 Well thank you guys so much for being here. In this breakout I wanted to talk a little bit about some of this near and dear to me and that would be pro-life activism. Before I was engaged in Catholic apologetics, especially full-time, my first foray was into pro-life apologetics. That's how my role as an apologist really got started. So I want to talk about that, about where we're going as a movement, things we have to watch out for, and then I wanted to make things pretty dynamic actually to have a lot of time for Q&A and for things you're wondering about in pro-life arguments, what pro-choice people are saying, how we move forward as a movement because we're in a momentous time really. So let me set the stage a little bit. Like I said, before I got involved in being a Catholic apologist, so when I was in high school I converted. I was interested in apologetics because I had to go through all the objections myself before I came into the church. That was in March of 2002. And then when I was a senior in high school, so I came into the church when I was a junior in high school, when I was a senior I remember, well yes, here's how the story goes of how I got involved with the pro-life movement. There was a girl who invited me, she went to a very tiny, tiny, tiny Catholic high school, like the smallest Catholic high school you've ever been to. You've been to a small Catholic high school, this one is smaller than that. I went there once for a senior graduation and it was one person. So he was like student body president, valedictorian, homecoming king. I've actually heard about another one of these at a tiny Catholic high school where it was like two siblings, or like one person and two siblings. Like how awful would it be if it's like your brother and it's like he's valedictorian, president, homecoming king, all this other stuff because you only know the person in class like them more than you? So tiny Catholic high school and they were only like 15 of them. So they all agreed to invite somebody to their, they wanted to have a prom. So they all said we're all going to invite somebody who doesn't go to this school so we can have 30 people. So it's still not as bad. And so she invited me and then I went and met her dad and you know being like a teenager going to meet and now I am the dad, but I have boys. So I'm like, off you go. See if you have a girl you're just like, you know all your hair just starts to migrate south basically. It's like a state of terror. When you're a dad you're like go get them. Off you go. But then being the teenager, I'm like, hello sir. I'll have her back by 1030. But he was the president of the state right to life organization. And so we developed a friendship from that point and he introduced me to the issue of abortion, to pro-life arguments, pro-life books. I just devoured them and I felt convicted. Well, I need to do something about this. That's if no one's doing something, I need to do something. But I really wasn't pushed into action until 2006. That was when I was a junior at Arizona State University. I was studying to get a history degree. I was planning to become a high school history teacher. And a pro-life organization visited our campus with these huge pro-life displays. They were 18 feet high. So they would have been as high. It would have been, yeah, as high as where it goes up to just a little below that ceiling. 18 feet, 40 feet wide, put up on the front lawn with pictures of unborn children before and after abortion. And surprisingly people got really upset. People were really upset, which I expected them to be upset. But I thought they would come up to us and say, oh my gosh, where is this happening? What can we do about this? But surprisingly enough, nobody asked about that. Instead, people would come up to me and say, how dare you put up these pictures? They were so mad at me. And I mean, I was very compassion empathetic with people. But as the day drug on, it was very hard for me not to be a little bit glib here or there. Like, how could you do something like this? Excuse me, why are you being so mad at me? Do you think I did this to these babies? Like, I understand if you're mad at me for that. And so I saw, well, I wasn't actually a volunteer with this organization just yet. I saw them doing this and thought, wow, what's, what is going on here? And so I went over there and started dialoguing with the pro choice people who came to look at this exhibit. And that's where I got started with engaging people in the pro life argument. By the way, the reaction that I would get from people when they would see these pictures and be completely offended and angry about it, the pictures of abortion, but still passionately defend legal abortion. It's a morally perverse thing. And it's hard to see it when you're in the moment right then and there. But usually it takes a long time to reflect back on history to see the moral perversity. It reminds me of a film based on a, based on a book. It's called The Boy in the Stripe Pajamas. Has anyone ever seen it? Yeah, get ready to cry your eyes out. Well, any story about the Holocaust, you know, you should obviously cry about it. The story is about an eight year old boy named Bruno, whose father is a officer, one of the commanding officers for a Nazi concentration camp. And they're moved from the city to live outside of this concentration camp. The family is Bruno, his mom, dad, and Bruno befriends a boy inside the camp. He goes up to the barbed wire fence. The boy's name is Shmuel and he thinks they are farm workers and that he's wearing pajamas. He doesn't understand what's going on. And he go and one day, you know, he makes his way to the camp and finds us out and asks his dad about it. Two things in the movie stuck out to me. Number one, he asks his dad, who are these people? And he said, son, they're Jews. You have to understand, son, these people, well, they're not really people. And the C, I'm like, that sounds eerily familiar. Okay. But the thing that really struck me was, you know, there's a scene in the movie where Bruno's mother and father are having an argument. And she is just livid and laying into Bruno's father, the mom, saying, how could you do this? Why would you move us? Why would you expose your son to something like this? You are so irresponsible just to try to climb ladder your job. You would move us outside a place like this. And of course, it's morally, it's moral lunacy that the thing she's most angry about is living outside of a concentration camp and not that a concentration camp exists. It's moral lunacy. Just like being really mad that you see a picture of a dismembered baby, but not that it's legal to dismember babies. That is moral lunacy. And yet people can't, they can't see it. And it's our job to help them to see it, but to do so in a gracious way. And so that's when I got started engaging others, going to these different university campuses and talking with people and training others. And I felt from that time, when I was in my early twenties, my mission would be to go out, if we're going to ever change the laws, people would say, when are we going to change the laws? And I'd say, look, we live in a democratic republic. The laws really only change once you change enough hearts. Though we can't change the laws while we have a supreme court decision that strikes down every law that we try to pass to protect unborn children. But we have to keep at it. If we can change enough hearts and minds, we can really change society itself. So that's where I saw my movement. And that's what I saw when people had asked me, what do you think is going to happen in Roe v. Wade? I am, I am just such a Debbie Downer. I am an introverted, melancholic, pessimistic, not necessarily pessimistic, but I don't often get my hopes up about things. That's your little glimpse into my personality. Then I married this girl who's this little blonde lady who's super bubbly, sanguine, always is optimistic and always hopelessly disappointed. I know it's my birthday on Wednesday. Maybe my parents will come visit to town. You never know. I'm like, oh, Laura, they're not coming. And now this reflects in our two oldest children. Matthew is like Laura and Thomas is this little melancholic introvert who remembers everything he sees or hears all the time and has now caught up with his brother academically. But he's the more pessimistic one. When their grandparents visited, their grandparents left, Matthew says, maybe Mimi and Papa will come back tomorrow to surprise us. And then Thomas says, Mimi and Papa are gone, Matthew. They are gone. They're not coming back. So I'm like, oh, there it is. There it is right there. And he was four. He was four. And he's just like, here's how it is. I wasn't born yesterday. I was born four years ago, and I've learned what this world is like. And so when people would ask me, even leading up to the Dobbs decision, I did an interview with Psy Kellett for the Catholic Answers podcast, and he asked me, what do we do after the Dobbs versus Jackson decision? I said, well, you know, no matter what happens to that decision, we'll have to keep pressing on, thinking in the back of my head, I'm just going to have to, I got to keep pro life spirits up when the football gets snatched away again. That is a reference, of course, to the peanuts comic strip. And that if you've been, if you've been pro life, well, how many people here remember the Roe versus Wade decision being handed down? Okay. It's very, now you're the people, see, I made fun of Matt frat. He said he was going to cry in his talk, and now I'm getting, now I'm getting emotional because when Dobbs versus Jackson was handed down, I called my mentor, the guy whose daughter I went to prom with who showed me all this stuff, because he had been fighting this since before Roe versus Wade as well. You know, he was aware of it before Roe versus Wade, and then Roe kicked him in the high gear and he had to do something about it. And I called him and I just thanked him for bringing me into this movement and training me. And I said, I was so grateful that you lived to see the day that if I'm pessimistic, I didn't think, if I didn't think I was going to live to see the day Roe versus Wade to be overturned, then I definitely didn't think people who saw Roe when it was handed down would ever, there would be anybody left who saw it, who would see it be overturned. And I was pleasantly surprised. And so pray, we pray, we pray to God for that. And so everything leading up to that, like I said, pro lifers, we've gotten into this habit where we're like Charlie Brown in the football, Lucy always ends up snatching the football away and we think we're going to kick it. But we also have to be able to persevere. Reading news articles that were, it's so funny reading the news articles about this decision, things like pro-choice Democrats outraged at the, that overturning Roe versus Wade that Republicans and pro life pro lifers, how could they do something like this? It's like, you know, we've been saying we're going to do this for 50 years, right? It's not like, why are you acting all outraged and surprised? Like we had this really sneaky maneuver or something. We've been telling you for 50 years that justice, that the laws must be amended for the sake of justice. And we have worked through the right way to do that, through the courts, through education, to consistently not to change public opinion, but also even just to hold the line. And that's what's interesting because if you look at other moral issues, when you look at, for example, so-called same sex marriage, that came over the country, the culture like a tsunami, we went from one point where the majority of people were opposed to so-called same sex marriage to just a few years later, the majority are in favor. But with abortion is very different. It's more like World War one. It's just more like trench warfare and we can't move the needle as much, at least with everyone as a whole with young people we're seeing big gains in people who are being pro-life. Well, there is a weird thing about why we're gaining with young people. So a good and a bad. It's good, young people have, they have their own 4D ultrasound images of when they were, when they were born. Or now with really young people, Gen Alpha, that's my kids, they're Gen Alpha now. People are probably live streaming their ultrasound in the womb and they have a TikTok account from when they were like 18 days old. So I'm like, okay, the other problem is that Gen Alpha and Gen Z, the youngest generation, they're pro-life because teen pregnancies and teen sexuality are at some of their lowest rates because people of those ages don't actually spend time in physical proximity with one another because their idea of friendship is essentially through a screen. So there's not as much of a need to defend abortion because there's not as much worry about premarital sex. You don't have to worry about premarital sex because if you're not in the same room together, it's, I mean, that's the 100% effective method of preventing an unintended pregnancy. Just not being in the same room with somebody, you know. So whether that, how good or bad that is, that's a mixed right there. I remember when the Dobbs versus Jackson decision was handed down. And it's so funny now, I'll explain to my kids forever, like living through history, where I was when that happened, and I'll share that with you. I was on a trampoline because I have small children. Well, I was waiting by my computer, had the laptop up and I was on a SCOTUS blog, Supreme Court of the United States blog. SCOTUS blog is always the first to get breaking news on the court. So I'm sitting there hitting refresh, hitting refresh, hitting refresh. And John Paul, my two-year-old, comes up to me. He's pulling on my pants side, side, side, outside, to pointing to the trampoline. And like, what do you get? I don't have time for you. I'm trying to help babies, you know. No, I go, I take him out to the trampoline. Well, because it's, this is June, now because it's Texas and we're going to heat wave right now, I actually have to spray the thing down to get our feet on it. And so I, so I'm just, I'm only a, not a totally neglectful father, I'm a semi-neglectful father. I'm jumping on the trampoline, looking at my phone, refreshing. I think it's fine to be on your phone before your kid can remember you're a bad parent. So before that, it's just like, you're golden before they think you're all checked out. And then I see the first case and it was a, it was about a logistical issue, a technical issue with Medicaid. And I was like, ah, they're not going to release it today. Yeah, I'm not going to do that. So I go and I take him off the trampoline. I walk upstairs and I walk by my computer. I think, okay, all right. I open it up, I hit refresh. And then on the SCOTUS blog, I see Dobbs is out. And it's like, and then in the next line, Casey and Rowe are overruled, are overturned. And just like my heart dropped and I was just brought to, brought to tears, that to have lived to see the day. But as I said last night, it's not the beginning. This is not the end of the fight. And what I'm concerned about, what I worry about is that a sense of complacency will fall over pro-life advocates. They have done studies on this when it comes to social movements. And when a social movement thinks it is winning, it does not try as hard. And that's been shown across social movements time and time again. And that was really shown by the pro-choice movement. And I think they're now seeing the error of their ways and they're going to change some of their strategies. Because one of their strategies for the longest time was to ignore the issue. Although that was a smart issue for them at that time, because when you actually look at the issue of abortion, honestly and graphically, the pro-choice position can't win. It just can't because of how viscerally evil this is. And because of the pain that many people associate with abortion. So the pro-choice movement would say, well, we're not going to debate this issue. We're not going to talk about it. We're not going to even mention the A word. We're going to talk about reproductive health. We're going to talk about choice. We're not going to talk about, we're not even going to say the word abortion, much less have a debate. For example, a few months ago in the spring, I debated one of the sharpest pro-choice philosophers on the scene today. A guy named Nathan Novus. Nathan teaches at Morehouse College, I believe. And he's published several papers and a book on the issue of abortion. And so we were going to have a debate. We had a debate at Emory University. It was sponsored by the Emory University Medical Students for Life. So different medical students had got together, wanted to do this. And Nathan personally reached out to the pro-choice medical students at Emory University, saying, do you want to co-sponsor this debate? We'd love to have you involved. And what they said was, no, abortion is not up for debate. We're not going to debate this. We're not going to talk about this issue. And so then when I go to Emory, I look out in the audience and the only students that were actually present, and this amazed me actually, the only students who were present were the pro-life students in the club. No other Emory students wanted to come to to see this event. They're just, if they're pro-choice, they're not interested. I also find it hard that people who probably call themselves pro-life are not as interested as well. I already know about all of that. And so, but I think pro-choice advocates are seeing, well, if we just keep, it's not up for debate. And Nathan on his blog writes, yeah, it is. Why do you think these laws are all being passed? Why do you think things are changing? We have to confront this issue. And that's the same for us, that if we think, oh, good, Roe vs. Wade is overturned, so we're done. No, we're not done. It's like, in episode four, when they blow up the Death Star, it's not done. It's not like, yeah, obviously everybody can go back and we should have a weekend where we cheer and celebrate on Yavin 4. That's fine. That's well deserved. But we can't just sit on our rumps because the pro-choice movement will be back with their AT-AT walkers and we're going to be caught flatfooted. Everyone's like, what is he talking about? I'm sure that's an old enough movie for nearly everybody here to be able to appreciate. But it's true, though. It's funny, people ask me, okay, what do we do now? Immediately after, what do we do right now? And I said, take a weekend off. This is a time where we can, and I did, I took my kids out to dinner every night. I just spent lavishly. We bought a cake for the babies to celebrate because we did work. So it's okay. We worked very hard. This is a significant victory that has now moved a major hurdle. But now, with Rowe gone, Dobbs versus Jackson takes a place in society that is similar to another Supreme Court case, and that is a case called Washington versus Glucksburg. Washington versus Glucksburg is an interesting case. It was handed down in 1999, and there was a group of doctors and terminally ill people in the state of Washington who were suing for the right to have physician-assisted suicide, because physician-assisted suicide was illegal in the state at that time. And so they sued the state, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court, which, by the way, you would never have this ruling today. You would never have this particular ruling today. This ruling was unanimous, nine to zero. Nine to zero, the court said there is no right to assisted suicide in the constitution. And so unanimously, the court affirmed that there is no right to a suicide, that the Constitution doesn't say anything about it, and we can know there is no right to it because state statutes prohibited suicide throughout our nation's history. So clearly, it was never thought of as any kind of a right. Even though punishments for a suicide might change over time, nobody ever thought anybody had a right to this kind of thing. So Washington versus Glucksburg said that the issue of assisted suicide was something that there is no right to it in the Constitution, which means you can't force it to be legal in all 50 states, but you also can't say that it must be illegal in all 50 states. It's something that the Constitution doesn't speak of, so every state gets to decide. So then later after that, you had states like Oregon, California that would pass measures to promote it, and other states that would prohibit it. I often cite this example with friends who are pro-choice lawyers or they're pro-choice legal scholars. They'll say things like, we can't have a patchwork where it's fine in some states, but not others. That'd be legal, legal anarchy, it'd be chaos, no. We already have that. There are things that are legal in some states and things that are illegal in other states. So you have physician assisted suicide in California and you have freedom in Texas. You don't have freedom in California. That's why we got on the last U-Haul out of town. Just like, jump on, quick, let's get out of here before they close the borders off. And now we're in a similar position when it comes to abortion. So what do we need to do now moving forward? Not only have we had our time to celebrate this momentous victory moving forward, what are things that we have to have to watch out for? Well, the biggest thing is we have to continue doing what has worked before when it comes to promoting the pro-life argument. And the thing that has worked before is focusing on the one question that matters most. What are the unborn? Because the other side loses whenever we talk about that particular issue. We lose when we talk about something that is not what are the unborn. So, and you see, and I was watching the media reports after the Dobbs versus Jackson decision where they would have a pro-lifer on and a pro-choice person and they're talking about things. And the pro-choicer always got the upper hand when they would say things like this, well, now that it's illegal, what are you going to do to help all of these kids that are in foster care? And the pro-lifer lost immediately when they said we're helping everybody. We're promoting programs. We're caring for people. That's what we want to do. Because then the pro-choicer, all they have to do is say, but you voted for this politician or you didn't vote for this spending bill or you didn't vote for this and you lost. But you won when you say, what are you going to do about all help all of these kids that are in foster care now? The pro-lifer says, well, I'll tell you what we're not going to do. We're not going to kill them. We're not going to kill them in foster care and we're not going to kill them in the womb. Would you agree those things should be illegal? Done. We have to do that because if people think that abortion is just a debate about what's the most prudent way to address poverty, we've lost. We've turned abortion, whether abortion should be legal or not, into a question like, should we have a flat tax or not? Or should we increase welfare benefits? Those are prudential judgments. There's things that people can reasonably disagree about. We can't reasonably disagree about other basic questions of morality, like whether it should be legal to lynch people because a mob says they're guilty or whether it should be legal to dismember a human being because he or she is unwanted. That's why we always have to focus on the one question. What are the unborn? So in our conversations, whether it's in public, whether it's with media, whether it's with friends or family, when people bring this up, we have to focus on that. And then one of the most common things that's coming up now is people are bringing up hard cases. So they're bringing up the cases that pull at the heartstrings. So they look at these cruel pro-lifers and they lie. Well, some people are mistaken because they just uncritically follow the liars. I remember, I always appreciate John, my mentor, because I was this young, bright-eyed, naive, 21-year-old, like, I'm going to change the world and I'm going to help people. And I would say, John, don't be as mean to these pro-choice people. They're just sincerely mistaken. He's like some of them are, but Trent, I got to get my John voice suit on. He's wearing a hat. Trent, let me tell you, some of these pro-borts, they will lie through their freaking teeth. They will lie through their freaking teeth looking at you. And don't you believe if they're okay with killing babies, what won't they do, Trent? And then it's so funny. In fact, I'm always on my, you know, I'm young. I have energy. I've gotten sleep. I want to always be perfectly gracious with everyone. And now that I'm nearing 40 and I have three kids, I'm like, don't give me that crap. All right, let's stick to this right now. I am slowly losing the patience I once had when I was a young. And also I've had experience of pro-choice people lying to my face, lying about my colleagues, committing dirty tricks to get us, you know, blocked from being on campuses, lying right to my face. And those words always stuck with me from John, that the activists, not just the people who uncritically follow this, but the people leading the charge, if you're okay with killing babies, obviously you're going to be okay with lying. You're okay with doing whatever it takes to win. So that's why going forward, we also have to remember what Jesus said in Matthew 10.16. Be as wise as serpents, but as gentle as doves. As wise as serpents, but as gentle as doves. I love what Jesus says that the children, he says the children of this world are often wiser, more prudent than the children of the kingdom. And that's true, right? Have you ever met like you got really holy people and they're just, they're wonderful, but sometimes they get taken advantage of by the children of this world. And so it's, it's kind of sad. That's kind of a debate, not a debate, but it's something my wife and I wrestle with, because we homeschool our kids. They go to, they're homeschooled in two days a week. They go to a, they go to a homeschool co-op. All right. So, and we love it. You know, they're just with all the other homeschool kids, but my wife and I, we were both public schooled, government schooled, I should say, our entire lives. So it's like we were put through the ringer, you know, put through the social pecking order. And especially the most cruel one, of course, being public middle school or junior high. Like, I don't know who thought of that. I really think once a kid turns 12, they should just be kept at home and then reintroduced to school when they're 16. Like that gap period, like they just shouldn't even be let out. They should just put them under lockdown. Yeah. So it's like, I was talking to Father John Parks last night, we're reminiscing because Father Parks was one of the volunteers in our youth group when I was a teenager and now how things have changed since then. And I said to him, I don't understand why the Lord gave 12 year olds puberty. That'd be like, if I gave a handgun to my two year old, like you don't even know what to do with this. I got to kill somebody. So when it comes to, you know, when we are out in the world, we have to balance that. We have to be wise to tricks and deception, but without becoming jaded and cynical. So it's a balancing act, I believe that we have to make when we're engaging others. And that's why we always have to, going forward, we have to understand in this pro-life fight, we have to stay connected to the Lord and to the sacraments, especially to reconciliation and the Eucharist. I will tell you this. So I, you know, I did pro-life apologetics. I graduated as a state university. I worked for the state right to life organization, Arizona right to life, worked for justice for all pro-life groups. So I did full-time pro-life work from 2008 till about 2007 to about 2012. Yeah. Cause then I started working for the diocese of Phoenix as their pro-life coordinator. That was the last position I held before I went to work with Catholic Answers. That was in 2012. I'm kind of grateful though, that I'm not in the pro-life movement full-time. I am so grateful for the people who are in that movement. We need them. I will do anything I can to help them, but it is a tough and grueling. If you are full-time, you're at a pregnancy resource center. If you do pro-life education on campuses, if you do it full-time, it takes a toll. I believe it takes a toll on your mental and spiritual health. After being in the trenches for several years, I've seen it because I've seen the burnout. I've seen marriages fall apart. And it makes sense to me. I mean, come on, spending every day trying to convince people to not decapitate small children and to be constantly told that you are a bigoted awful person for saying this, you would start to think you're living in a crazy world. And when you think you live in a crazy world, you start to think, maybe I'm just crazy, at least deep down inside. And so it's hard. You end up having to develop things like dark humor to handle all of it. And it makes sense to me because it does make sense to be pro-lifers develop things like dark humor to handle the work that they do because it resembles other people like paramedics, police officers, emergency room physicians, people who see death and gore every day. They also have to do that. And it takes a tremendous toll on them. So moving forward, that would be my recommendation is to stay close to the sacrament, stay close to a good community to get your head out of the fight. Even if you're not fully in it, if you are committed to making this important, something you want to share with other people, you have to be careful. When I would do pro-life talks, I gave like these rules for people to follow. And the number one rule was DBW. It stood for don't be weird. DBW, don't be weird. And so we would be out and people would do something weird. Now I'd say DBW, don't be weird. When you pray in front of an abortion facility, you're just praying quietly with your rosary, that's great. People think it's weird, but don't be unnecessarily weird. You're in front of an abortion facility dressed as the grim reaper. Here's the thing. I appreciate that people driving by, they'll get their attention. I highly doubt a woman walking into this abortion facility would want to come over and talk to you. So don't create an unnecessary obstacle to conversation. Don't be weird. And we get weird. Now you might think, well, I'm not going to dress up as the grim reaper. True, probably. But we get weird in other ways. We do this so much, someone says, well, what about abortion in the case of rape? And the first thing we say is, well, look, that's just something that's brought up to divide the issue. It's only like 1% of abortions happen because of rape. Like it's dishonest to even bring that up. The point is, should we be killing babies or not? Now that is actually being weird. Now you would say that because you've heard this question 100 times and you're sick of hearing it. But it doesn't land well for someone who the first, maybe this is the first time they've asked someone who's pro-life, yeah, but what about abortion in the case of rape? Maybe they know someone who's been a victim of sexual assault. Maybe they have been, or someone close to them has been. And the first thing we lead with is, well, basically it doesn't happen. So it's not a big deal. Well, when it does, that doesn't go over well when it does happen to people. It's dismissive. An empathetic person would say, yeah, that's terrible if someone, anyone who's a victim of assault or violence. And it's especially awful. Like there's some countries where if you're a victim of sexual assault and you get pregnant, you can be executed. It's called honor killing. And that's barbaric that anyone would do something like that. Like we should never, a pregnant woman didn't do anything wrong. She shouldn't be killed. She didn't do anything wrong. Would you agree though that the baby also didn't do anything wrong? So shouldn't we treat them both the same way? See? And then after I've led with that, and would you agree also when it comes to abortion, nearly every case is about people who choose to engage in intimacy. So can I ask you a question? Would you be okay with outlawing abortion and like there's an exception for rape? What do you think about all the other cases? Now notice here, I'm not compromising in any way, shape or form. I've given an answer, but I want this person to focus on the main issue. Some people who bring up these tough objections, they really are conflicted. There's two different kinds of people who bring up what about rape? What about the life of the mother? One type are people who are genuinely conflicted. Okay. And you can talk with them and work them through. And some of them will say, yeah, I do think it's wrong in these other cases. It should be illegal. But what about in these cases? And then you can have a conversation saying, well, is it still the same human being? But it's a different circumstance, but that's still a human being who's being killed. Other people though, there's the conflicted, genuinely conflicted. The other group, I call them crusaders. And this comes up maybe at a dinner party or with a group of people or they just want to really stick it to you. They bring this up. They're not, they think all abortion should be legal for any reason. And they bring it up just to make you look bad. Oh, your pro life. So you think a 10 year old is raped should give birth? And just to make you look bad? So that's why for the, when I know someone's being a crusader like that, I'll sometimes then offer them, well, look, let me ask you this. There's different pro life laws. What if there was a law that made an exception for rape? Do you think abortion should be illegal in the other 99% of cases? Well, you know, you answer my question. I will gladly answer your question, but I want to understand where you're coming from. What about the other 99%? Well, no, a woman has the right to choose. Okay. So then why do you even care about bringing up rape in the first place? If the unborn is not a human being, who cares? You don't need a reason. Like imagine if you went to the dentist, he said, okay, you have, you got three cavities. Were you brushing your teeth? I actually wasn't brushing my teeth. I can't help you today. You're not responsible. Out you go. You, you were brushing your teeth. You're responsible. I'm willing to help you out. Nobody judges whether you can get a cavity filled based on your previous behavior. It's just a cavity. Who cares? You know, maybe, maybe you get the lecture later, you know, from the dentist, but he'll, he'll fill it as it's not the morality doesn't change based on your previous behavior. But if the unborn are not human beings, then abortion, whether it's in the case of rape or in the case of I had a sexual encounter that probably wasn't the best idea at the time, it doesn't matter morally. It doesn't matter because what is killed is not human. It's not a human being. But if the unborn are human beings, then it can't be justified in any case. And that's what we have to bring up to heel. So for the same thing, if a woman's life is in danger, someone says, what if a woman's life is in danger? Are you this cruel pro-lifer? You can say, well, look, can you answer this question for me? Are the unborn human beings or not? If they are not human beings, then we should have abortion for any reason. It does not matter. But if they are human beings, and we both agree, then it follows from that. In all the other cases, it should be illegal. And in a tiny minority of cases, we may not be sure what to do. We have two people whose lives are in danger and we can only save one. And so there are cases like this that happen with born people. We just don't kill one person to save another. So the arguments from hard cases, you can also point this out to people. And someone says, yeah, but what about abortion to save somebody's life? So in order for that, why don't we need to keep abortion legal because of that? You could say to that person, well, let me ask you a question. Do you think it should be illegal to run red lights? You should give somebody a ticket if they run a red light. If we're all running red lights, that's bad. He's like, well, yeah, sure. Oh, yeah, but what about if my aunt is dying and I got to get her to the hospital and on this desolate country road with a broken red traffic light and I'm just sitting there and I'm like, okay, fine, yeah, you can run that traffic light. Great. So we should get rid of traffic lights. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Just because there's that one hard case where maybe you need to do that, it doesn't follow. We get rid of everything. That's not a perfect analogy, but you can help people to see clearly hard cases make bad laws. Hard cases make bad laws. Instead, when we dialogue with other people and these hard cases come up, always, always bring them back to that one question, what are the unborn? And then apply that and then work through the hard cases. So someone's life is in danger, for example. Every state allows, every single state, Alexander desanctus at National Review has compiled all these state laws showing that every state that criminalizes abortion allows medical providers to treat ectopic pregnancies. It's not even the same thing. You don't, you use a different procedure to remove the damaged section of a woman's fallopian tube where an embryo has implanted and can no longer survive with both of them will die if nothing is done unless you remove that damaged part of the tube versus dismembering or causing a child to be purposely miscarried. They're two completely different procedures. So that's to summarize as we're moving forward in order for us to make headway on this issue, we have to stay focused on the one issue that matters most. What are the unborn? We also have to maintain our spiritual sanity and our emotional health. It will be hard. It's 50 new fights. Oh, one last point. We also can't be our own worst enemies. Okay, we're going to end up disagreeing about what's the most prudent way forward, and we shouldn't demonize one another if we disagree about these things. For example, you might live in a state where pro-lifers disagree. Should we try to completely ban abortion or have an exception for rape and incest? And one person will say, if you do exceptions, that means you don't care about those babies. We have to do all or none. But the church allows people to pass feasible laws. It would be wrong to go from a complete ban to exceptions. But it's not wrong if you have abortion is completely available and you pass the law that you can feasibly pass. If you have good reason to believe the ideal law, you don't have political capital or voter support to be able to do that. For a reference to that, you can check out paragraph 73 of Pope St. John Paul II's encyclical The Gospel of Life. In that context, he was talking about a legislator. He said a legislator whose opposition to abortion was publicly known, was well known, could vote for a less than ideal law to restrict abortion if that is the most feasible law that he's able to accomplish. If he's going from less protection of the unborn to more protection, as long as he's moving in that general direction. So we as pro-lifers, we're going to disagree about the best way forward, but me, I'm an incrementalist. I really believe the best path forward is to go for the things that we are able to win on. And the reason for that is when I look at other social movements in the past, that is what they did. When I look at the LGBT movement, for example, they didn't start with, we want all of the crazy stuff. They just said, well, we just want this little thing, we just want this same little equality protection, nothing else like that. And then now eventually it's turned into, they didn't start with, we want kids at drag shows, right? Because that would give the game away. That they saved till after they've made all of these other victories. And the same for us that we have to meet people where they're at and move incrementally towards the goal. So that's, that's what I think. And yeah, that's how I'd recommend is you engage others.