Opportunities to End Abortion

We are live now on the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. I hope everyone's doing well out there. It is a gloomy day in New York, but progressively going towards spring, which after a long winter is definitely refreshing.

So I was just outside doing some work, and as I was doing some work, getting rid of leaves and salt and all the rest that comes with winter, the Amazon truck came, and Amazon truck doesn't come to my house very often.

I seldom order things on Amazon, but my book is using Amazon printers, and this is what it looks like. So I got my first author's copies of Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age. Wanted everyone to be aware of that, and I have a lot of copies.

So if you are interested in this book, I'll do more content and let people know a little more what's in it as we go, but you can go to johnharrispodcast .com. You can go to amazon .com. You can order it there.

It is on Kindle, and it should be on Audible, if it's not now, by the end of the week. So just want to give everyone an update on that. Now, that being said, we have a very special guest today and a topic that I've been really looking forward to because abortion needs to be completely ended, abolished, made illegal, and we've had trouble the last few years getting to this point, even with Republicans in certain very deep red states running everything.

They have the governor, they have the legislature, they have the court in their states, and they just can't seem to get past this point, even after the Dobbs decision. So my interest is, in doing what we're about to do, is really primarily to look at the best strategic ways that you, as a faithful Christian who wants to also see the end of abortion, how can you take the limited resources you have and put them to good use if the Lord's called you to this kind of thing?

And with me to discuss this is a very special guest. We have Bradley Pierce for the first time on the podcast. Bradley Pierce is a lawyer who you can find out more about at FAA .life, the Foundation to Abolish Abortion.

He is the producer of a documentary series called Abortion Free, which you can go watch there. And Bradley, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, John. It's great to be with you.

My pleasure. Well, give us a little bit more about what you do. Obviously, you're a lawyer and you're trying to fight abortion. How are you doing that exactly?

Equal Protection Legislation and the Foundation to Abolish Abortion

Yeah, well, the main thing that we do at the Foundation to Abolish Abortion is we draft equal protection legislation. So this session, right now, there's a lot of abolition equal protection bills filed around the country.

We've been involved with writing almost all of those. And so that's what we've been doing for a number of years now. And so we get involved with drafting those, get involved working with legislators, helping grassroots organizations that support those, doing educational things as well, and presentations at conferences and just trying to get the message out there of how we believe God would have us to address this issue of abortion and kind of, like you're talking about, what is our individual duties.

And really speaking to Christians and also to you, especially to pastors, how can pastors be properly equipping the saints for the work of ministry on this issue?

Could you give us a lay of the land? Because I keep seeing polls that claim that the majority of Americans, especially Gen Z, are very much pro-choice or pro-abortion and that this is a growing hill to climb on a national level.

But there are states that are very deep red where the people like Oklahoma, Idaho, the people are very against abortion. At least they say they're pro-life. Everyone elected says they're pro-life in these Republican majorities.

So it seems to me that there's some areas, especially post-ob decision, where we can work. We have some latitude, but it doesn't seem like things are progressing as fast as one would expect, especially as fast as the left would say things are, I mean, they act like, what is it?

38 states or something have already banned or limited abortion. They paint this very scary picture to their base who cares very much about making sure abortion is accessible. So give us a lay of the land.

Where are we really at in the United States?

The Post-Dobbs Landscape and the Abortion Numbers

Yeah, I think one way can address it in a number of different ways, but I think one way is to kind of compare this to the issue of slavery. Again, not just because we're abolitionists, but because there are a lot of overlaps.

One way of viewing this is that after the Civil War, we had slavery abolished in every state under the 13th Amendment when that was passed, officially abolishing it there. Before that, we had, let's say 1850, where we had lots of northern states that had abolished slavery, but southern states obviously had not.

But then go back to 1750, when not a single state had abolished slavery. And that's where we are today when it comes to the issue of abortion. Not to say that it's necessarily going to be 100, 10, 120 years from now before we actually abolish abortion.

Hopefully it's much sooner, but we still have a long road ahead of us. It's still legal in every state for mothers to abort their children. And so even in the red states, pro-life states, that have passed what I'd call third-party bans on abortion, banning third parties from assisting with that, which ends up shutting down the clinics, it's not illegal there.

It's explicitly written into the bills. This does not apply to the mother in all the pro-life bills. So that way, because of that, moms are still able to order the pills, possess the pills, take the pills, and abort their children in those states, in addition to the abortion travel, going to other states.

And so we still have a long way to go. There's no state that has actually abolished abortion. You know, when you do it like that, it's kind of like saying slavery is illegal for everyone except for the slave owner.

It's like, well, then we have not abolished slavery there. So there's still a lot of work to do. You know, we do see kind of the, you know, polls go different ways as far as where people in the country are.

Obviously, the majority of folks, I'd say the majority of folks really just don't care. You know, there's just a lot of apathy on both sides. But since the Dobbs decision, overturned Roe v. Wade, we have seen a greater action from the pro-abortion side and making a number of gains around the country.

Wait, tell me about that. I mean, what gains has the pro-abortion side made? I mean, I know there's been some bills that they've defeated, like in Ohio, for example, but what do you see as gains?

Yeah, well, they've defeated a ballot initiative right after Dobbs in Kansas that would have, you know, provided some more protections for pre-born children. But since then, they've actually tried many of their own ballot initiatives to actually enshrine abortion as a constitutional right in many states.

And in most of those where they've tried, they've actually been passed. So for example, Ohio, you mentioned there, they passed a ballot initiative basically enshrining abortion as a fundamental right, and a number of other states where that's happened.

Some of those have gotten defeated, like in Florida, but even in a state like Missouri, you know, if a red state, they were able to pass a ballot initiative like that. So I think it's because, you know, after Roe overturned, after Dobbs overturned Roe, I think a lot of the pro-life movement, your average pro-life voter, that's what they had been fighting for for so long, is overturning Roe.

And once that was accomplished, I think a lot of people either totally went to sleep on the issue or just really moved it to the back burner. Whereas the opposite happened on the pro-abortion side, it became very much a front issue.

And so I think that's why we have seen, and we are seeing right now, you know, the pro-abortion side making those kinds of political gains.

This is an interesting dynamic for me because it feels so surreal. I remember for years, defeating Roe v. Wade was the goal. And that was pretty much the only goal, it seemed like, for the pro-life movement.

And it seemed unreachable, like we would never get there. I was pretty skeptical that, especially electing Donald Trump would get us there. But here we are, and the Dobbs decision is not a perfect decision, but it did, I think, give us probably more latitude than we had before to work on the state level.

And after that happened, it's like there's no plan really. I shouldn't say no plan, and maybe I'm exaggerating, but that is how it feels to me. Like, now we're lost in the pro-life or anti-abortion movement.

And I don't really know why that is exactly. Like, I'm still very much interested in getting this taken care of and making sure that it's illegal to kill one's child. But I see what you're talking about.

People are not as motivated on this as they were before. I don't know if other issues have overshadowed that, that it's sort of home in a tangible way for them. But every time you see one of those videos or signs or just those jolting reminders that this is a child that is being killed, I mean, it just cuts right to the heart of like, man, this is still a huge, huge, huge issue, something we should care about as believers.

So how do you cut past that? How do you get to, especially legislators who claim to be Christians in red states that seem to vote against abolishing abortion?

Why Red States Still Have Legal Abortion

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of them that I think a lot of people really do think that the issue is solved in their states, right? Because even in a lot of these Republican states, the clinics, when they were here, had to report the number of abortions that they were performing to the health department.

So the health department still collects those. And so on paper, if you actually go look at the health department reports, yeah, you're gonna see in a lot of these states high numbers, like for example, here in Texas, 55 to 60 ,000 abortions a year.

And it's the same way in a lot of other, or pretty much all the other states. And then after Dobbs, then we had a trigger bill, right, that made it illegal for the clinics to operate. And then you see the number dropping from 55, 60 ,000 down to 100 or 50, which are really mostly just kind of what they call abortions, but are mostly kind of life and the mother situations.

And you think, oh, well, hey, great. We've effectively abolished abortion here. Abortion's basically gone. Let's move on to another issue. But what that doesn't show is the number of abortions, that abortions are still happening.

They're just either going out of the state or they're ordering the pills in the state. And none of that ends up getting reported in the state. So you get this facade of having, oh, we've dramatically lowered the numbers when it's like actually there's more abortions now in the US than there were even 10 years ago.

And even in the 14 states that many people consider to be abortion-free, there's still as many. In some states, it's only a slight decrease. In some states, it's basically the same. In some states, it's even an increase since before the Dobbs case.

And a lot of people don't realize that. So a lot of our work right now is not just educating people, yes, here's the biblical way to abolish abortion. We believe in equal protection. That's what the Constitution requires, et cetera.

But making people aware of that, hey, this is still a problem in the first place because a lot of people think that it's not.

And that could be an inhibitor. If people think that this is a done deal in their state, they're not gonna put resources towards fighting it anymore because they think the battle's done, there's other issues.

But I wanna explore that a little because I have heard this so often that the number of abortions have gone up or remain the same. And is this just because technology has changed and people are able to get in-home medications, abortifacients, I don't know if there's other ways they're accomplishing abortions in later stages, but they're able to get these things and kind of do-it-yourself abortions?

Or what is it?

Honestly, it doesn't make sense to me either that if there's no Planned Parenthoods in your state, somehow the numbers of abortions remain the same. I can't wrap my head around that. Maybe if you could walk us through how that's possible.

How Abortion Pills Replaced Clinics

I think the main way that it's happening is, so when Dobbs overturned Roe, then it basically ran Planned Parenthood ultimately out of 14 states currently today that are being called abortion-free. So obviously it didn't really deal with the demand, right?

People still wanted abortion. It didn't change people's hearts in that regard. And because the law said it didn't apply to mothers, it didn't change really the supply, it just changed the method. And so what we've seen is that because it kind of eliminated the clinics from these states, it actually made it much more financially viable for the pill providers to basically create what I, no offense to Amazon, but like the amazon .com of abortions, right?

To where you can now go online and order. And so it's kind of like, even in, just think about whenever COVID was around, yes, a lot of stores were closed or it was really hard to get to stores or it was really pain.

And yet consumer buying actually increased in spite of that. And so I think that's what we've seen, but where did the consumer buying go, right? It went online. And so I think that's what we're seeing with the abortion issue is that, yes, it's harder to go to a clinic now, but it's actually cheaper and easier to actually do the abortions because the market has shifted to the abortion pills online.

That's driven the prices way down and it's way easier to do that. And so instead of going and getting a six, $700 clinic abortion, you can now get $150 pill abortion.

That makes a lot of sense. I was just in Kentucky last week and I know they have a bill to abolish abortion that's going through. And the church that I was speaking at, a lot of the members there are very active on this front and trying to get Christian leaders and political Republican leaders to support this bill.

And anyway, the thing I was talking to them about a little bit, and I'd love to pick your brain on this, is if it's, as you say, it's like the amazon .com abortion pill coming in. This becomes an interstate commerce issue, right?

Like this is where the federal government would have to get involved. The only thing a state government could effectively do in that case, I suppose would be to, I mean, you can't kill a two-year-old in your house, right?

So you can't kill the child in the womb. So they can put that on the books, but it was very difficult, I would think, to enforce that. Because it is, a two-year-old has a social security card, people ask questions, especially in an early stage in a pregnancy, there's really gonna be no evidence.

There's gonna be no, no one's gonna know possibly that this even happened. It is so easy to conceal. So what is the hope with a bill like that in your mind? Like what would the government be able to do that they can't do right now?

State Homicide Laws and the Comstock Act

Yeah, well, you know, obviously the actual shipment of the pills is an interstate commerce issue, but ultimately the act of homicide is very, very much a state issue and happening within the states. And so we do believe that state homicide laws need to apply to people from the moment of fertilization.

And there's some states where they already do, but then they have written in to even to those, you know, that even the homicide law does not apply to the mother with regard to her own unborn child. So we need to remove those exceptions.

So that way the law, everyone's equally subject to the law and then everyone's equally protected by the law. That's what we want. But yeah, certainly it's going to be more difficult to actually enforce those, but kind of backing up, you know, in some ways the point of the law is not to find and enforce it or to find the criminals and penalize them.

The primary point of the law, or the first function of the law is to educate. You know, this is basically as the Bible says, to tutor. You know, this is the value of life. This is how much we value life.

We value these lives equally with these lives. And the penalty is strict because of how much we value life. But then if people don't agree with that, then the law is to restrain evil, right? It's to deter people from committing those crimes.

Yeah, there's lots of people that would commit crimes every day if we didn't have penalties in those laws. Those penalties serve the purpose of restraining them, which is for their good, but of course it's for the good of the potential victims.

And then finally, the law is there to provide justice. Yeah, if people will not be taught, they will not be deterred. They go through with it. Okay, now there needs to be justice provided, which then ultimately teaches and deters as well when justice is carried out.

And so that's certainly more difficult in this context, but it's not, really not that difficult in a lot of situations. I was actually talking to someone just the other day, actually a police officer, who in the course of investigating a crime came across text messages between the suspect that he was investigating and his girlfriend where his girlfriend indicates, hey, I'm pregnant, what are you gonna do?

And he's like, well, I'm gonna give you money for the abortion. Okay, let's order the pills. And they're kind of going back and forth in these text messages like, all right, ordering the pills. All right, did you get the money?

Yes, I got the money. All right, did you do it? Like, I mean, in some ways today, it's almost easier to enforce because of how much evidence people are constantly shedding as we, lawyers would say, constantly shedding evidence because of how much we're texting and videoing ourselves and pictures and everything today.

So in some ways it's actually easier to enforce than ever. And even the ordering of the pills, right? There's receipts for that and things for that. And so, yes, it'll certainly be more difficult than investigating homicides of born people, but certainly not impossible.

There's some questions coming in and I have a lot of questions too, but I wanna get to some of these. Javier Oliva says, if states can prohibit the shipping of a particular gun magazine, why can't it prohibit abortion drugs?

That's a good question because in New York, we had something a few years ago called the SAFE Act and we were limited in all kinds of ways. But one of the ways that that particular law limited us was through the size of the magazine.

Essentially, sports stores could not carry a magazine that held over seven bullets. And so I don't know exactly how legally that all worked out, but no one was shipping any of this stuff. And if you go on like Cabela's to try to order that, it's not coming to New York.

So why can't that same thing apply to abortion pills?

It kind of does in a couple of different ways. So first of all, there's many states that have passed what they call drug inducing abortion pill bans or chemical abortion pill bans that do prohibit shipping pills in or manufacturing pills or distributing pills within the state.

And the issue with the primary issue with those is that even all of those also say this does not apply to the mother. And so it's one of those, it's like if you had a ban, yeah, it's illegal to possess a magazine over five, but this doesn't apply to gun owners.

It's like, wait a second, I mean, you know what I'm saying? So that hurts it from being effective. And then secondly, there actually is a federal law that prohibits the interstate shipping in the mails of abortion drugs.

There's actually a federal law that's been on the books for about a hundred years, I believe. And it's called the Comstock Act. It prohibits distributing some other materials as well, but it's not being enforced today.

So the Biden administration did this huge memo saying why they weren't going to enforce it. The Trump administration so far has not made any indications that they're going to enforce that as well. Even if they did, there's certainly plenty of ways around it, shipping or traveling in other ways, but at least that would make it more difficult, but even that's not being enforced today.

So I've never heard this, I don't think, or I forgot it if I've heard it. There's a law on the books as it stands right now to prohibit abortifacients from being shipped across state lines in this country.

That's right, yeah.

So this is kind of like the border situation. We have the laws, but just no one's actually doing anything about them.

That's a good way of describing it. It is somewhat a, I mean, it wouldn't deal, it wouldn't solve the core issue, which is that homicide is legal.

Right.

And ultimately it's kind of a gun control issue, right? Or a drug war kind of issue. You can make it illegal, but if you're not dealing with the actual root issue of homicide, then you're just kind of chopping it.

You're not getting to the root, right? You're just kind of chopping at the branches. But should they enforce it? Should the Trump administration force it? Absolutely, yes. But at least so far they haven't indicated that they are going to.

Yeah, are there any positive things you see about the Trump administration? I know the Mexico City policy has been reinstated from what I understand. And it sounds like Trump is gonna allow states to have the latitude to try to sort some of these things out.

But do you foresee any other help coming from them? Or do you think that anti-abortion folks in red states are pretty much on their own?

You know, I mean, certainly lots of positive things from the Trump administration on lots of other issues, but on this issue, yeah, other than some of those kind of more international policies, you know, certainly they, you know, pardoned the folks who had stood in front of abortion clinics and things like that, things that we're grateful for.

But overall, you know, not helpful on this issue. And even a lot of the messaging during the campaign was, you know, counterproductive from the Trump administration. So we're hoping that people can get to him and reach him and, you know, help turn that toward equal protection, toward protecting children.

You know, even on the kind of leaving states to do their thing, even that during the campaign, you know, there were a couple of issues. There was an issue in Arizona. There was issue in Alabama, both of which, you know, he kind of said like, well, let's let states do their things.

But he then kind of went out of his way to get involved in against the anti-abortion side. And so, you know, we're certainly not seeing leadership from him on this issue. And what we are seeing is unhelpful.

Even recently, he issued an executive order that's not, doesn't really do anything yet other than, you know, ask for some recommendations, you know, on the issue of IVF, which, you know, has lots of problems.

A lot of IVF processes involve actual homicide of children. And so, you know, I don't know where that's ultimately gonna go, but it's not a good sign.

Yeah, I think it's important you mentioned that, because I read it and it could after seeing some of the blowback online, and I thought this does nothing. He's just saying we want to see some recommendations made.

And the curious thing that I suppose that I was asking, I know we're getting into maybe some different territory, but not really, because when you're destroying embryos, you are destroying human life, just like in abortion, you're destroying human life, it's both murder.

And one of the things that I've just been perplexed about is you have these pro-life organizations out there that have resources to be able to, I don't know, file briefs on these things and set agendas and so forth.

And it doesn't seem like there's much coming from them on the IVF front. They're awfully silent from, maybe I'm wrong, maybe you can correct me. But, you know, there are countries like Italy is probably the most well-known country that have severe regulations on IVF to try to make it as ethical as possible.

Same-sex couples can't participate in it. I don't even know if you can do more than one or two eggs because you have to implant whatever you fertilize, these kinds of things. And I don't even see any mirror of that in our country.

Like there's no one advising the president, to my knowledge, saying, if you're gonna do this, then let's put some regulations on this. What is going on with that? Why is there no moral direction from the pro-life organizations on this issue?

You know, I mean, certainly there are some, you know, I'll give credit where credit's due. There certainly are some organizations that are speaking up and then saying some good things and then opposing kind of what seems to be a rush, you know, to support IVF without any questions at all.

You know, but that said, I think what you're pointing out is that, yeah, generally speaking, you know, most of the pro-life leaders are fairly silent about it. Whenever, you know, destroying a life is destroying a life, whether that's five days old or five months old, you know, it's still, it's destruction of human life.

And so it's something that we need to be talking about, especially if we're gonna be consistent on this issue. But I think that's where a lot of it comes back to is, you know, quite frankly, a lot of the pro-life movement, and by pro-life movement, I'm not talking about like pregnancy help clinics and things like that that do a lot of awesome work.

I'm even, you know, involved in the board of one of those. I'm talking about like the pro-life lobby, you know, the major lobbying organizations that have bills and, you know, that, you know, endorse politicians and politicians endorse them and things like that.

There, we've seen for a long time a compromise on this issue of protecting life and really kind of letting the politicians, you know, drive things, which normally politicians are just, you know, I mean, there's some good ones out there, but a lot of them are just interested in getting reelected.

And so, you know, taking a hard stand on a controversial issue is not, you know, not the first thing on their list. And so a lot of these pro-life organizations provide cover for them, you know, for acting in a cowardly way and being willing to compromise.

And so we're seeing a lot of that.

I mean, it's frustrating because you can have a conversation about political reality and just say, look, this is where things are at. This is the barriers we have to contend with, which is why, you know, A, B, or C, we were not, you know, we're not gonna get our bill passed or whatever, but still being the moral conscience and saying this is wrong and this is where we need to go.

But abandoning the field just seems to me like you're asking for more abortions, you're asking for more discarded embryos, you're asking for more murder. You mentioned there are some big pro-life organizations that though are doing some good work.

And I wanna highlight that for people who might be wanting to give their finances, which are limited, to organizations that are actually in the fight. So, you know, what comes to mind is, you think through some good organizations doing work?

Well, and I'm speaking specifically on the IVF issue, right? People that are speaking out, like this lady named Katie Faust, you know, speaking out very boldly on the IVF issue. You know, Lilah Rhodes with Live Action speaking out very clearly on the IVF issue.

And others, you know, that, you know, we're gonna have disagreements on other fronts, you know, with some of those, but at least on the IVF issue, you know, saying some good stuff.

Good, good.

I wanna get to some more of these questions because I keep asking my own here, but let's see here. We have another question here. What would it take, this is from Pacific Westy, I guess is the name. What would it take to get federal funding of Planned Parenthood stopped?

What would be the result if we could get all federal funding stopped? I feel like you already started to go down this road a bit with this would incentivize the Amazon, I don't know, keep using Amazon, but the mail in abortions.

But what do you think if we could actually get to that point of shutting them down permanently?

Defunding Planned Parenthood and the Limits of Partial Measures

You know, I think it's something that, you know, we certainly want to see Planned Parenthood defunded. I don't want my tax dollars going there, but in some ways it's, you know, it kind of gets back to what does God, how does God tell us to deal with this issue?

Really, I think it's something that's fundamental we have to come back to. Otherwise, we're just kind of chipping away at the edges. We're not actually dealing with the core issue. And I think the way that God tells us to deal with murder is that it should be illegal.

It should be a crime. And if we make it a crime, then that's going to deal with the whole funding issue and the, you know, the whole shipping of pills and all these other things better than anything else, right?

If we really want to see Planned Parenthood defunded, then how about we make it illegal to murder people? That should be step one. And then, yeah, then let's go look in, you know, are these, there's still some other way they're getting money.

But step one has to be, let's make it illegal to murder people, and then we can go after that. Otherwise, we're just kind of making it, you know, more sanitary to murder people. We're making it to where, hey, well, I don't, you know, now I don't feel as guilty, or I don't feel like, you know, at least my tax dollars aren't going to that.

But that's not, you know, the problem isn't, the main problem isn't that my tax dollars are going to murder, you know, defund Planned Parenthood. The main problem is that people are murdering people. And so I think we need to keep the focus on that.

I think that anything else, although I would love to see them strip that out of the budget, I think we have to keep our focus on equal protection. And I think if we do that, then these other things will happen automatically.

I think if we keep the focus, that life begins at fertilization, we should be providing equal protection to that life, then we'll see all these other things happen. But whenever we're willing to accept these compromises like, oh, well, let's just make it illegal to murder babies after they're born, right?

You know, there's a whole big push in the federal government to pass that bill. And it's like, guys, if that's where you're like, that's our victory, then you're gonna, at best, you're gonna get that, but you're probably not even gonna get that.

But if you go all the way over here to the actual principle, right? Stick with the principle that here's when life begins, and here's how we should protect it like all other life, then you're gonna get these other things, right?

But you have to shift the whole window this way in order to get any of it.

Yeah, Trump has been usually pretty good in the business world, especially, I mean, that's the art of the deal, right? Of like trying to go three steps past what he actually wants so that he can negotiate and get what he wants.

And this is an issue that I've noticed for Republicans. They're not willing to play hardball like that. They don't wanna go for an aggressive measure. And then, okay, let's say there's something happens in committee and it's a heartbeat bill, whatever.

They just, like they go for the heartbeat bill from the beginning. They already have like almost for some of them, I suppose, an admission that maybe it's not a child before that heartbeat is there. And yeah, it does strike me as like, it's odd that this is one issue.

Maybe there's others that I haven't thought of, but where we don't play hardball because there's other issues that we will certainly play hardball on. Immigration has been one of them. So yeah, yeah, good thoughts there.

Some other questions here, a question from Dr. Bob. Is the state by state approach ultimately feasible? It seems impossible in a place like California. And we were maybe talking about this off before we started recording.

How can the Republicans get abolition done without getting booted at the national level? So this is tactics and strategy, right? Not morality in the sense of like, he's not asking what's right and wrong, but he's saying like, how do you make any gains in California?

I have that same question. I'm sitting in New York right now. I don't even know what to do.

Why the State-by-State Strategy Must Be Consistent

Yeah, well, I think it has become, could start at a lot of points with this, but let me start at this one. So I think that it has to become an issue that Republicans are consistent on and consistent on our position and consistent with when life begins, consistent with how we treat that.

So we have to start with that and then we have to start with our demand and stop undermining all of our own arguments. Yeah, that's been happening for a long time. So we have to get clear on that. And then in these states, like your own or like California, I know some folks are like, well, let's just try to get a heartbeat bill or let's just try to get this or let's just try to get that or let's just try to get a born alive infant protection act.

But even those things are ultimately, they undermine our own arguments and they actually end up setting us back and delaying things because there's a lot of states, like I just mentioned earlier, there's a lot of states that have passed heartbeat bills, born alive, infant protection acts, chemical abortion, they've passed all these things and the abortions are still happening there.

Our goal is not to pass a bill. Our goal is not to pass a piece of legislation. Our goal is to establish justice as God's required and to protect children, to provide equal protection. That's what our goal is.

And so the goal isn't to just give people better ratings on their pro-life organization, voting, you get an A plus or whatever for passing a bill that ultimately did nothing. And so I know folks in New York and California may say, boy, I would give anything even to just have a heartbeat bill, but go look around at the states that actually have heartbeat bills and you'll see they're not actually doing anything.

Other than they're making people think that abortion has been taken care of, but when it actually hasn't. And the other thing that they do is they make people look like they're pro-life and get the pro-life votes without actually doing anything to actually protect children.