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Today, Radical Personal Finance, live Q&A. Welcome to

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Radical Personal Finance, a

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show dedicated to providing you with the

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knowledge, skills,

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insight, and encouragement you need in

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the rich and meaningful life now.

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While building a plan for financial

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freedom in 10 years or less, my name is Joshua Sheath. Today

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is free. Today is Friday, April 19, 2024. And

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on this Friday, as I do on any Friday in

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which I can arrange the appropriate recording technology, we

0:32

do live Q&A. Live Q&A works

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just like a regular Q&A. And

0:37

on this Friday, as I do on any Friday in which I can

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arrange the appropriate recording technology, we

0:42

do live Q&A. Live

0:51

Q&A works just like call and talk radio works or

0:53

used to work. We just move it on to the Internet.

0:56

I show up to a phone line. You show up to a

0:58

phone line. We chat. You get to run the conversation. You ask

1:00

about anything that you want. Bring up

1:02

any topics of discussion. Bring up any questions

1:04

that you have. You run the podcast

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Sign up to support the show there

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on Patreon. And that will gain access

1:21

for you to one of these Friday

1:23

Q&A shows. We begin with Mava in

1:25

Texas. Mava, welcome to the show. How

1:27

can I serve you today? Hi, Joshua.

1:30

Thank you for taking my call. A

1:32

long time listener. Just haven't called in

1:35

before, but glad you took my call.

1:39

Just have a quick question about just

1:41

thinking about the sliding scale benefit

1:43

of a full-time parent. So

1:46

situation has been, and I have an

1:48

infant thinking about, you know,

1:50

dual income, going to single

1:52

income, thinking about the

1:55

point at which, you know, with the general interest

1:57

in home education or just kind of a high

1:59

level of education. involvement in child life, when

2:03

to kind of think about that transition because

2:05

obviously exiting the workforce kind of

2:07

goes against everything from a quick

2:11

trajectory towards financial independence and those

2:13

more quantitative goals. So kind of

2:15

think sliding scale on

2:17

the quantitative side, but just the qualitative

2:19

aspects of engagement, you know, can probably

2:21

see that as being really important at

2:24

each side, each six, but thinking about,

2:26

you know, infant to six, going

2:29

from dual to single and come, think

2:31

about strategically appreciate your thoughts. Sure. How

2:34

much money do you earn currently? 120. And

2:37

your husband? 200.

2:43

So you are in the

2:45

situation that is probably the most difficult, which

2:47

is probably why you're calling in to talk

2:49

about it, because there is

2:51

a financial answer and there's a non-financial

2:54

answer and it's difficult to know how

2:56

to value the non-financial answer. Let's begin

2:58

with the financial answer. If

3:01

there is a woman who is earning, let's say, you

3:03

know, 30 or $40,000 per year

3:07

and she is considering leaving her

3:09

paid income in order to become

3:11

a full-time mother and homemaker. And

3:15

if her husband earns enough money to support

3:17

the family without her income, then

3:19

the financial incentive for her to

3:21

do so is pretty obvious. After

3:23

all, what does daycare cost in

3:26

your area? Any idea? Probably

3:29

no means more than $100 per week. For

3:32

the standard care, we would

3:34

be interested. Yes,

3:43

that's what I would guess. So you have

3:45

a couple thousand dollars per month right

3:47

there. If you

3:49

go through all of the different financial

3:52

aspects of it and you calculate, a

3:54

mother who is at that modest

3:57

income range would probably come out

3:59

ahead with her being a

4:01

full-time stay-at-home mother. So we

4:03

can start with taxes. We would

4:05

remember that her income is the

4:07

most highly taxed because it's the

4:09

marginal additional income. So let's say

4:11

that she leaves her $40,000 a year job. There's

4:15

gonna be good tax savings because that's gonna be $40,000 less

4:17

at the top end, at

4:20

the highest marginal tax rate

4:23

of that couple. Then

4:25

we could get into the specific

4:27

clear obvious costs of daycare,

4:30

which can be calculated, recognizing

4:33

that, generally speaking, the costs of daycare

4:35

are gonna be a post-tax cost, notwithstanding

4:38

the various, perhaps she may

4:40

have eligibility for a credit of some

4:43

kind, tax credit of some kind, but

4:45

we're gonna have direct costs of daycare. Then

4:47

we can look into all of the other costs

4:49

of working that are associated. So

4:51

this family, for example, would frequently have two

4:53

cars. They may be able to go from

4:56

two cars to one car, or

4:58

to maybe instead of having a

5:00

brand new car that's reliable and fancy and

5:02

shiny, now we can swap out that more

5:04

expensive car for a cheaper car. And

5:07

that might drop the car insurance payments.

5:09

It might drop the overall gasoline consumption.

5:12

Maybe now where the

5:14

family was eating out two or three nights

5:16

a week because everyone was tired, no one

5:18

wanted to cook, well now maybe she has

5:20

the energy that we can eat at home

5:22

more and there's a savings on the grocery

5:24

budget. Maybe she's able to shop more efficiently

5:27

and get better deals for the family on

5:29

the overall costs

5:31

of living. And she can plan

5:33

really amazing inexpensive vacations. And

5:36

then just simply there's a huge quality of

5:38

life increase with the additional hours she might

5:40

be able to mow the lawn on Wednesday

5:42

morning so that Saturday can be family day

5:45

instead of her husband having to be out

5:47

there mowing the lawn on Saturday morning. Maybe

5:49

just to have more fun together because she's

5:51

more relaxed. She's not stressed, she's not depressed,

5:53

she's not dealing with workplace drama. Instead of

5:55

being Stuck in trying to figure

5:58

out how to vacation on two, boss. The

6:00

schedules all the gotta deal with his

6:02

one job and one bosses schedule so

6:04

those are some of the various lifestyle

6:07

benefits, but it's pretty obvious financial choice

6:09

for a mother who was earning a

6:11

more modest income. However, That.

6:14

Probably caps out somewhere around

6:16

the. Fifty. To sixty thousand

6:18

dollar your number. or even if I

6:20

go really aggressive with all the savings

6:22

that can be had at the end

6:24

of the day is a mother is

6:26

earning Again, I'm just guessing maybe more

6:29

than fifty or sixty thousand dollars. I

6:31

don't think you can make a financial

6:33

argument that the family is gonna have

6:35

more money for her to be a

6:37

stay at home mom then for the

6:39

family to have a daycare and put

6:41

the children into daycare financially. I don't

6:43

see that argumentative. The numbers don't work

6:45

and the numbers don't. Work partly because

6:48

her income now is smaller significant

6:50

to exceed all of those costs

6:53

that I've described, but also because

6:55

the second financial considerations always has

6:57

to be counted in which is

7:00

is there a potential harm either?

7:02

Actual harm, our potential harm to

7:04

her long term career ambitions and

7:07

her job prospects based upon her

7:09

being out of the workforce in

7:12

a highly corporate ties society, there

7:14

is often very little value that

7:16

an employer. Is going to place upon

7:18

her and her work experience of. He takes

7:21

time outs from the workforce and then

7:23

stays at home and this is something

7:25

that a lot of women find challenging

7:27

when they go back into the workforce.

7:29

I've been kind of out of touch.

7:31

My network has grown sour before I

7:33

was miss you know corporate Pot Shot

7:35

A had all the connections, all of the

7:37

network had all of these opportunities built

7:39

up. but now you know all my

7:41

friends are our mothers have babies and

7:43

on people that I associate with I

7:45

don't even have my professional wardrobe. Anymore

7:47

and these kinds of things to, she

7:49

goes back to get into the workforce

7:52

and get a job again and see,

7:54

instead of having five more years of

7:56

experience and five more advancements in her

7:58

career, when now there's. Aid.

8:01

A. Slower pathway for her and

8:03

it may take her quite some time

8:05

to catch up from a career perspective.

8:07

So when if your income exceeds that,

8:09

I don't see how you can make

8:12

a financial argument in favor of being

8:14

a stay at home mother and so

8:16

quantitatively again with the exception that I

8:19

said, if your income is. Quite.

8:21

Modest then quantitatively financially you will

8:24

be better off always working, working,

8:26

working, working, earning money earning money

8:28

earning money and then paying other

8:31

people take care of your children.

8:34

And when I say it like that it should

8:36

great on your on your. Nerves

8:38

a little bit because wait a second.

8:40

south on trying to do but in

8:42

reality that is what is happening And

8:45

so let's talk about why. Is it

8:47

the case that this is with this

8:49

it this is what we're doing well.

8:51

First of all let's say that you

8:53

did become a stay at home mother

8:55

Will your child would have a one

8:57

to one. Day care

8:59

provider to student relationship

9:02

and that daycare provider.

9:04

For. Cells would be

9:07

a highly educated,

9:09

highly motivated, very

9:11

socially competent worker

9:13

who has. All.

9:15

Kinds of experience in filled with love

9:17

and patience for her individual child. If

9:19

you go and take your child to

9:21

a daycare, you're generally going to have

9:23

a relatively lowly paid worker who is

9:26

working in a ratio of i don't

9:28

know for two, one five to one

9:30

depending on the daycare or four or

9:32

five students to one low paid workers

9:34

taking care of your child. And so

9:36

you can automatically see where the cost

9:38

savings for daycare come from. The cost

9:41

savings for daycare come from the fact

9:43

that instead of you providing the kind.

9:45

Of mothering experience that you could

9:47

provide. you are hiring a low

9:49

paid workers to provide a basic

9:51

custodial care experience and you may

9:54

have higher and a carry he

9:56

may have environments with me. We're

9:58

child stimulation and it's there may

10:00

be benefits to the children, get

10:03

to play with others and things

10:05

like that but point is your

10:07

your substantially downgrading the quality of

10:09

care that a child is available

10:11

that that a child is able

10:14

to experience in that kind of

10:16

models. So what other so. There's.

10:18

No way That. I don't know

10:21

how to measure that on a financial

10:23

scale. How do I do? How do

10:25

I say if we know, for example,

10:27

that a huge amount of a child's

10:29

social. Emotional control is

10:31

built based upon his relationship with

10:33

his mother, and we know that

10:35

when he's taken out of that

10:37

and his subjected to being separated

10:39

from his mother, what is the

10:41

cost of that in long term

10:43

in his life. We. Don't

10:46

know. We know that subpar. We know

10:48

that is absolutely inferior. We know that

10:50

emotional regulation is enormously higher for children

10:53

who are with their mother then for

10:55

children who are in a daycare environment.

10:57

And we know that their idol that

10:59

that's measurable throughout a child's lifetime. But

11:02

I don't know how to put a

11:04

dollar figure on that. I know it's

11:06

absolutely there. I know it's absolutely measurable,

11:09

and I don't know what price we

11:11

would assign to that value. Similarly, if

11:13

we look to educational outcomes or or.

11:16

Morals or vocabulary development on

11:18

every single metrics. The child's

11:20

performance on long term social

11:22

studies will always be highest

11:24

if he is with his

11:26

mother and with his family

11:28

with his siblings or and

11:30

so we can track that

11:32

children who are. Entered into

11:34

a daycare environment are noticeably behind the

11:36

curve on all of these factors because

11:39

of the inferior social environment. But I

11:41

don't know how to put a number

11:43

on that, so I know that it's

11:45

real. I know that there is value

11:47

there, but I don't know how to

11:49

put a number on it, So I

11:52

think a lot of times what I

11:54

see happening is that it's going to

11:56

wind up being a qualitative decisions that

11:58

you simply based upon. And based

12:00

upon what you want I think

12:02

in your situation what you described

12:04

as based upon the income fat.

12:07

Or that you are in in the income

12:09

the husband or and you are too difficult

12:11

decisions. Number One: if earning one hundred and

12:14

twenty thousand dollars, you're earning A. That's because

12:16

your career is something that you've worked hard

12:18

on. You've developed herself, and you build a

12:20

strong career that generates you with her. Six,

12:22

the provide you with a significant amount of

12:25

income, so that's great. The problem is that

12:27

it's harder to leave it harder to take

12:29

that time out and say you're gonna need

12:31

more compelling reasons to do that then many

12:33

people face. However, on the flipside, your as

12:36

Husband also earned a great income. And

12:38

so you guys could still have plenty of

12:40

money based upon his income and so you

12:42

have an easier decision. If that were a

12:44

path that you would want to go down,

12:46

you have an easier decision. Then say someone

12:48

whose husband is earning fifty thousand dollars is

12:50

not easy to make it on the fifty

12:52

thousand dollar household income. So if you are

12:55

earning fifty thousand dollars and he were earning

12:57

fifty thousand dollars that would be a big

12:59

hit your lifestyle for you to start earning

13:01

you're earning and in counts in your case.

13:03

However if you're earning one hundred twenty thousand

13:05

dollars in he's earning two hundred thousand dollars.

13:07

The hit to your lifestyle would be

13:10

less a matter of lifestyle and more

13:12

a matter of few less savings. You

13:14

could live the same or similar lifestyle

13:16

to what you living now but your

13:18

savings plan would slow down. Your financial

13:20

independence plan was slowdown. What's that worth

13:22

to you. I don't know

13:24

what I would suggest to you is

13:26

that you not try to make that

13:29

decision today, but rather that you put

13:31

a plan in place so that you

13:33

could be a full time mother if

13:35

you wanted to and swear I mean

13:37

by that is any time I am

13:39

counseling a couple whose having a baby

13:42

especially baby for the first time in

13:44

his a have any inclination or draw

13:46

at all to the mother being a

13:48

full time stay at home mom than

13:50

what I encourage them to do is

13:52

to split their income. and only

13:55

live on the husband's income and

13:57

save all of the wife's income

13:59

and do whatever is necessary in

14:01

order to make that happen. So

14:03

if you have to pay down debt, or whatever you gotta

14:06

do if you just only resolve that

14:08

going forward we are only gonna live

14:10

on his income, and all of your

14:12

income gets set aside into a separate

14:14

account. That way you would

14:16

know what you're getting into if you

14:18

chose to stop earning income for a

14:20

time. Number two is there's

14:22

not really a need to decide this

14:24

stuff much in advance when you're having

14:26

a baby. So what I mean is

14:29

let's say that you get pregnant and

14:32

you're expecting a baby and the baby's expected

14:34

in 40 weeks. Okay, well fine. You

14:36

don't need to march into your boss's office that

14:38

day and say I'm having a baby, I'm done

14:40

here. And you don't even need

14:42

to do it at any time in the pregnancy. You

14:44

can take the pregnancy, take maternity leave, and then you

14:46

can always decide to quit your job in the future

14:48

if you want to. And in

14:51

today's world, although of course all of

14:53

us would like to provide our bosses

14:55

with substantial warnings

14:57

so they can hire someone else, at the end of the day,

15:00

if you want to provide your, at

15:04

the end of the day, you're better off just keeping it to

15:06

yourself. Take maternity leave and

15:08

see what happens. My observation from talking

15:10

with a lot of mothers is

15:13

that prior to the baby being there,

15:16

they often feel

15:19

more strongly about

15:22

continuing their income, and they don't worry too

15:24

much about their baby. But once

15:26

the baby's there, they tend to fall in love with their baby.

15:29

And after a few months with the baby, then

15:33

when everything has changed in terms of their

15:35

relationship with their baby, then

15:37

they see these mothers see things through

15:39

a different lens. And I watch it

15:41

happen with my wife, with every baby.

15:44

My wife is, okay, when the baby is in her

15:46

tummy, okay, fine, you know, it's a baby and we

15:49

could talk about it. But then the baby comes out,

15:51

and those first few days of a baby's life, I

15:53

watch her fall in love with the baby. And

15:55

it's just so obvious, it's so crystal clear as

15:58

I watch it happen. And... I

16:00

think that's generally a common experience. So I would

16:02

say don't try too hard to make the decision

16:04

in advance. Position yourself so that

16:06

if you wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, you could.

16:09

And then just wait and see. Wait and

16:12

see what your experience is after the baby's

16:14

there. Wait and see what happens with your

16:16

family dynamic and consider it. The third and

16:18

final thing I want to...the

16:21

final option I want to point out is there

16:24

are third options. So

16:26

I said option one is

16:28

full-time stay-at-home mom. Option two

16:30

is putting your child into a low-cost daycare.

16:33

There are many third options. So

16:35

third options include family being involved.

16:38

Third options include working from home, having

16:40

an in-home nanny, someone who's there with

16:42

you. Throughout history, we

16:45

have worked knowing these problems that

16:47

I've described. Throughout history, wealthy families

16:49

have found solutions to this. And

16:51

aristocratic wealthy families, it's generally

16:54

normal that your children would have

16:56

a good governess, a full-time governess

16:58

or nanny, someone who's fully responsible

17:00

for childcare. And so there

17:02

may be other options. And if your income

17:04

is very important to you but you're trying

17:06

to kind of split the difference, then I

17:08

think you should pursue these options. I think

17:10

you should say, how could I have family

17:13

members, how could I work from home

17:16

so that I'm more available and not spending

17:18

time commuting into the city? How could I

17:20

have family members providing care during certain times?

17:22

Could I find one individual that would be a

17:24

really great asset to our family to care for

17:27

this child so that I can continue to work?

17:30

And I think that people who are –

17:32

women who are in a situation like you're

17:34

in, where you're a somewhat high earner and

17:37

you have this desire to provide all

17:39

those positive things for your

17:42

child will often pursue something related to

17:44

that third path. Thanks,

17:46

Joshua. I

17:50

appreciate your input. My

17:52

pleasure. Anything else? That

17:55

will be it for today. Thank you. Call me back

17:57

in the future and we'll talk more.

18:00

Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi,

18:04

Josh. We spoke a

18:07

few years ago and then again last

18:09

year about my wife and

18:11

I spending extended time in South

18:14

Africa with her family. And

18:16

after we spoke, you said I should call you back and tell you

18:18

how it went. Yeah, tell me about it. We're

18:21

back and I figured out how it went. Okay,

18:24

so a couple of things that we spoke

18:26

about, I guess the rewind

18:28

is that we went from the

18:32

day after Thanksgiving late

18:34

in November of 2023 through February of 2024 and spent 90

18:41

days. I wasn't going to

18:43

be able to renew my visa to

18:45

stay. So we just stayed for 90 days

18:47

and then came back to

18:50

Minnesota. And in

18:53

our time there, we stayed

18:55

with my wife's brother-in-law in

18:57

the granny flat out back.

19:00

So we had a lot of time with my wife's

19:04

family visiting their nieces,

19:07

the nephew

19:10

and her brother and parents. And

19:12

so that was all great. You

19:14

also, you mentioned we should

19:18

maximize the time that we have and

19:20

instead of kind of

19:22

looking at things through the prism of

19:25

geo arbitrage and dollar saved

19:28

to rather utilize that time

19:30

well. So

19:32

we had some four-wheel drive

19:34

trips to Lesotho. I actually

19:37

had a brother of mine come over for the

19:39

New Year's break and we went

19:41

to Mozambique and went four-wheel

19:44

driving there and yeah, had

19:46

a great time. And

19:48

I guess I really appreciated your

19:51

perspective that you've kind of

19:53

offered through your international travels

19:56

on the podcast and found

19:58

a lot of inspiration. that. And

20:01

so it's definitely something that we're planning

20:03

on repeating again. And

20:05

I don't know for how long we can

20:07

feed snowbirds and leave the North

20:10

American winter and go to South Africa. But

20:12

while we're able to, we're going to keep trying

20:14

to do that. How old are your children? How

20:16

old were they on this previous trip? So

20:20

we don't have children yet. We were just

20:22

visiting, just visiting my wife's

20:24

family and seeing her

20:27

nieces and nephews. Perfect. We

20:30

actually are planning on starting

20:32

our family, I

20:35

guess probably planning to

20:37

have, you know, if all goes to

20:40

plan, we would try to have a

20:42

child in 2025 when we return from

20:44

our trip next year. And

20:48

that actually is one of the things that I wanted to ask

20:51

you about is if, if,

20:54

have you found any challenges with

20:56

traveling with your wife as your family

21:02

has grown while she's pregnant? If

21:05

I was to put a, put my

21:07

thumb in the wind and take a guess,

21:10

I would guess we would probably try to

21:13

have, you know, start our family

21:15

maybe two or three months

21:17

after returning from South Africa in 2025.

21:20

And so that would mean we would be traveling

21:22

during our pregnancy. What

21:27

are your thoughts on that? Yeah. I'll comment on that just a moment

21:29

before I do. You were

21:31

working from while you were abroad, you

21:33

were working from abroad. Is that correct? Yeah,

21:36

that's right. So I'm, I'm a W2, you

21:39

know, employed or employee. And

21:41

so I had, I

21:46

think we had discussed, I actually spent quite

21:48

a while in a job search looking for

21:50

an opportunity that would allow our family to

21:52

do this. And so yeah,

21:55

I worked a U S hours

21:57

in South Africa. Mostly

21:59

I would work. 2 to 11 p.m. and

22:02

I found the adjustment

22:04

was actually pretty well to my

22:06

liking except for times

22:08

where there was something going on in the

22:10

evening and friends wanted to meet up or

22:13

something like that. That was you

22:15

know a bit of a drag. The rest of it was really

22:17

nice. We had our days free, you

22:19

know mornings were all to us

22:21

and it was kind of easier

22:23

to spend our time freely that

22:25

way except for when it came

22:28

to meeting up with friends

22:30

who were on you know a standard schedule

22:32

there. That worked out

22:34

very well. How did you arrange your affairs in Minnesota

22:36

with your house and things like that so that you

22:38

could be away for that long? Yeah

22:41

so we got a sublet

22:44

for our apartment that

22:46

we rented and that situation

22:48

has just changed when we

22:51

got back. We actually moved again and

22:53

so we'll probably have to climb that

22:55

mountain again for this winter. We'd

23:00

be able to afford to go

23:03

there and still pay our

23:06

rent that we're paying here but

23:09

it was certainly convenient to have somebody

23:11

else paying almost all

23:13

the rent while we were gone.

23:15

So we'll try to crack

23:17

that code again when we go but

23:20

it wouldn't prevent us. Taking

23:25

into account all of the extra money that you spent on

23:27

activities, would you say you spent about

23:30

the same in Minnesota as compared to

23:32

South Africa? Little less, little more, substantially

23:34

less, substantially more. How would you compare

23:36

your expenses during that time? I see

23:40

now you've asked the question and

23:42

I'm a numbers guy. Okay just broadly.

23:45

Broadly we saved so I would

23:47

say we probably just

23:49

our overall spend over three months was probably

23:52

$2,000 less with far more eat dining

23:54

out there than we would have done here

23:56

and then far more in the way of

23:59

travel for or vacation and

24:01

leisure and stuff like that. That's great. Yeah,

24:04

I just wanted to draw that out because here I

24:06

got a live, real, real live testimonial that you called

24:08

me in with. And I think

24:10

when we have opportunity, we wanna share these ideas

24:12

one with another because we live in

24:15

a time in which this lifestyle that once

24:17

would have been the domain of a wealthy,

24:20

financially independent, multimillionaire to be able

24:22

to go abroad for the winter

24:25

is now something that is available

24:27

to don't

24:30

be insulted, but a simple worker, right? You have

24:32

a job and you can go abroad and here

24:34

you are, you can get out of Minnesota for

24:36

three months, go to beautiful South Africa, enjoy your

24:38

time there and enjoy a

24:41

totally different set of experiences that

24:43

really bring a stronger joie

24:48

de vivre on a daily basis than

24:51

you would sitting in Minnesota during the winter. And

24:53

yet, financially speaking, you may have even saved a

24:55

little bit of money, be a little bit ahead

24:57

of where you otherwise would have been. And that's

25:00

what's so cool about geo arbitrage and the way

25:02

that you've done it is, I think, ideal where

25:06

what I mean is you didn't move abroad,

25:08

you didn't sever all your relationships, you didn't

25:10

get rid of all your stuff, that's really

25:12

disruptive. You just kept everything just how it

25:14

is, you just went abroad or went

25:16

elsewhere for a few months. And then

25:18

during that few months, you experience a

25:20

different lifestyle and then when you return

25:22

back to Minnesota or when you returned

25:24

back to Minnesota, I would guess that

25:26

you had a newfound appreciation for many aspects

25:29

of your lifestyle there, is that right?

25:32

Yes, certainly. And it also helped us

25:34

consider what it is that we valued

25:36

in the place that we're moving

25:39

to. And so I think we've made better

25:41

decisions on the return as well. Good, I

25:43

love that. All right, I cut you off,

25:45

you were gonna say one more thing and then I'll answer your baby question.

25:50

Yeah, I was gonna say I was just, I'm very proud

25:52

of my wife

25:54

also was instrumental in

25:56

making this opportunity a reality

25:59

because she... She took

26:01

a leap in her business that she

26:03

does full-time and she actually hosted some

26:07

photographers, two different flights of

26:09

wedding photographers that came to

26:12

a safari retreat that we reserved

26:15

and we captured

26:17

wedding content for these

26:20

photographers who want to appear

26:23

adventurous and capture

26:25

interesting wedding content.

26:29

So that was a new

26:31

leap in her business and

26:33

that's another enabling feature.

26:36

So yeah, definitely planning to

26:39

redo that. That is super cool. I

26:41

love it. I love it. All right, to

26:44

answer the question, it's fairly simple. So there's

26:46

the technical or what I'll call just the

26:48

legal side. It's not dealing with the law,

26:50

it's just more of a policy. And

26:52

there's the real side. So

26:54

is it difficult for a pregnant

26:56

woman to fly? The

26:58

answer is basically no. Each airline

27:01

will have its own individual policy

27:03

related to how many weeks pregnant

27:05

you can fly. In

27:08

general, they will allow you to fly

27:10

very pregnant, although some of them will ask,

27:12

let's say you're at 38 weeks, they'll say, we'd

27:14

really like you to have a doctor's note saying

27:17

that it's okay for you to fly. But

27:19

in practice, since in

27:22

practice, very rarely is an

27:25

airline employee, in

27:27

many cases a rather low level airline

27:30

employee, going to ask a pregnant

27:32

mother how pregnant she is. And

27:35

different mothers carry their babies in

27:38

very different ways. There are some

27:40

mothers who, you know, they're at 39

27:42

weeks and you would think, ah, she's 15 weeks pregnant

27:44

and there's other mothers who are at 20 weeks and

27:46

you think she's at 39 weeks. So

27:49

different mothers carry babies in different ways and because

27:51

we all, I mean, you and I, I would

27:54

assume you feel like me, you don't even want

27:56

to ask the woman if she's pregnant, you know,

27:58

unless she's very, very clearly pregnant. pregnant and

28:00

she has confirmed with verbal affirmation, I'm

28:02

not going to ask a mother if

28:04

she's pregnant, I'm not going to say

28:06

anything about it. So airline employees are

28:08

no different. The

28:11

only reason for the policy is they would prefer

28:14

for a woman not to go into labor during

28:16

flight that makes for an inconvenient situation for

28:18

the air crew. So technically speaking, each

28:20

airline will have a policy. The policies

28:23

vary but practically speaking, no one's really

28:25

ever going to ask you about that.

28:28

What's more important for you is that you will

28:30

want to have a plan for your wife to

28:32

have high quality prenatal care. It's

28:34

very, very important that a pregnant mother

28:36

has high quality prenatal care and

28:39

it will be quite inconvenient for

28:42

you to have that prenatal care

28:45

in two locations or multiple locations

28:47

and have the same high quality

28:49

of care. And with

28:51

a mother's first baby, there's a significant

28:53

level of unknown. Because

28:56

we tend to be somewhat isolated, it seems

28:58

to me, I'm making this up, you

29:00

verify with your wife, but I

29:02

think the first birth that most women ever

29:04

attend is the birth of their first child.

29:07

And so if it were different, if she had

29:09

training as a midwife or if she had visited,

29:11

she had attended her sister's birth or her brother's

29:13

birth going up or she'd been in

29:16

that and then that would be something. But in

29:18

general, the first birth that a first time mother

29:20

in our culture attends is the birth of her

29:22

own child, which means that she has

29:24

quite a lot of skills that she needs to learn.

29:27

And your best birthing outcome

29:30

will come if your wife

29:32

feels incredibly strong and

29:34

confident and empowered and exactly,

29:36

she has everything arranged exactly

29:39

as she wants it to

29:41

be. And so I

29:44

think in general, because of that,

29:47

you will want to have a situation in

29:49

which she is fully in control and

29:52

completely has everything lined up exactly

29:54

as she wants it. She has

29:56

the exact prenatal care that she

29:58

wants. has the

30:00

exact helpers

30:02

and whether

30:04

it's a midwife or her doctor or whoever

30:07

it is that she's interacting with, she has

30:09

a very warm and comfortable relationship and you

30:11

want her to feel the strong sense of

30:13

stability in her life. So

30:16

if unless there's a strong and

30:18

clear need as to why you

30:21

need to be traveling, then

30:23

I would encourage you to skip the trip

30:25

abroad during that time. Now just

30:28

for some others in my audience,

30:30

this clearly violates the difference with,

30:32

this clearly violates my discussions on

30:34

birth tourism. And this

30:36

is I think the biggest downside of birth tourism is

30:39

that if you go

30:41

somewhere for the goal of having a baby, all of

30:43

a sudden now you insert all kinds of uncertainty

30:47

into the situation which can have

30:49

negative results. So that's much

30:51

easier I think for a mother who's had a

30:53

baby before to do it or if

30:55

you're going to do birth tourism, then you want to

30:57

have a clear reason you're doing it and if at

30:59

all possible, you want to be set up in

31:01

advance. It's just much easier for a

31:04

mother who has been through the process at least once,

31:06

maybe twice, now all of a sudden her confidence level

31:08

is very different. But if I were in your shoes

31:10

and my wife were having a first baby, I just

31:12

canceled the South Africa trip that year. Stay home, take

31:15

a car trip, go to

31:17

Florida for the winter, go somewhere where it's easy,

31:19

you can get back and forth for prenatal appointments

31:21

if you need to, take a shorter trip, all

31:23

those things are fine but I would not go

31:25

to South Africa for three months for the reasons

31:27

that I've just stated. All

31:31

right Josh, thanks for the input. And thanks for

31:33

calling back with the story. We move on to

31:36

Matthew in Florida. Welcome to the show. How

31:38

can I serve you

31:42

Matthew? Matthew in Florida. Go ahead. Hi

31:45

Josh. Sorry, just unmuting myself there. So

31:48

my question has pertains to

31:51

tithing and

31:54

before I ask the question I realize that

31:56

tithing or tenting in the

31:58

Christian tradition. It's

32:01

a very prayerful thing that

32:03

you should consider. And I'm trying

32:05

to put some quantitative reasoning

32:08

behind a certain situation.

32:11

So I had a

32:14

real estate investment project

32:16

that went south.

32:18

And long story short, they,

32:22

the bank took over the property and

32:25

out six figures. And

32:28

it kind of made me start thinking, like,

32:31

how do we tithe in

32:34

respect to big gains and

32:37

losses in investment versus our

32:40

typical incomes that are coming in, like

32:43

W2 or business income? And

32:45

so I wanted

32:47

to throw that out there and see

32:49

what your thoughts were. I think the

32:51

answer for someone who is convicted of

32:54

his desire or responsibility to

32:56

tithe from a

32:58

biblical perspective, then I think the answer

33:00

is relatively straightforward. My

33:03

understanding of the tithe would

33:05

be that you tithe on

33:07

the increase of your

33:10

wealth in whatever form

33:12

it is. And so

33:14

in the agrarian society of the

33:17

Old Testament, then the tithe was

33:19

when you harvested your crops, you

33:21

gave a tenth of your tithe to the local

33:23

temple to support the priest who were laboring there.

33:26

This was a pre-financial society.

33:29

In the New Testament, we start to see

33:31

a society functioning in more

33:33

of what we would recognize as something

33:36

related to a modern financial system. And

33:39

we don't see the tithe working in exactly

33:41

the same way because the priestly system has

33:44

changed. And that's one of

33:46

the reasons there's so much controversy around

33:48

this issue among Christians who have different

33:50

convictions, churches that have different teachings. But

33:52

at its core, the tithe is based upon the increase.

33:56

And so how I would approach that

33:58

is as you have ways to then

34:00

you tithe on your wages as you

34:02

have profits, then you tithe when you

34:04

realize the profit. So if you sell

34:07

a piece of property and at that

34:09

point in time you realize the profit,

34:11

you realize the gain, then take a

34:13

tenth of the gain and

34:15

give that away. If you sell a business

34:17

and you realize the gain, then go ahead

34:19

and take a tenth and give that away.

34:22

So it's fairly straightforward

34:25

that it should be done when you

34:27

realize a profit. I don't think you

34:29

tithe on profits that are not realized.

34:32

So if your portfolio is increased enormously

34:34

but it's just sitting there, then I

34:36

would not tithe on that. That doesn't

34:38

make sense. You tithe on

34:40

the increase or the gain and

34:43

when it's something that is

34:46

like an investment, then you tithe when the

34:48

gain is recognized. That

34:55

makes sense. I

34:57

guess in the context of, I'm

35:01

not necessarily counting on that income

35:03

to survive. Obviously I have other

35:06

income but far my investment

35:08

is oiled that's not in

35:10

a quote-unquote retirement setting where I'm

35:13

taking draws from it. I guess

35:17

what you view that is just like, hey, here's my

35:19

bucket for later and I'm

35:22

gonna be harvesting later. I'm not

35:24

taking that for my needs now. I

35:27

don't know, I'm just trying to wrap my

35:29

head around it. I

35:32

would and so that's why I used the word that

35:34

I did. I was very precise with my word. I

35:36

said when you realize the gain and

35:39

so realizing a gain has

35:41

a specific accounting meaning. There's

35:44

a difference between unrecognized gains,

35:46

recognized gains, and realized gains.

35:48

Putting it simply, an unrecognized

35:51

gain is what you have

35:53

right now in your 401k.

35:56

Meaning that, okay, I've put money in

35:58

there and it's It's

36:01

growing, but it's not

36:03

what's called recognized for tax

36:05

purposes. A recognized gain is

36:07

when you have a gain, but for

36:09

some reason you have to recognize it

36:11

or report it, usually for

36:13

tax purposes. So an example

36:16

of this would be, let's say that

36:18

you are going to convert from your

36:20

traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. Well,

36:23

you would recognize those gains in

36:25

the traditional IRA as you convert

36:27

them to a Roth IRA for

36:29

tax purposes. I'm

36:31

just saying a realized gain is just simply

36:33

money that you're receiving. And

36:35

so you can have realized gains that are

36:38

recognized and recognized gains that are unrealized. I'm

36:40

using realized here just to mean when you

36:42

actually get the money. And I think this

36:44

is in line with the basic spirit, which

36:46

is when you receive the money and you

36:48

have control of it, that would be the

36:50

time at which I think it

36:52

would be wise to pay a tithe. So would

36:55

I tithe on the increase of a 401k account?

36:57

No. If I take money out

36:59

of the 401k account, that's when I would pay it. That

37:02

makes sense. I

37:06

was overcomplicating. I

37:09

always appreciate how you're able to take

37:12

something and simplify it. Thank you, Joshua.

37:14

My pleasure. Anything else?

37:17

No, that's it for this week. Great. Thank

37:20

you very much. We move on to the great state of New Jersey.

37:22

Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today?

37:25

Hey, Joshua, can you hear me? Yes, sounds good. OK,

37:29

perfect. Well, I'm glad the last

37:31

caller introduced the topic of

37:33

apologetics. I have a question for you, but really,

37:35

actually a couple of questions. Really

37:38

coming from the other side. So I'm not

37:40

a Christian, but I have lots

37:42

of family who are in different denominations and

37:44

even some non-denominational. And one of

37:46

the big challenges that we run into is around the issue

37:48

of abortion. And I

37:51

understand that there's a general

37:53

distaste for it in that community. But what

37:55

I don't understand is, one, is

37:58

there an explicit scriptural basis for the for rejecting

38:00

abortion at any point. Second

38:03

question is, if not, how do most

38:05

Christians arise at their conclusion

38:07

about abortion? And third, does

38:09

any of that change as we learn

38:11

more about gestational development? So

38:13

I'll leave that, I'll see that up for you to answer.

38:15

And again, I really appreciate

38:18

the way you think about these things, so

38:20

I'll just, I'll leave it there. Absolutely, just

38:22

if you're able to stand in line though,

38:24

so we can go back and forth. So

38:26

the first question you asked was, is there

38:28

a specific scriptural kind

38:30

of definition as to a

38:33

specific point during pregnancy at

38:35

which abortion would be disallowed, is

38:37

that correct? Well,

38:41

I guess more generally, any specific

38:43

scriptural prohibition. Right, so

38:46

I think there would be, the reason

38:48

I'm trying to discern is to

38:50

answer the question. There would be

38:52

two basic questions. The first question would be,

38:56

from a Christian perspective, is there

38:58

a scriptural prohibition

39:00

of abortion? And

39:02

then the second question would be, is

39:05

there a specific scriptural prohibition against

39:08

abortion at a certain time? And

39:11

this I think is the more applicable debate that

39:15

happens in our society right now. So

39:18

do you have a question on both of them

39:20

or one or the other? I

39:23

guess both of them, I'd be curious to know the

39:26

answer on, but

39:28

yeah, separating it that way makes sense.

39:30

Okay, so the first thing, let's

39:33

deal with the first, actually let's deal

39:35

with the second, which

39:37

makes more sense. I

39:40

guess we'll just deal with the first one, first and

39:42

foremost. I

39:45

think in fairness, while

39:48

I do think this Bible

39:50

teaches clearly about abortion, this

39:53

is one of those topics that requires

39:56

application. And what I mean

39:58

by that is, Where I

40:01

usually hear this would be Christians

40:03

prohibition when Christians prohibit homosexuality and

40:06

people say well Jesus never talked about homosexuality

40:08

and That's fair.

40:11

That's true but

40:13

to say that Christians should

40:15

not be concerned about homosexuality

40:17

because Jesus did not talk

40:19

about homosexuality is to

40:22

demonstrate ignorance of how Christians

40:25

derive their theology and the

40:27

applications of theology So there

40:29

are lots and lots of things that

40:31

that are not written in red letters in

40:33

the New Testament that Jesus specifically talked about

40:37

everything from slavery to abortion to

40:39

sex trafficking to rape to all

40:41

kinds of things I mean if

40:43

you go down the list of

40:45

all kinds of sins things that

40:47

you being a non-christian and I

40:49

being a Christian would Wholeheartedly agree

40:51

with one another. This is absolutely

40:53

wrong. This is absolutely prohibited and

40:55

yet Yet we would

40:57

have to acknowledge that Jesus did not

40:59

Jesus specifically did not speak about them So

41:02

that's that's one thing that is important and

41:04

this does come up sometimes in abortion because

41:06

people say well Jesus didn't talk about abortion

41:08

and it's you have to quick to say

41:10

that is correct. Jesus did not talk about

41:12

abortion now to

41:14

understand this Christians

41:17

generally derive their theology

41:20

from the fullness the full breadth

41:22

of Scripture Across Christendom

41:24

there is a there

41:26

are differences in what Christians considered to

41:28

be the canon of Scripture Protestants

41:31

generally recognize the 66 books

41:33

of the Old and New Testament that are most well known

41:36

Roman Catholics have a few additional

41:38

that we'd label the Apocrypha Orthodox

41:41

Christians have a few additional and so

41:43

there's some very variation but you can

41:45

but generally speaking Christians affirm

41:47

that all of these Writings

41:50

are inspired. That's why they have been

41:52

collected to be the canon

41:54

of Scripture there were other writings that are

41:56

ancient that were rejected by early councils of

41:58

the church and But the books

42:01

that we that we bring together we

42:03

consider these all to be authoritative and

42:06

so you'll find And

42:08

then the scriptures themselves are

42:11

self-referential and so for

42:13

example There's a birth verse in Timothy in the New

42:15

Testament Letter that the Apostle

42:17

Paul is writing to his disciple Timothy a

42:20

young man that he is training He says

42:22

all scripture is God breathed

42:24

and useful for correction and for teaching and

42:26

for all the rest of it and What

42:29

he's referring to there is of course

42:31

the Hebrew Bible That's what he's referring

42:33

to and he's specifically saying that it

42:36

will be That

42:38

it will be the Hebrew Bible that

42:40

this is this is inspired and then

42:42

based upon that other

42:44

Christians in the early church have gone on

42:46

and gathered together the writings that are in

42:49

the New Testament and Affirmed these are the

42:51

these are the reliable and inspired scriptures now

42:54

in addition to that You should

42:56

also understand that some Christians

42:59

believe that all not all Christian

43:02

doctrine has to be drawn

43:06

Exclusively from the Bible itself from

43:08

the writings from the written scriptures

43:11

itself This most

43:13

famously was one of the major

43:15

divisions in the Protestant Reformation So

43:18

500 years ago in the Protestant

43:20

Reformation the early reformers Created

43:23

the five solas the

43:25

and one of the five solas that

43:27

they kind of staked their claim on

43:29

that created Protestant Christianity Which is

43:31

probably what mostly surrounds you but

43:33

Protestant Christianity was built upon The

43:37

one of the the basic ideas is

43:39

that of sola scriptura? So

43:41

that the scripture alone is

43:43

the ultimate source of authority

43:46

but the reason that there was a schism

43:48

there between Protestants as

43:50

they're known now and Roman Catholics is

43:52

because in the Roman Catholic tradition

43:55

scripture is not the sole

43:57

source of authority and

44:00

so So Roman Catholics would acknowledge

44:02

church tradition and church authority as

44:05

being also authoritative

44:07

over the doctrine

44:13

of the church and the doctrine that Christians

44:15

live by. So for example, a

44:18

Roman Catholic in the

44:20

Papal Encyclical, I forget what

44:22

it was called, I read it,

44:25

but an example would be birth

44:27

control, right? Roman Catholic theology and

44:29

dogma teaches that married couples should

44:32

not use physical

44:34

or chemical means of avoiding,

44:37

physical barrier or chemical means of

44:39

avoiding children. That is

44:41

the official teaching of the Roman Catholic

44:43

Church. That is not a

44:45

teaching that is based, that is not a

44:48

teaching that you can find in black and

44:50

white letter in the Bible. You

44:54

can find hints of it. You can find

44:56

traces of it and for that reason, the

44:58

Roman Catholic Pope wrote

45:00

that in cyclical and why that became

45:02

church doctrine, but that is not a

45:05

black and white thing. There is no verse

45:07

that says thou shalt not use

45:10

birth control. So

45:12

tradition and church authority are also valid,

45:15

also in the Orthodox Church. In

45:17

Protestantism itself, this will

45:19

be a big dividing point. So Jesus himself

45:22

said, he said, it's good for you that

45:24

I go away because

45:26

if I don't go, then the

45:28

comforter will not come. But when he comes, he

45:30

shall take all of the things of mine and

45:32

teach them to you. And

45:35

so in Protestant Christianity, many

45:37

Protestants don't affirm the

45:39

sole and exclusive teaching of Scripture as

45:41

being everything. Many Protestants would believe that

45:44

the Holy Spirit is teaching us because

45:46

that is what Jesus said. So I

45:48

myself would affirm this, that I would

45:50

say that the Holy Spirit will teach

45:53

you or will teach me something that

45:55

I need to know and

45:57

I will never contradict Scripture.

46:00

I will never go to scripture and say, hey

46:04

look, in black and white it says this is

46:06

wrong, but the

46:08

Holy Spirit is telling me with my

46:10

personalized revelation that I should do it.

46:13

I think that is wrong, but you

46:15

can in many ways have expanded application

46:18

of a principle that you see in

46:20

scriptural in your own life. And I'll

46:22

give you one specific example. I'm

46:25

a rather, this is silly, and I'm trying to

46:27

use examples that would make this simple. They'll make

46:29

this clear. I'm

46:32

a somewhat large guy, and throughout

46:34

my life, I've generally been in

46:37

the habit of keeping my shirt

46:39

buttons open because of the largeness

46:41

of my frame. When

46:43

I was in high school and had a uniform, it just wasn't

46:45

comfortable to button it all the way up. And

46:48

one time I was in my early 20s, and

46:50

I was looking at myself in the mirror, and the

46:53

top button of my shirt was unbuttoned, and I

46:55

was showing all this chest hair, and I looked

46:57

at myself and I said, Joshua, and I just

46:59

sensed, in my heart, I just sensed the conviction

47:01

that that's not the image that

47:04

you should be portraying. That's not modest. Button

47:06

your shirt. Now, that kind

47:08

of conviction would be something that

47:13

many Christians experience and

47:15

say, that I've experienced

47:17

this. I sensed what

47:19

I would label as the voice of the Holy

47:22

Spirit saying, Joshua, this is an immodest behavior. But

47:25

I would never go out and put that in

47:27

black and white and say to someone else, well,

47:29

you can't unbutton your shirt. I wouldn't create an

47:31

encyclical that says, you can't do this. It's

47:34

just a biblical doctrine of modesty, and

47:39

I wanna apply it. In that moment, I

47:41

was applying it with my physical experience. And

47:44

then there would be similar expressions of, you

47:46

would have a biblical doctrine of modesty. So

47:48

for example, in the New Testament, Paul writes

47:50

to women and he says, I want women

47:53

to be adorned with the beauty

47:55

that comes from the inside, not with

47:57

costly gold and expensive apparel and braided

47:59

hair. all of these things. So

48:01

different Christians take that in different ways

48:04

and they make different applications of it.

48:06

And so you may have a very

48:10

conservative Mennonite

48:12

group that doesn't

48:14

wear the Christians

48:16

in that group never ever wear

48:19

earrings, they never wear any kind

48:21

of jewelry, they never wear makeup, they

48:23

never do anything because they are very

48:25

fundamentalist and following the specific dictates

48:27

of that passage of Scripture. Then

48:30

you'll have other groups that are less

48:33

focused on the specific application

48:35

of don't wear costly jewels

48:38

and instead focused on applying the

48:41

spirit of it, the spirit of the idea.

48:43

And so this would be kind of

48:46

where I would be. So

48:48

I gave my wife a pair of earrings for

48:52

some present in the past but I don't want

48:54

to go around and see how much wealth can

48:56

I display on her. And in my own expression,

48:58

I want to even though that was written to

49:01

women specifically by the Apostle Paul, I take that

49:03

as applying to me as well as a Christian

49:05

virtue of modesty. And so I want to be

49:07

modest. I want to be modest in my speech,

49:09

I want to be modest in my appearance, I

49:11

want to be modest in my expression, I don't

49:14

want to go around and just talk about myself

49:16

all the time, I don't want to wear things

49:18

that are constantly going to bring attention to myself,

49:20

I want to express this virtue of modesty

49:22

but I want to do it in a thoughtful

49:25

way. So that's

49:27

a preamble to say that as we

49:30

as we go to scripture you need

49:32

to understand where doctrine comes from and

49:35

that I could wholeheartedly, I could

49:38

wholeheartedly, you can make

49:40

the argument against a certain

49:43

thing such as abortion without

49:45

specifically going to chapter and

49:47

verse and specifically identifying this

49:50

one thing and

49:52

still be perfectly correct within Christian doctrine

49:54

and each tradition or stream of Christianity

49:56

would have a slightly different way of

49:58

looking at it. And so if

50:00

you don't understand that, you just look ignorant when

50:02

you say, well, show me chapter and verse on

50:04

that. Show me chapter and verse, Joshua, as to

50:06

why you think you should button the top button

50:08

if you're sure it. It just makes you look

50:10

ignorant that you'd understand how we

50:13

derive doctrine in what

50:15

we do. Now, there's one more thing that

50:17

you need to understand is that if you go to

50:19

scripture itself, I

50:21

think it's fairly common. I'm not saying anything controversial here.

50:24

Most Christians would agree that what

50:26

you see in Christian, so in

50:29

our modern world, in the United States and in

50:31

England and various other places, we have a tradition

50:33

of what is called common law. Common

50:35

law is different than a civil law tradition. So

50:37

you have a difference between England and France, as

50:39

you have a distinction between common law and civil

50:41

law, difference between the United States and, anyway,

50:45

you have a difference between common law and

50:48

civil law country. I don't remember which country

50:50

has every single one. But in the English

50:52

speaking world, common law is the basic application.

50:54

What that means is there's not so much

50:56

a focus on a specific

50:59

set of laws that are written

51:01

down by

51:04

a government and that these are all

51:06

of the laws, but rather we draw

51:08

our legal system from the laws that

51:10

have gone on before. And

51:12

when something has gone on before, then

51:15

you see an

51:17

application of it. And

51:19

so in the US tradition, we have a

51:21

written constitution. That would be different than in

51:24

England. But we have a written

51:26

constitution, and then you have application of that. You have

51:28

case law. And that case law is

51:30

an expansion of the law that has

51:32

come before. Now, I'm not

51:34

a legal scholar. I would say though that

51:37

certainly this is the same basic system that

51:39

you see in the Bible itself. And

51:41

then I think you could say, I

51:44

would guess that probably the common law

51:46

tradition comes out of Christianity,

51:48

that we draw it from that. And so

51:50

if you go back and you study the

51:53

most detailed civil laws that we

51:55

have in the Bible, coming from the Mosaic

51:57

civil code, I'm persuaded that this is a

51:59

system of... case law. You have a basic

52:01

law, for example, you could bring

52:04

it together with just the Ten Commandments.

52:06

Here's the basic Ten Commandments, but then

52:08

you have many, many applications of that

52:10

case law, of expressions of it, of

52:12

bringing it into more focus. And what

52:14

about this situation? What about that situation?

52:16

And it expands throughout history. So

52:18

the simplest reason that Christians

52:20

would be opposed

52:25

to abortion is

52:27

because of the biblical prohibition

52:30

of murder. Thou shalt

52:32

not murder is one of the

52:34

most fundamental aspects of biblical law.

52:37

Thou shalt not murder is clearly stated in

52:39

the Ten Commandments, but prior to that in

52:42

the Noeuk Covenant, you have God clearly saying,

52:44

don't murder, and if a man takes another

52:46

man's life, then his life is to be

52:48

forfeit. He should be executed if he takes

52:50

another man's life. Murder is

52:52

one of the first sins that's recorded in

52:54

the Bible between Cain and Abel, and

52:57

from the beginning to the end of Scripture,

52:59

we have a prohibition against murder. Now

53:01

there are applications of that. What is murder?

53:03

The reason we have the different distinction

53:06

between murder and manslaughter is

53:09

because of the biblical distinction between

53:11

murder and killing, where

53:13

we clearly see application of this.

53:15

But no other verse

53:17

is necessary for

53:23

being opposed to abortion other than

53:26

thou shalt not murder. The fundamental

53:28

foundational basic ethic

53:31

of any ethical system.

53:34

So we'll

53:37

go to a couple more examples

53:39

in a moment, but I'm answering question

53:41

one to say, why would a Christian

53:43

oppose abortion? Well because Christians believe that

53:46

abortion is murder, and the Bible

53:48

says thou shalt not murder. So then we

53:50

get to the second question. We would say,

53:52

alright, well is there a point in time

53:54

at which it would be murder, and a

53:56

point in time at which it would not

53:58

be murder? So let's say... that I have

54:00

a baby and here's where just ask if you're

54:03

willing to share your perspective let's say I have

54:05

a week old baby and

54:07

I intentionally end the life of that

54:09

baby a week after he has been

54:11

from his mother's womb are

54:13

you would you call that murder if I did that

54:15

to a week old baby yourself at where you are

54:17

right now yes okay and if it

54:19

were a week prior to the birth of the child

54:21

would you call it murder if I ended the life

54:24

of the baby I think

54:27

I think I would yeah okay

54:29

so good so not all people

54:31

would agree with you because many

54:34

people have tried to come up with different theories

54:36

so I think I

54:38

don't know if he still doesn't seem as

54:40

popular as he once was but I once

54:42

read some of Peter Singer's writing writing on

54:44

this where he talked about basically we should

54:47

not that what was his

54:49

argument you gave me on the spot so

54:51

you get you get what I can do

54:54

I'll just extemporaneously but Peter Singer talked about

54:56

basically that in order for a baby

54:59

to in order

55:01

for murder to be in order for

55:03

the ending of life of a young human

55:06

being to be murder the human

55:08

being would have to have personhood and

55:10

he did not believe that personhood was

55:13

an attribute that a baby could express

55:15

prior to I forget his number but

55:17

maybe two or three years old and

55:20

so we get into the question of personhood

55:22

which is which is the fundamental debate philosophically

55:24

as the difference between ending life of a

55:26

human as compared to and murdering

55:29

a person is based upon personhood

55:31

so he said that because he didn't see

55:33

much of a distinction between a baby at

55:35

39 weeks of gestation as compared to

55:38

a baby at 41 weeks of

55:40

gestation and it's interesting that

55:42

when you have a baby the the

55:44

first that in

55:46

some in some literature related child

55:48

birthing you have the concept

55:51

of the first trimester the second trimester the

55:53

third trimester in the fourth trimester and

55:55

so the fourth trimester is the first few

55:58

months the first three months of babies life

56:00

in which the baby has been delivered

56:03

from his mother's womb, but in many

56:05

ways, he still has a very similar

56:07

experience outside of the womb as he

56:09

had inside the womb. There's

56:12

a lot more similarity between a baby that's

56:14

a two-month-old with a 32-week baby as compared

56:18

to a two-month-old with

56:20

a six-month-old baby. They're just wildly

56:23

different in terms of their development. You

56:25

could say, well, maybe,

56:27

and many people say, abortion

56:29

is the ending of

56:33

human life prior to the

56:35

physical delivering of the baby. If

56:39

you apply your reasonable thinking to

56:41

that, it's hard to draw that

56:43

line. It's hard to say that

56:45

there's a big difference between a baby at 39 weeks

56:48

of gestation versus a baby who was delivered

56:50

at 40 weeks and is one week old.

56:53

Both of them will die if

56:55

left alone, so we can't say

56:57

that personhood comes when you can

56:59

take care of yourself. A six-year-old

57:01

child will die if left alone

57:03

in most cases, so we

57:05

can't use a criteria of saying that

57:08

the child has to be able to take care of himself. Physically

57:11

speaking, then we say, well, maybe it's because

57:13

the baby can survive outside of his mother's

57:15

womb. Well, at 39 weeks, then the baby

57:17

can survive outside of his mother's womb. No

57:19

big deal, fully formed, everything's good to go,

57:21

just like at 41 weeks. There's no material

57:24

difference there. Then we say, well, then the

57:26

difference of personhood or whether abortion is wrong

57:28

or not, it's just based upon the location

57:30

of the baby. The baby is located inside

57:32

the baby's mother's body

57:34

or outside of the mother's body. Some

57:36

people believe that, but I think that

57:38

if you examine that really carefully, it

57:40

starts to break down. Then we have

57:42

to move earlier in the pregnancy, and

57:44

we have to find some other

57:47

basis of it. This

57:49

is where there's been such a big difference

57:51

with two things. Number one, ultrasound technology, where

57:54

we can see the development of the baby.

57:56

We can see the point at which a

57:59

zygote and an embryo and a fetus

58:01

start to resemble what we would recognize

58:03

as a baby versus before that. We're

58:06

pretty astonished to see how early that happens.

58:08

It's really remarkable when you start getting ultrasounds

58:10

at 20 weeks and you see your baby

58:12

there formed. It's just astonishing to see it.

58:15

Then the second thing is our ability to provide

58:18

pre – forgetting

58:21

the name of it – the NICU for

58:24

a very premature baby, provide life-giving care

58:27

for a preemie baby. If

58:29

you have a very premature baby, certainly

58:32

the statistics change a lot, but you move

58:35

all the way back to 25 weeks

58:39

and you might get decent survival rates for

58:41

a baby with medical care. Those

58:44

arguments just don't seem like they're

58:46

philosophically consistent. What's the difference

58:48

between 25 weeks and 27 weeks? You

58:51

go back to Roe v. Wade

58:53

and this creation of this trimester

58:55

system and it just seems philosophically

58:57

inconsistent. I

59:00

think what often Christians look at is they

59:03

go back and they say, at what point

59:05

in time is the baby a separate

59:08

entity? It

59:10

took quite a while for there to

59:12

be the broad agreement that there is

59:14

now among many Christians, but

59:16

basically the point in time at which the baby

59:18

is a separate entity is it fertilization? The

59:21

time at which there is a unique DNA that is

59:23

different from the DNA of the mother and of the

59:25

father basically is fertilization.

59:27

That's the point in time. Then

59:30

there is scriptural evidence that

59:32

could be pointed to indicate

59:35

this from a theological basis. Probably

59:38

some of the famous verses

59:40

in Psalms, the

59:42

writer of Psalms says that, �You knitted

59:45

me together in my mother's womb, and

59:48

I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.� There's a verse

59:50

in Jeremiah that says, �Before I formed you

59:52

in the womb, I knew you.� Let me

59:55

repeat that. �Before I formed you in

59:57

the womb, I knew you.� you

1:00:00

were born, I consecrated you." And

1:00:03

then you can go through

1:00:05

and I mean there are

1:00:08

other applications of that that you can

1:00:10

find. And there's, I can't

1:00:12

cite chapter and verse at the moment extemporaneously,

1:00:14

but we can go back and there were

1:00:17

laws in the Mosaic law about striking a

1:00:19

woman who is pregnant and

1:00:21

what happens there. And so there's

1:00:24

clearly an acknowledgement that there is

1:00:26

a, that God is involved

1:00:29

in the forming together of life

1:00:31

in the womb. So,

1:00:33

so the primary

1:00:35

doctrine is thou shalt not murder. And

1:00:38

then secondarily, in addition to those verses

1:00:40

that talk about God's knowledge of the

1:00:42

baby, there is a clear consistent

1:00:45

theme in Scripture that God Himself

1:00:47

is the author of life. And

1:00:51

it's not necessary to deny

1:00:53

that a male and

1:00:55

a female through sexual

1:00:57

copulation are involved in

1:00:59

that process in order to affirm

1:01:01

that. The Scripture clearly teaches that

1:01:03

God is the author of life, not

1:01:06

independent of a man

1:01:08

and woman's activities, but together

1:01:10

with them. And so we see throughout

1:01:12

history, sorry, throughout the Bible, there's basically

1:01:14

an uninterrupted theme from the beginning to

1:01:16

the end, that God opens the womb

1:01:19

and God closes the womb. And

1:01:21

so if you bring these various strains together,

1:01:24

you arrive at the modern Christian conviction.

1:01:26

You arrive at the modern Christian conviction

1:01:28

that, that life begins

1:01:32

at conception, that God is involved

1:01:34

in the actual giving of life,

1:01:37

and life begins at conception primarily because where

1:01:39

else can it be placed? And as

1:01:42

we have increasing levels of

1:01:44

scientific evidence, then that argument

1:01:46

has been easier for Christians

1:01:48

to make because now we

1:01:50

have scientific evidence that supports

1:01:52

what in many cases is

1:01:54

a theological conviction. Let me add two more things

1:01:56

and then I'll just stop for your comments. There's

1:01:59

two more things. that are associated with this though.

1:02:02

The other theme that is really important

1:02:06

doctrinally is that Christians

1:02:08

value persons,

1:02:11

they value people, and

1:02:13

one of the most consistent expressions

1:02:15

of the Christian religion has

1:02:17

been to care for those who

1:02:20

are unwanted. Christians are clearly commanded

1:02:22

multiple times to care for widows

1:02:24

and especially orphans, that

1:02:26

providing care for orphans is

1:02:29

a fundamental basis of Christian

1:02:31

religion. If you went back

1:02:33

to the early Christians in the Roman Empire at that

1:02:35

time, abortion, safe methods

1:02:37

of abortion were not common. So it's

1:02:39

my understanding of history that in the

1:02:41

Romans it would be very frequent that they

1:02:43

would go ahead, the baby would be birthed,

1:02:46

but then the baby would just be set

1:02:48

aside on the trash heap. And it's my

1:02:50

understanding that Christians would go out and regularly

1:02:53

walk, work through the trash heap finding abandoned

1:02:55

babies, and they would take those babies, they

1:02:58

would adopt them, and they would raise them.

1:03:00

And this has been the same thing that Christians have

1:03:03

done all around the world in many places, is

1:03:05

that any time a baby is unwanted

1:03:08

or abandoned, then Christians go and adopt

1:03:10

the baby because we have to. It's

1:03:12

a fundamental commandment of our maker that

1:03:14

we are to care for orphans. And

1:03:17

then you say, well, all right, that's fine, but

1:03:19

why would there be a society, why would somebody

1:03:22

not want a baby? This is

1:03:24

where you get to other aspects of sin

1:03:26

that often, what Christians deal with.

1:03:28

If you look at the reasons that people abort

1:03:30

their babies, generally speaking,

1:03:34

can I speak generally? This

1:03:36

is non-inclusively, but many of the

1:03:38

reasons that a mother

1:03:41

would abort her baby would

1:03:43

be related to some expression of

1:03:45

sin. Sometimes it would be

1:03:47

sexual sin. In

1:03:49

some cases, a young

1:03:52

mother was engaging in sexual relations with

1:03:55

a man, and they weren't married, and

1:03:57

they were fornicating, and now there's a

1:03:59

baby. and I don't want the babies inconvenient.

1:04:02

In many cases, it would be

1:04:04

due to sins of greed and

1:04:06

sins of, I mean, I

1:04:09

just label it as greed. If you

1:04:11

look at the pro-abortion folks today and

1:04:14

you listen to their arguments, their basic

1:04:16

argument is, in many cases,

1:04:18

when you go back to the couple years

1:04:20

ago, there was a shout your abortion. I

1:04:22

listened to all these testimonies of women who

1:04:24

were talking about their abortions. The basic theme

1:04:26

as to why these women would kill their

1:04:29

babies was that the baby was an inconvenience

1:04:31

to my career. The baby was gonna keep

1:04:33

me from making more money. The baby was

1:04:35

gonna keep me from doing better financially. And

1:04:37

this is repulsive, this kind

1:04:39

of thinking is repulsive to the Christian mind.

1:04:42

To put money in front

1:04:45

of a person who needs you is

1:04:48

just repulsive. And

1:04:51

so, and then you look at the societal expressions

1:04:53

and there's all kinds of just practical expressions of

1:04:55

it. So it's the totality of

1:04:58

all of those things that is based

1:05:00

upon it. And I should also note

1:05:02

that if you look for, if you

1:05:04

look at the arguments of pro-abortion activists

1:05:08

or proponents, basically then

1:05:10

you have to deal with the

1:05:12

philosophical arguments for autonomy. That's the

1:05:14

basic, one of the

1:05:16

basic philosophical arguments in favor of

1:05:18

a woman being able to abort

1:05:20

her baby at any time

1:05:23

for any reason whatsoever. It's autonomy, I can do what

1:05:25

I want. And autonomy, this

1:05:27

kind of extreme form of autonomy

1:05:30

is not a Christian virtue or

1:05:32

a Christian philosophy. And that,

1:05:34

I'll skip that discussion for the moment, but

1:05:37

those are the, those are kind of the,

1:05:39

some of the many reasons as

1:05:41

to why you have such a strong

1:05:44

Christian support for abolishing abortion

1:05:46

in all of its forms. Okay,

1:05:48

I'm gonna need to

1:05:52

go back and listen to

1:05:54

digest all of that. You'll be

1:05:56

both. Yeah, well, first I wanna

1:05:59

say thank you. for going

1:06:01

to such lengths. This is a

1:06:03

topic that, as I said in the beginning, it's

1:06:05

difficult to speak with Christians about because I often

1:06:07

run into the scenario where it's

1:06:10

kind of like a moral dumb sounding like, what do

1:06:12

you mean? What do you mean? Why is it wrong?

1:06:14

It's wrong because it's wrong. Okay, well let's go a

1:06:16

little deeper than that and try

1:06:18

to understand what the motives are here. So

1:06:20

I appreciate you taking the topic on and

1:06:22

sharing your beliefs. It's really helpful for me

1:06:24

to understand. We could probably

1:06:29

fill out the rest of your show talking about this, so

1:06:31

I want to respect the rest of your listeners. And

1:06:35

I guess my, in

1:06:38

conclusion, my concern

1:06:40

is that things like

1:06:42

complete prohibitions on mostly anything

1:06:45

tend to ignore the consequences

1:06:47

of those prohibitions. So abortions

1:06:50

that are performed illegally with

1:06:53

less than sterile techniques for

1:06:55

multi-medically necessary reasons, kind

1:06:58

of those stories get pushed down and

1:07:00

not paid attention to in favor of

1:07:02

the how well she sinned and so

1:07:04

therefore she was wrong, so she deserves

1:07:07

whatever she gets. That's

1:07:09

my concern, is really about the total prohibition

1:07:11

on anything. And I think that if we,

1:07:16

I guess in conclusion I would have one final

1:07:18

question. Is there a

1:07:21

point of compromise that you think

1:07:23

Christians and non-Christians could make on

1:07:25

abortion at any point in the

1:07:27

future or will abortion at

1:07:30

any point, beginning

1:07:32

a conception, always and forever

1:07:34

be considered a sin

1:07:36

and therefore rallied against politically?

1:07:39

Fair questions. And there be any compromise. And

1:07:42

well we're not going to do two hours on

1:07:44

this. Any listener who wants to skip this has

1:07:46

a skip button and a fast-forward button. So I'm more

1:07:48

interested in two thoughtful

1:07:51

men who care about these issues and want

1:07:53

to deal with them in a straightforward

1:07:57

way. I'm more interested in our having a

1:07:59

productive conversation. and I pay

1:08:01

for the hosting, anyone who wants to skip can

1:08:03

skip. I feel that one

1:08:06

of the great problems that we face

1:08:08

in our society is that when these

1:08:11

important and heavy and

1:08:14

difficult moral issues are

1:08:17

dealt with, people try to deal with them too quickly,

1:08:19

and these are difficult things. So

1:08:23

in terms of, first, I think that it's

1:08:25

important for anybody who is, I guess one

1:08:28

thing that I found really helpful is

1:08:30

the time at which I was

1:08:33

fully able to empathize

1:08:35

with a mother who

1:08:38

aborts her baby. And

1:08:41

I'll tell you specifically where that happened. My wife

1:08:43

used to watch this show called Call the Midwife.

1:08:46

She got interested in it. And there

1:08:48

was a scene in Call the Midwife, or

1:08:50

various scenes, in which it was dealing

1:08:52

with this direct topic. And it

1:08:55

was clearly, the writer of the

1:08:57

show was clearly doing it at doing it to

1:08:59

get at the coat hanger issue that you're specifically

1:09:01

dealing with. But the writer of

1:09:03

the show, at the time, abortion was prohibited in

1:09:05

England. The show was set in England. And

1:09:08

there was this very

1:09:11

poor mother with many children, and

1:09:14

this very poor mother with many, many children became

1:09:19

pregnant again, and she couldn't care for the children

1:09:21

that she had. And the

1:09:23

show writers wrote her in a situation where

1:09:25

she felt like she had no other option.

1:09:28

And so she went and she obtained a back

1:09:30

alley abortion. And

1:09:32

I don't remember if she,

1:09:35

I think she lived, but it was very severe

1:09:37

and she was going to die, and who knows.

1:09:40

But it was that time in which I was

1:09:42

filled with empathy. And I'm

1:09:44

really glad that I saw that, because it

1:09:47

seems like I have to go through experiences for

1:09:49

me to have empathy with people. And

1:09:51

when I have empathy, I'm able to be more,

1:09:54

I'm able to face things more

1:09:56

straightforwardly. At its

1:09:59

core though, empathy. or kind

1:10:01

of a toxic form of empathy can't

1:10:03

be our beginning place in anything because

1:10:06

we can empathize all the way,

1:10:08

you know, to the greatest moral

1:10:10

evil you would ever you would

1:10:12

ever imagine purely from empathy

1:10:14

perspectives. So we need

1:10:16

to begin by using our rational brains

1:10:18

and thinking about things logically

1:10:21

and then make sure that we

1:10:23

have dealt with the emotions appropriately

1:10:25

and that we're genuinely actually providing

1:10:27

care for the people involved. And

1:10:30

what I find is that in the difficult

1:10:32

cases, usually

1:10:35

so the difficult

1:10:37

cases are actually much simpler if we

1:10:40

begin with a logical argument

1:10:42

and then we move

1:10:44

then to how do we do this in an appropriate way.

1:10:49

So you mentioned difficult

1:10:51

situations and then you talked about people

1:10:54

dying with illegal abortion

1:10:57

procedures and things like that.

1:10:59

So first, let's deal with

1:11:01

or straightforwardly, let's deal with

1:11:03

the most common objections which

1:11:05

are rape, incest

1:11:07

and abortion necessary

1:11:09

because of the life of the mother, where there's danger to

1:11:11

the life of the mother. If

1:11:14

we look at these logic, I'll just give you

1:11:16

my case is that if we assign personhood

1:11:19

to a baby and

1:11:22

personhood is a philosophical term, basically we mean

1:11:24

that I have rights, you

1:11:26

have rights, the father has rights,

1:11:28

the mother has rights and the baby has

1:11:30

rights. These are persons and we're

1:11:33

going to treat the baby as a human being

1:11:35

with human rights. If

1:11:37

we do that and then just

1:11:39

follow that train of logic forward,

1:11:42

then we have everything that we

1:11:44

need to resolve those three most

1:11:46

commonly cited situations

1:11:49

and arrangements. There

1:11:52

are two separate trains. So if

1:11:55

a baby is conceived in rape or

1:11:57

a baby is conceived as a product of

1:11:59

incest, then in

1:12:01

that situation we need to

1:12:03

understand that the only morally

1:12:07

righteous person involved

1:12:10

is the baby. The baby is

1:12:12

the only innocent party. Excuse me. In the

1:12:14

case of rape I'm not trying to say

1:12:16

that the mother is is not innocent.

1:12:18

What I'm saying is that

1:12:21

the baby is the most

1:12:23

obviously truly innocent person. So

1:12:27

what we have in the case of rape

1:12:29

or incest and a baby conceived in rape

1:12:31

or incest is we have multiple

1:12:34

moral agents. In

1:12:36

the case of rape the guilty party

1:12:39

is the father. The

1:12:41

mother may or may not bear some responsibility

1:12:44

but let's assume that she's

1:12:46

totally innocent. The

1:12:49

baby is also totally innocent

1:12:51

and we don't right moral

1:12:53

wrongs with more moral wrongs.

1:12:56

So if I come and

1:12:58

I murder your

1:13:01

brother we

1:13:04

don't right the wrong of my

1:13:06

murdering your brother by you going

1:13:09

and murdering my mother. We

1:13:11

know that. We know that while it might

1:13:13

feel good to kill someone else and it

1:13:15

might get some kind of vengeance it doesn't

1:13:18

solve the moral wrong. So

1:13:20

the same thing that happens in rape the

1:13:22

morally guilty party is

1:13:24

the rapist. That's whose

1:13:27

life should be forfeit. The

1:13:29

baby is the truly innocent

1:13:31

party. Then you get to

1:13:33

well what I commonly hear if I talk to

1:13:35

someone well you don't want a mother to see

1:13:37

the face of her rapist

1:13:40

for the rest of her life. If you read

1:13:42

the stories of mothers who have faced

1:13:44

that in some cases the

1:13:46

baby himself or herself winds up

1:13:48

being an important part of her

1:13:51

healing from the trauma of this

1:13:53

great evil that was committed against

1:13:55

her. In some cases the

1:13:57

baby can be adopted but in no

1:13:59

case case is the moral

1:14:01

evil of rape made right by

1:14:04

murdering the innocent baby. Similar

1:14:06

with incest, same basic thought process

1:14:09

applies, is that the baby is

1:14:11

the innocent party and we

1:14:13

should not go out and murder

1:14:15

innocent people just because other people

1:14:18

commit great wrongs and great evils.

1:14:21

With regard to life of the mother, if

1:14:23

we ascribe personhood to the baby and

1:14:26

to the mother, then we have

1:14:28

a proper moral framework in which to

1:14:30

deal with difficult situations. We

1:14:32

know how to triage situations. What

1:14:35

happens in abortion is that if

1:14:37

a mother's life is in danger, then

1:14:40

we automatically assume that the right answer

1:14:42

to that is the death of the

1:14:44

baby. That's not

1:14:46

always the right assumption. It's my understanding. I'm

1:14:48

not a medical doctor and this could be

1:14:51

wrong, but I think it's right. I

1:14:53

am not aware of any medical procedure

1:14:55

that would require us to

1:14:58

intentionally end the life

1:15:01

of a developing fetus in

1:15:03

order to save the life of a mother.

1:15:06

There may be many circumstances in which the

1:15:08

baby must be delivered. The

1:15:10

mother is experiencing preeclampsia or some

1:15:12

potentially life-ending disease. We

1:15:16

may need to deliver the baby and

1:15:18

clearly we may deliver the baby knowing

1:15:20

that the baby will die. If

1:15:23

the baby is very young, we know

1:15:25

that the baby will die, but we

1:15:27

don't need to take active steps to

1:15:29

kill the baby before delivering the baby.

1:15:31

That's the difference between abortion versus a

1:15:34

medical triage situation in which we're weighing

1:15:37

the balance of two important lives, the mother

1:15:39

and the baby. We're doing

1:15:41

our best that both of them would be alive,

1:15:43

but in many cases we know that the baby

1:15:45

may die because the baby is not fully developed

1:15:48

and we have to protect the life of the

1:15:50

mother. If we just describe personhood, then we

1:15:52

know how to deal with this. We know

1:15:54

morally that when there's a great accident,

1:15:56

an airplane accident or a great war, we

1:15:59

know morally And when you go out on the battlefield,

1:16:01

that you might be a one and you might be

1:16:03

a three, and we're going to first take all the

1:16:05

ones and the twos, and if you're still alive when

1:16:07

we get to the threes, you might make it. But

1:16:10

when the guy going around triaging all of

1:16:12

the casualties is riding

1:16:14

on your face with a sharpie, and he rides a three,

1:16:16

he knows that you're probably going to be dead. So

1:16:19

we can deal with those things morally speaking.

1:16:22

Now in terms of what

1:16:24

about is a woman just going

1:16:26

to abort her baby and be ... Let's say

1:16:29

that abortion were made illegal. Let's

1:16:32

say that guys in my camp

1:16:34

who want to abolish human abortion

1:16:36

win. And it becomes

1:16:38

the law of the land at

1:16:41

which abortion by any

1:16:43

means or mechanism, be it physical,

1:16:46

chemical, at any stage of pregnancy,

1:16:48

is made illegal. Are people still

1:16:50

going to abort their babies? They

1:16:53

might. Human history would indicate that at

1:16:55

the end of the day, if we

1:16:58

want ... If anybody wants a baby to die, then

1:17:00

we can do that. The basic reason we kill

1:17:02

babies is they can't defend themselves. Just

1:17:06

like Bill Maher last week, Bill Maher's

1:17:08

comments that made the news. It's

1:17:10

like, okay, I can see that it's murder, and I'm

1:17:13

kind of okay with that. The reason we murder babies

1:17:15

is they have no means of self-defense. And

1:17:17

if they did, then we wouldn't murder

1:17:19

them. So it calls on

1:17:22

those of us who do have

1:17:24

a means of imposing our will

1:17:26

on other people for morally righteous

1:17:28

reasons to do so. And we

1:17:30

have to be those who defend the babies. But

1:17:32

at the end of the day, we're not going

1:17:35

to end murder just by making murder illegal. As

1:17:37

far as I know, murder is illegal everywhere in

1:17:39

the world. And as far as I know, people

1:17:41

still murder one another. But

1:17:44

that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. That

1:17:46

doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. If an

1:17:49

action is immoral, and that's a

1:17:51

big if, but if I'm

1:17:53

right, and abortion is

1:17:55

an immoral act always, then

1:17:57

it would not be a problem.

1:18:00

for there to be a law that prohibits an act

1:18:06

of law. So, for example, I

1:18:08

think, although I would have to go and check state by state,

1:18:10

and I don't

1:18:22

know, but why is suicide a crime?

1:18:25

Well, it seems like the dumbest crime in the

1:18:28

world. After all, the dude's dead. You're

1:18:30

going to make it illegal for him to commit suicide.

1:18:32

It's the dumbest thing in the world. But

1:18:34

the signaling importance of law is

1:18:36

that law sets the standard that

1:18:38

we should look to. And

1:18:41

so, suicide should be illegal.

1:18:44

It should be an illegal act so

1:18:46

that people have one more reason

1:18:48

out of many to not try

1:18:51

to commit suicide because that destroys

1:18:53

a society. And I'm not

1:18:55

a legal theorist, but that's where I would like

1:18:57

to discuss with regard to saying,

1:19:00

well, aren't women going to harm themselves

1:19:02

with a back alley abortion? I

1:19:06

don't know. I would guess so.

1:19:08

After all, people do horrific things all

1:19:10

the time no matter what the law

1:19:12

is. And if somebody wants

1:19:14

to kill another person, they're going to find someone

1:19:17

to kill someone else. What

1:19:19

I don't think we have an obligation to do is

1:19:22

to facilitate murder

1:19:25

in a safe, comfortable

1:19:27

environment. After all, it's never safe or

1:19:29

comfortable for the baby. The baby is

1:19:31

the one who always winds up dead.

1:19:33

And since babies can't defend themselves, you

1:19:35

and I, who can defend morally innocent

1:19:38

persons, you and I have to be

1:19:40

the ones that stand up and defend

1:19:42

the baby. Now, there are

1:19:44

many practical outworkings that we simply don't

1:19:46

know. We don't know

1:19:49

all of the impact of things.

1:19:51

We don't know how to do things. And the other

1:19:53

question you said was, is there a point of

1:19:56

compromise or will we always be arguing

1:19:58

about it? I don't know.

1:20:01

What I do know is that the current

1:20:03

system we have is immoral. What

1:20:05

I do know is that, just as a

1:20:08

simple example, if there

1:20:10

were anybody in my life who

1:20:12

came to me and said,

1:20:15

I'm going to abort my baby, but

1:20:18

if I don't, would you do something else? I

1:20:24

would have dumped any baby. I

1:20:27

can't say anyone in the world because I'd be careful. I

1:20:30

would adopt any baby that I had contact

1:20:32

with in order to save his life from

1:20:34

being aborted. Right

1:20:37

now, there are so many

1:20:39

societal problems that we have with the

1:20:41

adoption system, with all kinds

1:20:43

of issues that are

1:20:46

not being attended to because we have

1:20:49

a completely dysfunctional system. There

1:20:51

are many solutions that we haven't created

1:20:53

even yet that we

1:20:56

could create. Just putting

1:20:58

it simply. I've said this to multiple

1:21:00

people. I've said this to people that I have known. I

1:21:02

said, listen, if you ever found

1:21:05

yourself pregnant and you weren't

1:21:07

going to keep the baby, I just want you to

1:21:09

know that I'll adopt the baby because I feel like

1:21:11

it's my moral duty to do that. If

1:21:14

I'm going to be against abortion and

1:21:16

I'm not going to be willing to

1:21:18

adopt children, then I have a problem.

1:21:20

I need to be super careful about

1:21:22

that. That doesn't mean that I always have

1:21:24

to do it. We

1:21:27

need to be careful with what we create. In

1:21:29

general, there are all kinds of other systems

1:21:32

that are not created, that are not

1:21:34

done. My wife and I, we went a

1:21:36

number of years ago and explored adoption.

1:21:40

I still am interested in adopting children. I

1:21:44

walked away from that experience visiting with government

1:21:46

agencies. I walked away from that experience saying

1:21:48

basically, there's no possible way that I'll ever

1:21:51

be able to adopt a baby. The

1:21:54

hardship of that, there aren't enough babies

1:21:56

that are even available, and then the

1:21:59

cost and the hardship and everything of that,

1:22:01

it's just that it's a really difficult

1:22:03

scenario. And so I can't go into

1:22:05

it, but my point is that we

1:22:08

need to start from first principles and ask

1:22:11

ourselves these deep philosophical questions that you and

1:22:13

I began with, then continue

1:22:15

that on and then try to

1:22:17

find solutions that don't involve

1:22:19

moral wrong. And that's not always going to

1:22:21

be easy yet. We shouldn't pretend it is.

1:22:24

We're adults. We have to deal with things that are hard.

1:22:27

But we need to be careful that we keep what

1:22:29

is right and what is wrong

1:22:31

in clear focus or

1:22:37

there's no limit to where we can go. And this

1:22:39

would be my kind of comment of this monologue

1:22:41

and then I want to hear your response. But I

1:22:43

had an experience in 2005 that shook me to my

1:22:46

core. I

1:22:49

was in Guatemala in 2005 and I was

1:22:51

up on top of a pyramid,

1:22:58

a temple that was there. And

1:23:00

this is one of the temples with the local, I don't

1:23:03

know if they were Mayans, I forget the tribe now,

1:23:05

but it was a temple that was used for

1:23:07

human sacrifice. And I sat there on

1:23:11

that temple and I

1:23:13

pictured the thousands and thousands and

1:23:15

thousands of babies that were sacrificed

1:23:17

right there on that pyramid.

1:23:23

And I don't know

1:23:25

if I wept or not, but I want

1:23:27

to weep when I think about it just

1:23:29

because it really opened my eyes. And

1:23:32

if you look throughout history, you and I

1:23:34

in the modern world, in our modern civilization,

1:23:37

we are living in a world

1:23:40

that is formed by men

1:23:43

with moral courage

1:23:45

who spread the message of moral

1:23:49

virtue. That has

1:23:51

never been easy and it

1:23:53

is not the common experience of mankind.

1:23:56

The argument that we're having or the discussion,

1:23:58

you know, the I use argument in

1:24:00

a philosophical sense. The argument that we're having at

1:24:04

this time is

1:24:07

something that we could only have in today's

1:24:09

world, where you and I are trying to

1:24:11

think through these issues as seriously as we

1:24:13

can and reason with one another and reason

1:24:16

with our neighbors in public and make

1:24:18

arguments. You and I are not resorting to

1:24:20

force. You and I are not

1:24:23

picking up guns and shooting each other,

1:24:25

and that is vanishingly rare throughout human

1:24:27

history. Normally in human history,

1:24:30

you just might make right. And

1:24:32

it's the same with every expression

1:24:34

of warfare, it's the same with

1:24:36

anything. And you and I are

1:24:39

not fundamentally different than those Mayans

1:24:41

who sacrifice their babies to

1:24:43

their God in cold blood. There's no

1:24:45

real difference between you and I, except

1:24:48

that we have been raised in a

1:24:50

society that cares about moral virtue. So

1:24:52

we need to be super careful that

1:24:55

we don't ever stray away from that,

1:24:57

but rather that we continue to proceed

1:24:59

on this societal direction. And we'll

1:25:02

have to develop new systems,

1:25:04

new institutions that cause, but

1:25:06

I don't want to get away from the fact that most

1:25:08

of the time, the

1:25:11

root cause of abortion

1:25:14

is sin. It's people knowing they're doing wrong

1:25:16

and wanting to do it anyway. I've spoken

1:25:18

with a lot of women who do, excuse

1:25:20

me, I've listened to a lot of women

1:25:23

who do abortion ministry,

1:25:25

and I've spoken to a handful of

1:25:28

them. And if you will go

1:25:30

and talk to anti-abortion activist women

1:25:32

who reach out to young women who

1:25:34

are aborting their babies, you will find

1:25:36

that the things that you and I

1:25:38

are talking about now, the

1:25:41

discussions of rape, incest, and life of the mother, a discussion

1:25:43

of well, how will a woman, will a woman be damaged

1:25:46

if she does a back alley abortion and she harmed,

1:25:48

etc. This is not

1:25:50

the vast majority of cases. The vast

1:25:52

majority of mothers who are murdering their

1:25:54

babies are doing it because the

1:25:57

baby is an inconvenience to their life and

1:25:59

the baby can't can't defend himself and they know what

1:26:01

they're doing is wrong and they're taking joy in

1:26:03

it. I know that it sounds

1:26:05

harsh for me to say that, but I've listened to

1:26:08

enough of them who were actively talking to women in

1:26:10

that situation and I've seen enough of it come out

1:26:12

in the public that I think that my statement is

1:26:14

not incorrect. I

1:26:17

didn't answer the, is there going to always be ...

1:26:21

Is there going to be a point of compromise? I don't think there's

1:26:23

going to be a point of compromise ever. Well, I

1:26:25

think what you're going to see ultimately is I think

1:26:27

that in the fullness of time, abortion

1:26:30

will be illegal in many

1:26:33

places, not all places,

1:26:35

but probably many places. If nothing else,

1:26:37

the reason for that is that people

1:26:39

who are pro-abortion kill their babies. One

1:26:42

of the reasons that ... One of the

1:26:44

challenges that men like you face who are

1:26:46

not particularly religious is that

1:26:48

religious people don't tend to be

1:26:50

around ... Sorry, non-religious

1:26:52

people don't tend to be

1:26:54

around for very long. I think

1:26:57

the future of the world is almost

1:26:59

certainly more religious than it is today. If

1:27:01

we go back and we look at the

1:27:03

... If we look at the statistics related

1:27:06

to atheism from say the 1980s as compared

1:27:08

to today, we see that non-belief

1:27:11

in God, non-religious belief has

1:27:13

dramatically declined and we see that the

1:27:16

future is basically being built by people

1:27:18

who are religious. If you

1:27:20

look at the religious fault lines, if you look

1:27:22

at the lines in our world today, if

1:27:25

you look at our society, the people who

1:27:27

are productive and who have babies are

1:27:30

generally religious, and the

1:27:32

people who don't have babies are generally not.

1:27:36

People who kill their babies, there's lots of

1:27:38

people who would ... It crosses on their

1:27:40

back of their car that kill their babies,

1:27:43

unfortunately, but in general, the people who kill

1:27:45

their babies are generally non-religious. The people who

1:27:47

welcome their babies are generally religious. If

1:27:50

you look at the sexual practices of the religious

1:27:52

versus the non-religious, non-religious sexual practices

1:27:54

generally don't result in babies, or

1:27:56

if they do result in babies,

1:27:59

they generally cost 30 or 40 thousand

1:28:01

dollars to pay someone to birth a baby for

1:28:03

them, which has its own slave market that we

1:28:05

have to deal with. People who

1:28:07

are religious generally have babies pretty

1:28:09

easily and naturally. And so if

1:28:12

for no other reason, birth rates are on the side of

1:28:14

the religious people, and

1:28:16

generally speaking, many of the major religions of

1:28:18

the world are pretty united in their prohibition

1:28:21

of abortion. And so if for no

1:28:23

other reason, I don't think there's going to be a

1:28:25

compromise, I think there's going to be a very difficult

1:28:27

time right now in the United States as

1:28:29

we see of political effects and

1:28:31

legal cases and things like that.

1:28:34

But in the fullness of time, generally

1:28:37

speaking, it seems obvious to

1:28:39

me that babies

1:28:41

are worthy of

1:28:44

our defense. It's

1:28:46

also obvious that we're going to be pretty

1:28:48

desperate for babies in the future as we

1:28:50

continue to live through population

1:28:52

collapse. And generally, religious

1:28:55

people tend to outproduce and

1:28:58

out-procreate non-religious people. And

1:29:00

so it may just be a function

1:29:02

of demographics and not a function of

1:29:04

moral argumentation. I'm hoping it comes

1:29:06

faster, but for that reason, I don't expect

1:29:08

a compromise. In the fullness of time, I

1:29:10

expect that eventually abortion will

1:29:12

be hopefully abolished throughout the world, but it'll

1:29:15

probably be a while before that happens. I

1:29:17

spoke for a while, so please share anything that you want to say.

1:29:20

I didn't mean to go quite that long. That's

1:29:23

fine. I don't know that I could speak for as

1:29:25

long as you've got a lot more experience on the mic than I do.

1:29:29

I think I agreed with almost everything you

1:29:32

said, with a couple of caveats. So yes,

1:29:34

I also don't want to live under some

1:29:36

law of Hammurabi where you murdered my brother

1:29:38

and therefore I murdered your mother and were

1:29:40

square. That's obviously wrong. I

1:29:43

don't want to live in a society where murder

1:29:45

is just openly accepted and it's okay to do

1:29:47

and everyone turns a blind eye. That's also obviously

1:29:49

wrong. I think from a

1:29:51

values perspective, just strict values, you

1:29:54

and I are probably pretty closely

1:29:56

aligned. I too am a father. I

1:29:58

love my babies. I... certainly

1:30:01

appreciate everything that they offer to me

1:30:03

and if someone told me that at

1:30:05

39 weeks they were going to try

1:30:07

to abort them, yeah

1:30:09

I would I would fight them through the nail. My

1:30:12

issue comes up in where

1:30:14

we start defining personhood. You know I

1:30:16

know you had said that personhood begins

1:30:18

at conception and I've

1:30:20

had trouble with that so a little more background.

1:30:22

I was formerly a Christian for a long time

1:30:25

but I started having I guess

1:30:27

whole kind of poke in that around

1:30:29

questions where it was just kind

1:30:32

of a doctrinal faith answer and

1:30:34

my I guess my general synopsis

1:30:36

is that it's hard for

1:30:38

me to accept answers like that when it

1:30:41

seems that time and time again the modern

1:30:44

apologetics from Christians tend

1:30:47

to try to assimilate

1:30:50

scientific findings instead of just

1:30:53

you know looking back at

1:30:56

the way the doctrine has been ascribed for

1:30:58

decades and saying okay well this was clearly

1:31:00

wrong and we're going to update. No it's

1:31:03

okay we'll find a new scriptural verse that

1:31:05

is permissive of these things that we now

1:31:07

know to be scientifically true without a question

1:31:09

of a doubt. So

1:31:12

all of that to say I guess the main

1:31:14

difference comes up when we start talking about

1:31:16

personhood. I can't

1:31:18

say I think personhood begins at conception. In fact

1:31:20

I don't think I would. I also

1:31:24

don't think it begins at birth that

1:31:27

that seems to me to be kind

1:31:29

of equally flawed in thinking and

1:31:31

whatever side of the argument you're

1:31:33

on I think at

1:31:35

least for my worldview both of those have some flaws

1:31:37

to them. What

1:31:39

I think is that we're running into or

1:31:42

we will at some point run into a

1:31:44

scenario where we know a lot more about

1:31:46

what makes a human brain

1:31:49

conscious and at the end of the

1:31:51

day I think we care most about

1:31:54

the humanity of an embryo

1:31:56

or a humanity of a fetus. I

1:31:59

scientifically don't think there's much difference

1:32:01

between a zygote or a

1:32:03

blastocyst from a goat or a newt or a

1:32:06

human or any other animals. We look at them

1:32:08

under a microscope they're all gonna look very very

1:32:10

much the same. There's certainly a

1:32:12

point when from

1:32:15

an embryo perspective there starts

1:32:17

to be morphological changes and again same I'll

1:32:19

offer the same credentials you did. I'm not

1:32:21

a doctor. I'm not a gestational

1:32:24

scientist. Just I know enough

1:32:26

from reading to be a little dangerous. We're

1:32:29

gonna run into a point where we know a

1:32:31

lot more about when the consciousness enters

1:32:35

or develops in the brain from electrical

1:32:37

signals and impulses and neurons firing than

1:32:39

we know right now and I

1:32:43

guess my concern is that that

1:32:45

will kind of slide through the news

1:32:47

cycle as unimportant because everyone has already

1:32:50

decided when human

1:32:52

consciousness begins for them and to

1:32:55

me human consciousness is really the thing that we care

1:32:58

about here that separates us. I

1:33:00

don't see any evidence for a

1:33:03

soul being breathed into a zygote.

1:33:08

It's very difficult for me just to accept that as a

1:33:10

matter of faith because it's not something that I possess. So

1:33:13

I'm I guess the reason I asked

1:33:15

about the are we ever going to reach a period

1:33:17

where we can come to

1:33:20

some agreement. It's under the hope that

1:33:22

at some point we'll know more than we do right

1:33:24

now to be able to say okay definitively 12 weeks

1:33:27

20 weeks whatever it is. This

1:33:29

is when this this thing can feel

1:33:32

pain, experience human consciousness and

1:33:34

that is the that's

1:33:36

really what we care about. So

1:33:39

it's difficult for me to accept

1:33:41

the just the basis that it

1:33:43

begins that personhood

1:33:46

to use the term used begins at

1:33:49

conception and I think

1:33:51

the the challenge we run into in our society

1:33:53

is that a lot of a lot

1:33:56

of the a lot

1:33:58

of the most vocal proponents on

1:34:01

the anti-abortion side tend to

1:34:03

use the notion that there can

1:34:05

be no exceptions to this. You

1:34:09

frequently hear it from, I guess, my side of the

1:34:12

argument, well, if you don't wanna have an

1:34:14

abortion, then don't have

1:34:16

an abortion, I get that.

1:34:18

And I would support that. And

1:34:21

mind you, I'm not pro-abortion. I

1:34:25

think I feel similarly to you that

1:34:27

if someone I knew were preparing to have

1:34:29

an abortion, I would really strongly consider having

1:34:32

them deliver the baby if they were later term

1:34:34

and raising the baby myself, because I think that's

1:34:36

a strong value to have if you can do

1:34:39

it. I

1:34:42

guess I'm, as

1:34:45

usual with these conversations, they come down to a matter of, do

1:34:47

you believe that souls exist or that souls don't

1:34:50

exist? And if a soul

1:34:52

is breathed into a human at conception,

1:34:54

then your side of the argument

1:34:56

makes perfect rational sense. From

1:34:59

my side of the argument, without that belief,

1:35:01

the rationality is kind of

1:35:03

lost to

1:35:07

just not knowing exactly where that

1:35:09

point lands. To me, it's

1:35:11

not the beginning, it's not the end. We just don't know

1:35:14

enough yet. So I guess that'll

1:35:16

be my response. I

1:35:18

think your critique of

1:35:20

Christians or various religious

1:35:23

people wanting to update their

1:35:26

theories as scientific evidence emerges

1:35:29

and say, look, we got it right, is a

1:35:32

very valid one. And

1:35:34

so I wanna affirm you in that critique.

1:35:37

I don't know that it's always, I

1:35:41

don't know that the critique is

1:35:43

always applicable, but it certainly can

1:35:45

be something that people do. And

1:35:47

the world is flat, well, look, the Bible says the world is

1:35:49

fat. Well, the world is round, look, the Bible says the world

1:35:51

is round. And you

1:35:54

see various people do that from various religions.

1:35:56

And so I think that that's

1:35:58

a fair critique. And it can be. something

1:36:00

that people would do. It

1:36:03

may also be true that we don't have answers. You

1:36:07

and I would be fully shared in that

1:36:09

we don't necessarily have answers. The

1:36:11

end of the day, we're going to be saying, �This seems

1:36:14

best to me. I don't see

1:36:16

another place to put this.� I would say,

1:36:19

as an example, can

1:36:23

I acknowledge that it's difficult

1:36:25

to accept an 82-celled organism

1:36:28

that I can't see

1:36:30

as a person? Certainly

1:36:33

I would acknowledge that. It's much easier

1:36:35

for me to see a 41-week baby as

1:36:37

a person than a 41-hour fertilized

1:36:41

whatever it's

1:36:43

called at that stage of gestation as a

1:36:46

person. I would

1:36:48

acknowledge that openly,

1:36:51

that in terms

1:36:53

of human intuition, one

1:36:56

is much easier to relate to than the other. I

1:37:00

don't see where else you would put it. I

1:37:02

think you see that working out in our debate

1:37:04

on this subject, in our discussion on the subject,

1:37:06

that if you went back 20 years

1:37:09

and � what was Bill Clinton's quote? � President

1:37:11

Clinton, �abortion should be safe, legal,

1:37:13

and rare.� You look at the

1:37:15

argument today. That was something that I think really

1:37:18

a lot of people were united

1:37:21

on at that time, that

1:37:23

you would have had guys like you and me that would

1:37:25

have said, �Well, we have different � I don't think so,

1:37:28

but okay, I understand.� That legal thing is

1:37:30

close enough. Maybe

1:37:32

we could share this to some degree.

1:37:35

What we see, for whatever reason, is that

1:37:38

that is not where we are right now.

1:37:40

You see the

1:37:43

strong form of � so the

1:37:45

pro-life camp is not

1:37:47

a united camp. It's pretty squishy. Right

1:37:50

now, you see a strong moral

1:37:52

movement in the anti-abortion

1:37:54

crowd coming from the abolitionists,

1:37:57

those who want to abolish human abortion.

1:38:00

that abolitionist movement is

1:38:02

gaining ground on

1:38:05

the pro-life camp. And then you see

1:38:07

in the pro-abortion camp, you see a

1:38:10

widespread saying of, listen,

1:38:16

we just want, we will not

1:38:18

tolerate any restrictions whatsoever. I

1:38:20

often wonder if this is just an expression of

1:38:22

the US American

1:38:25

legal or political system that

1:38:27

creates this environment for us. Because if you go

1:38:29

around the world, it seems to me that most,

1:38:33

other than perhaps Canada, I don't know of

1:38:35

a country in the world that has more

1:38:40

rights to abortion than

1:38:42

the United States. I would

1:38:44

say Canada certainly has more, but there's probably

1:38:46

one or two others. But abortion is very

1:38:48

highly restricted in much of the world, especially

1:38:50

in the European world where we have a

1:38:52

common heritage as compared to the US system.

1:38:56

And I don't know, I guess is my point. I don't know.

1:38:59

I do have one question though. Is there a

1:39:01

reason since we've discovered DNA and since

1:39:03

we can measure DNA, would

1:39:06

you be willing to accept the baby's

1:39:08

separate DNA as a sufficient

1:39:10

evidence of personhood, of a unique

1:39:13

identity? I'm

1:39:17

not sure. My

1:39:20

initial kind of gut

1:39:22

check response is yes. But

1:39:25

I haven't considered that. I'll have to take that back

1:39:27

with me and mull over it a little bit. I

1:39:30

think if there is a scientific

1:39:33

solution, I think it would be that one, at

1:39:37

least in terms of our current scientific knowledge.

1:39:40

That one and then just the general

1:39:42

intuition of rights. As

1:39:44

I see it, maybe it's Peter

1:39:47

Singer. And

1:39:50

I would say that one of the things that's interesting is

1:39:52

I think there are a variety of things that are related.

1:39:54

If you go and read Singer's writings, one of his

1:39:57

most important contributions and

1:40:00

his sphere was his writings

1:40:02

on speciesism and the

1:40:04

preferential treatment that humans receive as compared

1:40:06

to animals. And so

1:40:09

you interact in today's world

1:40:11

with many ethical vegans, ethical

1:40:13

vegetarians as they style themselves

1:40:15

that basically don't distinguish between

1:40:17

human persons and animals

1:40:20

in terms of rights. And

1:40:22

so you see people trying to defend animals

1:40:25

and get animals into courts and give

1:40:27

animals the same rights that human beings

1:40:29

have. And I think that's kind

1:40:31

of the logical outflow as well. I see these three

1:40:33

issues as related. Number one,

1:40:35

abortion is related.

1:40:38

Number two, euthanasia is

1:40:41

kind of the second expression of it because

1:40:43

many of the arguments around

1:40:45

abortion have a natural fellow argument

1:40:48

in the face of euthanasia. And

1:40:50

as you see euthanasia spreading around

1:40:52

the world, then I think

1:40:54

those are naturally related in terms of

1:40:57

the same arguments that I would use

1:40:59

to defend the rights of

1:41:01

a baby are the same arguments I

1:41:03

would use to oppose euthanasia. And

1:41:05

then the same arguments that of autonomy

1:41:07

that someone would use to promote

1:41:10

the right of a woman to abort her baby

1:41:12

would be the same arguments that would

1:41:15

be commonly used to defend

1:41:19

access to euthanasia. And then the

1:41:21

third would be simply arguments

1:41:24

related to animals and

1:41:26

our rights over animals or our

1:41:29

defense of animals and everything associated

1:41:31

with speciesism. The most obvious expression

1:41:34

of that being in the ethical,

1:41:36

vegetarian, vegan world. And

1:41:39

so I think they're related. And I think that

1:41:43

maybe there will be a... I don't think

1:41:45

that science is ever going to create some

1:41:47

system of rights. So far, if

1:41:49