GOP Platforms, IVF, & Post-War Consensus

GOP Platforms, Equality, and the Proposition Nation

We are live now on the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. This is an unannounced podcast, so I'm not sure how many people will have. We'll see. I wanted to just follow up on some things I didn't get to yesterday and clarify a few things, too, because there were a few questions after I stopped recording.

If we have time, I don't think we will, but if we do, I will go into a Russell Moore podcast that I listened today and a few clips from it, so we'll see if we have the time to go into that. I listened to Russell Moore and I listened to a Michael Horton podcast.

I don't know what it was. It was a panel discussion. Gospel Coalition put it out, and later in the week, hopefully I'll be able to get to that and we can talk about that as well, but I'm here for questions.

If anyone enters the chat and has any questions about anything that's been going on, I will do my best in the limits of my abilities. So the first thing I was going to talk about yesterday that I didn't get to talk about is the GOP platforms, and this is related to the broader discussion about abortion, pro-life, and the future of the GOP on this particular topic, and I have hope that, I've never heard anyone else articulate this, but I have a little bit of hope, so I want to give you a white pill.

Can I do that? Because I think we need it, but this isn't just some kind of Pollyanna. I'm, as I see Donald Trump say things that are wishy-washy about abortion, I'm just holding on to some kind of naive, you know, dream that I have.

That's not what it is. I actually see something that I think could be a game-changer, so I want to share that with you, and T. James Boone, you were the first one to leave a comment here. Yay, made it for another live broadcast, probably because I'm doing them later in the evening, at least I did yesterday and today.

Your ears are not going to bleed, T. James, if we talk about Russell Moore, I promise you. I'm not going to talk about, there's only like three clips I want to share from the podcast that he did. Really, there's not a lot of new things.

He keeps recycling the same talking points, right? So, but yeah, we're going to have some white pills, or at least one white pill, so I want to show you something, and I'll express why I think this is significant, and how this relates indirectly to, I think, the life issue.

The 2012 Republican Platform and the Language of Equal Opportunity

So this is the Republican platform, 2012. We could go back farther, but let's just go back to 2012. I'm going to type in the phrase equal, okay? So this will bring up equality or equal. Second paragraph, the pursuit of opportunity has defined America from our beginning.

This is the land of opportunity. The American dream is a dream of equal opportunity for all, and the Republican party is the party of opportunity. Now, this is better than equality in the sense of equal outcomes, but this is also a problem, and I know many others have made this point as well, but we don't even start out with equal opportunity.

Now, if you mean equality before the law in the sense that if you violate a moral law that's encoded in our legal statutes, you will be punished for it, that's one thing, right? But this is a bit ambiguous, and I think there's opportunity here to insert whatever you want.

There's enough room in something like this to have the propositionation, and if you listen to this podcast for any length of time, you know that propositionation is this understanding of America, and it often flows with American exceptionalism of a certain variety.

I believe in a different variety of American exceptionalism based on the sacrifices and the heroes and the things that actually I think truly really made America prosperous and great and all the rest, but what we often hear, the version we often hear is that there were these ideas.

These ideas were embedded in places like the Declaration of Independence and perhaps other founding documents like the Constitution, maybe the Mayflower Compact, but mostly the Declaration of Independence, specifically the second paragraph, and this idea of equality, and this idea of equality is what America is, and even though the founders didn't live up to this, it was for later generations, as Lincoln also said himself, it was going to be later generations who would eventually realize this, and this has just grown and grown and grown to the point of anyone can really be an American.

It's not a place, really. It's not a people, really. It's not anything that's intrinsic to the tangible temporal world that we live in. It's more of this abstract concept that's somewhat nebulous of equality, and so this is, I think, serves a politically useful, it can be a politically useful tool for both sides because when they talk about equality, if you're against a particular policy that's supposed to provide equality, then you're in danger of not being an American.

You're out of step with everyone, right? So that's a very brief primer on what the propositionation is, but you have language, this comes up 10 times, the term equal. I'm not saying it's wrong every time, but it's heavily laden with this particular phrase.

It says, we are the party of the Constitution, the solemn compact, which confirms our God-given individual rights and assures that all Americans stand equal before the law, which that's probably the only equality that I'm really willing to defend publicly.

I'd have to think about it, but I think that equality before the law or equal worth in the eyes of God, I'll defend those things, but when it comes to other kinds of social equality, I just see the left using these things to forward its own goals for egalitarianism.

It says, we affirm the right of students to engage in prayer in public schools, to have equal access to public schools, equally, well, equally important. Well, we'll say nine times, because that's not really treating equal in the same way.

Here's another one. In this country, the rule of law guarantees equal treatment to every individual, including more than 1 million immigrants to whom we grant permanent residence every year. Now, you're starting to hear a little bit of, wait a minute, hold on, equal treatment to every individual.

Okay, what does that mean? 1 million immigrants to whom we grant permanent residence every year. Now, maybe there's no problem with this, okay?

Which is fine.

I'm fine saying, okay, there's no problem with, we've decided as a country to come together and say, we're immigrants, we're gonna treat them the same way we treat citizens. We grant them a permanent residence and then they become part of us.

There's an assimilation process. We've all agreed on what this is. I don't know that there is agreement on this quite anymore, to be quite honest. This is back from 2012. But you can see though that this, equal is used throughout this as a high, noble, moral principle.

And equalize the tax treatment of a group and individual health insurance plan. More money alone does not equal better. That's not, I will say, we'll say eight times, all right? So I'm gonna discount that.

Let's see here.

What else do we have that I want?

Okay, so a lot of these other statements aren't about equality in the terms of equal for law, equal outcomes or equal opportunity. But you do see this coming up a few times in the document. And it's also tied to the intrinsic to fundamental to basic to what America is.

Now in 2016, if you type this in equal, the term comes up 14 times. And again, it's near the beginning. It says we affirm as a declaration of independence that all are created equal endowed by the creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,.

Which is fine.

That is in the declaration of independence. I just wrote a paper or a section for my book two weeks ago now, a week and a half ago on this. And I think most of us, like 99 of the time you hear this brought up.

Should I say 99? Okay, 90 of the time you hear this brought up. It means something completely different than what the founders were thinking. They were thinking equal in a state of nature. They were not thinking that this meant equality in domestic social institutions.

I think there was no thought probably further from their minds. And in fact, they make this very clear the next year when Vermont petitions the Continental Congress, the same Continental Congress that approved this language and says, hey, New Hampshire granted us lands and New York is giving us a problem and saying these lands belong to them.

And they're violating our rights, our inalienable rights. And so you just wrote a declaration of independence. What are you gonna do about it? And the Continental Congress basically writes back and said, well, actually what we were doing in that was we were representing 13 distinct corporate bodies, states and how their rights, their rights that they would have been afforded under the British unwritten constitution were violated by England and not defended by the King.

So they were saying that we were representing these corporate entities, the body politic. We weren't representing individuals with their gripes. It wasn't about domestic institutions. And this is one of the things I think that's very confusing but I'm not saying the error is present in this.

They're just quoting it, but oftentimes when it's brought up I think it's portrayed inaccurately. It says, it talks about competition, competitiveness. Well, that's using equal again in a different way, but so I'll skip over that one.

Let's see, that God bestows certain, here it is, inalienable rights on every individual thus producing human equality, okay? What does that mean though? That government exists first and foremost to protect those inalienable rights.

That man-made law must be consistent with God-given natural rights. And that if God-given natural and inalienable rights come in conflict with government court or human granted rights, God-given natural inalienable rights always prevail.

Inalienable, by the way, just means cannot be given up. These are, this is what God endows people with in a state of nature. This, according to the founding generation and how they would have thought of this, it's what they're given in a state of nature without any government, without any, they haven't entered society yet.

This is just what you have.

When you enter society though, you give up some of these, or I should say, give up's not the best word. They get amended. Some of these get given to the government or society to then administer. So like, I'm trying to give it a good example.

Like in a state of nature, there is nothing prohibiting a minor from driving a car, okay? That's their, that would be transporting oneself, freedom of movement. This is something that would be, I guess, in a state of nature, something that no one can tell you no, it's something that God has given to you and government should secure this.

Governments should guarantee that you're able to have the freedom of movement, let's say, all right? I'm using a more modern example if it were written today. But we know in society, when you enter society, there's other people that you have to be concerned with.

And so there's safety laws. There's minimum requirements for getting a driver's license. You can't be 15 and get one. You have to be 16, or in some states, 18 or 17. There's regulations that come with this.

So you actually amend those inalienable rights in a state of society, right? And that the inalienable rights that they were complaining about, the things that they were saying shouldn't be given up were inalienable rights that were amended or they were secured under a British constitution.

So that's the context of the founding. So there is this, you have a slight individual aspect in the argument at the beginning, but then it very quickly moves into, and even at the beginning, actually, it sort of just deviates for a moment.

It starts with, it's these state entities. It's these corporate bodies that are complaining about what the king is doing to abridge their rights as conglomerates, not as individuals who are saying that, you know, they're not making sweeping statements about domestic relationships.

They're not, in fact, slavery being one of the ones that's brought up most often. The second to last complaint they have in the Declaration of Independence is that Lord Dunmore in Virginia, the royal governor, is fomenting slave insurrections.

And the way, the reason he's doing that is because he is telling them that if they join the British army, they will gain their freedom and then they will be free and they can fight against their masters.

And this was a real problem, right, for the colonists. And they're complaining about this and saying, this is violating our rights. Well, how is that possible? Because they were mediated through a tradition, this British tradition.

And so I just think that, let's see, we'll keep reading here. But I think that historical background is important in understanding this. And of course, if this is too much, if this is just overload, I will have more information coming about that in due time so you know exactly what the founders meant, what at least the Continental Congress meant when they were talking about this.

But it wasn't the main thing that was remembered about the document. It wasn't seen as the cornerstone. It was boilerplate stuff. It was, like at the time, it was not something that was seen as super innovative.

It was at all. In fact, Jefferson later writes and says, we weren't trying to be innovative. So now it's seen as this great experiment, this new idea of liberty, this new grand thing that was farthest thing from their minds.

But let's see, I think you get kind of that treatment here. Let's see. I think I lost my place.

All right, so it says,.

God-given natural inalienable rights always prevail that there's a moral law recognized as the laws of nature, nature's God, and that the American government is to operate within the consent of the governed.

We are also the party of the constitution, the greatest political document ever written. It is the solemn compact built upon the principles of the declaration that enshrines our God-given individual rights and ensures that all Americans stand equal before the law, defines the purposes and limits of government, and is the blueprint for ordered liberty that makes the United States the world's freest and most prosperous nation.

Most of that I think is not bad, but I just want you to notice how emphasized that term equal is. It says, we are reaffirmed the constitution's fundamental principle, limited government, separation of powers, individual liberty, and rule of law.

We denounce bigotry. Now this is interesting because this is, the founders would have been bigots by their standards of 2016, right? We denounce bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic prejudice, and religious intolerance.

Therefore, we oppose discrimination based on sex, race, religion, creed, disability, or national origin, and support statutes to end such discrimination. As the party of Abraham Lincoln, we must continue to foster solutions to America's difficult challenge when it comes to race relations.

Today, we continue to encourage equality for all citizens and access to the American dream. Now this opens up all kinds of policies when you say that. You wanna, if you want to encourage equality for all citizens and access to the American dream, what does that look like?

It says merit and hard work should determine advancement in our society, so we reject unfair preferences, quotas, and set-asides as form of discrimination. Our ranks include Americans from every faith and tradition, and we respect the right of every American to follow his deeply held belief.

Now I can keep reading, but you do see in some of the language here, this would mean a multicultural setting of some kind. Lincoln did not understand that line in the Declaration of Independence the same way the founding generation would have understood it the way they were using it.

Lincoln, in fact, even said at one point that this was for later use, that this was put in there for later use, which would have been news to them. It wasn't even a governing document. It wasn't, certainly not like the Articles of Confederation or the Constitution later.

So this has become, though, the cornerstone. This has become, equality has become the animating feature, the definitive feature of America. It is used for just about every policy. There has to be some kind of an element of equality between peoples.

Equal access to school facilities. Let's see, equality comes up quite a bit in this. Let's see if I wanna focus on any of these. We will also reform the Equal Access to Justice Act to cap and disclose payments made to environmental activists.

Let's see here, that's not really related. Again, it talks about, again, it's amazing that it keeps talking about this. The federal government should not be a partner in talking about a certain policy thing.

I'm just gonna skip ahead.

As the Constitution gives it no role in education, at the heart, here it is, of the American experiment lies the greatest political expression of human dignity, the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty,.

And the pursuit of happiness.

That truth rejects the dark view of an individual as human capital, a possession for the creation of another's wealth. I'm not sure that was in the minds of the founders, but the sentiment, we can kind of get around the sentiment here.

You're talking about a society that had chattel slavery, right, when you're talking about the founding generation. In fact, it was written by, it came out of Virginia, right? And some people think, and they're probably right, somewhat based off of the preamble in the Virginia Bill of Rights.

So they didn't see things the same way. All right, I think we're gonna, all right, that's pretty much it for what I wanna focus on now. Is this stuff a glaring, glaring problem? Is this stuff, is this the worst thing in the world that this language is in there?

I'm not saying it's the worst thing in the world, but what I'm saying is the Democrats emphasize this, and I've talked about this before, in their party platforms. If you go to their 2020 platform, it literally starts with America is an idea.

And what is the idea?

It's equality.

If you go to their current platform, it says very similar things in the document. The Republicans are holding back equality, and they're there to ensure equality. And the Republicans for years were saying kind of the same, similar language.

They were using similar language, saying nowhere about equality. Sometimes the differences was parsed with, well, they're about equal opportunity, and the Democrats are about equal outcomes. But I think greater minds than me have made the point that equal opportunity, if you want to level everything, so everyone has the same opportunity, it inevitably is going to flow into equal outcomes.

And we saw that to some extent with the civil rights movement. That was, in the beginning, that was what they were advocating for. We want equal opportunity, and what it eventually end up with, quotas, affirmative action, and I would say historians will look back and see 2020 and everything that happened during BLM as an extension of this.

It's still going on. Because if you don't have, because the idea is that humans are, they have unfair advantages, and we need to somehow make it so they don't have those anymore. And if we correct that, those unfair advantages, then everyone's going to eventually wind up the same.

So it's a flaw, that equal opportunity, if we just give people equal opportunity, the flaw will be corrected. But surprise, surprise, humans are still unequal, even if you try to set those metrics. So eventually, the question arises, why are things still unequal?

The fact is, no one starts even with equal opportunity. No one, because God has created everyone different mentally, physically. He's put people in different geographical areas where they're going to have access to different things.

Everyone has unique experiences in this world that will affect them. You can never set things so that everyone will have equal opportunity. It's just impossible. The most you can do is say, the law is going to treat citizens in a way that as much as is possible, so that as the law is able to catch people who break it, they are treated equally by incurring fines and penalties and so forth.

But even then, we know that there are all kinds of situations that make that perfect equality before the law in a human society impossible. You're going to have not just evil people who take bribes and people with connections and those kinds of things, but you're going to have people who commit crimes and do things that they shouldn't do outside of the watchful eye of the rest of society.

And so it's something to strive for, equality before the law, but equal opportunity as it's often defined and often thought of and equal outcomes, I don't find either of those things, the way they're commonly portrayed as being something that's possible.

And when we try to do that, we end up running up against creation basically. And so anyway, all that to be said, when Christians talk about equality before the creator, they're talking about something, it can be somewhat similar to what the founding generation would have thought of as people being created equal, that there is this, in a sense, an abstract equality people have in a state of nature.

God has given them equal worth. God has given them access to preserving themselves, self-preservation, but when they enter a state of society, when they're living with other human beings, the understanding was that these things become amended in some way.

There's different rules for children. There's different rules for women in that society. There's different rules for men. There's different rules for slaves in that society. There's, in our own society, we have different rules for different categories, different privileges and so forth, for even in our tax code, for people with kids, for seniors, for, right?

So these are all things that, are these equal? No, they're not, but there's good reasons behind many of them. All right, so John, why are you waxing long and eloquent about this? Maybe it's not that eloquent, but why are you telling us about this?

I'm leading up to this. I see what we just talked about as the seed of a lot of progressive measures to try to come up, to say that America is intrinsically this, so therefore we need policies that create, even Trump's IVF thing right now is basically kind of this.

There's some couples who are struggling to have kids. We need to make everyone else pay for them to access IVF and stuff, right? These are the kinds of policies that you'll see, not just on the left, but on the right.

What was the justification for even invading Iraq? We need to give them equality. That wasn't the whole justification, but that was part of it, that they are under the thumb of a dictator. So we're gonna go in there and make them Americans, basically.

I think a lot of bad stuff has been promoted and I don't have time to get into all of that, but if you go along with me on that point, check out the 2024 GOP platform, which is titled Make America Great Again.

And I wanna show you something. I type in the phrase equal. Hmm, it comes up three times. That is significant. And there was no platform in 2020, so that's why I didn't skip over 2020. There just wasn't one.

Three times? Common sense tells us clearly that the Republican Party must stand for equal treatment for all. Likewise, the Republican Party must ensure that equal application of law to all regardless of political affiliation or personal beliefs.

So it's equality before the law. It's not tied to, it's as common sense tells us. That's experience, that's tradition, basically. I mean, it's in that neighborhood. They're not saying that, it's just interesting that they're not framing it in these abstract terms as much, and they're not saying this is intrinsic to America, or that you can boil down what America is to equality of some kind.

That's it. Then they say universal school choice, we wanna expand 529 education savings accounts and support homeschooling families equally.

That's it.

That's it for the whole document. So what do they think America is then, right? If it's not equality, if it's not this notion that all men are created equal, and that's American exceptionalism, what is America?

America as a People, a Place, and a History of Sacrifice

Let me read this to you. This is the first paragraph of the new Republican platform. It says, our nation's history is filled with the stories of brave men and women who gave everything they had to build America into the greatest nation in history of the world.

Generations of American patriots have summoned the American spirit of strength, determination, and love of country to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges. The American people have proven time and again that we can overcome any obstacle and any force pitted against us.

In the early days of our republic, the founding generation defeated what was then the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. In 20th century, America vanquished Nazism and fascism and then triumphs over Soviet communism after four years of the Cold War.

I'm gonna keep reading. This is great. I'm just telling you, this is really good. If some of you might think, what's the big deal?

I'll explain.

But now we are a nation in serious decline. Our future, our country, sorry, our identity, our identity, listen to that, our identity and our very way of life are under threat like never before. Today, we must once again call upon the same American spirit that led us to prevail through every challenge of the past if we are going to lead our nation to a brighter future.

And then it goes through how politicians betrayed us, allowing our borders to be overrun, all of the things that they, so let me just, I wanna keep reading, but let me just, I'm too excited here, tell you what I think is going on here.

There is a shift happening and it's freaking out some people, but I actually mean, I'm here for it, okay? I'm hoping that it lasts. I'm hoping this doesn't just die with Trump or I don't think it totally will.

I think the imprint is there. America, and this is the difference between the emancipation in this narrative I've talked about and the sacrificial narrative. America is a place of heroes. America is a place of sacrifice.

America is a place of real, tangible men and women who endured things. America has an identity and it's a people and it's what they've accomplished. And they exist within some borders. This is America.

They have defining characteristics that are in real life, visible, intangible people. You might call this populism. I don't know what other words. I mean, some people might think it's fascism. I also noticed, you might've noticed it too.

They went from the founding generation and they skipped to the 20th century. They didn't even talk about, I don't even, let's see if they even talk about Lincoln. I don't even know if they talk about Lincoln or the civil war, any of that.

They just kinda, yeah, Lincoln's not even mentioned. Not once. This, I think the reason that this is good is because this particular phrasing says something very different about America than the other two documents.

The other two documents are more abstract, propositional, distant. They're nebulous. They can be used to justify anything, really. This is about, this centers what the politician should be doing on how does it benefit real tangible people that live and work in this country that have a history to them.

This is the ourselves and our posterity, right? From the constitution. This is, there's a history. There's, it doesn't mean that there's not processes of assimilation and that kind of thing, but there's, you can't ignore the fact that this is a, there's a real people here and they deserve better and they've been abused and mistreated by the ruling class.

What does this mean for abortion?

I'll tell you.

I'm encouraged on the life issue. It's not the only one. Obviously, there's implications for the border issue and all kinds of things, but on the life issue, I'm encouraged, even though this particular platform softened some language, it, let's just say Trump, Trump did some bad things.

From my understanding, Trump did some bad things. See, there was, at least in some of the previous platforms, there was an attempt to have some regulation on the federal level. Trump has gotten rid of most of that in the party platform.

He wants this to be a state issue. And now it's overturning Roe v. Wade. This was always going to punt most of the things back to the states, but he wants, he wants to kind of, I think it's probably because of the, how unpopular the issue is.

He wants to win elections. I mean, that's what he said. I talked about that yesterday in the podcast. That's what he said back in April. We got to win elections. This isn't a popular issue. But he wants this to be a state thing.

Okay, I get that. Here's the thing though. Foundationally speaking, like think, think root level. If you think about America as a tangible people in a tangible place, and you start conforming everything else, policies to this notion, that it's not about some abstraction.

When you're in abstract land and it really, it's not very far from fantasy land. When you're in that world and you're thinking through, hmm, I wonder what the eggheads think would be best in their, with their theories.

And we should just impose those things. You're not thinking as much about tangible people. You're thinking about satisfying math equations. Not really math, but you know, logic. You're thinking of satisfying some theory that someone came up with.

But when you're thinking about actual tangible people and they're the ones you serve, and then it dawns on you that many of these people are dying at very early stages through abortion pills, through abortion procedures.

Many of them in IVF, related to IVF procedures. They're dying because of selective reduction in these things. You start realizing they're Americans too. These, they're part of this, this tangible thing.

Now, maybe that doesn't do a lot for some of you. This does a lot for me though. I actually think that if this takes root over time, inevitably the Republican party, if they really believe it, is going to have to become more anti-abortion and more pro-life.

They're just gonna have to. If they stay in abstract land though, I think they don't, they're not required to as much. Because look, you can make arguments. The Democrats do this all the time. They make arguments for, we need more access to abortion because that's about equality, right?

And then the anti-abortionists will come back and say, no, equality means there's, we need equal protection. And we, and I'm not saying we, you shouldn't use that terminology or that's wrong or anything.

I think it's fine to use it. But if you're basing the whole thing on some notion of equality, whatever notion it is, instead of, hey, it's just intrinsically wrong to murder a human life.

That's it, that's it.

It's not even about, it's not about equal treatment. We want equal treatment when it comes to murder or like cross the board. But it's not, that's not the thing that makes it wrong. It's not because it's a violation of equality.

It's because it's a violation of the Imago Dei. And what's the image of God? It's something that exists. That's very real in every soul, in every person. They have this. That's why it's wrong. And you think, oh, is America an idea or is America people?

People with an Imago Dei, something very real that they have, that you can identify in other people. You can't just, I mean, all the dictators in history use some notion of equality to justify killing people because we need, it's not fair that they're alive.

They've taken too much. They're taking resources, that kind of thing, whatever. They should, they forfeit their life to satisfy some notion of equality. But when you're trying to satisfy not equality, but the God who designed you and gave you worth because you were made in his image, it's a different thing altogether.

And I think the Republican Party platform ends up continuing to hold this language and it can resist the urge to put nebulous views of equality that are so often abused, misinterpreted. I think that we have a shot on a ground level.

I think the poison pill from the left's perspective is there. That's my, I hope that helps some of you. That helps me. I don't know, tell me if it does or not. I'm taking any questions tonight. So did you see Twitter GC?

Group chat, is that, did you see Twitter? Is that what GC means? I don't know, did I? Watching from the Dominican Republic, Eric Johnson says. T. James Boone says, I'm all here for the, I'm here for the white pills.

Good, good, good.

Leftists believe the saddled created the horse and not the other way around. That must've been something I said, I don't remember. George W. Bush created No Child Left Behind. Goal was equality in education, co-sponsored with Ted Kennedy, Red Kennedy.

That's funny. Matt Borish says this, and that is a great point, Matt. Matt has, Matt, by the way, is leading music at the conference coming up. We have the men's conference, fundamentalsconference .com.

You don't wanna miss it. It's coming up in what now, three weeks? You need to sign up, we're getting close. But that's a great point. The No Child Left Behind was all about equality and we're worse off now than we were before he started that.

Clarifying the IVF Argument and the Difference Between Embryonic Loss and Selective Reduction

All right, let's talk about, oh, I have to mention something from the program yesterday. I haven't actually, I don't listen to most of my programs. I haven't listened to this, but someone said that I made a mistake and I need to correct this.

Now, I don't think, it doesn't sound like I made a mistake that I have to like delete the podcast for, because I would if I had to. If I said you should go murder children, and that's not what I meant, but that was the meaning.

I would delete the podcast. I don't wanna encourage anyone to do anything wrong, obviously, but I obviously didn't say that or imply that, but I did confuse something apparently. And when you're talking about IVF, there is a lot of technical jargon.

And yes, I've read a lot about this, okay? I've consumed a lot of Christian resources about this and yes, including abolitionist resources. I'm not saying I'm an expert at it and I'm always open to new resources, but there is a lot of technical information.

In fact, I was talking to someone in a chat group who I respect highly on this, who's an abolitionist and he wants to ban it. And frankly, I do too. I think under the conditions we're in now, if I had a switch that I could just ban all of IVF, I would do it because there's a very narrow way to use this and for it to be ethical, I think, in any way.

I mean, the things associated with it more often than not are not ethical. But that being said, I'm not trying to make excuses for myself, but this person I respect told me, hey, like, I think I was saying fertilized, what was I saying?

Fertilized embryo. And he's like, all embryos are fertilized. And I meant, I was confused. Fertilized egg, fertilized embryo, same thing. Embryo, fertilized egg. But okay, he understood what I was saying, but it is important to have your definitions and your technical jargon right.