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#NoDespair2020
I can't believe I have to do this again. Phil Fisher, he looks very serious. He looks very serious. I don't know. What about abortion is the name of the video. What about abortion? Should this one issue determine how Christians vote?
What about abortion? My goodness gracious. You know, I'll tell you what, like I haven't seen this video, so this is gonna be a live reaction video. We're gonna see what he has to say and I'm just gonna give you my thoughts as they happen.
I don't have a lot of high hopes for this video. I'll tell you that right now. I've seen a lot of people share about it. I remember his most recent video and stuff like that. Yeah, I don't think this is gonna go very well, but one of the things that I do think is helpful is having a nice low-carb citrus wheat beer with you when you're watching a video like this.
No, I'm just kidding. What is helpful, though, is to remember what we're talking about when we talk about abortion, because abortion, as a word, I feel like a lot of us are desensitized to the word. Abortion is the killing of a baby, of an infant, a baby in the womb.
You rip them apart limb from limb. There's blood, there's pain, there's just all kinds of carnage. We're talking carnage of these babies. Sometimes it's a smaller baby, you just suck them out with a vacuum cleaner, you know, their brains out and stuff like that.
Sometimes you snip their spinal cord to kill them. There's a variety of different ways to do it, but it's killing. It's killing a baby, and so if you have grandchildren or your own children or whatever, it's a baby, it's a child, it's an individual.
I was just talking to some brothers yesterday, we had some people over for dinner, and I was talking about how amazing I found it that my children had their own personalities, like so basically immediately.
I always thought when I was growing up that kids were basically the same until they were three years old, and then they would develop their personalities, but that's not the case. They come out of the womb with their own personalities and things like that, and so it's just really hard to imagine anyone killing a baby.
When you talk about this as a political issue, obviously it's not just a political issue. This is really twisted. I mean, this is more twisted than slavery. This is more twisted than the American chattel slave trade.
Way more twisted than that. It's one of the worst sins imaginable. God gets really angry when people sacrifice children for their own benefit. God gets really angry about that, because children are the most vulnerable people among us.
There's just no question about that, and so this is a very evil practice. It is commonplace in our culture. This is the most evil thing I could imagine in our culture today, so let's see what Phil Vischer, the liberal Christian, has to say about this.
Let's watch this video. I don't think we're gonna get through the whole thing. It's 15 minutes long, and I don't have enough beer to get through it, so let's.
Just watch. I was in high school in the early 1980s when evangelical Christians first started focusing on abortion, and the one thing we all agreed on was that overturning Roe versus Wade was the key to reducing abortion in America.
Forty years later, we still haven't overturned Roe. Today, some pro-life evangelical Christians are asking whether this is still the right focus of so much of our attention. Is overturning Roe the key to reducing abortion?
Our friend David French made an argument that really got us thinking, and when my podcast co-host Sky Jatani echoed that argument on Twitter, people said, hey, you should make a video about that. So we did.
Here's my buddy Sky. Okay, so is overturning Roe.
Versus Wade the most critical thing in ending abortion? I don't think so. I think we have to overturn Roe versus Wade. We have to make an amendment that protects unborn people, because for some reason the Constitution is not clear enough on protecting the lives of unborn people for some reason.
So the Roe versus Wade decision is absolutely ridiculous, obviously. But no, we don't have to overturn Roe versus Wade. Roe versus Wade didn't establish any laws. I was talking to some people on Twitter just the other day about this, and I completely support just completely ignoring Roe versus Wade.
States should ban abortion today. Like your state, whatever state you're in, that state should ban abortion today, and the government would have nothing to say about it. We can do whatever the heck we want, because the government can't just make up laws from the bench.
It obviously doesn't work that way. We see people nullifying federal law all the time when it comes to like marijuana, for example. Why do some states allow marijuana usage when it's a federal crime to have marijuana?
Because it doesn't matter what the federal government says. They can't control you any more than you allow them to. You just have to say no. Sometimes the answer is just no. Nullify it. I completely disregard what you're saying.
You have no authority in matter. That's how you handle abortion. That's the best way to handle it. Just completely ignore it. It shouldn't have to be overturned. Roe versus Wade is a ridiculous decision, obviously.
It shouldn't have to be overturned. We should definitely try to overturn it, but the best way to go about this is just to ignore it completely. The federal government has no authority over the states in this matter.
Let's continue.
Sky, trying to answer the question. How much you want to bet Phil Vischer's argument is not that? Is overturning Roe versus Wade the key to reducing abortion in America? Stop right there. Stop right there.
This is the wrong.
Question, my friend. I am not all about reducing abortion in America. I'm about banning it because right now, as it stands, you can murder a pre-born baby and have no punishment attached to it. That is not justice.
That is unjust. It is unjust to allow murderers to go free. It is unjust to allow murderers to go without retribution. It is unjust to just completely ignore the law of God when it comes to people who kill other people.
Whether that limits abortion or not, of course it does limit abortion, but limiting abortion is not the goal. The goal is to establish justice. Right, social justice warriors? The goal is to establish justice, and God tells us what justice is in the case of killing.
Murder. If you murder someone, death penalty for you. Your life is forfeit. Your life is forfeit if you murder someone. And so if you murder a baby, your life is forfeit. You should be swiftly executed.
I don't care if they inject you with a poison. I don't care if they hang you. I don't care if they burn you at the stake. I don't care if they stone you. Whatever method you want to choose, you should face your maker instantly.
I hope you repent of your sins by the way, but you need to meet your maker for the crime that you did, for the murder that you did. My goodness, murdering a baby for goodness sake. You should meet your maker, and you shouldn't be on death row for 100 years.
You should meet your maker. That's how it goes. Whether you're the person who did it yourself, you're the doctor. It's not a doctor. Let's not call it a doctor. Whether you're the executioner, or you're the person who paid for the execution.
Whoever you are, if you're murdering babies, you should meet your maker. Your life is forfeit. So I think that the Bible seems to indicate that if you establish justice in that way, that has a restraining effect on crime.
So I think according to the scripture, we should understand that if you establish justice the way God commands you to establish justice, that has a restraining effect on sin. So there will be less people committing abortions if we establish death penalty for people who try to get abortions.
So it would have the effect of limiting abortions, but let's not make any mistake about it. No, we should not be putting as the highest goal limiting abortion. No, instead the highest goal is honoring Christ in establishing justice.
It might seem like a small thing to you, but it's actually a big difference. It's a big difference, because there's all kinds of ways you could limit abortions in an unjust way that dishonors Christ. Like for example, let's just say you did this.
You said, okay, well now all babies are now wards of the state, and the state needs more children, and therefore we're going to capture people. Once we find out that a woman's pregnant, we're going to capture her, put her in a cell, and she's going to be in a cell, and we're going to monitor her to make sure she doesn't commit an abortion.
Then when the baby comes out, we're going to take them. Yeah, that would limit abortion. That would definitely limit abortion, but it would be unjust. It would be unjust to do it that way. Obviously, limiting abortion is not the goal.
Establishing justice is the goal. Let's continue, Phil.
And if it isn't, what is? It's okay if you disagree, but it's worth having the conversation, okay? Here it is.
Yeah, I always want to have a conversation, and they always look at the camera like a... It's worth having the conversation. Well, no, because the conversation is built on a faulty premise. So it's actually not worth having the conversation, because I'm actually not interested in having a conversation on what method limits abortion the best, because that's a faulty premise.
It's a faulty conversation. That's not the goal. The goal is to establish justice. So actually, the only conversation worth having, Phil, if you're a Christian especially, is what does the Lord who redeemed me require us to do in the case of somebody killing a baby?
What does God require? You know why that's the only conversation worth having? Because that's the only way to talk about love. God is love. God loved us, so we love others. We love because Christ first loved us.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. So we better figure out what those commandments are, because otherwise, we're not going to love, right? We ought to be a people of love, right, Phil? So if we're going to be a people of love, then the question is not the question that you ask.
No matter how stupidly you look into the camera, that's not the question. The question actually is, what does God require in the case of somebody killing an infant? That's the right question. So no, this isn't actually a conversation worth having.
I'm going to continue to listen to your nonsense, because that's what I said I would do, and plus I've only had a few sips of my beer, so I guess I can keep going. But this whole video is built on a faulty premise at the outset.
Do not accept the way that social justice advocates frame the conversations, because they lie in their framing so often. In fact, I'm writing a chapter in my book right now. By the way, consider pre-ordering my book, How to Defeat the Woke Church Movement.
One of the early chapters in my book, I'm kind of working on it right now, it's called You're Being Framed, and it's all about how the conversation in the woke church movement is being framed. And if you accept the way they frame it, then it's going to be a very difficult task to defeat the woke church movement, because their framing is all wrong.
So Phil Vischer has framed this conversation all wrong. This is not a conversation worth having. Again.
For almost 50 years, Christians have been told that who you support for president will either save or sacrifice the lives of unborn babies. This has led a lot of pro-life Christians to become single-issue voters.
So, but here's the thing, though. So like, again, it's framed wrong, so it's not about limiting abortion. But when you look, when you consider what does God require of me when, in the case of somebody killing an infant, you would think that the party that says, whatever, it's all good, in fact, taxpayers should pay for it, that would probably be a non-starter, right?
And the party that at least acknowledges, yeah, abortion's not good. Abortion is bad. Like, you would think that at least that difference would be enough to say, okay, one's a freaking non-starter, and the other one, let me see what else they have to say.
Single-issue voting or not, it's not about single-issue voting, it's about how morally depraved and psychotic do you have to be to be like, well, killing babies is all good. Like, anyone who believes that you have anyone's best interests in mind when you can't figure out that it's bad to kill babies, you have to be really stupid.
Really stupid to think, oh yeah, well, I know that they're against, they think it's cool to kill babies and it should be funded by taxpayers and it's like the greatest thing since sliced bread, but they're really good on loving people after they're born.
You'd have to be an idiot to believe that. A complete idiot.
To overlook everything else about a candidate as long as they're against abortion. When a candidate's bad character or unchristian policies are brought up, the response is often, yeah, but abortion. The argument looks something like this.
My vote determines the president, the president nominates justices to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court can overturn Roe v. Wade and overturning Roe will make abortion illegal and save babies. Let's unpack what's wrong with this argument and why your vote for president might not impact abortion the way you think.
Let's look at three common assumptions. Number one, a Republican president will appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court to end abortion. Okay, so stop right there. This is a mixed.
Bag. So it's good to appoint judges that have the, I know this takes a lot of mental gymnastics and it takes a lot of law school to figure this out, but yeah, it's good to have judges that have enough morality to think, yeah, probably killing babies is bad.
That's a good thing. Does it end abortion? No, it doesn't end abortion because justices don't make laws. However, it's good to have good judges. And I'll tell you one thing, if a judge doesn't even understand that it should be illegal to kill babies or that it's even bad to kill babies, that's a terrible judge.
So you shouldn't want to appoint judges like that. So there's some truth here. Yeah, obviously appointing judges to the Supreme Court doesn't end abortion, but appointing evil judges is probably a bad thing.
In fact, it's a curse from God. So it's better to appoint judges that are better than ones that think it's okay, in fact, probably a public good to infants. Do you see how framing this just like affects everything?
Of course, how you frame the conversation is how the conversation goes. So if you're assuming that appointing judges will end abortion, then they've got a good case here. They've got a good case here.
But if instead you're saying, no, no, I'm not worried about that. What I'm worried about is what's right. What does God require in the case of somebody killing their baby? If you frame the conversation correctly, then this whole presentation has no point, most likely.
I mean, I'm.
Only a minute and a half in. So in 1973, Republican presidents have appointed 11 justices to the Supreme Court, and very soon it could be 12. Democratic presidents have only appointed four. For 49 of the last 50 years, Republicans have held the majority on the Supreme Court.
Despite this Republican domination of the court for five decades, it hasn't overturned a row. For example, right?
Yeah, because we've appointed some terrible judges. And by the way, it's not really about overturning a row. So never accept the way they frame it. The way they frame the debate will determine whether or not it's successful or not.
But the thing is, the idea that's being pushed here low-key is that, well, it would be the same exact situation that we're in right now if the Democrats got to appoint all the judges instead of Republicans.
That's completely ridiculous. That's completely ridiculous. It wouldn't be the same situation that we're in right now. As horrible as many of the Republican-nominated judges have been, we would be in a much worse situation had the Democrats got to appoint horrible, horrible judges instead of Republicans.
Republican-horrible judges are horrible, yes, but they're not anywhere near as horrible as Democratic-appointed judges. There's no question about that. So you can see how sneaky this is. Like, well, you know, if single-issue voters—assuming you're a single-issue voter and then the judges are going to end Supreme Court, well, then it's the same thing.
Let's just appoint Democratic judges. Which is absolutely insane. Absolutely insane.
In 1992, Republicans had an 8-to -1 majority on the Supreme Court. Five of those eight Republican justices had been appointed by Reagan or Bush, both stridently pro-life presidents. And that one Democratic justice on the court, Byron White, he voted against Roe in 1973.
But when a case came before the court that year which could have overturned Roe, the Republican-appointed justices didn't do it. Instead, they reaffirmed the right to an abortion. And even as recently as 2020, a Louisiana law restricting abortion was struck down by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed by George W. Bush.
And here's the important part. In his ruling, Roberts cited the legal principle of stare decisis. That's the belief that the court should abide by its previous rulings. So for decades, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court has only reaffirmed rather than reversed Roe v. Wade.
And if Chief Justice Roberts says the court should abide by its previous rulings, it's looking less and less likely that the court will ever overturn Roe, no matter how many conservatives are on it.
Yeah, this is all good stuff. I completely agree. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but it definitely means that there is a problem here. There is definitely a problem here. What has happened when the Supreme Court just says, well, you know, we said it one time, I guess we gotta say it again.
Like, there's a big problem there. And Republicans ought to look at the kinds of judges that they appoint to these positions. Hey, I don't have a problem with that. They're exactly right. It doesn't mean you don't try to overturn Roe v. Wade.
It doesn't mean that you don't try to appoint good judges. You definitely should. But again, let's not pretend like if we had had Democratic-appointed judges, so presumably more liberal judges, that we'd be in the same situation that we're in right now.
That is completely ridiculous to think.
That's why David French, a civil liberties lawyer and strong pro-life conservative, says this. For almost three decades, the Supreme Court lesson has been clear. Put not your trust in judges to rescue America from the moral stain of abortion.
I dislike David French very much, but that's a very good point. Good work, David French.
Right now, you might be thinking, but Sky, those justices from the 80s and 90s were too moderate. We still need more serious pro-life people on the Supreme Court, and then things will change. That brings us to the second assumption.
Overturning Roe is the key to ending abortion. Politicians talk about Roe v. Wade a lot. Republicans get their voters excited by promising to overturn it, and Democrats get their voters fired up by vowing to defend it.
You'd think the entire issue of abortion hangs on this one case, but the truth is a lot more complicated than that. Here's what people forget. The Roe decision in 1973 did not legalize abortion, and simply reversing Roe wouldn't make it illegal.
For example, according to the CDC, in 1972, the year before Roe, there were nearly 600 ,000 legal abortions in the U .S. That doesn't account for the thousands of abortions that were unreported or performed by unlicensed doctors.
And in those states where abortion was illegal before Roe, it was still way more common than you might think. In Michigan, for example, in 1971 to 72, nearly 30 ,000 women traveled to New York for an abortion.
So what he's saying here, in case you fell asleep in church for a long amount of time, is that people will still sin even if it's illegal to sin. That is some tremendous insight there, whoever you are.
People will still find ways to sin even if it's illegal to sin.
Values were commonplace at America's founding that abortion must have been illegal and super rare until recently. But actually, it's just the opposite. In 1776, abortion was legal everywhere in the United States.
In fact, abortion was so widespread in America in the 19th century that one doctor in Missouri said, quote, the evidence will bear out the assertion that in no age of the world has there been a more reckless disregard for the lives of unborn human beings than in this present age and among the civilized and professedly Christianized nations of the earth.
Wow. That's impressive. I mean, this guy, whoever, whatever his name is, he's actually telling us that people sinned in the 1800s. Can you imagine that? People sinned in the 1800s and people were killing unborn babies in the 1800s.
I wonder if they were killing them in the 1700s as well. That's interesting. It's a very interesting conversation here because I didn't think that people sinned back then. I don't know, man. I guess we should just not even consider what God requires us to do in the case of someone killing an infant because people were sinning back in the founding fathers' times.
This is amazing, this video.
And that was in 1874, nearly 100 years before Roe v. Wade. Significant restrictions on abortion didn't start appearing in some states until the late 19th and early 20th century. But even after those laws were passed in the 1930s, doctors still performed an estimated 800 ,000 abortions every year.
That's about the same number that's happening today. So the idea that before Roe, abortion was illegal and rare in America is just not true. That false narrative, however, is very useful to both political parties.
Republicans act like the country before Roe was a Christian utopia. I don't know how much more I can take of this, guys. I'll tell you that right now. I'm not so sure I can take much more of this. And Democrats present the pre-Roe America as a hell on earth for women, but neither is entirely true.
That's also why.
Neither is entirely true because, you know, it was only kind of a hell on earth for women before Roe v. Wade. Neither is entirely true. It was only kind of a Christian paradise and also kind of a hell on earth.
Like, a little bit. A little bit true, though. Freaking unreal, man.
Bernie Roe wouldn't be a decisive win. Instead, we would just return to the state-by-state patchwork of laws that existed before 1973. And just like before 1973, women living in a state without abortion could still cross state lines to see a doctor or just order an abortion-inducing drug over the internet, which wasn't possible in 1973.
Yes. And so these kind of women,.
We should hunt them down and then try them on the evidence of two or more witnesses. And then when they're found guilty, execute them. Whatever way you want. You know, I don't really care which way you do it.
You could do it with a pill if you want to. Execution. That's what God requires for people.
Who kill other people. According to the study, the most optimistic outcome would be a nationwide reduction of 12%. That's why David French said, quote, even if Roe is overturned, abortion will be mostly unchanged in the U .S., end quote.
I know what you're thinking. But Sky, 12 is still a lot of abortions.
No, I'm not. I'm not thinking that at all. And neither should you be. Neither should you be, because it's not about reducing the numbers. It's about considering the question that every Christian should consider, because we're supposed to be a people that's demonstrating our faith by our works, right?
Demonstrating our faith by our works. And so we ought to figure out what those works are supposed to be, right? If we're going to be demonstrating our faith, our love for Christ by our works. And so it's not about percentage reductions.
It's not about anything like that. It's about what does God require in the case of somebody killing another person? That's all that it's about. That's the only question that a Christian ought to be considering when deciding it should abortion be illegal or legal.
That's the only question. What does God require? That's.
What Christians should be thinking about. That's a lot of babies. If overturning Roe will save even 1%, isn't it worth it? Yes, of course it is. The issue is not whether overturning Roe would help. It would.
The issue is what will help the most? No, that's not the issue. Do not accept the.
Framing of this. Do not accept the framing of this. I'm assuming this is a vote Democrat kind of thing. I don't really care to watch the rest of this. I'm getting kind of sick of this, to be honest with you.
But if there's anything in this video that you... And by the way, if you want me to finish this, I'm halfway through now. If you want me to finish this, tell me so in the comment section that you want me to finish it.
But to be honest with you, the thing I said in the beginning without even seeing the video, that he was framing the question completely wrong. It's the wrong framing. And so if you don't accept the framing, then you don't even have to engage in this kind of a conversation.
Because I'm not talking about what's better, 13 reduction in abortions or 12 reductions in abortions. I'm assuming that what he's about to do is say, well, if you give welfare and if you believe in wealth redistribution and if you do all this stuff, you'll limit abortions more because people kill because they don't have a lot of stuff.
And if they had more stuff, they wouldn't kill. That's not what James says. That's not what the book of James says. The book of James says that they have covetousness in their hearts. They have envy in their hearts.
And so if you give them some stuff, that doesn't actually do anything to stop the covetousness. In fact, if you give them stuff, if you give them food without making them work, for example, which is also against the Bible, by the way, if you do that, all it does is feed that covetousness.
They want more. They end up wanting more stuff. And so that's not what the book of James says. So even if you try to play these games, well, you know, the Pew Research Institute tells me that if I give more welfare, then there'll be less babies killed.
That's who cares? Who cares? God doesn't allow that. And that's not the right question anyway. So I don't even accept the way this question's been framed. So it's really not a valuable video in that regard.
But if you do accept how this conversation has been framed, then I have to ask you, why? Why do you do it? Shouldn't you be more concerned with what God is requiring than with whatever, you know, pragmatic reasons you think you should vote the way you should vote?
That's not how we do this. If we want to be a people that loves Christ and loves God and loves other people, we need to be considering what does God require? That's it. That's the only question that we should be considering.
So if you want me to continue this, I will. If not, then I won't. I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.
