Transcripts For CSPAN2 Ryan Anderson And Alexandra DeSanctus

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Ryan Anderson And Alexandra DeSanctus Tearing Us Apart - How Abortion... 20221011

Discussion about this brand new book. And so i know you all know about this, but its a brand new book by Ryan Anderson and alexander de sanctus and so afterwards for those of you that are here in person. Feel free if we have copies of the book for sale. You can get them signed and you can actually talk to the authors well, but let me just very briefly. Introduce our panel and then ill hand it over to them first our moderator. This morning is Catherine Jean Lopez Catherine is a senior fellow at the National Review institute where she directs the center for religion culture and civil society. Shes also added to her large at National Review and has been on the Editorial Staff of National Review since 1997. So catherine i assume you must have started as a College Intern given that shes published widely in catholic and secular publications. It is also a nationally syndicated columnist with andrews mcneil universal. Shes the author of a year with the mystics visionary wisdom for daily living and speaks frequently on faith in public life virtue and prayer. Ryan andersons the president of the ethics in Public Policy center and hes also the Founding Editor of the public discourse, which is the online journal of the witherspoon institute. And he also is is not in his bio, but he was actually my predecessor here at the Heritage Foundation for many years. Hes author coauthor of five books including this brand new book tearing us apart, but its previous book which has the distinction of being banned from amazon is when harry became sally responding to the transgender moment. Andersons research has been cited by two Supreme Court justices Justice Samuel alito and Justice Clarence thomas in two Supreme Court cases. Alexandria de sanctus is a visiting fellow at the ethics in Public Policy center where she covers abortion policy in the Prolife Movement is well as other key topics at the intersection of politics culture and religion. She also a staff writer at the National Review institute and does regularly reporting regular reporting for the National Review print magazine as well as National Review online. She also hosts National Reviews podcast for life, and shes a 2016 graduate of the university of notre dame and coauthor with Ryan Anderson of this terrific new book, please welcome our panelists. Thank you all for joining us. I am still cant quite believe this is the first monday after row and yeah, we couldnt have a timely or discussion. Obviously i am were gonna talk a little bit about dobbs obviously up top, but i i have to share so the title of this book is tearing us apart how abortion harms everything and solves nothing and a couple of months ago. I was on the streets of manhattan outside planned parenthood at a witness for life that has been going on for 15 years outside planned parenthood. People praying the rosary across the street from planned parenthood and the new york city for abortion rights people have gotten to know me. They protest our prayer and so one morning they come up to me and say oh Catherine Jean lopez. Thank you for joining us. It was so good of you to join us. What are you going to blame on abortion in the National Review today . And i thought oh my goodness. Theyre reading us. Because theres a whole lot that traces back to abortion as the two of you go through and in the book, so there is hope that we can convert hearts and minds even even who are most hostile. So ryan can i start with you . What were your first thoughts and as as youve been processing what happened . Of course, we knew that that would probably happen. You kind of took a gamble that it would happen on this book because this book is really a handbook for postrow america. And so the timing couldnt be a better so sure. I mean a couple thoughts and one is alexandra and i last fall could count to five when the state of mississippi asked the Supreme Court not only to uphold their 15week law protecting babies after 15 weeks of life in the womb. They didnt just ask the court to uphold that they actually asked the court to overturn row and casey which was a bold move by the states. I think the attorney general on the solicitor general there deserve a lot of credit for doing what conventional wisdom told them not to do conventional wisdom said go for what roberts is going to do in his concurrence and just ask to uphold the 15week bill and then keep row and casey in place. We can count to five thinking theres now five votes to do it, but i think conservatives have been burned so many times by the court that it was was cautious hope right. Its always prepared for the worst because if youre a conservative about this room court for the theft past 50 years. Thats what you came to expect. So even after the leak, were like, this is great. But you know, theres still a chance that the chief pulls someone to his opinion. So friday morning at 10 10 when you know, call us once got his blog refreshing and i actually i guess it was at the Supreme Courts website refreshing because go to splog has the live feed. It was just great. Its actually happening. You know, this isnt, you know, Charlie Brown when you know, the football gets pulled away one more time, but then it was also a sense of like well now we have to work that much harder, you know overturning row was just a preliminary step, you know, we should celebrate we should actually like give a lot of thanks to the past 49 and a half years of prolife scholars and activists. Who made this moment possible be very cognizant that you know, there are people whose names will never be celebrated people who labored largely unknown to us who actually kept one this cause alive and then two like laid the foundation, you know, most every argument that zan and i rehearsed in the book someone else originally developed. You know, we have i dont know 50 pages of endnotes and those are the people who, you know, were building off of but then it was you know, first i would say it was a moment of relief like this actually happened gratitude and then it was now we got to get to work. All right, right. Alexandra you i have to explain if you dont follow her. I was so grateful when you came on the staff of National Review because i never have to read a planned parenthood annual report ever again because you are so on top of everything and its really its really a Great Service that you provide one example would be kate smith from she abc here. Yes cbs and and you just doggedly followed her reporting and instead. She was doing planned parenthoods pr. So now shes actually working for planned parenthood. So congratulations on helping her realize her vocation, i guess what were your reactions to . Yeah friday, i think kind of like ryan said it was not surprising in the sense that we sort of knew it was coming for a long time. But it also was just kind of shocking that it actually was over right when i was growing up. Ive been prolife my whole life and ive been doing this work at nr for six years, which was a microcosm of what most people in the movement have been doing but it just never kind of felt real in my lifetime, this might actually be over right and for it to sink and it almost hasnt sunk and its been a couple days now. Its still kind of like wow rose actually over right . Its so momentous and it almost feels kind of anticlimactic because the fight is now going to just go on right abortions not over today because were always gone, but certainly yeah that the gratitude for people that will never hear about or know most of whom thats kind of why were here right . We know the big names and all those people are important, but all the work has been done at the Grassroots Level that we wont hear about and i think thats really important to keep in mind. And that point that you make is so essential that abortions have not ended in america now. There are some states where trigger laws are now in and whatnot, but also, the reality is their pills by mail, you know abortions are still happening in america and in states like my own new york. Were going to have more abortions our governor. Wants us to be an abortion destination. What a wonderful goal for for a state. Um, one of the things that gives me hope is that polling as you go into makes clear consistently people know what row is they . Dont know its all three trimesters of abortion people who describe themselves as prochoice. They want to know that women in tough situations have options. Theyre not waking up in the morning wearing stickers, i as i got into new union station. I saw people leaving saturdays rally and it says abortion on demand without apology that is not most people in america who describe themselves as prochoice, so if we can get past the media and the mobs, you know, this this book can convince people or at least the facts in this book if we make use of them what gives you hope. Start resin. Yeah, i think like you mentioned just kind of remembering that what we see and hear from the probe Abortion Movement is not where most people are and its kind of hard to remember that because really all we hear about is, you know, most americans have an attend americans support row. How could the court do this or we see the pictures of the angriest people outside the Supreme Court or you know, we see, you know, the pictures of the destruction at Pregnancy Resource Centers at the kind of angriest pro version supporters are now perpetrating, but thats not where most people are and i think most conversations ive had about abortion of people who disagree with me are mainly just worried about women, right and whats going to happen to women and i think part of what kind of brought this the idea for this book to mind was that if this is the taking him innocent human life this isnt good for anybody and so while thats a depressing thought and you know, we have a lot of work to do to convince people of that. Thats actually an amazingly powerful argument right if you can say to somebody women really need this. Im worried about women and you say actually this isnt good for women either. Let me explain why and if theyre sincere they want legal abortion because theyre worried about women and were correct then theyre winnable right and thats i think a huge number of people almost everybody who supports abortion if they actually are openminded they care about whats best for women and for everybody in our society, theyre winnable with not only whats in our book, but probably probably more that the Pro Life Movement has to offer and ryan you you do have a chapter that really gets into how its bad for women like physically and mentally and and you know, one of the things that this book makes clear and we have these are like historic relics. We have some outside the end row issue of National Review where we go into bad science bad law bad history, you know bad for women obviously children die in the midst of this. What good is is there in this can you talk a little bit about some of the most important points in that realm sure. So i would say the most important. Area, this is i guess the Second Chapter of the book about how abortion harms women is the overarching like worldview that it puts forward. So even more important than like the physical harms that both surgical abortion. And then i think its like, you know at a two to three times greater rake the risk of chemical abortion to women, you know greater than the physical harm is greater than like the regret the emotional psychological harm. I would say the way in which abortion as equality. So the Ruth Bader Ginsburg style argument has allowed us to sustain a culture in which the male way of being human the male way of a body embodiment is taken as the norm and my wifes way of being human is somehow it effective version of my way of being human and we structure our Higher Education system our employment system our economy our entire culture around my body being normal her body being somehow dysfunctional for her to be equal to me. She needs to sterilize her body and then if the sterilization fails she needs to kill her child who is viewed as a threat a competitor. To her equality rather than doing what all the original womens rights advocates and this is where alexander and i our colleague at epc erica bakiaki has done such beautiful scholarship pointing out that they took seriously equality. They understood equality did not mean sameness and they wanted both laws and cultural systems social systems to take each way of being human equally seriously and structuring society around the equal dignity of the female way of being human. As penance for my sins. I have a really aggressive confessor and he makes me listen to the New York Times podcast the daily and so this morning when i was driving in i was listening to the daily and they interviewed four different workers at Abortion Clinics that were shut down on friday because of the road decision, which the Dobbs Decision over turning row and it was a tragic listening to this because they really believe that they are now unable to help women experiencing unplanned or crisis pregnancies. And you know some of them, you know broke up during the during the podcast episode saying, you know, i felt so bad. Theres nothing i could do to help this woman, you know, all i could do was give her the name and the phone number of an outofstate Abortion Clinic and not once you know, its an hour. Its a half an hour long podcast interviewing four different employees of Abortion Clinics. Not once that they say, you know, we could help these women choose life, you know, we could help give them other options. To this and just how tragic it. Is that like for the past 49 and a half years row has built up an entire unjust social structure in which womens equality means access to abortion. So one of the things that we hope is like now the people who have been making these arguments like erica for so long now, they have greater purchase, you know, erica was on cbs sunday news yesterday and jan crawford after wait, are you saying that abortions bad for women and her responses . Yes, that is exactly what im saying, and it was as if it was shocking like this is a new revelation that people are hearing it for the first time, but they are hearing it for the first time and thats the importance of what we now have to do i mean what with the court did last friday was open up the space for us to not persuade our neighbors and then the past laws thatll protect both babies and mothers. And we need to be very calm and patient knowing that even though weve been hearing and making these arguments our entire lives. Other people are hearing it for the first time. I i was really struck watching another show by how preposterous the prolife view seem to be to everybody around the table except peggy noon in alexander what gives you hope and and also did anything surprise you in the midst of putting this this book together. Like a positive surprises. Yeah, okay. I dont know that there was much positive in the book and i remember when we were working on the introduction. We we put a heavy emphasis on how all of this is important because life is good because after writing the whole book i was like man, this is awfully depressing we have to remind people this is not just like a grim march through that the kind of history of abortion in the lies that sustain it. Although that is what most of the book is but i think all that is that matters because we all kind of know fundamentally that life is good. I dont know yet besides kind of the winnability of the argument. I dont know that much gives me hope i kind of i like the point ryan raised about people listening now. I think thats true, right it kind of things feel lighter and more open that we kind of have this chance to make the case in a way that we havent and i think road being gone is a good thing obviously because our laws can be changed now, but its good because the other side cant point to it anymore like you used to be the case that when you make the pro life argument the other side would just say, oh its the law of the land right away and this is a constitution go away. Thats not true anymore. And so they might say it used to be the law of the land or you know, the court was wrong, but thats gonna fade away. They cant say that forever. And so i think now theres going to have to be people coming to the table from the other side making their best case, which they dont have a good one, right . They dont their best cases. Its the law of the land they cant say that and so i think you know the fact that that is the new conversation is a good sign for us or a good opening for us. Robbie george from princeton your mentor was on twitter or facebook or something this weekend talking about being at a colleagues house. Whos pro joyce. I saw that and and she had on her refrigerator her grandchilds ultrasound and so they were able to have a conversation just on the humanity the obvious humanity there, you know outside of a context of a political debate, right . And that is where we need to meet people because politics and media are not our friends on this issue necessarily. Obviously we have to have you know, policy and political debates, but its its the place of pouring salt on wounds all too often unfortunately. So the most the more we can leverage relationships to have longterm, you know efforts to persuade the bette

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