 Everybody, today we are debating the ethics of abortion and we are starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate. Today is going to be an interesting one as we have two guests here debating a very hot button issue and we wanna let you know at modern day debate we are trying to welcome you no matter what walk of life you come from. We really do hope you feel welcome here as we debate politics, religion and science as well as some other controversial topics as we really do want everybody to have their shot at making their case and we also try to do it in the non, you could say the most non-partisan way possible as we really do wanna be fair to everybody and with that wanna let you also know if it's your first time here consider hitting that subscribe button as we are very excited for future debates coming up. 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So yes we are going there that should be interesting and with that wanna introduce our speakers I wanna say first up front folks I have linked both of the speakers in the description. So that way if you would like to hear more of them you can that's why I put those links there go ahead and click them and you can learn more about our guests and also what we're gonna have is a fairly flexible format it's going to be 10 minute opening statements one from each side starting with Kay who will be taking the oh gosh you know what I didn't even put it in the border. So Kay is actually defending the pro life position and then Ray will be defending the pro choice position and so I should have put that in the border and didn't even realize it. But what we are going to do is have Q and A at the end which will follow after our roughly 15 minutes of open conversation and then you will have a chance to ask your questions so feel free during the debate to fire your questions into the old live chat if you tag me with at modern day debate it makes it easier for me to be sure I get every question in that list for the Q and A. Super chat is also an option in which case you can not only ask a question but make a comment that of course the speaker or speakers would get a chance to respond to and it'll push your question or comment to the top of the list for the Q and A. So with that we are very excited to kick this off. So first I'll give just a chance we'd love to hear kind of both Kay and Ray what you've been up to in terms of what you've been doing in terms of your passion projects on social media and otherwise. So thank you both for being here we'll start with Kay and then we'll go to Ray and then I will get Kay started on her opening but first Kay thanks so much for being here what have you been up to lately in terms of passion projects and social media and the like. Well anybody that follows me is that I'm super super active on my Twitter I tweet a lot sometimes people say I tweet a bit too much but other than that as far as social media goes I am actually working on uploading to a YouTube channel more regularly I have a YouTube channel that I started years ago that I upload very regularly too and I am trying to get better with that so that regular content is being uploaded to that channel hoping to kind of get that ball rolling a little bit more in the future. You bet well thank you very much we're stoked to have you here and I can add that link in the description if you'd like at either before or I should say during or after the debate so thanks so much Kay and with Ray we really were excited to have you as the first time here so welcome and coming from all the way over in is it did you say it was England? Yeah the United Kingdom Absolutely well we're excited to have you and thanks for staying up late with us we really appreciate it No it's absolutely no problem at all so I mean to answer the question I've been trying to build a platform stage 501 having the website stage501.com and we're just doing podcasts about events that are happening every week and we sort of cover things from a kind of center left perspective but I'd like to invite everyone from every political persuasion onto my show to have debates and so on so we've been running for probably about a year and 10 months or so now something like this so we're doing pretty well I think we're building up the platform and I guess I'm active on social media so you know people can come and harass me on Twitter if they want to and see what result they get but yeah no everything's going pretty okay Absolutely glad to hear that thanks so much Ray and with that we will kick it over to Kay for this opening statement as I had mentioned Kay will be defending the pro-life position so Kay the floor is all yours Okay so I'm Kay Fellows I have been a pro-life activist for nearly seven years now I started off with pro-life activism as a very staunch Republican traditional conservative and over the last two years or so I have kind of moved more into libertarianism and with my shift in my political views I have also shifted a lot in my defenses of my pro-life beliefs but I have stayed very consistently pro-life throughout all of my political shifts if anything I've become more pro-life I do believe that the right to life is an inalienable right meant for all humans regardless of location, age, size, development, et cetera I fully believe that abortion is a violation of the staunch, horrible, violent violation of the rights to life and that with the inalienable right to life we should be protecting it from the very, very beginning the very smallest of human beings the very smallest of our species that cannot defend themselves from the atrocities of think-like abortion we should be fighting like hell to defend those who cannot defend themselves I came to the conclusion of being pro-life many, many years ago whenever I looked into what abortion does and how violent and horrible it is and what these human beings suffer at the hands of abortion and just in more research years and becoming more knowledgeable on the subject it has only pushed me to be more pro-life and my focus is more on a social standard of making abortion unthinkable but I do also advocate for making abortion illegal I am against all abortion from the very, very beginning of fertilization all the way up to birth I do not think that there are any exceptions to that rule and that's pretty much where I stand on the issue You bet, thank you very much for that and then we will kick it over to Ray for her opening as well thanks so much for being here Ray Yeah, no, thank you for having me on James and obviously hello everyone who is listening so my introduction is gonna be a little bit long I'll try to keep it under three minutes but we'll see how that actually plays out so I'll try to connect the position that I've taken to kind of like a broader societal issue because I don't wanna argue just the issue by itself in isolation because I don't believe that reproductive choice is an issue that exists in isolation for everything else so I'll try to get into that so as you all know, my name is Ray Murasame I'm a cultural commentator and political analyst from the perspective of third worldism tendency which makes me an advocate of post-colonial feminism and Pan-Asianism Now this is particularly real for me because I'm from a family that are East Asian diaspora in the Americas and I currently live in the UK so as I said before I operate the live stream channel under stage 501 my live stream is focused on current events and I always talk to people from all sides of the spectrum I'm also a systems analyst working in the defense sector so I just wanna say before I go any further that I anticipate there will be trolls in the chat so I just wanna address them very quickly so to the trolls who will assuredly be showing up in the live chat this has become a bit of a fixture in the online space recently which is people show up to troll me on the war in Afghanistan for some reason so my answer to those trolls when they do show up is that I do not regret Afghanistan and I take my own advocacy for feminism very seriously so I do not support making peace with the Taliban so when the Trump supporters show up to have that argument with me this is not what we're talking about today so they need to stay out of the chat with that so anyway back to the topic which is actually abortion so people may be wondering why happened to be the one to address this topic when it came up instead of any of the other women out there who could have also addressed it James Coons put out a tweet on his account a few days ago saying that Kay Fellows wanted to have this conversation about abortion and I replied to it via DM by saying that if any asking if anyone else was volunteering yet and since no one else had volunteered I figured well this is my chance right so I figured it'd be an interesting conversation even though I'm usually from like the moral fashion voice only side of live streaming and content creation but I decided to jump in it so hopefully we'll have a good discussion and I think everyone will come away having seen each other's perspective and I'll obviously try to be fair I won't attack, I won't talk over my opponents I'm not trying to fight or anything I'm just having a conversation so before I get started I'm aware that a large section of the audience are now hearing me for the first time so they may not know what my economic views are particularly since I have the word progressive appended next to my name and people have some assumptions as to what progressives believe on economic issues which are intimately tied up with the reproductive choice issues so I'm just gonna go over some of that very quickly as well so I'll explain the basics of my policy preferences because they're important to the debate I support free trade free trade is a great strategy for growth because if the aim is to develop your country then lowering tariff and non-tariff barriers and allowing low income countries to receive FDI and tech transfers letting them export their way to growth this makes abundant sense pan-Asianism and other forms of pan-regionalism which I support these are a utilization of something that's referred to as the Berksten-Zohelik theory which is when you sign regional FTAs it incentivizes others to sign trade deals so they don't get left out and this particular form of regional identity politics then creates a global free trade acceleration and prosperity for all so just putting that on the table I am not against flourishing economies and in fact my position on abortion is actually connected to flourishing economies as I will describe so developing countries can't compete in industrial production with countries that have more modern institutions citizens with higher educational levels developed infrastructure and so on to break free from being just a low cost provider of war materials whether mineral or agricultural this is a long process and so I think we need to do what's necessary to expedite that process a lot of that process involves having control over your own reproductive life because if you're bound just bound to the home and you're unable to sort of break out of this reproductive cycle of just being someone's wife then you're never able to really grow your economy in the way that you're supposed to so I mean I would say to activists in the west I mean this is on the left and the right because they all have different strictures they would like to impose so some people want to impose restrictive environmental social reproductive laws and so on where do they get the right to tell people in the third world what they cannot and cannot do to satisfy the basic needs of their people so like telling people they have no right to a highway or to extract gas to fund social programs or they have no rights to universal health care service along the lines of the South Korean single payer model or that contraception, abortion and other forms of reproductive health should be denied to them this means telling people whose economies that are only now developing that they have no right to actually develop their economy or to fight poverty or to develop a strong and progressive culture so I don't know, you know it's one of those things where I don't know from where they're deriving this authority to make these pronunciations, right? So I didn't want to drag this on this introduction on for too long because otherwise I'll be going into topics that should be discussed in the actual section so I'll be good on that and not like start forcing my arguments into the introduction but you know these are things I'm going to bring up the other thing I'd say is yeah I guess this will be the end of the introduction this is probably a good place for me to actually stop for an introduction otherwise I'm gonna be moving into my arguments but my position on abortion is that I'm pro-choice because I support reproductive choice for women because it is economically the right choice for a developing nation to take. You bet. Thank you very much, Ray. We will now jump into open conversation. Appreciate both of you being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. I find it really interesting because I'm not an economist and I am not nearly as well educated as Ray is on economies, particularly third-world issues. I think my issue with abortion really more stems from a moral standpoint and I think that we're openly going to disagree on that. I don't think that we should be sacrificing human life for the sake of growing an economy and I do think that if we were able to sit down and think through the process that there could be another way for these economies to grow and flourish without sacrificing human life to do so. Okay, well I mean how would you, I'll present you a classic instance of this problem. Right, so you know the war in Vietnam after it had ended and they had used, you know, the American side had used Asian orange when they were fighting in the jungles which polluted a lot of the groundwater and the environment, which resulted in Vietnamese people being saddled with, you know, random fetuses that had obvious birth defects which would make, you know, for children who are going to grow up into adults that would be economically non-productive. I mean, would you say that it'd be morally wrong for those people to abort the fetuses which are obviously detected as being deformed ones and then essentially take the economic hits as a consequence of that? Which would be more moral? I don't think that one is more moral than the other. I do believe that what happens to cause those deformities in fetuses is absolutely abhorrent and it should have never happened. As a pro-life activist, I actually consider myself more a consistent life activist. Very anti-war. But it is not up to what you would consider living human beings. People that are on the other side of the birth canal that can process reason is not up for us to decide whose life is worth living and we can't base our value or the value of other humans on what they provide for us even economically. So, I mean, your position would be then that Vietnam should sacrifice their developmental goals in order to remain in the position of being the most moral but then they would be subject once again to market forces across the world in which they would be not selected for the productive work that's being distributed by our global trade and they would lose out as a consequence. So like the entire nation would be poorer because of the fact that they're unable to make the pragmatic choice if they were to do things your way. Well, I mean, to be morally consistent, do you believe that it would be morally okay to kill people that are on the others that have been born that are not contributing to the economy that are holding back their economic process? People that you consider human beings with rights because they've been born, they don't provide anything to their economy. They actually hold it back. Would it be morally acceptable to kill those people as well? Well, I mean, people have already made ties with those individuals and they're legally recognized as being, as having human rights obviously and being actual persons. So that is different. So obviously I would not support violating people's human rights in that way. But when you're having the conversation of like, where do you place personhood as beginning? It strikes me that placing personhood at the beginning of conception consigns you to essentially a dead end that if anything is wrong with the fetus or if there are any reasons as to why that fetus should not be there. For example, let's say in the case of sexual assault, if there's any reason as to why that fetus should not be there, then there's nothing you can do about it if you've actually placed the limitation on abortion. Yes, but where do our human rights come from? Like, what is it, what is so special about birth? What's so magical about passing through the birth canal that suddenly grants humans the rights that born humans have and grants them the idea of personhood? I mean, you'd have to say that that is the state essentially making the decision that they're going to recognize life from a particular point, which is when the child which has been born is no longer directly connected to the woman, is no longer dependent solely on her for its survival. So I mean, I'm guessing that's where they would be placing it. But it's not necessarily the state doing so. I mean, it is a scientific fact that a brand new unique human being begins to exist at the point of fertilization. So why does- A human being, yes, but how do you get? Well, actually, yeah, you can show me this because this is the question I wanted to ask you actually. How do you get from saying that, okay, a developing fetus is a human being, but how do you jump from there to now we should confer full personhood rights on to that developing human being? Because if we say that some human beings do not deserve rights based on things like location, size, development, then in order to remain consistent with that argument, we have to say that size, location, development also impedes us, it gives us the rights to take personhood away from certain born individuals as well. Okay, like why would you think that that would be the case? Like why would it be that if we apply this in this particular place that it has to automatically apply in this other way? Because it would be inconsistent otherwise. If you say that a fetus does not have the rights to be recognized as a person and therefore have all the human rights that a person does based on the fact that it is dependent solely on its mother for life and support and to keep it alive, then that argument can be taken and used against people that are born and living today. Well, I mean, if they're a born and living today though, the entire society can actually take care of that, can actually take care of that person. There's no, okay, let me put it this way. When it is someone who is pregnant and carrying the child, then they are the only one who can sustain that. Where does the obligation on that person come to keep the child? Like from where does that obligation come? Even from a libertarian perspective, where does that obligation proceed from? That obligation perceives from the expectation of the human being. We have that obligation even after birth. A woman, yes, society can take that responsibility away from a woman, but there are certain situations and circumstances where that obligation remains. A woman can relinquish her responsibility to her born child, but there are certain regulations and obligations in place from her to relinquish that responsibility. A woman can't leave her infant in the middle of the woods and just say, I'm relinquishing my responsibility, society should take care of this infant now. If a woman doesn't have the ability for XYZ reasons to just relinquish her born children to society to take care of them and she just leaves them and they die because they need someone to take care of them. They need someone to help them sustain life because they cannot do it on their own. They're not developed enough to do that for themselves and the child dies. Well, we place the responsibility of that child's death on the mother. Those obligations remain in place well after birth. So I don't understand why the obligations are deemed unnecessary whenever she's carrying the child. But if we extend this to its logical conclusion, doesn't this completely undo the very underpinnings of libertarianism as well, given that someone could make the similar argument for why isn't everyone in the entire country given automatic housing, which is paid for by every member of society because without the housing, they may suffer and or slash die, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, someone could make that exact same argument but just extend it out to the whole society until you have essentially no market whatsoever. Yes, but when we're talking about abortion in particular and how these obligations extend not just to society but particularly for the mother herself because the child that she bears is her responsibility and so she really was just that responsibility to society. These are human beings that are physically, emotionally and mentally incapable of caring for themselves. So that obligation remains in place simply because the human being that we are discussing has no ability to meet the obligations that we are imposing on them. For example, a fetus cannot, you can't expect a fetus to take care of itself not just because it's not developed enough to do so but because they have no understanding of the obligation placed on them to care for themselves otherwise they will die. That is true well after birth for human beings. I have two toddlers, neither one of them would be capable of caring for themselves. I left them alone and decided I didn't want to care for them anymore than they were imposing on me and I just left them, they would eventually die. Okay, so I mean, all right, we'll come back to that. The next question, the other question I have for you then is do you accept that consequentialist arguments on this issue are actually strong because of the fact that there is an entire society in which a failure to enact liberalized abortion laws will lead to adverse effects? I mean, I'll give you an example here and I can actually put the link in the chat if anyone needs it but it's from bmjopen.bmj.com slash and need the, well, it's actually a long link. I'll put it in the chat later on but I'll just quickly read these three paragraphs that they have here because I found that there was pretty much summarized the position pretty well and then tell me like the ways in which you disagree with it when I get to the end I guess. So quoting from them, a pregnancy has short-term and long-term direct and indirect costs for women. These may be exacerbated when the pregnancy is unintended. Individual circumstances influence whether abortion provides a better outcome for women than bearing a child at that time and women give many reasons for having an abortion. For example, in Bangladesh, women and their husbands describe challenging life circumstances such as poor health, poverty that influence their decisions to terminate. These examples from Latin America, Africa and Asia bolster a case for making a concerted effort to document the cost for women households and societies of seeking and obtaining abortions. Economists have paid some attention to the relationship between abortion and various economic outcomes at the meso levels and macro levels. Much of this literature focuses on the economic impact of abortion legalization rather than the pecuniary cost of abortion. Several studies have linked the legalization of abortion to increases in women's labor supply. For example, Callist found that by reducing unwanted births, legalization of abortion in the USA led to increased labor force participation rates for women, especially for single black women. Bloom et al took this point one step further and found that lower fertility instrumented by the legalization of abortion increases women's labor supply and contributes positively and significantly to gross domestic product growth, GDP growth. Not only do abortion regulations impact women's labor supply, but they also affect occupational mobility. In particular, targeted restrictions on abortion providers, also known as TRAP in the US, laws in the US, make it more difficult for women to seek an abortion and are linked to increased job lock. Consequently, women living in states with TRAP laws are less likely to move between occupations and into higher paying occupations. The authors also found that public funding for medically necessary abortions is associated with full-time occupational mobility for women. The legalization of abortion, this is the final paragraph for this. The legalization of abortion is also linked to various measures of children's human capital. Several statistical studies have found positive outcomes for children born after the legalization of abortion. In a widely cited and somewhat controversial study for the USA, Donacue and Levitt found that crime rates across states appear to have dropped as a result of Roe versus Wade. Children who were born. Just to, I mean, as long as you're okay with giving Ray plenty of time to respond to, or I should say Kay, I don't have enough time to respond to all these points just because it's a while. Yeah, I'll give her as much time as she needs. Yeah, I'm gonna be totally fair on that. So, and I won't interrupt one of them, but she does either. So I'm about to finish up. It's just two more sentences basically. Children who were born on one team before the legalization of abortion grew up in more disadvantaged households and they also grew up to be more disadvantaged as adults. With similar reasoning, Anat et al found that U.S. children born after the Supreme Court until 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling were more likely to graduate from college, less likely to be welfare recipients or single parents. Children's outcomes may have improved on average because they were more likely to be born into a household in which they were wanted. Romania's abortion ban is associated with worse educational outcomes and labor market achievements of children born after the ban. And in Sub-Saharan Africa, abortion, law and liberalization is linked to greater parental investments in girls' schooling with the rationale that access to abortion lowers the likelihood of a girl dropping out of school in the event of an unplanned pregnancy, end quote. So the benefits seem to be copious. Yes, and I have actually read that exact link and I do encourage people that are pro-life to read it and it is very challenging to a lot of people that are pro-life that really don't have a handle on why exactly they are pro-life. I've talked to a number of pro-life activists that have read this study and kind of come out scratching their heads because they really weren't prepared for the discussion that is in this article. This is actually the reason, one of the many reasons why a few years ago I started identifying as a feminist because I am of the full belief that societies instead of adapting and changing, particularly, I mean, I'm most knowledgeable of abortion issues in the United States because I am in the United States, particularly in the US, abortion was offered as a band-aid solution for a society that wasn't willing to change how our business model was structured to make it more inclusive for women whenever they entered the workforce. So instead of adapting so that women who are biologically capable of getting pregnant, whether intended or otherwise, can hold a job, can move up through their careers, even if somehow they become pregnant unintentionally, they offered abortion as this kind of band-aid solution to and kind of marketed as this is what you need in order to be equal to men in the workforce. So I'm not denying that there are economic benefits, particularly for women, whenever we legalize abortion. But my argument is that instead of offering the band-aid solution of killing other human beings, we should be willing to restructure how these countries are run so that it is more inclusive to women who shouldn't feel like they are less because they are biologically capable of getting pregnant. Okay, I mean, I can actually meet you halfway on that. I can say that I agree with the point you just made there about, I mean, because I used, I deliberately used the term at the beginning of this reproductive choice. And the reason I say this is because for people who do want to have children on purpose and are intending to do so, but are dissuaded from doing so because of the fact that the system that we're currently laboring under, disincentivizes childbirth in a number of ways because of the way that business are set up. You just described it perfectly. So I'd be able to meet you halfway on that and say that I would be okay with a world in which feminist policies are enacted to make workplaces more friendly for women who want to carry out what is a natural biological function of giving birth to children. So I can meet you halfway on that. It's just that when I include that in reproductive choice, I would still leave open the door for abortion in the case that people really want to choose it. So I'm okay with having these modifications made. It's just that, and I even agree with you that I think it would make the situation a lot better because of the fact that then you'd know that people who have chosen to have abortions are doing so entirely of their own choice and not because their boss pressured them into doing it or because they knew they would be fired if they did not and so on and so forth. So the level of abortion would probably decrease slightly if those things were enacted. So I can meet you halfway on that. And I hold this not just for the feminist idea that our business structure in many countries is built in a way that purposefully excludes women. It was built for the sole purpose of men being the sole and only breadwinners and women being the whole when they were unwilling to bend that. But I also think that abortion is offered as a band-aid solution for most of the issues that are listed whenever women go to seek abortions. I think that we should be offering other solutions to these problems like poverty, for example. Abortion doesn't prevent or end poverty. We're still seeing impoverished neighborhoods offering women the choice of killing a child whether she deeply wants that child or not for a chance for her to get out of poverty or avoid going into poverty is a band-aid solution. I think that as a society, we can offer women something that is better, actual solutions to the problems that they are facing whenever they have unplanned pregnancies instead of saying, well, we'll kill your child for you. But that's really what we can do for you. Well, I mean, this is why I meet you halfway because I'll say that we can do both in the sense that these problems can't be addressed from the social policy side. While leaving that in place for the event in which it is necessary. So for example, when we're talking about sexual assault, so we're talking about overbearing husbands who insist on imposing their will and then women have to essentially correct that will by negating it after the fact in some cases that door needs to be left open for that kind of thing to be able to occur, I think at least. And not only that, but simply having the option available, even if it is not being used by a particular person, it still benefits the prospects for women because of the fact that the door being open for that to hypothetically happen deters the kind of controlling behavior which men sometimes engage in, because then think about it this way and it's gonna sound slightly callous when I say it this way. So I'm expecting the chat will probably explode or something, but think about it this way. If you're married to a guy and the guy keeps insisting that he can essentially utilize you as a way to produce as many children as he might want, even if you disagree with the number of children he's trying to produce at the time at which those children should be born. If he knows that there's a hypothetical chance, you could actually just undermine him by aborting the fetus at like two weeks, for example, right? Using plan B or something like this. If he knows that that is a possibility, that deters him from engaging in those activities because he would know that you could actually, you could bring the fire on that issue. Very similar to the arguments that people would make about the Second Amendment, for example, if they know that the Second Amendment exists, it deters people from taking certain actions. Quite similarly, if there's an abortion capability that exists hypothetically that you could conceivably access, it alters the behavior of men and makes them more compliant with the kind of just social relations that we want, even if you choose not to use the abortion services. Do you really think that could be the case? Do you have, like, is this coming from an opinion or is this based in statistics that having abortion access will determine from being sexually aggressive or sexual, be willing to sexually assault someone? There is a study, although people may say it's from a biased source, it's from IWPR.org, which is blatantly a feminist advocacy group. So I'm sure that some people in the chat will say, oh, well, now we have to discount it, but I can quickly read the paragraph for it. And obviously I'll give you the time to respond. Yeah, I would actually love to hear it. Okay, so it goes as follows, quote, there are multiple potential pathways through which abortion may affect women's economic outcomes. The first is through lowing fertility, which has several direct economic implications. Having fewer children increases a woman's ability to participate. This is all stuff that's been said before, they'll get to the point shortly. Holding household income constant, an additional child reduces the resource available for other family members and can push a household close to or below the poverty line. I'll skip past these economic arguments because they've literally just been said in the previous link, and I'll just get to the point of where they're going. Yeah, abortion access may also affect economic factors through pathways other than fertility, including changing women's expectations about their ability to control their fertility. In response to these changes in expectations, women may take different decisions about their education, the timing of marriage and family formation and their careers. Additionally, increases in women's control over their reproductive outcomes may empower women within their households, changing their access to resources and ability to control their own economic paths. These shifts may lead to a broader impact on women at the population level, even for those who never experienced the unintended pregnancy. Okay, I mean, I will not argue that because I don't have any evidence in front of me to make an argument. I don't want to make an argument that I don't have facts to back it up with. So I'm not going to say that it is not possible that abortion changes aggressive sexual behavior in men. I will say that whenever, from my perspective, because I do have facts to back this up, that abortion has consistently been used by abusive men as a power, as kind of an abusive power. You see women that have been forced into abortions by abusive partners or by men in their lives. So I can make the argument that abortion can also be used against women by abusive partners. I can't really argue against the possibility that it kind of drives men's aggression away whenever it comes to them wanting to force impregnation on a partner. I will argue that I don't believe that abortion is a viable solution whenever it comes to abusive partners. I think that, again, we can offer women better than saying if your partner forcibly impregnates you, will kill the otherwise innocent human being that had absolutely no part in that abuse. And overwhelmingly, these women are sent back into the arms of that abusive partner, especially by our most well-known abortion industry here is Planned Parenthood, and they have been caught covering up rape, marital abuse, molestation, sex trafficking, things like that. So I can only argue with what I know. I don't support the idea that we should be using abortion to kind of as a band-aid solution for women that are in abusive relationships. I think that we should be having more programs that help women out of these abusive situations instead of here's an abortion and sending her back to be abused by that same partner over and over and over again. Well, I mean, this is another situation where I can definitely meet you halfway on that, which is, again, obviously I would support the programs in order to make sure that people are removed from these situations if unlawful activity is occurring because obviously sexual assault, that marital rape is still a thing, right? So in all of these countries, you introduce the law that says marital rape is bad and it will be basically prosecuted whenever it is found out. I mean, on what you said on Planned Parenthood, I mean, I haven't actually seen the data for myself, but obviously I will trust that what you're saying is correct here. And so if it is so, what I would say is there needs to be a regulation which would obligate Planned Parenthood to disclose to authorities some of the contents of what they are told in these interview rooms if those things which they are told contravene United States law, because I mean, I do find it disturbing that if someone, you know, which is sit down in Planned Parenthood, I don't want to have a conversation and say that, you know, their husband is abusing them and that this is why they are here in order to have the abortion procedure done, that the procedure would be done and then like no further action would be taken. That information should be passed to the authorities as soon as basically in order to make sure that, you know, everything is dealt with. And obviously you don't then send the woman back into the same environments after having disclosed this information either because then of course, you're putting her at greater risk. So there should be a path, a pipeline as it were to essentially remove her from that abusive situation. So again, I need you halfway on that. I'm not against the revision of these programs or the implementation of these laws. Yeah, absolutely. I just, I think, you know, I take it a step further because I see fetuses, embryos, vestices, you know, whatever stage of development that they're in, I see them as human beings. And if we're going to view them as human, as the human beings that they are, that fetus, black, sexist, embryo, that pre-born human had no part in the abuse that the woman suffered. They had no part in the marital rape, rape outside of marriage, sexual assault, so on and so forth. They had no part in it. So whenever we're offering abortion as a solution in cases of rape, what we're essentially doing is we're taking an innocent human being that had no part in that crime, that horrible violation of the woman's rights. And we're giving the death penalty to that human being. And in many cases, especially in the United States, the actual perpetrator, the rapist, goes free or suffers very, very little or minor consequences for actually violating a woman's rights in such a horrible way. And the fetus suffered the brunt of that by having their rights for life taken from them. Well, I mean, I agree with you on the necessity of being able to actually prosecute these people when they commit these acts. And doubly so, if it creates the kind of situation you just described where a lot of effort has to be undergone, there are women who are obviously going through incredibly difficult decisions that they have to make. There is a fetus which is being removed from existence, which some people may say, as you have said, that you view it as an actual person. And so there is something to be said about that. We need to, I would totally support the idea, obviously, that these men should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And they shouldn't be allowed to constantly wriggle away and get away with causing this sort of massive societal devastation on a consistent basis. And I think the way to actually go about doing that is you've got to foster this culture of openness and reporting. And the only way that we can really do that is to kind of like lean in to a lot of these movements that have been calling for accountability. I mean, hashtag me too, for example, has been given like a bad rap by a lot of commentators on the right, particularly. And I sort of look through your Twitter account, you're obviously not agreeing with the people on the right. I see you quite frequently criticizing them for absolutely ridiculous things that they have done. And I think that's absolutely fantastic. So I mean, you have some good content that's going on in that regard that I agreed with. So I think we can both agree there that, if we leaned into this me too thing a little bit more, we would lessen a lot of the problems involved here. Because when I came into this conversation, I was definitely not coming in to say that we should increase the level of abortion arbitrarily or something like this. Like, I don't mind if people make the informed choice to not have abortions if they don't want them. So my aim and agenda is not to arbitrarily just increase the level of it or to propose that it is a band-aid solution to absolutely all problems. I just don't want to close the door on the existence of this option if that is the last and only thing which they can bring themselves to do at that point. But I do support all of the things that you said about essentially shaping society in such a way that the solution to every problem doesn't magically end up being that one. And I do agree with you that there is a lot that men as a group have to answer for in terms of the structures that they have created in this regard. I mean, I don't even, you know, it's one of those things where thinking about, thinking about like even people who are so blatantly guilty who are getting away with things for a long time. Like, let's talk about, what was his name? Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein, for example. I mean, these were people who are known to the authorities and it was known widely that they were committing all kinds of crimes and they were just essentially skating by on a consistent basis. And obviously I'm not gonna sort of just single out the United States for criticism there. There are wide sways of the third world in which men are just walking around doing things. And like the entire town knows that this individual is a predator or something and then no one takes any action against it. And so, you know, as women, we need to come together basically and say, you know, these people need to be placed under strict surveillance. There needs to be, I suppose you can even say perhaps more CCTV, I don't know what it would have to be in order to basically nail these people so they can't continue to get away with this stuff. Yeah, and that's why I said at the beginning in my introduction that I am more of an activist. Whenever it comes to abortion, I more advocate on the level of social change because we can make abortion illegal tomorrow and we're still going to have structural issues in place. So many hurdles that women are going to have to get over in order to be in a place where they can function without having the mandate solution of abortion. So whenever I advocate against abortion, I advocate on making abortion more of an unthinkable, changing society in such a way that women don't have to even consider that they need to have an abortion, especially if that's not something that they actually want to do. You see overwhelming statistics of women saying they didn't really want to have an abortion. They didn't want to have to go through that, but there are so many societal structures in place to where they felt like they had no other option. And I think that it would be more beneficial for the pro-life movement to get behind tearing down those structural barriers that women have had to hurdle over. And the whole reason for Roe versus Way back in 1973 is because women were so tired of having to fight these hurdles and women and men refusing to adapt and change the societal structures to be more inclusive of them. So they did what they thought that they had to do in order to gain equality on a societal and cultural level. So I think that as a pro-lifer, it is much more beneficial to be an advocate for social change in our society and our culture to make abortion something that didn't need to be an option. Okay, I mean, I can totally understand the argument you're building there. The only thing that I would bring, or the primary thing I could say, because it's not the only thing, but the primary thing that I would bring as a sort of a counter to that is that what you're doing there is redefining what the phrase pro-life has meant up until this point, because up until this point, pro-life has largely been like a preserve of kind of like the social conservative right who are exactly against the kind of reforms to society that you're talking about. All of these progressive reforms, they're firmly dead set against them. In fact, some of the conservative pro-life people are so conservative that they will even try to get you prosecuted for a miscarriage because they have written down the law in such a way that now it becomes suddenly your task to prove that it was a miscarriage and on abortion. So these are like unintended consequences and so on. So like, if I were to put this to you as a question, like how would you, if you're gonna build a pro-life movement that was separate from that kind of cultural milieu, how would you go about differentiating yourself from them and building something that does not end up being co-opted by those people immediately? I think that I would approach it a similar way to how I approach labeling myself as a pro-life feminist, you know, feminism has a very, very big, horrible stigma around it is particularly on the right. I got a lot of pushback from, you know, I started as a traditional Republican conservative and have since drifted more center and particularly on social issues, I am actually quite more left leaning than I used to be. But it's reclaiming a label that has been misused and abused in my opinion, you know, when people, people make the argument so often that, you know, to be pro-life is just simply to oppose abortion. And if you've typed in the definition like pro-life definition into a search engine, that is what you would come up with. It's somebody that opposes abortion. But I think that we as a movement, as a people need to understand that as pro-life activism adapts, we have to adapt with it. Our society is changing and pro-life activism as a whole should change with it. We have come to realize that simply opposing abortion isn't enough anymore. There were things that we had to do and change to make headway in our movement in order to be more accepting. The idea of, you know, loving both mother and child, the love them both hashtag is fairly new. Like in the last five years, people on the pro-life side have started adapting that. And it's been very, very successful. Women that are scared and are running to these abortion clinics out of fear of, you know, societal consequences, they need to have somebody there that loves and cares about them and that they know it's going to be there for them, regardless, you know, being inclusive of post-aborted women in our movement has been widely successful. And the refusal to adapt to that, to being more than just somebody that opposes abortion is going to make way more headway in our movement while we're trying to achieve than just simply saying, well, I oppose abortion and not doing anything beyond that. It's kind of where the idea of, you know, your only pro-life up until the baby is born and then just kind of tap out. That is a problem with a lot of people that claim to be pro-life, particularly on the further right side, conservative traditional Republican side. They're not willing to kind of adapt and address the societal issues that women face that is driving them to the abortion clinics. They just don't want them there and they don't want, abortion is kind of the thing that you don't talk about. It's this horrible evil. We don't talk about it. If you do it, you're a horrible, terrible person and that's kind of where their activism ends. And having people in that mindset has been constantly like we take three steps forward and they're pulling us two steps back. So we're only making one step at a time because these people are refusing to adapt. And I'm gonna be perfectly honest. I was blacklisted by a lot of people in the pro-life movement about a couple years back because I was tired of standing by and seeing this toxic idea of what pro-life activism should be, hindering our movement, hindering us from saving lives and saving women and giving them more opportunity and better options. So I think that whenever it comes to changing what it means to be pro-life, it really is going to come down to calling out the people that have those toxic opinions. Okay, I mean, that's, that is, I would say that's an admirable position to have taken within the context of what's happening. I mean, I would hope that you would be successful in being able to convince them of this. I mean, there are probably plenty, I think there are plenty of people perhaps in the chat who are on the progressive side, who have been saying that they don't anticipate that you would be successful in being able to convince them to behave in a way different from how they have behaved so far. But I mean, obviously I would still give you the credit from my side that you're putting in the effort to try to change their outlook on this at the very least. I mean, a lot of things would have to change in their philosophy, in order to basically bring them to the point where they'd be willing to support these social reforms because I mean, they have a lot of economic stances that involve not wanting to provide the services to people because they're constantly going about, talking about how these things need to be cut in order to somehow prevent the country from getting into debt, quote, unquote. And all of the other, the usual narratives that people bring as to why they don't want to expand or do the outlays for social services. How would you approach it from the economic angle of basically bringing them to a point where they would be willing to actually spend this money? Would you essentially go around balancing it by saying that if you don't want this practice of abortion to continue at the rate that it's been going, then you're gonna have to make a concession on these economic issues that you've been holding on to for the past 45 years, 50 years, et cetera, et cetera. Would that be kind of your strategy where you'd presented to them in that way that you can have this or you can have that? Yeah, and I mean, I have done that and it's unfortunately, it's not wildly successful. There is a large part of the pro-life movement. I mean, whenever you look at very traditional Republican conservatives, they're very, very set in their ways, they continue this vicious cycle. And I think it really stems, like it boils down to our elections and our elected officials. We're seeing a small kind of steady and gradual kind of walk away from mainstream pro-life activism. The kind of more fringe activism and the pro-life movement that I am a part of is growing consistently on a continual basis. It's getting bigger. People that are more center or left leaning consistent like ethic activists that are also anti-war and oppose people like Donald Trump, which is a really, really big thing whenever you say that you're pro-life activist and you don't support their supposedly pro-life president, you get a lot of pushback from the mainstream pro-life movement whenever you voice that distaste for their elected officials that we don't see as being beneficial to our movement and what we're trying to, the culture that we're trying to create. But what it's going to stand down to is more and more people are walking away from this mainstream idea of what pro-life activism is and what we need to do to accomplish our goals. And eventually they're not going to have the support that they have anymore to just continue in this cycle of saying that they want to end abortion, but really not putting any action behind preventing women from feeling they need to have abortions. Yeah, I mean, you've mentioned Donald Trump here as well. And I mean, yeah, I've seen this dynamic actually developing. There was even a point actually at which the Adam Smith Institute basically called out the way in which Donald Trump had approached this and his supporters had approached this because they re-implemented something called the global gag rule, which is where they're not allowed to talk about abortion as part of reproductive health. They're not allowed to address a whole variety of things that are in the same constellation. And in some cases, they're not even allowed to address basic birth control and stuff like that, where they essentially withdrew that funding from a number of developing countries where that funding ordinarily would not exist in the first place. So it was essentially being provided by the United States, which I mean, it's not a very optimal position to be in because it's not a very independent position to have if you're a developing country. But I mean, that was how it was. So the global gag rule apparently by 2020, which we're in now would have been responsible apparently for 6.5 million unintended pregnancies, 2.2 million abortions, 2.1 million unsafe abortions, which is kind of like, I guess worse than a regular abortion in that sense. 21,700 maternal deaths, if that loss of aid was not met by other sources. So I don't know whether it was or wasn't, but that's just what the Adam Smith Institute was projecting would happen if they went along with Trump's method of addressing the issue. And so they then commented, quote, maybe this is what Trump was after. He said the women seeking abortions should face quote, some form of punishment, but you might have hoped he would have prioritized the economy over vindictiveness. So yeah, I mean, I get the impression that the Trump administration and their supporters did not think through what they were doing. They were kind of just making a moral grandstanding point without a consideration as to whether people, how people would actually respond to that or what the unintended outcomes of that particular choice would be. So I mean, would you agree that they should not have gone about it that way? I would agree with that. And I think that overwhelmingly we do have the underlying issue of personal opposition, whether it's mostly for religious reasons because the overwhelming majority of the pro-life movement is religious. I, in particular, am not religious and I have nothing against religion or religious people, but whenever it comes to issues, particularly like contraception, the pro-life movement does itself a huge disservice by publicly supporting the hindrance of women being able to access contraception and things that are going to prevent them from getting pregnant in the first place and therefore possibly keeping them out of the abortion clinic. I don't think that it is that good. Exactly. No, no, full agreement with you on that because I mean, you would figure that if they want to reduce the incidence of abortion, which again, it's one of those things where you would prefer that. So if it's going to exist, I assume you'd prefer it to be a last resort than the first one. Then they've essentially set up a system when they advocate against contraception where it just increases the probability that someone will try to seek an abortion be it legal or non-legal. Exactly, exactly. And there are studies that are out there that do claim, and I'm not saying that they're wrong or that I disagree with them, that having access to the contraception doesn't lower the number of abortions that take place, but saying that women cannot have abortions because it's wrong to take the life of other innocent human beings, but then making a moral stance that's not at all based in science. It's just simply, this is how I feel about things and I don't like contraception and I don't think that women should have access to it. It hinders the message that we are trying to put out because it's not about your moral opinion on what women should and should not be able to access whenever it comes to preventing pregnancy. Okay, very good. I mean, I agree with you on that. And it's actually refreshing to get that level of agreements as well because every single time that I've had this debate previously, it's been with like, I mean, dare I say it, it's been with like what I would have first was like religious wackaloons. The last time I had a conversation on abortion with someone who was in the pro-life movement, it was one of these kind of people that you were describing where the person came on and surprised me halfway through the debate by freeing on me the position that they never supported contraception in the first place. And I was like, what? Literally what? So no, I'm quite happy to hear that obviously that you recognize this as a problem as well. So yeah, I mean, I'm always happy to reach the middle ground agreement with people on issues that will reduce the incidence of abortion in the first place because not only does it give us less things to argue over, but also it's like, it's simply less expensive and you don't have to wade as often into the sort of moral and philosophical issue of the personhood of a blastocyst, fetus, et cetera, et cetera. Because I mean, the disagreement is there. I think the disagreement on the status of the fetus when it is still in the womb of a woman will continue to persist across society. There's always gonna be, I think, that divide of people who think it's one way and people who think it's the other. But one of the best ways to avoid ever having to have that argument multiple times over is to reduce the incidence of this by allowing people access to obviously social services that will allow them to make choices within a better economy, giving people access to contraception and so on and so forth. I mean, would you be willing to go as far as to say that if there were a single-payer health system, it should cover the costs of contraception if people needed it? One second, just wanna let you guys know, I'll give you a chance to answer, okay, but what we will do is maybe in a few minutes we'll go into the Q&A. So just wanted to give you a heads up. And floor is yours again. I mean, as a libertarian, I think that whenever it comes to things like healthcare, I don't think that the government does very well in regulating that well, but I do think that there are things that we can do that would make contraception more readily accessible and more affordable to people that need it. I think I fully am supportive of contraception being over the counter. I think that it's ridiculous that I have to go to my doctor and get a prescription, go and have that prescription filled just to get basic contraception. I think that we can do better about informing women about the potential problems that they're going to face if they're on contraception for long periods of time. I think that in society we need to be more invested in giving women better options about contraception that don't have such harmful side effects, but that is like another issue that should not at all be tied to the abortion debate, whether or not women have access to contraception is not something that anti-abortion activists or pro-life activists should be discussing in the realm of abortion being wrong because there are two separate issues. And whenever they try to blur those lines and say that we're going to have the conversation about abortion being wrong, and we're also going to say that women shouldn't have, it's morally wrong for women to take contraception, they are muddying the waters and they are muddying up the message that the pro-life movement is trying to put out is that we are fighting against abortion or we should not be fighting against women's rights to have contraception. Okay, and just before we go to the Q&A session because I know that James is asking us to kind of wind it down a little. I saw that in the chat, some people are like criticizing you because they think that in the response you just gave to me that you're endorsing additional regulations even though you're a libertarian, but my understanding of what you just said is that you're actually supporting deregulation of the system of acquiring contraception. So I don't understand how the chat managed to misunderstand that. But I mean, from my understanding of it, I think that you're entirely consistent on what you just said there. Yeah, I get misinterpreted whenever they liked but people like to attack me on being a libertarian and having certain opinions. But I think whenever it comes to things like birth control, I don't think that it's at all a libertarian's dance take that we should have the regulations that we have in place whenever it comes to accessing basic contraception. Okay, so happy to meet you on that one. It's one of those things where we both agree literally on that issue because I would support a deregulation as well. If you're saying that people have to go in the US, if you're saying that people can't just buy it over the counter and they have to go all over the place to get prescriptions and so on, then obviously I think that's completely ridiculous. And yeah, that should be deregulated. People should be able to make that choice over the counter without having to consult with 15 different authorities before going there, right? So no, I agree with you on that. And that may also lower the overall cost of the product as well without having to go through all of these intermediaries and without having the state providing that kind of incentive to drive the price up because I do accept the libertarian arguments that when the state enters a situation, sometimes it can paradoxically lead to the price increasing rather than decreasing on a particular product, depending on the dynamics involved in how that product is sourced. So again, I meet you halfway on that. Absolutely, and it's funny because I think that with this new wave of pro-life activism that I'm very, very proud to be a part of, I think that there is a lot of middle grounds that people on either side of this argument can meet on and agree on. And unfortunately, a lot of that middle ground has been missed for so long because people in the pro-life movement in mainstream pro-life activism, refusing to budge on so many of their moral issues whenever it comes to all kinds of different things that they're so unwilling to come more to the middle on anything and meet people from the pro-choice side that are defending abortion and nothing is getting accomplished. And I think that it's going to be super beneficial and I'm excited to see the progress that we can make on both sides of the argument. You know, like we were discussing earlier about, you know, marital rape, rape in general, sexual assault, holding predators accountable. You know, it doesn't matter if you support abortion or you don't support abortion, that is something that we can meet on the middle ground of and make great headway for the benefit of society as a whole, but particularly for women that is going to benefit our movement as pro-life activists in wanting to lower the rate of abortion and refusing to come to that middle ground to have these discussions with people that are pro-choice because they support abortion and I'm not going to bend or even discuss because they support abortion and the horrible people because they support abortion. This narrative that we've been supporting for so long has caused us to lose out on making so much headway as a society. With that, we may switch into the Q and A. Q and A, unless Ray, I don't want to cut you short if you had something you wanted to add, but otherwise we'll switch in. No, I think this is a good point on which to, in order to make that turn. So no, you can go to the Q and A if you want. Excellent, and want to remind you folks, I have put both of the links for our speakers down in the description. So they're waiting for you if you'd like to learn more about them. And with that, we will start with the first super chat coming from Steven Steen who says hashtag Kanye 2020. Thanks for that, Steven. Good luck. Nine tails, Cosmic Fox. Thanks for your question. Said question for Kay. Why does accepting the idea of forcing women to carry a child involve caring less about the impact to women than you do for an unborn child? I don't think that it, I never believed that I care less about women than I do about their unborn children. You know, hashtag love them both. These are two human beings, two human lives in saying that it is morally wrong or scientifically wrong to kill one human being because they're, in a sense, they are of equal value to the woman that is caring in them. Does not mean that I care about the woman less. I'm simply making the absolute moral argument that it is wrong to kill human beings. Fetuses, plasticists, embryos are human beings. Therefore, it is wrong to kill them. And making that argument and being consistent with that argument and that train of thought doesn't mean that I care any less about the woman who has come into this unplanned pregnancy or the burdens that she is facing due to the untranparency. I simply believe that there are other solutions that we can offer to her that does not mean that we have to sacrifice an innocent human life to prevent her from having those heartchats. Gotcha. Thank you. And also, heads up. These are actually pretty benevolent super chats tonight. So I don't think we really have anything that's blood sports toward either of you, but some of them are just hellos or some of them are quotes. If you want to respond, you definitely can, but you don't have to. It's up to you. Movie theory, in fact, quotes Reagan saying, I notice all pro-choicers are already born. If you want to respond, Ray, you can, but you don't, like I said, it's up to you. I mean, it just looks like that's a quip. I mean, yeah, I mean, I guess people who are having conversations about anything would be already born. Gotcha. It's a particularly good retort for them. Thank you. And pragmatic culture, thanks for your saying hello. It says just saying hi to Ray. You have a buddy out there, Ray. And then... Okay, I'll say hi back to him. I don't think he actually agrees with me on this topic, but hi nonetheless, pragmatic culture. I know who you are. And movie theory, thanks for your other question says, does R, I'm guessing that must mean Ray, does R support Planned Parenthood and its racist founder? Well, I mean, in the course of this conversation, I've essentially like criticized Planned Parenthood practices to some extent, given that I accepted, you know, Kay Fellows' description of what went on inside of those rooms, you know, whole cloth, because I mean, she's on the scene. I expect that she would know what happened in that scenario. So I did actually give him some partial criticism. I don't know about the allegation of the quote unquote racist founder. I mean, I don't know anything about that. They would have to send another super chat explaining what they mean by this, but I don't know whether the founder was racist or not. I don't know how long ago that was either. Gotcha. Gotcha. And thank you for your super chat from Brendan Ardeline says, referring to every stage of human life as a quote, baby unquote, is a cheap ploy. People arguing against abortion always resort to leaning upon emotion and shaming. Kay, if you wanna... That's mainly why whenever I refer to these lives, I try to use either the scientific term embryo, blastocystitis, or preborn human being or simply human being because it's just science. It's not something that we can argue about. These are human beings. A new human life begins at the moment of fertilization and they are human beings from that moment all the way through their stages of development through birth and onward. They're human beings. It's just simple basic fact. I'm not leaning, I don't like to lean on terms like baby or even child too much because I do think that it is somewhat kind of an emotional ploy. Like these are babies, like you're killing babies. And having been a part of that type of pro-life activism for so long, I see that it is not at all beneficial to our arguments to try to use emotionally manipulative language, which is why I most often try to refer to core scientific language for that express purpose. Gotcha. And thanks for your question from, this one is movie theory says for women's rights, what about the 50% in the womb? Is that addressed to me first? I think that's my guess. Okay, women's rights, what about the 50% in the womb? I assume this person is asking about what, male babies, right? Is that where he's going with this? They said four women's rights, question mark, what about the 50% in the womb? Yeah, well, I mean, obviously I would say that I don't have anything against men and I don't think that they should be unduly harmed by the progress that she's being made. I mean, it shouldn't be seen as this kind of oppositional thing where every time we make an advancing women's rights in any sphere of life, it somehow comes at the expense of men. In fact, we are invigorating society with a greater ability for everyone to meet their desires and goals. So I don't think this is harmful to men. Plus on top of that, these men who are asking these questions may give men that with daughters as their children later on, and I think they would want them to be able to succeed in society. Gotcha. I guess you could have been referring to men. And then Johan and Avraham, thanks for your statement said abortion is never in all caps and answers. You can respond if you want, you don't have to. I mean, that's just literally a statement they're making there. I can't really argue with Avraham. I obviously, I disagree with him on the idea that it quotes never an answer. So if it was directed at me, he's just making that statement toward me, but obviously I don't fully agree with that. Gotcha. And thank you for your question from Jamie Russell, who said, is it libertarian to allow freedom for others to influence children against our personal beliefs, i.e. religious or other in the public square? I'm guessing that was directed towards me as being very into the conversation. I don't think that there should be, I think that there should be a separation in public spaces. Separation of church and state is a two way street. If it's a public space, then influenced religion-wise should not exist. I'm fully against there being any type of religious indoctrination, regardless of what the religion is in our public schools. They're public schools, they should be void of any kind of religious indoctrination or teaching. I would extend that to all public spaces. If it's a public space, do that on your own private time because the separation of church and state needs to go both ways. Gotcha. And thanks for your question from Crafty. Kila, appreciate it, says forced pregnancy should never be a policy of civilized society. Blanket bans don't work, it just makes it later term in higher cost. I mean, I disagree on the idea of saying forced pregnancy because that's literally not something that any pro-lifer is advocating for. Nobody is advocating that we hold women down and forcefully impregnate them. Saying that it is wrong and that we should, we as a society should not accept that there is a specific groups of human beings that do not have their inalienable right to life and therefore abortion is wrong because it takes the right to life away from a specific group of human beings is not, it's not forcing pregnancy on women. Gotcha. And thanks for your question from Ninetales Cosmic Fox. Said K, life goals come well after birth and are essential to quality of life. So why reduce a mother's quality of life for an unborn entity with no life goals? This idea is kind of based in something that you can't prove or know. It's, you're saying that a woman's life is going to be less if she has an unintended pregnancy and carries that pregnancy to term. And that's simply not something that we can say for sure that if a woman who falls pregnant unintentionally and gives birth to that child that her life is somehow going to be less than it would have been had she not. And we as human beings don't get to decide whose life is worth living, whose life is more worthy of being lived than other human beings. Gotcha. And thanks for your question from Matthew Steele. Good to see you again. Matthew Steele has been on here before and he's an old school YouTuber. He was back in the days of Nephilim Free and G-Man and Potholer. That's how long he's been around. So Matthew Steele asks, to Kay, considering that abortion can't realistically be banned, what do you consider to be satisfactory real-world changes that can actually be accomplished? I mean, I think, I'm guessing whenever he says that it can't realistically be banned, that he's saying that there will always be some level of existence of abortion. Like there will always be those few that result to self-induced abortions or what they refer to as back alley abortions, even if we do all the things that we can do as a society to prevent women from feeling the need to have abortions. My argument there is that we don't keep things legal simply to keep safe or make it easier for the people that commit things that are wrong to make it like an easier alley for them. Like we're not going to say that we're going to make robbery easier for people because it might be harmful to people that want to rob others at the expense of somebody else's rights especially. So if we say that a fetus is a human being and therefore has human rights and the most basic human rights is the right to life, then it is wrong to kill these human beings. And therefore all we can do as a society is put forth our best effort to make abortion as unthinkable as possible to prevent as many women as possible from feeling the need to access what you would consider an unsafe, self-induced back alley abortion. Gotcha. Thank you. Matthew Steele for your other question asks, to Ray this time, says you're approaching the topic from a very dispassionate clinical perspective. So what do you think is the best possible state of things regarding the use of abortion around the world? Well, I mean, we ended up covering this over the course of the conversation already, but I mean, as I said earlier, I'm not about arbitrarily increasing the abortion rate for no reason. I'm just taking from the perspective that abortion is gonna be there and it's going to exist. And I'm gonna slightly include what was asked in the question just before to Kay as well. I mean, she gave part of her response involved saying that we don't transfer wealth to thieves in order to prevent them from thieving. But in fact, some would argue that this does in fact occur on some level, because if you look at the way that social services operate, these wealth transfers are decreasing the incentive for people to commit crimes that would involve them acquiring this money. So I mean, you could also have the argument and say that by safely providing a certain level of service for abortion, termination of pregnancies and so on, that you're essentially just serving a market which already would have been there regardless. And then you're simply regulating that market in order to make it safer than it otherwise would have been. You could also make the same argument with the supply of alcohol, for example. People try to do prohibition on alcohol. You ended up with the mafia driving around, transporting alcohol here and there. And so the only way to bring it back into the legal sphere was to have the government actually regulate the provision of alcohol and to essentially do audits on these people and to impose special amounts of taxation on different types of spirits and so on. Similarly, with the debate on certain times of drugs, particularly marijuana, for example, in the United States and in Canada, where they had the debate over whether the drug war should be whammed down to an end because of the fact that people kept doing the drugs anyway, even though the state had imposed a ban on those. So bringing it on the regulation may create a safer environment for people who are going to make that choice regardless of whether you tell them yes or no. So I mean, I would say to the person who's asking the question, again, I'm not intending to arbitrarily increase the number of abortions for some kind of fun or something like this, because obviously it is not fun. You know, it's just about creating the safest environment in which people can make these choices and reducing the number of unnecessary pressures which may force people into those decisions. Because again, the phrase I used at the beginning of this conversation was reproductive choice, which is part of reproductive justice. This involves the right not just to have abortions, but rather the right to have children if you actually want them at a time and spacing of your own choosing. And that second part is the part that's extremely important to emphasize. Gosh, Anne, thank you for your question. Coming in from Harley Quinn said, quote, person unquote or not, a free woman retains their bodily autonomy to choose who may and who may not use it as an incubator and it's just Harley Quinn, James. I'm going to try to keep this as quick and limited as possible because I could argue the bodily autonomy argument for ever. Bodily autonomy, first of all, is not an absolute. There are plenty of instances in a civilized society where you cannot just do whatever you want to do with your own body. You cannot publicly expose yourself or publicly urinate. You can't assault someone. If you fling your hands around because you feel like doing so and you hit someone, you've assaulted them, you can't sexually assault somebody else because you feel the need for sexual gratification and that's what you want to do with your body. There are limits to the idea of bodily autonomy and that limit is where another person's body and rights begin. So if you want to argue that bodily autonomy gives you the right to an abortion, you also have to acknowledge that a fetus, as we've mentioned many times before, is a human being with the equal rights to bodily autonomy. Abortion violates their bodily autonomy. Gotcha, and thank you for your question. This one is for Ray. It's from Sunflower and they asked, they said people with cerebral palsy or progeria often say they're happy they weren't aborted. Why is it okay to abort lives just because they're deformed or diseased? I think that anyone who is alive will probably, when asked in a poll, claim that they're happy to have been born. However, I think this is a weird philosophical question they're asking because a person who has never been born has never experienced life and therefore be unrepresented on a poll. So I'm mystified as to how this question is being posed to me. Like if you didn't exist, how would you vote on a poll? You got it. And movie theory. I'm surprised this is like maybe the first night we've gotten like sincere questions. Movie theories had come in control, but says, does our want to censor pictures of babies from abortions? Do I, okay, do I want to censor pictures? Well, I mean, I'm not aware of pictures that have been created. I mean, maybe there are some, well, I mean, no, I just realized what they're talking about. So if there are pro-life groups on the like social conservative side who are showing like literal pictures of I guess dismembered fetuses or something like this, do I think that there should be censorship on that? No, I don't think the government should be able to just arbitrarily censor images that people may or may not find distressing. But obviously I would expect that like in the name of, I guess in order to placate some public sensibilities, at least like provide a warning if someone is going to show those images, like I guess it would be up to them to provide a warning if they want to. But again, I don't think the state should mandate that people should provide warnings before they display certain images. So, I mean, I don't know the motive behind that question because I don't think I addressed it during the conversation in the first place, but no, I don't think the government should be regulating whether you can show images to people. I mean, there are plenty of people, I think posting these things on Twitter and I don't think Twitter stops them from doing it either. Gotcha, thank you. And next, thanks for your question or this is a movie theory says, join the secular pro-life network. Gotcha. And T Torshan, thanks for your super chat. Part of it I don't understand. So I'm just gonna, let's see. I think they said, I don't know what this is. They say, is Ray a unit for, I don't know what, hold on one sec. Cause sometimes we get these characters, define. Sometimes we get these, okay, yep. Nevermind that. Yeah, I think I saw that question when it was written the first time. It was one of those, it was one of those strange questions where what they've done is they've asked me a question, like the second part of it involves like an anti-semitic statement that they've appended to it. So like, I think if you read out the whole question it wouldn't play out very well. Yeah, it's, we have attracted some characters to our channel, but T Torshan, I don't know what you're trying to do, but sometimes we get these troublemakers and we are okay with you if you give arguments, but I just don't see where this is going and it looks like it's going in a bad direction. So if you want the $2 back for your, if you want a happy meal tomorrow or something, I could send it back, but I'm not gonna read that. Louis Romero, thanks for your question. This is for Kay, they said, if an embryo is equal to a third trimester fetus or an adult, the use of lethal force can be justified to stop an abortion, i.e. an abortion clinic shooting, as it can be justified to prevent the murder of an adult. That was a long question. I think I'm, did I say Kay or Ray? I keep getting this confused. It was for Kay, and I could read it again if you'd like unless you got it. No, I think I get like what he's going for. I'm a libertarian. I very heavily support the nonaggression principle. As of right now, abortion is legal, and therefore it would not be legally justified to take the life of an abortion doctor that is performing an abortion at any stage of pregnancy. And I will never ever advocate or support or defend shooting abortion doctors, shooting post-aborded women, shooting abortion supporters or killing them in any way. That's not okay. We're trying to advocate for society to accept pre-born humans as human beings with equal rights to born human beings. We are not going to get there by meeting that with aggression and violence. So I'm never going to advocate or support the idea that we need to fight the violence of abortion with violence on people that support it or carry it out. Gotcha. And thanks so much for your question today. Let's see. Yep, we got that one. And we just had a new one fly in. So not, we don't have too many left. So thanks so much for your patience, both of you for being here with us, especially Ray, as you're apparently hopefully a night owl. And Harley Quinn, thanks for your question asked, when did we establish that the fetus and the living person necessarily have equal value? How did you demonstrate this was the case, Kay? Because whenever you make the argument that a fetus is not an equal value to a born person, it is almost always I have yet to hear an argument for that basis that wasn't based in the idea that our value as human beings is based on what we provide to the people around us. That is not what makes us valuable as humans. It's not what gives us, gives our life value. And that's not what grants us our unalienable human rights to life. Gotcha. And thanks, missed a couple. Mark Spence, thanks for your contribution to the channel, really does mean a lot. And Timothy Bryce, thanks for your question said, Kay fellows, what would you say to libertarians that disagree with your stance on birth control? I agree with you to negate, quote unquote, unnecessary abortions. I don't understand how a libertarian can make the argument that the government should in any way be regulating birth control. We as libertarians argue that first of all, the government does very few things well, and that's why we want to limit their power as much as possible to their primary purpose, which is to defend human rights, particularly constitutionally observed human rights. That is their sole purpose. So I don't understand how a libertarian can make the argument that the government should be stepping in to regulate what grown adults or even, I mean, whatever it comes to, I started on birth control whenever I was still a teenager and I had to have parental consent in order to do that. I think that there are ways that we can try to ensure that teenagers are being informed on birth control and that parents are aware that their underage daughters are on birth control without saying that we need to have all of these regulations in place to where it is become such a burden for women to even be able to access birth control. I don't understand. I've never heard a libertarian make an argument against deregulating birth control. I think I would really have to hear where the argument is coming from because honestly I can't wrap my head around the idea that a libertarian would argue that the government should be in control of regulating something like birth control. Gotcha, and thanks for your question. Let's see, we have, I thought we had one more that just came in. Let me just check really quick. I think, I'm curious. Ray is, do you and T Torshan have a history? This person seems to be interested in you. You're targeting me this evening. I'm not sure as to why he's targeting me, but read his question anyway. I'll address it. I mean, I guess it's not literally inappropriate. It's just maybe some would say uncouth. They just said, Ray, do you have any children and do you live to work? I mean, I don't understand the second part of the sentence because I don't think that anyone lives to work. People work to live, not the other way or not the other way around. Regarding the children thing, I mean, not at the moment, but I mean, I can keep T-Tork on updating on that situation if he wants. Okay, thank you. And Mark Spence, thanks for your question, said, Kay, if there is no God, why is abortion objectively wrong? I get this question a lot because I'm not a religious person. I grew up very religious, but I have since kind of faded away from being religious. There are moral absolutes that guide us as a society. We are not a religious society despite what people on the right traditional conservative Christians want us to believe that we're a Christian society. America was built on the idea of freedom of religion and therefore no particular religion guides us as a society and no religion guides us as a whole. Our culture, our society, that our ability to live, civilized together is based on what I refer to as moral absolutes. We have built our social, our society has been constructed on the idea that killing other human beings, particularly innocent human beings is wrong. That's why even in different cultures around the world, we don't kill other innocent human beings. It's considered wrong. You are punished for it. And if you look at cultures as far back as you can go, whenever they started making exceptions to that rule, you saw societies begin to collapse whenever they said that certain human beings did not have that inalienable human right to life. That society eventually collapsed in on itself because those moral absolutes is what guides our society to be able to where we are able to live peaceably for the most parts together. The idea that it's wrong to kill innocent human beings isn't the only one in particular, but whenever it comes to the argument of abortion, that is the main moral absolutes that we as a culture, we as a society, we as honestly like a human species have come to the conclusion that we cannot live peaceably together and build and structure societies if we do not agree to the moral absolute that killing innocent humans particularly is wrong. Gotcha, and sunflower, thanks for your question. Said Ray, not even all healthy people say they're happy to be alive. Suicide happens. Deformities don't make people wish they were aborted or never born. I mean, it would really depend on who you ask on that one. I mean, I don't like waiting into that issue because I can't pronounce for other people as to what their mental state may or may not be since he's saying that. But I mean, I do remember a BBC report from years ago where they were interviewing someone who was like the product of sexual assault or something like this and like their entire family had been like literally ruined into personally across the board by the presence of this event. And when they asked the person who had been born as a consequence of this whether they were okay with the situation, the person themselves expressed the view that they would rather have never lived, which I thought was extremely sad, but it is a counterpoint to what the person who's asking me the question had said. And then when they asked the mother about it as well, the mother herself actually responded on camera in front of the child that she too would have referred to that child had never existed. And so there was this moment of stunned silence obviously from the BBC reporters. But I mean, this would seem to contradict the narrative that the person asking me the question is putting forward because I mean, you're gonna get all kinds of different answers. Gotcha. And that is our last question for the night, folks. I wanna say, we appreciate you all hanging out your things for your questions. Sorry we didn't get to read all of them, but I do have to say it's one, not only does Ray have to hopefully get sleep soon, but Kay was also a good sport and very flexible in making this debate because Kay had a fender bender as I mentioned in the chat. So despite having to kind of lose a lot of time to that this evening, Kay was still willing to come on. So we really appreciate both Kay and Ray for being willing to come on tonight, especially their flexibility. We really appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me on. I thought that this was a great conversation. I very much enjoyed it. Yeah, I mean, I agree as well. I mean, I wouldn't mind having another conversation again about like any other topic you'd like. I mean, I don't mind this whole. So yeah, thank you for having us on obviously James and you know, take it away. My pleasure. You wouldn't happen to believe in alien abductions, would you? We'll talk later. We're looking at folks for a person who is, we've got someone wanting to debate anyone who is a strong advocate of alien abductions occurring as well as what was the other one. Oh, cancel culture. So let me know if you happen to be for cancel culture, shoot me an email at modern day debate at Gmail and we've got someone who wants to challenge, they take a pretty firm and unyielding kind of inflexible stance against cancel culture. So that could be a fun one. And wanna say, like I said, we really appreciate our speakers. We put their links in the description folks and thanks for all of your questions as well as we wanna let you know, if you have not seen, we are on podcasts. This debate or discussion will also be on podcasts as we're continuing to strive folks to carry out this vision of hosting fair debates on controversial topics that may not be allowed everywhere. And so we really do though, most of all wanna say thanks to our speakers for being the lifeblood of the channel, making it possible. And with that, we will let you all go for the night, keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable folks, take care.