral chaos that we're current as Christians have been afraid to stand soundly and squarely on the principles asserted in Scripture.
01:55:16
And until we get enough backbone to do that consistently, we're just going to continue to see our nation and the children in our nation suffer.
01:55:23
And we have a question this time for Jason Darnell in Detroit, Michigan, says, isn't it one of the major problems with getting a unified front of abolitionists in this country is the fact that some of the abolitionists in this country are the most nasty and closed minded people on the face of the earth?
01:55:47
Well, I don't actually disagree with that. And, you know, I don't really I'm not married to the term abolitionist.
01:55:53
And I think we can agree that for the last 10 years, there's been a lot of ugly behavior from professing abolitionists, as there has been from professing pro -lifers, you know, but the abolitionist movement, sadly, has been marred by a lot of self -righteousness, youthful immaturity, contentiousness, strife, schismatic behavior that is that is ungodly.
01:56:15
And I've never been I've never seen actually a movement that's been so so caught up in so much of that type of stuff.
01:56:21
But thankfully, I think there are a lot of guys who identify with the abolitionist label who are setting a better example.
01:56:29
And guys like Rusty Thomas has been a phenomenal leader in this regard, who leads with humility and grace and honor.
01:56:35
My good friend, Darren Stitt, who's my partner in Operation Save America, a brother that has very, very tempered, a lot of humility and grace.
01:56:43
And the brothers who end abortion now. I've got to give a shout out to my man Luke Pearson over there and Jeff and Zach and Zach and all the guys over there.
01:56:50
The guys in Texas, as I mentioned, Love Life in Charlotte. These are guys that are standing up. They're advocating for bills of equal protection with grace, humility and charity.
01:56:59
And so there is a new movement of people, whether you want to use the term abolitionist or not. I don't really care whether you want to call yourself a principled pro -lifer, an abolitionist or just a
01:57:09
Christian who wants to see justice. That's not what matters. We need to be, I think, united against our common foes and the enemies of Christ.
01:57:18
And and we need to do that with humility and grace. And and that's just true of the
01:57:23
Christian church in general. Social media has brought about a tremendous amount of youthful ignorance and arrogance that needs to be repudiated.
01:57:31
And better examples need to be set by by men. And Scott, you have about 20 seconds. Thanks. Well, I appreciate
01:57:38
Jason's candid commentary there, and it's true. I have been called all kinds of names.
01:57:44
In fact, I've been told that I'm just in this for money and that I want abortion to stay legal.
01:57:50
And that's why I'm an incrementalist. And the reason I want it to stay legal is so that I can continue to profit from it.
01:57:56
I mean, these are the kinds of things abolitionists have told me over the years. And it's why, quite frankly,
01:58:02
I just refuse to engage with them and would only engage with Jason because I know him. I know his heart. And we've been able to have good faith discussions in the past.
01:58:10
And I can trust him. I don't want to spend my time defending whether or not I believe the
01:58:16
Bible, whether or not I'm really a Christian, whether I'm sinfully motivated and lapsed into deception.
01:58:22
I mean, these are just poisoning the well assertions that abolitionists have thrown out there. I mean, even the good people at G3 have said that or that incrementalism is a golden calf and idol that must be brought down.
01:58:35
Well, if they really believe that, they need to disfellowship people like me who won't renounce incrementalism.
01:58:41
And yet they don't. They just assert this. They don't actually follow through and do anything with it. And I think those statements are are poisoning the well.
01:58:49
And we're out of time, and I want to make sure that our listeners have your websites. I know that Operation Save America, where Jason Storms is the national director.
01:59:01
The website is Operation Save America dot org. Scott, please give your website. Pro -life training dot com again, no no dashes, just pro -life training dot com.
01:59:12
And I want to thank my friend Jason again. Really appreciate his willingness to discuss this in an agreeable manner.
01:59:17
And thank you both. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater