 Today we're discussing Roe vs. Wade and we are starting right now. With our opening statements, thanks so much for being with us, Ken and the floor is all yours. Okay, yeah, so abortion is, in my opinion, a legal infanticide. I believe that unborn child is a developing person and therefore, aborting unborn fetus is a form of boys just killing a child. The arguments for abortion are purely economic and not moral. I am not satisfied with any of the moral arguments that have been presumed by pro-lifers. I am also wary that abortion opens the door to ideas of eugenics and the idea of designer babies. It also reduces human beings to cold matter and a dead universe and ignores any kind of spiritual definition or meaning that a perfect person might have. Obviously, we're doing this because Roe vs. Wade has been overturned in the United States. I am genuinely pleased about this for a number of reasons. I've never been comfortable with Roe vs. Wade. I've never been in comfortable with the arguments defending it, such as a woman's right to privacy, which strikes me as a technicality. And so I am very much on the pro-life side of things. I will pass over my time to Stardust and if she's got anything to come back with, that's fine. Thanks so much. We will indeed kick it over to Stardust. If it's your first time here, welcome to Modern Day Debate. We are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion, and politics. We hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from. And with that, thanks so much, Stardust. The floor is all yours for your opening as well. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So an abortion, in my opinion, is a medical procedure that should be decided between a doctor and a patient. And while I think my opponent and I can agree that abortion should be a last choice, I think it's a necessary choice to be available to those who need it. The point in which human life begins doesn't really matter to me in the argument about whether abortion should be available or not, because I look at the outcomes of denying people abortions and I look at the outcomes of countries where abortion has been banned. We can even look at, you know, a lot of people will say, well, people are not responsible and that's why, you know, we shouldn't be allowing abortions. 64 percent of people who have an unintended pregnancy were on a contraceptive method. A lot of the times, in fact, most unintended pregnancies in the United States are caused not by contraceptive, like not by not having contraceptive by a gap in coverage or a gap in use, right? So you kind of have to have a perfect mix of disaster to have an unintended pregnancy. And I do think that it's an important medical procedure. Again, if you believe that life begins at fertilization, there are tons of eggs that are disposed of through in vitro fertilization, there are tons of miscarriages that happen, a good portion of pregnancies end in miscarriages. So it doesn't really it doesn't really speak to me if you think that life begins at conception or at fertilization or implantation at the end of the day. We know that abortions are going to happen, whether they're legal or not. And since at least one third of women, I believe, who seek abortions in the United States have had children already, we're now putting those children at risk of losing a parent because they will be seeking a back alley abortion. You got it. We're going to jump into open conversation. Well, as you know, many upcoming debates, folks, for example, at the bottom right of your screen tomorrow night, a debate on whether or not science fits more comfortably with atheism or theism. You don't want to miss that tag team debate tomorrow night. Hit that subscribe button so you don't miss more upcoming debates. And with that, thanks so much, Kennan and Stardust. The floor is all yours for open dialogue. OK, well, Stardust, if I may respond to some of the points you just made there. Yes, I am one of those people who believes that life begins at conception because, of course, it does. That's what the medical science tells us. But I agree that's actually by the by you're all. But you're also conflating different events like you're talking about the fertilized eggs phenomenon. Obviously, if a woman miscarries, that's not. Well, that's technically an abortion because that's what abortion means that the medical term is for when the room flushes out the fertilized egg. What we're actually talking about is what we used to call terminations, medical terminations. Obviously, we let's not quibble the semantics. When I say abortion, we both know what I mean by that. So miscarriage is unfortunate, but it's not an abortion that we're like we're talking about the in vitro fertilization. I actually agree that fertilizing a load of eggs and then destroying a lot of these fetuses is also immoral. Because you're destroying your potential life. They are alive. That's also something that I would absolutely forbid you do it one at a time, basically, just to restrict that wastage. In terms of, you know, gap in coverage with contraception and things like that, it's the responsibility whoever uses the contraception to make sure that they use it properly. Now, obviously, for women, it's very, I mean, you know, this start up, I'm going to give you an extra female contraception for growing out loud. But obviously for like men, for example, could wear condoms and things like that to increase the reduced the likelihood of unwanted pregnancies. So yeah, gap in coverage doesn't move me at all. If you fall pregnant, there is another life in play. There is life in the belly of the mother. Second problem that when you come to personal responsibility, you say that, well, there are children who are alive who might lose a mother to a baccalaureate abortion. Well, obviously, I don't want people to go to quacks who've got coat hangers or whatever, you know, improvised medical equipment. But that's the other thing, because you mentioned because they've already got kids, therefore. You are mentioning an argument, an economic argument. It's not moral. So the idea is that if you can't afford, you know, you've got two children, you can't afford a third one. First of all, I don't believe that's entirely true. And second of all, it's still not an excuse for killing the baby. See, I could understand if a woman fell pregnant by accident, you know, not through rape or anything like that. She fell pregnant by accident. She can't afford the child. She could, if you wanted to, give the baby up for adoption. Now, I realize that adoption services, adoption services in Britain are crap. I don't know what they like in the United States. I imagine they're not particularly good because foster care systems are rubbish all over the world. But it's still not a reason for killing a child. So I'm not particularly moved by that argument either. And I think that's enough rambling for me. So if you want to come back on that stall, that's free to do so. Yeah, so. So you can make the argument that people can give up their children to adoption agencies if they really feel like they're incapable of raising a child. But we've seen what happens in countries where where there have been bans on abortion, like Romania is an excellent example. And when when Romania when when basically communism fell, basically, there are there are hundreds of thousands of children that were found in these orphanages in Romania. And a lot of them were shackled to the beds. A lot of them had never been touched by a human being before. A lot of them had been stunted because they were. They they they had no development, basically. Nobody there to help them develop. So yeah, it was about like 170,000 children were kept in these like adoption centers. And and I don't think that that's a great outcome either. If we're looking at like the best outcome for for children that currently exist and for children that may come to exist later. I think making abortion available is the only way to to kind of allow for that. We can look at what happens to women who are turned away from abortions. There there's a turn away study I like to look at a lot of the time. Women who are turned away from abortions oftentimes are stay with violent partners and they often expose their their existing children and the unborn child to violence in the home. As a result of that, people who are turned away from abortions often are experienced financial hardship for like up to five years after they've been turned away. I believe it's like 20 percent of people who seek out abortions are also doing so because they feel that they can't emotionally handle being pregnant. They feel their mental health is not in a place where they can handle being pregnant. So I do think that if we're looking at outcomes overall, we're looking at like quality of life overall. I think the best way to ensure that everybody has a better quality of life and that we actually can take care of people who exist in this world. I think the best way to do that is to make sure that abortion is available. OK, but the problem with that is that again, what you're doing is the I should explain a more nuanced position that I hold stardust. This is where the conversation starts. It's not where it stops. So yes, reverse is made. Raiders being repealed. Hooray for me and my side. But I am also conscious of the fact that there will be outcomes. There will be impact from this. There will be a mess to mop up. So you mentioned, for example, all the examples you've given of anti-abortion laws failing are actually problems to do with either foster care or government welfare and things like that. So you use the example of the Romanian orphanages. Now, I know about this one because I follow someone on TikTok called Roma, who was adopted by Canadians and was from a Romanian orphanage. Sorry, adopted by Canadians from a Romanian orphanage. And so she knows something about this. And she knows it was Nicolae. Was it Nicolae Nicolos? Forget his first name. Cecescu, who was a psychopath, obviously didn't care about people like most communist dictators saw people as a mass and didn't care about individual human suffering at all. Though when you're saying, you know, you talk about their children being chained to railings, you're talking about children that are malnourished, you're talking about children who've never been touched by another human being. Those are not arguments for abortion. Those are arguments for, you know, prosecution under the law for child abuse and for improvements in the Romanian foster care system. It doesn't justify the killing of unborn children because, well, that's expensive and difficult. Therefore, we should destroy the unborn children to make sure that the problem doesn't occur. You also mentioned the fact that the increase in violence in the home and things like this, because they don't have access to abortion and things like that. It creates stress, money worries. I'm not opposed to governments issuing... I mean, obviously, in the UK, we have something called child... What do we call it now? Is it what's called a child? Is that child income support or child benefit allowance to allow young mothers or new mothers with newborn children to buy essentials for the baby? You know, things like nappies and formula and things like that. You know, I'm sure a lot of them spend it on booze or whatever, but it's meant for the essentials of the baby. So again, there are ways that you can deal with that you could tweak this issue. The only downside I can see in somewhere like a country like yours, the United States, is because you think, well, your country seems to think that welfare is communism. It's unlikely that you're going to get a lot of stuff. Now, obviously, again, that's an add-on. So what you do is you say, right, we're not going to kill unborn children. Every single human being, regardless of social status or intellectual ability, has innate value. You know, we went back in the bad old days when God was alive. We used to say that every child, every per-human being was a child of God, was made in the image of God, and therefore had a special value that no human agency could take away. We've lost all that now, but I'd like to see that return, maybe even in a secular fashion, this idea that, you know, there's some basic things that people should, you know, society, you know, the wider culture should offer to people who are struggling in whatever circumstance. So, yeah, if you want to pick that up, start us over. Sure. I think the issue, though, is repealing Roe v. Wade wouldn't be as much of an issue if we had other laws in place that would help alleviate these conditions. But what it leads to now, because we are repealing it and we know through the repeal, at least I think 13 states are going to have abortion bans overall. We're basically forcing people to have unwanted children and not creating the circumstances for people to raise those children in a healthy household and a healthy community with enough resources to give to that child. So what this seems like to me is that we're basically forcing people on one end without providing a solution to them to make sure that those children being raised are now going to have good lives. So it doesn't really speak to me that when you talk about it as the right to having this life when the people who are trying to help bring up this life don't even have the resources to do so, right? And then we have to leave it up to the state then and we know that the state system like foster care is not good. We know that it's just a horrible system to go through. So and I think we can agree that like we don't want abortion to be the first thing that people turn to, but when we don't even come up with solutions, with laws, with programs that can help families and help even single mothers raising children, then what choice are we leaving them? Well, Stardust, the problem is is that because obviously I come from the UK and I'm still in the UK, I've been all over the world. The thing about, and I should give you some background. I studied English and American literature and culture at university, which doesn't make me an expert on America because I don't live there, but it means that obviously I've looked at your culture, it's the evolution of its political system and things like that. I mean, you are American, aren't you? Not Canadian, is that right? American, yeah. Yeah, sure. So obviously, I can never tell the accents, I do apologize, but the trouble is, is that your system, welfare programs in your country don't work for two reasons. One, Americans don't seem to like it. The American culture is very individualistic and doesn't like socialize, centralize anything, but also because it's a federal system, there's no one federal plan that's ever worked effectively. There's no centralized authority that can really, no centralized federal program that really meets the needs of the people it's meant to serve. So you could argue, yes, okay, we could get rid of babies, unborn babies to save us the bottom, but even if we didn't, the idea that the government solves the problem, at least, well, it's certainly true in the UK, it's definitely true in your country. That doesn't work either. There's, it has to start, America works best when it works locally, and that's also true in the UK. National welfare programs are terrible on a grander scale, but in local areas, particularly in like greater metropolitan areas, local councils are more effective because they can deal with local issues at the local level. So yet you are going to have to leave it up to the states, even if the state, even if you don't like those states, because that is only the only effective way, you're going to deal with the inevitable fallout of banning abortion on demand. Yeah, do you want to come back on that again? Yeah, I mean, I just think that, I can agree that like, generally America doesn't like to provide these types of programs, or when they do provide the programs, they don't really do much. And oftentimes there's like a lot of paperwork and a lot of hoops to jump through. So I can agree with that. I still think that, again, so many, like there is a percentage of abortions that are done because they're medically necessary. Those need to be available. And there's a percentage of abortions that are done because again, because of rape or because of incest or because of a birth defect where the child will be born and live in horrible pain and then die. So I mean, I think these are things that need to be available. And again, regardless of whether it's legal or not, people are going to have them regardless. So it's either we now, either we have it legal and they're having safe ones and we can try to encourage them to take actions prior to becoming pregnant so that they don't have to enter that situation or we can make it legal and do the same. But now people who seek an abortion are now going to be so much more likely to experience a complication or even death. Okay. So I and my fellow pro-lifers like Kay Fellows who's often appeared on this channel and has spoken on, is also be like pro-life pagan. I don't know if you've ever met her. Yeah, I've met her. Yeah, as they say, rational pro-lifers like us do not oppose medically necessary abortions. So if pregnancy or birth would kill the mother and there is no way you can sort of cut the baby out and let it live outside of the womb in a incubator or something like that, then obviously an abortion is the lesser of two evils but it's still, it's a necessary evil. And that's, but we just still recognize it as the killing of an unborn child. Your point about if the child is born deformed or disabled or suffer and then die, there are very few conditions that I can think of that I've looked up in preparation for conversations like this where a child is going to suffer an agonizing youth and then die prematurely. They just, I can't even think of one off the top of my head. Most people when they say, oh, well, if the child is disabled or deformed, what they tend to be in is down syndrome because that's one of the few congenital defects or, you know, chromosomal mutations that can be detected in utero. I'm sorry, but that's not a compelling argument. If your response to, oh, my child's got down syndrome is kill it, then that makes you a not very nice person. It's a eugenicist argument. It's the idea that these people because they are chromosomally mutated are undeserving of life. If you take that to its logical extreme, and I'm not saying that you have done or will do, you can justify an awful lot of nonsense with that kind of reasoning. You know, if there are burden in the belly, why aren't they a burden in the street? You know, why can't I round up people with genetic abnormalities and send them to a shower of the pipe's gas in? You know, why can't I do? That's, it opens that door. And I don't want to open that. I want to keep that door firmly shut and preferably locked. And for this reason, I don't like designer babies. I'm not a big fan of IVF. Again, I don't like the element of choice. I don't believe that every, because again, expanding on this, I'm not in favor of the death penalty. I don't believe that human agencies should decide whether individual human lives have the human beings have the right to live. It weirds me out. It's creepy. So I don't want it. Even if someone deserves to die, we don't deserve to kill them. Do you see the distinction there? So I just back away from all of it. There are topics I will not allow government agencies certainly to flirt with. Again, if you want to pick that up, feel free. Yeah. So again, I'm not advocating for people to be having abortions because they find out their child is going to have Down syndrome, right? I am talking about those few cases, right? Where again, there are, when I'm talking about like medical abnormalities, we're talking about like birth defects, things like that. Or things that harm the mother. But since you don't seem to have a disagreement with that, again, I would just bring it back to the fact that we know abortions will be happening regardless of whether they're illegal or legal. And I think the best way to prevent more abortions is not to make it illegal, but to prevent more abortions, the way to prevent more abortions is to make contraceptives easily accessible to as many people as possible. Glad we can agree on that one. To have social programs that will help people. But yeah, as far as making abortion illegal, it's not going to stop people from getting abortions. People are going to find a way to get them regardless. Yes, that's absolutely true, but I'm afraid Stardust, I'm not moved by that argument either, I should explain. You can use that argument to justify pretty much anything. Like, for example, you and I would agree that slavery is wrong. No, we shouldn't own people as property. People are not livestock to be harnessed with reins and used to pull farm equipment, right? Slavery, bad idea. People are going to own slaves though. So, you know, people are going to find a way of enslaving people. Because slavery is still a problem in the United States and in all the Western countries. Definitely in the Arab world, I mean, I used to live in the Middle East and I know that the entire Arab world runs on slave labor. It's quite horrendous. Chinese sweatshops, you know, we want to talk about mega corporations enslaving their own people in their own countries to do this work. So, people are going to find ways of doing it. It still doesn't make it right. It still doesn't mean I have to legalise it or make it a comfortable thing. So, when it comes to, okay, maybe that's a bit extreme, my example, but yeah, the idea that people are going to do it anyway to me is not a compelling argument. Because you are still going to reduce the number of abortions. You are still going to reduce the number of people who want it. Also, if your response to being pregnant with, and let's face it, most pregnancies are healthy and viable. You know, the medical intervention only comes in when the mother chooses to have one. It's not because, oh, by the way, this birth is going to kill you. Because I'm sure there are plenty of examples from El Salvador, from Ireland, but which obviously up until relatively recently, they had draconian anti-abortion laws where women were basically on death's door because the state refused to intervene and perform a medically necessary abortion. So no one rational with an IQ above room temperature is arguing that if birth would kill the mother, that they have to carry the baby to term. Because you're still going to end up with a corpse at the end of it and your inaction is leading to that death. So yeah, that's not the point I'm making. What was the other point? Oh, I've lost my train of thought. I've rambled my way into a corner. I do apologize, Stardust. It's just terrible. So to address your point about slavery, the reason why we were able to, part of the reason why we were able to successfully like reduce slavery so much and make it not a normal thing is that we provided people the ability to enter society and make lives for themselves, right? It's not that we make something illegal and that's the end of it, right? There has to be other things that go along with that that enable people to have better lives. And when we talk about abortion, again, we don't have those things available. People, and abortion is a bit different from slavery in that like you, slavery is like an ongoing process. You have to maintain, right? Like abortion is something that people seek out to when they are in a hard part in their lives, they either think they're not emotionally able to handle caring a child or they're not financially able. Something like, I think over half of people who seek out abortions are living below like the federal poverty line. So, and a lot of them are not even able to cover their basic living expenses prior to having a child. So, like when we talk about this, again, I'm all four things that will reduce the amount of people getting abortions but making it illegal doesn't seem like one of those things. It will only reduce it and it won't reduce it out of like a good reason to reduce it or to reduce it because it's illegal. It's not reducing it because now this person has the resources to take care of a child. And oftentimes like, when people find out also back to the birth defect thing, a lot of the times, you don't realize that a child is going to have a serious defect until like later on in the pregnancy. I do think that these are things that need to be, like again, decisions that are left up to a doctor and a patient, it should always be advised by a doctor. And again, like, yeah, people are just not going to stop having abortions because it's illegal. They will just find a way, already you see an influx in people talking about how to make at home abortion pills, people talking about things that you can take to stop a pregnancy. So I guess that's kind of where I was going with this for now, I guess, so yeah. Well, okay, no, no, fair enough. I mean, I'll take your points one at a time. The problem is with making slavery, I mean, there's no problem with making slavery illegal, obviously, but repealing slavery means that it allowed people to move forward to abolish it, to crush slavery wherever they found it. It gave people permission to say, this is not an institution we respect in our country anymore. We want nothing to do with it, we can go off. If you take away the right of abortion, you take away the easy exit route. This is one of the reasons, like for example, one of the reasons I believe, and this is something that you might disagree with because you live in your own country and therefore you would have more details, one of the reasons why American lefties, because I'm not left-wing, one of the reasons why American lefties find it so difficult to get social welfare programs that most post-industrial Western countries have is because people just think it's unnecessary. Because abortion is the cheaper option, right? It's cheaper to kill a baby than to feed, let's be honest. You know, I mean, we both agree on that. So abortion is seen as the way forward. By taking away that option, and by increasing the number of births, you would inevitably, at least on local levels, increase demand for the very welfare programs that lefties have been calling for in your country for decades. So there's that to look forward to. The second thing is, I don't know about all this, whether people who want abortion fall below the poverty line. I have to trust you on that one because I haven't got any numbers to confirm that. You know, you said something else as well. Yes, many defects in a child are not revealed until later in the pregnancy. Still don't care. I'm not comfortable with this idea that because a child, because you have to bear in mind, Stardust, that you can get rid of a child for no reason whatsoever. This is something that I think a lot of pro-choice activists are not aware of. I'm sure you've heard her name, but a woman at the center of abortion in the United States was a woman called Norma McCorvey, who died in 2017 and her obituary was published in The Economist. That's how impromptu she was. And she was a pro-choice activist right back in the early days before RoboCyclape was passed. When it was finally passed, she couldn't have an abortion. She gave her child up adoption and she went to work for an abortion clinic, which had recently become legal. And so when she was working on the reception desk, she got to hear the reasons that people gave, women gave for wanting an abortion. And she wasn't satisfied with most of them. She said, you don't actually have a reason to abort the child. You're just doing it as a matter of convenience. Norma McCorvey is, of course, known to American legal history as Jane Rowe. And Jane Rowe is the center of Rowe versus Wade. So the woman, the figure at the center of Rowe versus Wade converted to Roman Catholicism and became an anti-abortion activist for the rest of her natural life. So the trouble is, is that I don't think disability is grounds for abortion. I don't think that poverty is necessarily grounds for abortion. These are excuses to get rid of a problem. And I don't regard any human being as a problem or they're a challenge, a puzzle to be solved, but they're not a problem because I can get rid of problems. I can't get rid of puzzles. Do you see where I'm going? Sure, but I don't really care about like, so like you said, still don't care. Like I still don't care with like this one person is saying about the reasons for people getting abortions, right? Financial reasons may make 40% of the people who seek out an abortion, but financial reasons is just one of many reasons that they choose. It's only something like 5% of people who seek out abortions are getting it only for a financial reason. It's usually in addition to not being financially prepared, but also like there's like at least a third of women who seek out abortions are doing it because of partner related reasons. Either their partner has already become abusive far before they became pregnant or a lot of the time, the first time that people, for a lot of women, the first time that people experience violence in a relationship is when they become pregnant and it tends to escalate when they become pregnant. So financial reasons are not the only reason that people seek out abortion. It's just one of many. It may be one most common one that happens, but it's usually accompanied by something else, whether that is a partner related reason, whether that is a health related reason, whether that is a mental health thing. So yeah, it's not for no reason. It is if you are in a situation and a lot of these domestic abuse situations often escalate. And so now you feel like you're not ready for a pregnancy because the person you're with is violent. The child that you already have is being exposed to this violence in the household. You don't have the ability to like separate yourself, move yourself away from that person and terminate a pregnancy, sorry, not terminate, and carry a pregnancy at the same time. It's just not something that a lot of people can do. So when we look at this, people often think that people are doing this out of convenience and sure, you can say it's out of convenience, but I would say that like, if you have a partner who is either in and out of jail or who is physically abusive with you or is not financially able to support you or you yourself are having serious mental health issues. Yeah, it's still technically for convenience, but these are very legitimate reasons. Well, this is it. I mean, I can understand, because there are difficult situations, another confession I should say, I used to be a high school English teacher. So I know I've taught kids from troubled backgrounds as we say you for mystically the profession. I don't teach English anymore because I recovered my sanity. So yeah, I understand that there can be, but again, none of these are reasons for abortion. What these are are reasons for something else. So you say, for example, if the partner presumably a male partner is abusive or they're always in and out of jail or they can't hold a job or whatever, that's an argument for removing mother and baby or the partner. It's not a rebel and not an argument for killing the baby. Likewise, you said to... But often, like I said, you can't remove them from that situation and carry a child to full, to term while doing that. It's just not possible financially. No, but it could be. This is the point. No scenarios that you have proposed in those nightmare scenarios, like the husband male partner is abusive or the male partner goes to jail, the male partner can't hold a job. Those are not arguments for killing an unborn child. Those are arguments for doing something else to mitigate those circumstances. Because the argument, not the argument, but the solution to the problem cannot begin with destroying the problem. If the problem is the problem of the pregnancy or the problem, the abusive partner or the criminal history or whatever it is. But instead of dealing with all of that, which I would argue is much more important and much more socially important, if you destroy the baby, you kind of cut out, you kind of ignore it, not you personally, but one ignores all of the other factors, because what you've done is it will just reduce the burden. It doesn't. It's a lesser of two evils. Right? No, but it's... When you yourself, wait, we were talking earlier, you talked about how it's a lesser of two evils to terminate a pregnancy because it's going to cause harm to the mother. Is it not also the lesser of two evils to terminate a pregnancy because you were financially unable to both carry a child two term while leaving an abusive partner? Is it not the lesser of two evils? I would say that like if you, if carrying a child to term is going to expose two children to physical harm and the woman, then I would say that it is the lesser of two evils to terminate the pregnancy. If it's going to cause the woman harm because it causes her, there's a birth issue, I think it's just as valid to say that it's fine to terminate a pregnancy if it's going to put other children at harm. So because a man can't control his temper, say, an unborn baby and an entire human timeline should die. Well, because a mother can't just carry a child to term despite whatever medical just sit with it and take it, we should just terminate a pregnancy then just because she's going to have some sort of a defect. Why can't the husband just take care of it if she passes? What's the big deal? Well, because there's very, there are very few births where very few children, a woman could, a baby might survive the birth, it might kill the mother, but obviously I don't want the mother to die either. See, what we're doing is now we're conflating social issues with medical problems. See, they're a very, it's highly unlikely that if... Social issues are tied though. Social issues are tied inherently to medical issues, right? Like people with lower incomes are more likely to have birth defects or more likely to have defects that are going to, like again, people with lower incomes and people in the lower federal income bracket are more likely across the board to be in abusive relationships, to experience birth defects, to experience addiction. There's like a whole bunch of, like these are why we kind of, like we look at health as a whole and health is very tied to your economic income and your economic status. Right. If the object is to do no harm, then abortion would count as harm because it's an unborn life, an entire timeline that's been abandoned. It's an abnegation of responsibility. My argument, as I said earlier in this conversation, this is where the conversation starts, not where it stops. I'm not suggesting for a moment that there won't be difficulties. I'm not suggesting for a moment that there won't be social programs that need to be instigated. What I am suggesting is I'm removing an option from the table. I want more options, yes, but this can't be one of them. So if the argument is, well, my husband can't control his hands. We're poor, we live in Dogpatch, Nebraska and I, you know, we're finding it difficult to go against it and he keeps hitting me. Killing an unborn child, it's one less problem, but the solution doesn't fix anything else. I'd much rather help mother and baby than just mother in that scenario. Does that make sense? Right, but then again, we're talking about you are fine with us terminating a pregnancy if it's going to harm the mother. Why is the mother's health, why does that overrule the potential life of that child? Well, no, the only reason I suggest if it kills the mother is because it's highly unlikely for a woman to carry a baby to term and give birth to it if the baby, if the baby is going to kill her. Even if the baby, if birth is going to kill the mother, you can always perform, for example, a caesarean section. I was born by C-sections, where my head is a cube, where it wasn't squeezed whether the vagina or vaginal canal. So yeah, you can carry a baby to term, but if birth kills the mother, then obviously there's C-sections. If pregnancy kills the mother, then you'd have to perform an abortion or a medical termination because either way, if the pregnancy's gonna kill the mother, the baby's going to die anyway. So in that scenario, the question becomes... It's rare, but it's not necessarily, right? We can definitely say that it's less likely, but in the case that we know, in the very rare case that we know that a woman is going to die by giving birth, but the child can still live, I don't see why with your argument why we would put the mother first. Also, what's stopping us from prosecuting people for miscarriages then, right? If somebody doesn't take all the steps to prevent having a miscarriage, why are... What's stopping us from prosecuting them for having an abortion? Two problems there. First of all, if birth... Giving birth and C-section are not the same thing. So if birth kills the mother, obviously we want mother to live, so we would cut the baby from her. We can do that now. We have the technology. With regards to punishing people for miscarriage, that would be ridiculous. Miscarriage is a natural phenomenon. It is perfectly plausible for a young mother to be a mother who's pregnant, woman who's pregnant, to go take all the hormones, take all the vitamins, do all the exercises, and mother nature, who is a fickle mistress, let's be honest, can just say, you know what, screw it, flush it out. Because I know, obviously, I've never had a miscarriage, but I know women in my circle who've had stillbirths, miscarriages, they've suffered the disappointment of not even being able to get pregnant. You know, there's the whole drama behind all of that, and it's traumatic. I know one of my old, when I was teaching in Down in Essex, one of my old colleagues, who was pregnant, she'd always wanted to be, but was told by a doctor when she was younger, she'd never fall pregnant. So when she did fall pregnant, it was great, but then the baby died in utero, and she had to go to hospital to have the corpse of the baby surgically removed. Now, I've never asked details about that, because one, I don't want to know, it's not my place to really ask that sort of thing, but that's horrifying. You can't punish people for a natural action over which they have no control. You could argue, and I don't do this, you could argue that if you induced a miscarriage, like you used a coat hanger or something, that you could punish someone for doing that, but obviously you'd have to prove it and it's getting in the weeds. The point I'm making is, if the baby is healthy and viable, if the mother is healthy and viable, and the mother can bring the baby to term and give birth without any medical complications whatsoever, abortion on demand is completely unjustified, you're only doing it because you either, A, can't be bothered, or B, you don't want to suffer the stress of it, or C, that you're afraid of the financial responsibility, which can be mitigated against. The solution to all of the social problems that you have proposed, and I recognize them as social problems because we have them in the UK as well, the solution to the social problem is not exterminating human beings. That tends, history is that often enough, that we have to find something else a bit more compassionate and humane. Okay, so what is the line between somebody inducing a miscarriage and inducing an abortion? Where is the line? We have had people in the United States, we've had people in the United States who have been charged for having miscarriages, we've had people in the United States who have been charged for somebody else inducing a miscarriage. So where is the line? Because we can look at that also, if you were saying we have to prove that somebody's miscarriage was with intent, you were just talking about earlier, we shouldn't be allowing people to have abortions just because they're in a horrible home life and their children are being exposed to harm in that home life and abuse in that home life, right? And then, but by that same logic, we would have to again prove that that person within that time period is one being abused by their abuser or if it's a rape, like that they were raped by a rapist, right? How are we going to prove that? Oftentimes people don't even seek out medical care after they've been abused or after they've been raped. Well, I would argue that if you're inducing a miscarriage, then you're performing a form of auto-abortion. You're actually performing an abortion on yourself. So I wouldn't actually draw a distinction at all. But also I am aware in places like El Salvador, for example, that women have gone to prison for miscarriage. Well, that's lunacy. The burden of proof would have to fall on the prosecution to prove that the defendant has killed the baby. If you can't do that with reasonable, if you can't prove it beyond reasonable doubt, then unfortunately the woman walks free. So I'm not one of these people who thinks, because I think the problem with the pro-life argument is it's misframed by pro-choice activists because they think that it's really about either punishing women or restricting women or it's something about, you know, we're seeking revenge on women in some weird way. And I'm not saying you've done that, but I'm saying that there are nuances that need to be tweaked here. So I'm not suggesting for a moment that the repeal of Roe versus Wade is the end of the matter. And I've uttered that throughout this conversation. What I am suggesting is that if your solution to an un-baby with impoverty is to kill the baby rather than solve the poverty, you haven't solved anything at all. And so I'll keep iterating that point, because it's the idea that, okay, the father's abusive, that would deal with the abuse. The mother is poor, deal with the poverty. Those are things you fix. You don't fix either of those problems by killing the child in the first place because in actual fact, killing the child fixes the poverty because there are less mouths to feed. And that's why I said in the beginning when I was talking about my opening remarks, the arguments for abortion tend to be economic rather than moral. People like abortion laws, governments like abortion laws because it reduces the number of people claiming on the welfare state. That's the real reason they like doing it. There's no philosophical, spiritual, or moral reason for abortion on demand at all. There might be medical reasons, and obviously we discuss those, but everything else is pretty flimsy, at least as far as I can tell. So until we fix the abuse and the poverty situation, which are also going to lead to medical issues, we know that there is a correlation with the poverty and abuse and medical issues. Unless we fix that, there's no reason for me to even consider taking abortion off the table because right now raising a child in an environment like that would be so incredibly harmful to that child, especially when we know there's no way you can afford to carry a child, to term raise a child while you're trying to leave an abusive partner. Secondly, I would say that even with miscarriages, where are you drawing the line? How do we draw the line between an induced miscarriage and a non-induced miscarriage? How are we going to determine who is going to be charged for that and who isn't going to be charged for that? Because it just seems, if you don't charge it then you're okay with back alley abortions, right? You're okay with people going out and seeking unsafe abortions and possibly putting themselves at risk. Or if you do charge it, then we're in an area where we have to determine how do we know that this person induced that miscarriage? Right. Okay, so the first one is the, when you said about the, let me just make sure I'm not misquoting you. If you allow abortion upon demand to remain on the table, your government, especially your society, has no inducement to fix any of the social issues we've mentioned. You have to, has to be a problem to be solved. If you get rid of the unborn child, there is no problem to solve and those of the alone social issues. The problems are still there. The problems were still there, but there's less incentive to solve it because there are less people to worry about. Second of all, when it comes to induced miscarriage and natural miscarriage, if a woman says, I miscarried, we must assume that she's innocent because you must assume innocence until she's proven guilty. And if we can't prove it, then fair enough, that's it. That's the end of the conversation. It would be incredibly difficult to prove. The old Salvadorian problem was, is that they just assumed because of their draconian anti-abortion laws that every miscarriage of a great majority of their miscarriages were induced by desperate women, which of course is an assumption of guilt until they prove innocence. The burden of proof falls upon the defendant. Our legal system, one would hope, and certainly our legal system doesn't work on that. So if I can't prove it, she walks free. That's it. I don't consider, I don't think that's, to be honest. What I'm hearing is that you're okay with- Can I just finish that? Can I just finish that, sorry. To be honest, that's a really minor-ish. The idea of miscarriage was induced, was it natural? It's relatively, it's really minor. I would assume that most miscarriages are natural anyway because I'm like that. So that to me is getting, if I'm gonna be honest, that's getting in the weeds. It still doesn't address the fundamental problem. This is a abortion on demand and ethical moral good, or a social necessity. And that to me, in the highly unlikely scenario that all women is brought up on charges for inducing their own miscarriage, how would you prove it? I mean, look, if you drank something that gets flushed out of the system, any damage to, say she'd used the coat hanger, any physical damage would heal itself relatively quickly. If nobody knew that she was pregnant, that's another one. If the pregnancy was kept very quiet among friends and family, again, there's no evidence of the pregnancy in the first place. So it's really, really minor and technical, but it doesn't really go anywhere. Okay, so because we don't know where the line is between an induced abortion and an induced miscarriage, it's pretty much the same thing. And because you are okay with not having to prosecute people who induce miscarriages, what I am hearing from you is that you're totally okay with back alley abortions, with unsafe medical procedures, with the increased possibility of these people who go out and seek abortions, dying and leaving their children now without a mother, without a parent in their house. So you either have to bite the bullet that, okay, we're increasing, we're exponentially increasing the amount of unsafe medical procedures that are unregulated or we're going to have to prosecute people for inducing miscarriages and we're going to have to determine where the line is when somebody induces a miscarriage, do we consider it an induced abortion, et cetera, right? 11% of back alley abortions kill the mother, by the way. That's a huge percentage. Yeah, but this is the big problem here. An induced miscarriage is an abortion. There's, you keep using those two phrases. There's no distinction there. A miscarriage, an induced miscarriage. So if you take an abortifacient deliberately known that you're going to flush a viable fetus out of your uterus, that is an abortive, an abortive technique. But there is no distinction there. Second of all, because miscarriages are a natural phenomenon and they happen with alarming regularity as a lot of feminists will comment on their writings. I mean, I've lost count of the number of feminist journalists who've written about their miscarriage or their stillbirth, right? It's slowly but surely coming out. You can't prosecute people for miscarriages, realistically. I mean, you could say, for example, oh, she didn't eat the right vitamins or she didn't do enough exercise, but that varies from pregnancy to pregnancy, doesn't it? There can't be a universal standard where you have to eat like five gummy vitamins every day if you only eat four. You're guilty of self-induced abortion. That would be lunacy. There's no way you can do that. The second thing, you mentioned something about being, yeah, go on. Yeah, okay, so what if somebody, for example, starves themselves to induce a miscarriage? Well, they wouldn't, but what if that's, how, when has that ever happened in the history of this? It can happen, it's happened. People can starve themselves to induce a miscarriage. And if you believe an induced miscarriage is the same as an induced abortion, which I personally, I think I agree with you on that, then where is the line? Are you going to punish her for having starved herself to make sure that she miscarries on purpose? Well, first of all, you'd have to establish whether the woman was starving herself to get rid of the baby or starving herself because she was anorexic. You would also have to, there are also medical procedures available whereby you could force feed. I mean, I know it's unpleasant, but you could do that if you wanted to. You'd also have to establish motive, because obviously there's a media race. Men's Raya, that's the phrase I'm looking for. Men's Raya, whereas what is the motive for starving herself? So you then have to prove that she wants to risk, and she wants to risk an unnatural body weight because she's desperate to get rid of the baby, but that's completely unrealistic. It's preposterous. If that was a TV script, you wouldn't buy the story. That's not what we're talking about. Even if she was anorexic, right? Even if she was anorexic, and she were starving herself because she's anorexic and not because she's pregnant, and a pregnancy miscarried as a result of that, I would think that that would still give enough people reason to prosecute. It doesn't matter at that point. You've still induced an abortion. You've still induced miscarriage. No, no, because the miscarriage is the unfortunate, unintended side effect of a psychological disorder. She should have been more careful then. She shouldn't have been starving herself then, right? Which is mentally ill. If you're anorexic, it's possible to be. We still punish people for child abuse, even if they're mentally ill, right? Do we not mitigate again, or do we not count the mental illness as a mitigating factor? We count it, but people still have their children taken away. Well, yeah, obviously, because they're physically abused. If you're schizophrenic and you beat your own child, you don't get to raise that child unless you can prove under medical supervision or psychological supervision that you're managing your condition. I speak with some authority on this because I suffer from mental health issues. I have a history of depression. I was mitigated for two years. Yes, mental illness affects your temperament and your behavior, but if you're still acting within society, so unless you're so mentally ill that you have to be sectioned, like in the UK, what was called mental health act to be sectioned means you're sectioned on the mental health act, you have to go to an asylum or whatever they call those hospitals now. You're still responsible for maintaining yourself. So like, okay, I have a history of depression. I know I have a history of depression. I need to seek treatment for depression if it's available, of course, that's a different discussion. If I don't maintain my treatment, that falls on me. I can't say, well, I was miserable, I got miserable and angry, so I killed this guy. It's like, well, no, you don't get away with murder because you have a history of depression. You know you do. And you chose to neglect yourself. So you're still responsible even if you're bonkers. So yeah, you take children away from abusive people because of course you do. Why they do the abuse is almost, well, it's not beside the point, but it's a secondary issue. The problem is is that if they are physically abused, you separate the link between parents and child. So yeah, of course you take it. And if they're neglectful too, right? If they're neglectful as a result of a mental illness, then yeah. And so an example I would bring to you in that case is that there are people, let's say a woman is pregnant, but she's addicted to drugs. Addiction is a mental illness. If she induces a miscarriage because she is taking drugs or she is actively taking drugs, is she still guilty of manslaughter? She may not be guilty of murder with the intent to murder, but she is still guilty of manslaughter. So are we going to prosecute her? Well, no, but the trouble is, is that, yes, okay, she is guilty of manslaughter. I mean, because, but again, she's not taking heroin to induce an abortion because that's ridiculous. I mean, I know there are some- But it doesn't matter. He's still prosecute for manslaughter, right? It depends on the circumstances. And it also depends on the punishment. See, I, yes, I would agree that the woman is guilty of manslaughter because her baby has died because of her drug addiction. But as I again, I, members of my family are addicted to heroin, have been for like decades now. I used to say he was dying of it, but to be quite honest, he's been around for 25 years with this addiction. So the definition of dying may vary. That's my second one. I won't go into too many personal details. I agree to anything, but, so yeah, she's, if you're talking about a junkie, someone who needs a fix, someone who can't function without a fix, you know, like physically, their organs don't work or their mind doesn't work and it compels them to do things. That's not just a mental illness. That's also a physical dependency. If in the course of, you know, smoking your crack or injecting your heroin or whatever, you find out you're pregnant and you then miscarried, you could then argue, yes, that's manslaughter, but what should the punishment be? I mean, one of the big problems, again, with the United States and also in the UK, let's be honest, is that we send junkies to jail, which is the worst place for them. They need to go to rehabilitation centers. So yes, the baby has died, but what's the point of sending a woman to prison for however long manslaughter is in your particular part of the world? That doesn't fix anything because the main problem isn't the fact that she had the manslaughter, the abortion, which was unintentional. The main problem is she's a junkie. So you've got to fix that. If there were a fewer junkies, if she wasn't a junkie, the baby might have lived. So you fix that problem first and then everything else knocks on from there. So then what's the point of even putting somebody who did purposely induce an abortion into jail? What's the point of that then? Because it's not like putting them in jail is going to make that child be alive. It's not like putting them in jail is going to prevent future abortions. Okay, but if somebody killed you, should we put your murderer in prison? I mean, putting your murderer in prison won't bring you back from the dead. It won't necessarily prevent future murders from happening. And obviously- If somebody's drunk driving and they kill me by accident, right? They're still guilty of manslaughter and they still go to jail. Yeah, but they chose to drink alcohol. They chose to go behind the wheel of the car. They didn't choose their addiction. What makes you think they're addicted? Let's say they are, they're an alcoholic. They have an alcohol problem, right? If they have an alcohol problem, if they have an addiction and they can't function in their daily life without drinking and they end up drinking and driving and then they end up killing me by accident, we would still put that person in jail. Just like if a woman were addicted to drugs and she knows that she's pregnant and she takes drugs and induces a miscarriage as a result of that, I feel like we would have still president to put her in jail. True, there is an argument there. But also an alcoholic might need to drink but they don't need to drive. So the reason you don't drink and drive, we all know this is a one tonne death machine and you're not allowed to drive at high speeds. Right, but the woman didn't need to get pregnant either. She may need to get her fix of drugs but she could have had protected sex and not gotten pregnant. Agreed. So it's the same thing, right? You know, similar, yes. It's a different scenario though. It's slightly different but yeah, there are parents. That might be a good opportunity to go into Q and A if you guys are ready for it. Sure. You got it, wanna let you know folks, our guests are linked in the description. So if you'd like to learn more about their views, you certainly can. If you click on the links below in the description box and I've gotta tell you, folks, if you have been living in a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears and you didn't know, Kenden has a wildly successful TikTok account. You can check that link out in the description box and I gotta tell you, I gotta give props to Stardust as well. Stardust is, in addition to being Twitch's favorite daughter, she hosts some controversial stuff. So if you like controversial debates, I've gotta hand it to you, Stardust. You've hosted some controversial stuff. You've stepped on some toes, not on purpose but you know, sometimes. Always by accident. That's right. Always by accident. I gotta say, I have found it to be refreshing that you said, I don't care, I'm doing it. I've really enjoyed it. Your channel, it's been fun to see your channel grow. So. Thank you. May I ask, sorry for interrupting, Joe. May I ask what's the most controversial debate you've ever had, Stardust? In all seriousness, it's genuine curiosity. What would you say? So usually the more controversial ones that I have are the ones that I host for other people. I usually, I host like a weekly debate panel. And sometimes some really controversial things will happen or there's like infighting and drama that will break out during panels, things like that. Yeah, but I think most recently, I think most recently I interviewed Richard Spencer like a few months ago. And so now everybody's really mad at me for that one on Twitter. So. I would love to have a conversation with Richard Spencer. I really would. I mean, I don't agree with, well, I'm not sure I'd agree with any of his politics, but I would love to have a conversation with him, it'd be fascinating. Not that this conversation has been very enjoyable, actually, Stardust. I do appreciate you, you know, talking, popping in last minute to talk to me. Sorry, James, you wanted to do a Q&A, didn't you? I just want to realize we're just... No problem at all. Aya, we'll jump right into these. Thanks for your questions, folks. We're going to try to move through as fast as possible. If you have a question, you can submit it. Two ways. One, if you tag me with at modern day, modern day debate in the YouTube live chat or Twitch live chat, or if you do a super chat, we put those at the top of the list. Here we go. Sky Lounge says, does science claim that all life begins at conception? They said all cells are already born alive by division from its parent cell. Life began only in the first time on Earth. I'm not sure if they're trying to say like that this human cells are like, there's no like actual new life in the fetus. I'm not sure. The trouble is that I understand the nature of the question because life is one of the biggest mysteries of science. We don't understand what life is. We don't know the difference between life and inert chemicals reacting to each other. We don't really know what death is. When does death occur? Some organisms break down, but parts of the organisms are still alive. So yeah, it is one of the big mysteries of science. They say that human life begins at conception because obviously that's when the creation of the human being begins. But the questioner is right in the sense that we don't actually know what life is really to know quite scientifically when it starts. So a human life, we like to say begins at conception, but again, it's a philosophical mind field. So yeah. You got it. And this one coming in from, do appreciate your question as well. Bradley Troska says, Kenden, when it comes to in vitro fertilization, they use many embryos, but only select one that is viable. The rest get destroyed. Is that now murder? Well, I mean, I mean, yes, it was definitely you're killing unborn children. There's also something in the problem with that, of course, is that it takes away, it's a level of interference that I find cold calculating scientific. It's almost like, it's almost as callous as factory farming. You know, you pick the best animal and go with that one. So yes, I mean, murder, well, no, it's not murder in the sense that because it's still legal to do. Remember, murder by definition and definition is unlawful killing. So if it's on the statute books that you could do that, then it's not murder. It's still wrong. It's still immoral, but it's not murder. So no, that will be my answer. But I ask a question. Yeah. Go on. Yeah. So let's say you have like a burning building and you have like six test tubes with like the fertilized eggs in them, right? And then you have a single, like a single baby, right? And you can only choose one of them to save. Which one would you choose? Well, you know, the load of test tubes or maybe the slipping. Well, I mean, the instinctive response obviously would be to save the individual baby. But just because that's my instinctive response doesn't mean it's right. Uh-huh. But I guess if you had the ability to choose, you would choose the test tubes then? Well, I mean, the thing is, is that because you do, that's an old philosophical conundrum, isn't it? The idea, do you save the living baby or do you see potential lives in the test tubes? You could, there is a rational argument which says, well, actually, you could try and save all of them or you could save the test tubes and then raise those babies to replace the one that died. But that's facing, human beings don't do that. We hear the crying child. We respond with a kind of visceral, primitive animal instinct to the child that's making noise, don't we? We wouldn't go for the test tubes. But again, that's, you know, so yeah, I probably would save the one child. Doesn't make that a right one. I don't know. I mean, that's a bit, that's a complicated one. I don't think there is a final answer to that question. This one, this one coming in from Bradley Trasca says, Kenden, can a pregnant woman with cancer get chemotherapy? This could kill the fetus. Your arguments sound very hypocritical. No, no, because if you think about it in that scenario, it's one corpse or two. If denying a woman cancer treatment would kill the mother, the baby would die as well. Second of all, because obviously pregnancy drains the mother, you know, physically, it's a physical burden. So if you've got cancer, the last thing you want is a drain on your nutrients, because you don't know your nutrient supply, because you don't have a lot of that left. So yes, if taking, if going for cancer treatment leads to the miscarriage of the baby, that's an unfortunate side effect of a woman. A woman is choosing to save her life. She isn't choosing to kill a baby. But the death of the baby is the unintended side effect of the medical procedure. Again, this is one of those big examples that comes up in, I think there's an Irish case about with this sort of thing. It to me, it's not that complicated at all. And if you speak to most pro-lifers, Kate Fellows who is here is a fine example of this. If it's, in that scenario, cancer treatment is a medical necessity. So that must come first. The element of choice is not part of it. Well, she already made a choice though. She shouldn't have gotten pregnant, right? Yeah, but she didn't choose to have cancer, did she? Yeah, but it's the same thing with an addict, right? The addict didn't choose to be an addict, but they did choose to like carry a baby or drive a car, right? So... Yeah, but addictions, you know that there are certain behaviors that can become addictive. Cancer can sprout out of nowhere, you know? Yes. Again. But addiction is still something that's like a mental health thing. It's not like you can really help it, right? So you still have to get a fix no matter what. Cancer is something, you can't help it. You have to either get the treatment or choose to die, right? So you don't have to choose to get pregnant. She didn't have to choose to get pregnant. She could have chosen to not get pregnant. Your analogy doesn't work. A junkie can go without a fix. Going without a fix. Not always, they can die if they don't get a fix. Some of them can die. In rehab centers, they often have to wean them off because they'll die if they don't get a fix. Well, it depends on the scenario. But again, choosing to indulge in behaviors that lead to addiction is one thing. Developing cancer randomly is not the same scenario. Right, but then let's say they developed lung cancer and they had a history of smoking in the past. Then they should have chosen not to smoke, right? And choosing to not get pregnant. Yeah. So it's a mess. I admit it's a mess. I mean, I'll argue with that point. But it doesn't, you don't solve anything by letting people die. So if someone's got lung cancer, say a woman has been smoking 20 a day for her whole life and she suddenly develops lung cancer. But you just said we don't solve anything by letting people choose abortion either, right? We don't solve these issues by letting them be able to get abortions whether it's because of a health reason or because of like a greater societal reason, right? It's not like you can choose the society you were born into. It's not like you can choose being born into a horrible economic situation. Right, but you fix that, don't you? Or at least try to, or mitigate against. You can't always, right? Like you don't get to choose the life that you're born into. If you're born into a life where you are addicted, you are born with less wealth than your peers. You were born in, and you live in an area that has like bad health outcomes, then you didn't choose that, right? But you did choose to get pregnant. And so I guess like by that, you're saying that, well, they shouldn't be able to get abortions because that's not solving the issue. But getting an abortion isn't solving the issue of cancer either, right? Getting an abortion isn't solving the issue of them being addicted to drugs either, is it? Well, no, but you would be getting an abortion, it's not part of cancer treatment or addiction recovery. It's a miscarriage, a miscarriage is what we're actually talking about. A miscarriage, and a natural abortion, natural miscarriage is the byproduct of the treatment. But it wouldn't be natural. It wouldn't be natural because you have the choice to either get that treatment or carry that child to term. So we know it's not natural. You're inducing a miscarriage. Whether that's part of the treatment or not, you're still inducing a miscarriage, you know what it's going to induce. Yeah, I suppose, but then we can't carry the baby bits at term because you'll be dead. So the choice has become, is it one corpse or two? And well, obviously. Well, if you're that far, I'm thinking that probably like chemotherapy alone would not be the thing that's going to save you, right? If you're that far along that you would be. I don't understand. That, yeah, basically you could choose to carry the child, right? Or you could choose to get the chemotherapy. And then you know, but still making the choice to get chemotherapy might be the treatment, but you were still making the choice to also induce a miscarriage. You're choosing to deal with the cancer. The miscarriage is the unintended side effect of that. The two options are not choose- It's not an unintended one if you know it's real, if you know it's happening. It's not unintended if you know that it's a side effect. Well, a badge, sometimes you've got to choose the least worse option, but the argument you're making is that, well, okay, they don't go for cancer treatment, they bring the baby to term, but then of course if they don't have cancer treatment, they can't bring the baby to term because they're dead. So the choice then becomes, do I try my luck and try and give birth to this child and risk the tumors eating me from the inside out, or do I take the cancer treatment knowing full well that I will miscarry, but at least I'll be alive to learn from that experience and hopefully make better choices in the future. See, there's no scenario there that's good. There's no good scenario. There's no right choice. There's no- I just wouldn't call it unintended though. Maybe you could call it unexpected. Even then I wouldn't even call it unexpected because it's something you can know, you know with enough certainty that if you get chemotherapy, you're going to miscarry. So it's not unintended. Well, it's indirect. You're not saying, you know what, I can't be bothered anymore, get rid of this babe. What you're actually doing is I've got tumors, they need to be dealt with, that's the emergent, that's the most pressing issue. That's what you're actually choosing to do. You're not choosing to kill the baby, you're choosing to kill the baby. You are choosing to kill the baby. You're choosing to kill the baby by focusing on something else. You're neglecting it basically. You're killing by neglect. Indirect. It's not indirect. You know that the cancer is going to be directly murdered. Like the, not the cancer, the chemotherapy is going to directly induce a miscarriage. It's not indirect. Yeah, no, that makes sense. But the trouble is, but in that scenario, there is no good outcome. There's no good outcome. Yeah, but there's no good outcome in any of these scenarios, right? Oh no, but there are other options that you can go for. In the cancer scenario, you've got either way, the baby dies. You know, it's either I take my chemotherapy, the baby dies, or I... Right, okay, let's say for example, an abusive household, a lot of the times, like if somebody gets beat up enough, like they'll miscarry, right? Or they can have an abortion prior to getting beaten up and miscarrying, right? Or if the person who beats them up induces a miscarriage, I'd prosecute the assailant. Yeah, that would be ideal, right? But again, either you're choosing... You're not really making a choice to not kill a child in that sense then, right? Like you know that you're putting your child at risk either way, right? You're making the choice to put them into risk. The mother isn't making the choice. The assailant's making the choice. The mother can choose to not be with him. The mother can choose to... The mother didn't have to choose to be with him in the first place. Yeah, that's possible. But no one chooses, you know, no one can expect the man to suddenly become a bit aggressive and violent and start beating the crap out of her. And if a man, I mean, if a man, the kind of man who would be... Swedge the living crap out of a pregnant woman, he must know that the violence he does... I don't buy this scenario. The scenario is preposterous. You do realize that. No, no, it happens. It happens all the time where people, a lot of the times when women get pregnant, that's usually in a lot of relationships the first time that they experience physical abuse. Well, that might be true in some cases. I don't know how many. But it's still... Again, we're disappearing. The statistics line up with that. But we're disappearing into the weeds here. There's no solution to this that is perfect. I mean, it's like the pro-life nor the pro-choice position. It's not like this is going to be pro-life will solve everything. It's not like pro-choice solves everything. Because as I've established, the pro-choice movement doesn't solve the social issues I... My contention is purely that I don't want people choosing to kill their unborn children. Right, but then my point is that pro-choice or pro-life, we're not taking away the fact that people are going to be inducing miscarriages or doing back alley abortions. We're not changing that fact. Whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, whether you have legislation that prevents or prevents prohibits or allows for it, we're still going to have people who go out and seek those solutions. And so it's not really a solution either way if you prohibit it. But we might will be reducing the number of abortions, which is probably the only best outcome. And frankly, that might have to be the best scenario. But again, if 11% of back alley abortions result in the death of the mother, then we're increasing the deaths. Yeah, but how many back alley abortions? Instead of however many it would be, that 10% instead of one life for each one of those, it would be two. That's not the question. How many back alley abortions? 11% of what? Yeah, I don't know what it would be. I see, I'm not having to go used on us, that's always, it's not person attack. Those kind of arguments, they don't hold water. 11% of what? You need the final... The back alley abortions would happen. Yes, it reduces the amount of abortions, but they're still like only by a small percentage, I believe. I believe it's some... Yeah, but don't you see 11%? Back alley abortions almost entirely replace front room abortions. So the state is almost total replacement. No, you see that's... According to this Amnesty International, it says that when abortion is banned, back alley abortions essentially replace all of those safe abortions. Yeah, but in which countries, in which cultures, at which times, you see that's not, that's too vague. See 11% of one million and 11% of a thousand to two different numbers, of course. So the idea that you can't just use the percentage on its own, it has to be a percentage of something. And that's why I don't... I mean, I'm not saying, look, if you had more numbers on it, if you had more data on it, then obviously I would consider it, but 11% of nothing is nothing. You know, you need a whole... Sure, 11% I would say is a significant portion. If, when we know, according to this Amnesty International thing, if according to that, it says laws that totally ban abortion do not, in fact, decrease abortion rates, rather they drive women and girls to seek unsafe clandestine abortions. So it almost completely replaces those safe abortions. Because of the question for Kenden, I'll give you the last word, and then I've got a question for you, Stardust. Got it. Sure. This one coming in from Aaron Webster says, so because they might have a hard life, we should kill them, Stardust? No, we shouldn't. They're going to get their... That's not the point, right? My ideal world, abortion would be the last option that somebody chooses, the very last thing that somebody considers, right? But we know, again, based on what I'm reading here, abortion, when it is banned, almost completely is replaced by unsafe back alley abortions, right? It's not that abortion goes down. It's not that abortion goes down. Abortion still exists, and abortion is now unsafe. And if 11% of those abortions are a result in the death of a mother, we're not, we've resulted in more deaths. So. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question as well. Steven Steen, actually, a statement says, this channel doesn't represent those who actually are killed by abortion. Why are there no fetuses on the panel? Debate is worthless without proper representation. Fair, very fair. Malivia, thanks very much, says James. If I email you, that's funny, okay. That's it for later. First name last name says, we all knew you. Let's see, should... So first name last name says, Kenan, should we separate any logical choice from you? I don't, I don't get it. Brent Langel says, pro-life's real political goal is state-enforced pregnancy. They want to enforce an unwilling woman to remain pregnant at gunpoint. Using state violence for this purpose is depraved and unconscionable. The state compels lots of people to do lots of things they don't want to do. Why should this issue be the only one where it's questioned? The idea, the way the question was framed is too dramatic for what we're actually talking about. The state compels you to pay tax. People don't want to do that. The state compels you to wear a seatbelt. People don't want to do that. But they call it state violence. If you don't do these things, we'll punish you for not doing these things. You know, this idea that this is the one issue where state violence, which is always a bit of a wobbly phrase anyway, when I think of state violence, I think of the military. I think of armed policemen. That's when I think of the state violence. I don't... I think that's far too melodramatic, far too hyperbolic. Yes, we are effectively enforcing women to be pregnant, unless, of course, it's medically necessary to terminate pregnancy. What we're doing is removing the element of choice whereby a woman cannot choose to kill a perfectly viable child for whatever reason. And then the burden falls on the rest of society to come up with a solution for the increased number of births. It is ultimately the most... It enforces us as a culture to be more charitable and compassionate. And that's the reason why I consider it the better elk. But, you know, if you disagree, that's all. And as far as dramatic is concerned, oh, Brenton's just getting warmed up. And I'm even reading these the way I think he would say them, because Brenton's been on here to debate many times. He says, over 1,000, sorry, over 100,000 Americans are waiting for a kidney. They will die without one though. You can live comfortably with only one kidney. Does Kenden want to use state violence to force unwilling donors to give their kidneys? Or just one kidney, I should say. Well, no, because then if you remove a kidney that affects the function of the first birth, it's not as simple as just ripping out a kidney and giving it to the person, because it doesn't work like that. And again, it's a bad analogy. You're talking about organ donation. There's a, you know, allowing someone to die effectively or suffer a poor life and actively killing something else. It's not the same scenario. These analogies just don't work. They really don't work. There's no scenario quite like pregnancy. There's no scenario quite like birth. There's no moral debate quite like abortion. So that's why a lot of these things, a lot of these argument analogies just don't, just don't, can't withstand reason, you know, scruces. You got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Joe Schwartz says for both, what country has the best laws on abortion? Well, I just pay 10 to the U.S. so I wouldn't really know. So. I mean, yeah, I mean, I take stardust for you. I mean, I, having not seen all the laws on the statute books, I wouldn't know. As I say, up to, I mean, the United States had the most liberal abortion laws in the Western world up until relatively recently. But yeah, I can't, I don't know enough to answer the question. Sorry. No problem. All this one coming in from, do appreciate it. First name, last name says, why should any individual be forced to use their body to support another individual? So in a way, it reminds me of the old Judith Jarvis Thompson, if I remember the name right, the old violinist argument. Yeah, yeah. No, the trouble, the problem is, is that it's, the real debate here when it comes to abortion is either nation of person, the nature of personhood and who gets priority, mother or baby. I would argue that I don't draw a distinction. I would argue that mother is responsible for baby. Therefore, they should be weighted equally, that the death of the baby should be, you know, incidental or accidental rather than premeditated. So the reason mothers have to suffice, have to give to the baby is the whole point of, and I'm sure Stardust will know more about this than I do, the whole point of the terrible plumbing system that women have to endure throughout their lives is to make babies. That's its function. The baby is not an organ, it's not a tissue sample, it's separate organism forced by circumstances to feed off another organism because that's the whole point of the system in place. So that's why it's compelling. If the mother then were to give the baby up for adoption because of personal circumstances, then that's obviously a different issue, I would accept that. But that's why it's not, that's why it's not the same as, yeah, the violinist one is about, you know, is it like hooking up somebody for dialysis or something like that, is that an organic form of dialysis or is that the old analogy that they use? The violinist. I remember roughly stated, because it's been a while since I've heard it in an old class I learned it, and the idea that if you were to, let's say, be in a coma and you wake up, let's say you've got an accident and then you are hooked up to somebody through dialysis, just like you were saying, such that in some way their body was dependent upon your body and you're basically confined to either staying there so they can survive or if you disconnected and laughed, they would die. And some people argued that's analogous to why should a woman have to carry the fetus to birth? Well, yeah, but the answer to that one, but the reason why the analogy doesn't quite work is because the whole point of pregnancy is that it comes to an end naturally with a baby and the baby will eventually grow up to be independent and walk away, whereas then the violinist scenario, there's no timeline set like that. So the idea that you're basically strapped for the rest of your natural life just keeping this person alive, thereby sabotaging the independence of two people rather than just one. So yeah, it doesn't quite line up, but that's just the... I mean, we could fix it though, we could just make it for eight months, right? For eight months, you have to be hooked up to the violinist, right? Well, yes, but the expectation would be that after the end of the eight or nine months that the violinist would either walk away or by that point, you would have found a solution to deal with the violinist, like something that's more long term that leaves both P parties independently viable. But again, it doesn't work. But there's no medical scenario in which that's even likely. So it's a thought experiment that doesn't really go anywhere. That's why I don't really, that's what I don't quite like. This one, let me in from do appreciate your question. This one is from Lord McDoth 01 says, how much damage does a pregnancy need to do to a mother for an abortion to be allowed? Maybe this also kind of goes to the question of, is there such as if the life of the woman is at risk? Or for example, in the more extreme case, if you were, if the doctors were thinking, I'm just kind of fleshing this out. But so I'll let you answer their question before I give you the second one. But how much damage does a pregnancy need to do to a mother for an abortion to be acceptable? Ken, then. Well, again, I don't know because I'm not a medical man. I would say life threatening is the old risk one. But then of course, yeah. Oh, I was just thinking for that violinist scenario. Let's say it takes eight months for his kidney donation to come up. So that's why somebody has to be hooked up to them. So in eight months, we know that he's going to get a kidney. So it'll be good. So you don't need to be hooked up to him after eight months. Yeah, but again, that's a thought, it's a thought experiment. That's not even vaguely realistic. So it doesn't tally with the abortion argument that the reason I don't like it is because it's not, because that's an unrealistic medical scenario. If it was a natural medical procedure, it'd be different. But because it's an unrealistic medical scenario, any answer you give to that does not map easily onto the abortion debate. That's why the violinist one doesn't really work. It's a bit like the, well, no, it's not like a trolley problem. No, we've put that one to the side. But yeah, again, because what you're doing is you're putting in so many different barriers. Like, well, what if it's eight months, we're going to get a kidney, well, what if the kidney fails? What if the, you know, the body rejects the kidney? There's all sorts of things that you can throw into that to just complicate the philosophical question and it still wouldn't get any closer to the abortion. But, you know, that's just BB. This one, by the way, interestingly, Judith Jarvis Thompson, who came up with that argument, also came up with the trolley problems, which is so like, she's had a huge influence on philosophy. This one coming in from Alex Williams says, "'Kenden, would you support a law "'that compels men to use their bodies, "'such as their organs or blood, "'if medically required, to sustain your child's life "'after birth, even if it risked your life?'' I'm just trying to think of a scenario in which that would be vaguely realistic. Let's humor them and do just to get as much as possible out of the intuition pump. Let's say that, like, in some way, their blood, like, let's say, in the future, there's a disease that we discovered where their blood, you know, had to, they needed new blood. And so this question, they said, "'Would you support a law that compels men "'to use their bodies, such as their organs or blood, "'if medically required, to sustain your child's birth, "'sustain your child's life after birth, "'if it risked the father's life?'' So maybe it was such that it, like, the man had to give so much blood that it, you know, jeopardized his own health to where it risked his life in order to give enough blood for the man. Well, no, but again, in that scenario, it's a bit like, would I force a woman to carry a baby if I knew that the pregnancy would kill her? It's like, well, no, I wouldn't, because then that would be a scenario where a medically necessary abortion is perfectly permissible, in the same way that if a father is donating blood to a child to keep the child alive, but the father's probably gonna die from donating all of this with all of the red, all of the vital claret, then that doesn't really, it doesn't really solve it. I mean, I suppose if the father chose to do it, that'd be one thing, but even then, it's still incredibly risky and it ends up you kill a person. I mean, I'm not sure, yeah, that doesn't work either. So I said, sorry, I'm just being difficult, I think. You should stop. No. Bradley Trouscott, thanks for your support of the channel. And he also said, Stardust, you have a big fan. I'm thinking they must mean themselves. And this one coming in from Aaron Webster, says, coming from an ex addict of 20 plus years, it is not a mental illness. You see where it is headed and you choose to continue using or not. I think that may be. Okay, well, fair enough. I would defer to greater experience. I mean, the only addiction that I suffer from is that I'm a nicotine addict. So I've had to stop smoking and I'm now on the nicotine, minty things. So yeah, that's very much pushy. That's not what we're talking about yet. But yeah, there is a mental element to it in the sense that, I mean, I was going to say that the former addict would agree with this, but there is a mental compulsion to find a fix. But they are right strictly, I suppose. It isn't a mental illness. You're not delusional because of the addiction necessarily. You're just focused on feeding that demon on your back. Yeah, I would still say it's medically, it's still like a medical necessity though, because some people do die if they don't get their fix. So, great. But it depends on the substance, doesn't it? Depends on the substance, yeah. Two quick questions. Are we allowed to say, are we allowed, if people called each other cracker, is that allowed on Twitch or YouTube? Well, it's not on Twitch, but if you're talking in an example or something or somebody else says it, you know? So yeah, I guess it's okay. Okay, and then I didn't know that cigarettes are addictive because of nicotine or what's the other thing that's in it? There's gotta be something else too, right? Is there also? Because of the tobacco? No, I don't think formaldehyde, well, the nicotine's in the tobacco. I don't think formaldehyde is addictive, it's just a poison. But yeah, I think nicotine's the only truly addictive chemical. I didn't know, okay. You're right, okay. I didn't know that nicotine is within the tobacco because I was for some reason, I was thinking of them as like separate and I was thinking like it's both tobacco and the nicotine. No, because they're ancient tribes that chew tobacco leaves and they get the same buzz from smokers, you know? So clearly, so it's a naturally occurring chemical. But yeah. God, thanks for letting me tangent for a second and this one coming in from Brenton Langle strikes again. He says one out of four women who experience domestic violence though have a miscarriage as a result. That's 25% star is 100% correct. Okay. That's fine, but I don't understand what the point is. I mean, okay, okay, so one in four, where did the stat come from? Second of all, what is one supposed to do with that number? If a man is beating up a woman and induces a miscarriage, I would cheerfully see that man at the talk. I don't think- Sure, but again, I guess the thing is like the point is you're either choosing to be able to terminate that pregnancy or you are choosing to be in a situation where somebody's going to terminate it for you, I guess, and some of these, so it's not like- Yeah, but no, no, no, no, I mean- But she didn't have to get pregnant. She didn't have to get pregnant like you're saying. She doesn't have to be in that relationship like you're saying, but again, if she miscarries, but if she miscarries because he beats her, it's not like she had to choose to stay in that relationship, right? No, I mean, she could obviously want to leave. She could choose to try to leave, but ultimately she's not choosing a man to punch her belly until her baby falls out. I mean, that's preposterous. Yeah, but oftentimes it escalates over time, right? So it could have started and been pretty mild to begin with and then it escalates and escalates. And so she probably had a few opportunities to leave before it happened. Well, or she's been psychologically manipulated by her abuser as tends to happen obviously misread the situation or to not take serious steps to vacate. It's not as simple as, oh, well, he hit me once, okay, I'll just put up with it. It's not that simple. And I think everybody should know that if they don't already. There's a reason why battered wives spend 20, 25 years with the man, with the man they married who beats them on the regular. It's not because they enjoy punches to the face. It's because there's something psychological going on there which is they've been manipulated into accepting the scenario, whatever the abuse happens to be. Sure, but again, it starts off mild. So people often, like, if you're making the argument that like a person, like a drunk driver doesn't have to choose to drive, I'm just saying we can make the same argument for somebody who's in one of these relationships and like, and doesn't choose to leave, right? Like, it's never, it doesn't always, I mean, it never is that immediately somebody like beats somebody until they miscarry. Usually it escalates to that point. It's not the same scenario at all. If I don't find... Right, there's more time with the interviews of relationship to walk away. Well, yes, but there's lessons. There's all, it's also harder to do so because of financial, social strictures or financial barriers. If I choose to go down the pub and I choose to have seven pints of beer, I know that as I'm drinking my pints, I should not be driving at any point. If I then go, you know what, screw it, live life on the wild side, get in my car, I know that what I'm doing is illegal, right? Even if I'm pissed, I know that it's a crime. If I then get behind the wheel of my car and then drive it away and I'm being a bit wobbly, I know that what I'm doing is a crime. I could be stopped even if I never hit anybody, even if I get home safely. I'm still breaking the law and I can still be arrested. If I then kill somebody by running them over because of my reaction times are slow, I have made a series of choices, conscious choices admittedly poisoned my alcohol, series of conscious choices that led to the death of somebody who's just, you know, walking around going about their life. But let's say it's not at the pub though. It's not the same thing. Right, but it doesn't have to be at the pub, right? It could be somebody who is addicted to alcohol who has a physical dependence on alcohol who is not even at the pub. Let's say they keep a bottle of liquor with them. They're still choosing to drive. But let's say, yeah, sure they are, but let's say they still have a job to go to, right? They're physically dependent on alcohol. They still choose to drink for alcohol and continue to drink it because they have a physical dependence on it. What are they gonna do? Not go to work? So they go to work and then they come back, they're driving home and they have alcohol in their system to get them through the day. And let's say they get into an argument, not argument, into an accident and kill somebody, right? Like it's still the same thing. Yeah, and they would still be prosecuted for it. You don't, you can't say I'm an alcoholic, therefore I'm absolved of all responsibility. That doesn't work. I know people have lost their job. Okay, so then we could do the same thing with the lady in the situation, right? Like, oh, I'm in a psychological state where I need to be with him. Okay, but yeah, but it was still neglect. You still exposed your unborn child too and abusive partner. Yeah, but it's not a rational conscious choice, is it? If someone's been psychologically manipulative, it's like when people join cults, cult leaders manipulate them. The alcoholism wasn't either. No, but you can choose not to do anything about it. And you can choose to indulge yourself and you can choose to get pissed and get behind the wheel of a car. Those are conscious choices. You don't have, I've got the idea that you don't have the choice to not go to work. You're gonna be out of, you're gonna be financial and like financial trouble if you don't go to work, right? So you have to go to work. You have to drive to get to work. You have to drink because your body's physically dependent on it. No, but what you've done is you've just piled all these things on and it still doesn't come anywhere close to the abortion. I think it does. I think we can make the argument about choices for any scenario. Yeah, but Salas, what you've done is you've complicated a hypothetical scenario for an incredibly small number of people who won't be affected, most people won't be affected by this issue and it's completely removed from whether or not someone should choose to kill an unborn baby. It's not the same scenario. This is why analogies don't work like this. You're still abnegating responsibility. You are responsible for your habit. You are responsible for whether or not you drive. You are responsible for maintaining a job. You're responsible for the people you put yourself around. You're responsible for choosing to be with somebody who you know is abusive, you know who's not going to be good to your children. You are responsible for that. You have a duty as a parent, as a potential parent or as an existing parent to not put your children in an abusive situation. So we could do the same blame game with them. No, unless you've been psychologically manipulated to accept the present scenario, unless there's no actual physical means, because there's no point in leaving a house in the Dying Street, for example. That's another complication. I could do the same thing in return. It still doesn't justify the killing of unborn children even as a last resort. What we're doing is we're taking alcoholism, we're taking spousal abuse, we're doing all of these things, we're talking around the main issue, which is should a person, a mother or father or a state, whatever, should they have the right to kill an innocent, unborn child guilty of no offense, even when we know that there are perfectly viable alternatives to a prematurely ending a human life. That is the only thing. One thing, but here's the, where's the flaw? Here's the flaw. So you're talking, you said that if the spouse beats up a woman so badly that she miscarries, that you wouldn't hold her responsible. You would hold the spouse responsible because she could have battered woman syndrome. So you're telling me basically that you're okay with somebody else inducing an abortion, inducing a miscarriage in this woman because of battered wife syndrome. What is the difference in allowing that woman to get an abortion? Why does her spouse get to do that to her instead of her going out and making that choice? Well, he doesn't get to do that, he'd go to prison. Right, he'd go to prison, but she still doesn't get a choice in her body, right? I don't understand your argument. If a man chooses to... I mean, she's choosing to stay there, you're saying, but I would say she's choosing to stay there, but you would say that she's, like again, she's got battered wife syndrome, right? But like, what is the difference? Why are we drawing this line here? If it's okay for her to put herself in a situation where her spouse is going to beat her until she miscarries, but it's not okay for her to remove herself from that situation and get an abortion so she can more easily remove herself from that situation, I don't understand the line. Well, it's simple, one's a conscious choice, the other one's an unconscious section. If you go to an abortion... It's a conscious choice to stay with him. Maybe, no, no, no, but she didn't because she's got battered wife syndrome. You see, what you're doing is you're saying, a conscious choice to go to an abortion clinic to kill an unborn child is a decision that you have made. A woman who stays with a man, she doesn't want to be to have a miscarriage. She also doesn't want to get beaten up. But if she suffers from battered wife syndrome or whatever the official medical diagnosis with psychological, psychiatric diagnosis is, she's not capable of making rational decisions. She would have to be physically removed from that environment because you could not trust her to make the same rational choice of leaving the residence. So you'd get state services would come in and rip that woman out of that scenario, which would violate her autonomy or whatever we want to spin it. But there's a massive difference between you, Stardust or whoever watching this, consciously going to in a Planned Parenthood and killing an unborn child and a woman who's been so warped and manipulated by a scenario that she cannot anticipate future suffering if she's getting punched by... What if she does want a miscarriage to help make her like leave that situation, but she doesn't want to get beaten. She's profoundly... So is she now responsible because her spouse did beat her to the point of miscarrying? In a highly unlikely scenario, that a woman in an abusive relationship wants her partner to induce a miscarriage for whatever reason, that is profoundly immoral. That's unbelievable. I mean, first of all... Okay, she doesn't want... Nobody wants to be an abusive relationship. Nobody wants to be beaten up. But let's say she's married. Let's say in her marriage, she does want a miscarriage because she wants to be able to... She wants to be able to leave that relationship that's abusive. But I'm not saying she necessarily wants to be beaten, but if her husband beats her until she miscarries... Stardust, you've talked us down a railroad to you. You're talking about an alarmingly specific, hypothetical scenario that almost would never occur. Why do we say it would never occur? Why do we think it would never occur? Because it's a law and order special victim units episode? It's not... What you're doing is you're getting in the weeds on an incredibly specific... It's 25% of that statistic that person said that this doesn't seem like it would be too out of the ordinary. So, again, 25% one in four, where did that number come from? What is the sample size? Who compiled this data? What questions were asked? One in four, one in four abusive relationships ends in a miscarriage. I mean, how do you calculate such a thing? The numbers, you can't... This is the thing. I don't use statistics in this fashion because I need to know A, the source. B, I need to read it. And C, it's probably... I mean, I don't even know when it was compiled because obviously statistics change over time because there are trends in social change. So you can't just say one in four in the miscarriage. It doesn't work. I hate to do this, but just because we have so many questions I want to get through and we want to get Ken and out at a decent time because it's 11 p.m. when you started this debate, Ken and we appreciate you staying up late with us. No, it's all right. I mean, I can still carry on for a little bit. I don't need my beddie buys just. You got it. Someone from Brenton Lange strikes again. He says, I oppose all state violence, not just abortion. Thank you for that, Brenton. Tell him I say he's lame. Say it again. Whoever that Super Chatter was, I called them lame. You've heard it here first. I've declared them lame. How do you like them apples, Brenton? All right, Anarchy Last Name says, why should a woman sacrifice their economic output for nine months just because they forgot to take their pill? So you think that a woman's only value is what she produces materially for the economy? Is that the implication? See, I don't regard, I think that creating, life's main event is reproduction. The only reason children become adults is to make children. One of the great regrets of my life is that I don't have children. The idea that she gives up, okay, she's not pregnant anymore. So she gives up at nine months of working in the boot blacking factory or working in a mindless, zombie-flying desk job. That doesn't sound like a viable alternative, does it? I mean, I'm not saying that she has to be pregnant all the time. That's not why I might want to know about that. But if the only way she could go back to a terrible office job is to kill an unborn child, no, sorry, I wouldn't give her that option. You got it, this one coming in from, do appreciate it, Lord McDath01 says, you didn't answer my question, Ken, and how crippling does the pregnancy have to be? How likely the chance of death in particular before you would draw the line and say that an abortion would be permissible? So they say, for example, would it have to be that a woman has a 75% chance of her life ending if she carries the baby or would 50% be enough? Or does it have to be 100% probability in order for an abortion to be accepted? These are, to be honest, I mean, it's a fair question, to be honest, but it's one of those questions that only a medical man could answer. As I'm not medically trained, I wouldn't know because, again, we're determining the likelihood of a woman dying because of pregnancy. That must vary from mother to mother. It can't be something that you can't to set a universal standard. It would have to be done by a visiting physician. It would appraise the situation and then come to a judgment. And then hopefully if they're in self-sound mind and they're professional, then obviously we would respect that judgment. But yeah, that's not a question. I'm not qualified to answer the question if I'm being brutally honest. Got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. First name, last name says, would it be okay to force a man to donate blood for nine months given that it would save lives? We've had that one, haven't we? Where is that? Is that someone else who's asked? We framed the question. Yeah. I have no... But I have no, do you know what? I have honestly no objection. If the government said, my British government said, we've got a blood shortage. We need a blood drive. We need to go around our living population and provide it obviously they don't have, because you can't donate blood if you've had cancer. You can't donate blood if you've had sex with men in the last, I think it's four months because of the risk of HIV contamination, things like that, if you're a gay person. But yeah, I would have no objection to the government saying we need blood stat and then compelling people to donate. I mean, we've just gone through COVID lockdowns where people were compelled to vaccinate. So yeah, I mean, if you could produce a credible, if there was a credible scenario where we needed blood pronto, yeah, why not, why not force people to donate if they can, if they've got, if there are no mitigating circumstances. I'm surprised they don't subsidize it now that you say that in terms of giving blood. I was gonna say, I mean, you know, I mean, in the UK, I don't know what it's like in the US, but in the UK, if you go to like the National Blood Service to donate, I can't donate blood for various medical reasons, but you know, if you can't donate blood, all they give you is like a biscuit and a pat on the head or something. It's like, no, that's not gonna get people. Give them some hard cash, you know, buy their blood. Right? Yeah, even five bucks would probably go a long way. I know what you mean. And then this one coming in from Brian W says, okay, my main question is this, why is it any of your and anyone else's business except the woman that is having the abortion? There are lots of things in any society that affect very specific groups of people, but I have to live in a society where this sort of thing goes on. So for example, I've never owned a slave. I've never been a slave and I've never, you know, but I still have an opinion on slavery, right? I don't like slavery. I don't want slavery to exist. And if I found out that slavery existed in the UK, I mean, it does exist in the UK, but I would support any measure to try and defeat it. The same is true for abortion on demand. I'm never going to have an abortion because I can't make a baby, but I still have to live in a society where abortion and demand is legal. Am I comfortable with this? The trouble is, it's only in the abortion debate does that argument come up because I'm unlikely to execute someone or to be the victim of the death penalty, but I still have a very strong opinion of the death penalty. Why should I be denied the ability to express? Well, I'm not saying that you've done this, I agree with you, but why should one be denied the ability to express an opinion just because you're not immediately effective? You're not a part of that little, you know, social group, you know what I mean? You've got it. This one coming in from Al Den says, gosh, Kenan, they're gunning for you. We got, this is, I think, are there any more? I mean, look, if I'm hilariously wrong, then I don't want to be torn pieces at all. That's why I love coming onto your channel and other channels because I want to be challenged on one. Well, here's another challenge. Al Den says, Kenan, who would ever try to escape a pro-choice state? A state gets no benefit from forcing births. It is legislating Christian morals. Sharia, when? Well, it's funny you mentioned that because in a lot of the Arab countries where obviously Sharia dominates or a version of Sharia dominates, abortion, medical abortions are legal. Like in Saudi Arabia, they perform medical abortions, but they treat it as a religious ritual and they pray over, pay for the soul of the mother, the soul of the child and for the souls of the doctors performing the process because they recognise that they're killing the child. I'm not a Christian. My pro-life position is not Christian-based. There's a video on my TikTok channel that's been up there for a few weeks now that's done quite well where a woman asked, has anybody heard an argument against pro versus Wade that's not based in Christianity? And I managed to do it in about two and a half, three minutes. It is possible to be pro-life and not be religious in the same way that Kate Fellows, or I keep mentioning, is pro-life, which is also pagan. So, you know, it's not Judeo-Christian morality that's necessarily informing my pro-life position. You got it. This one coming in from, I do appreciate it, Dan Dawson says, what is a quote, unquote, unborn child? A child, by definition, is a person that is between the stages of birth and adulthood. So they're saying it's... Well, I was gonna say, the pithy answer is an unborn child is a child that hasn't left the womb yet. I mean, obviously that doesn't explain anything. Personhood is a profound philosophical problem. You know, if a child is in the womb, but is asleep effectively because it's surrounded by the antibiotics fluid and all the rest of it, you know, is it still a person? I would argue that it is, if it's got a heartbeat, a neural function. But yeah, I mean, this is, again, you're splitting fine hairs. So, yes, it's, I mean, here's another scenario there that you can take that argument and flip it around. Would you allow abortions like two weeks before birth? You know, the answer would be probably not because that's a perfectly healthy viable baby that would otherwise live. So is that a person? Is being in the womb a reason to deny personhood? Do people become people only when they leave the uterus? See, that leads to more questions and it's incredibly complicated to answer. You got it, man. Thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from Brenton Langell again. Here we go. Come, Tim. He is a high energy. I like that, Brenton. It's that pea protein. He doesn't do soy. Brenton, I love you, buddy. He tells me, he says, I don't do soy. It's pea protein. But he says, should a person be allowed, and that's P-E-A protein. So should a person be allowed to kill an unborn child? Quote unquote. Is a begging the question fallacy. You must presuppose the answer. It's circular reasoning. You don't have to elaborate on that. Well, he may not be, he may not use soy. I'm going to call him soy, though. So take that, Brenton, whatever your last name is. Have you crossed paths before? I was going to say so, but I haven't. I just chose him randomly to fight with. That's what I don't know. Go ahead, Ken. Yeah, so Brenton, Brenton, that question wasn't any good. You're going to, I mean, by all means, challenge us, but I mean, you know, you're going to have to reframe it. So I don't know what your point was. Tell him to fight me. Tell Brenton that he may not eat soy, but I'm calling him soy. He doesn't need soy because he is soy, so yeah. Tell Brenton that if he doesn't form his arguments properly, I'll do the rest of this in this conversation in my Donald Trump voice, just with William. Yeah, he's not exactly, go ahead, not exactly a Trump supporter, but let's see. Maybe we'd say it's like, I don't know if it'd be a formal question-begging fallacy, like I'm trying to, you might say maybe it's like a question-begging apathet where it's like, it's, I think he's just saying like, okay, like to assert that is like, we're not willing to grant on the pro-choice side that it's a child, but- Yeah, I kind of see where he's coming from. Because I regard it as a child, I don't think the killing children is right in this scenario. If you deny it's childhood, it's childness, the question then becomes, at what point does it become a child? And that's another philosophical point. Because I regard it as a child in the womb, I don't want to kill it. I don't want to see it killed. I don't want to live in a culture where it can be killed. But that's the basis of my entire argument. If you don't accept it's a child, then okay, abortion might be perfectly visible, but then you'd have to explain at what point does this unborn creature become a child that's worth preserving, worth keeping. So I think the burden, it's not just all on me, it's all on the pro-choice group to justify their position. You got it, this one. Coming in from Brian W. says, hey James, looking good. It's always the man who says that. But I'll take it, thank you. Your beard is the maximum, your beard is the maximum. Thank you, it's never, why can't a woman say it though? Thank you though, Brian, for real. Okay, this one coming in from Brian says, question is, why do you debaters work on your, why don't you work on your deeply personal interests instead of budding into women's rights to do with their body what they choose, more directed at Kenden, they say. Can I respond to it? I talk on issues that affect people that don't affect me all the time. So maybe you should butt your head out of this if you can't handle it. I am not one of those people gate keeps conversation, so yeah. Well, thank you starters, because that was about to be my point. It's like it's very sexist to assume that, because obviously we're not two species with two halves of one men and women, right? But also he's forgetting, this person's ignoring that at least half of the pro-life movement in America is FEMA. So you can't say it's men versus women. That's a crude oversimplification, at least half pro-life as a women and obviously the pro-choice movement if they're not all women either. So yeah, it's not, you can't just say, oh, it's all misogyny or it's male show for this or whatever. There are, this is a complicated topic and everybody's allowed to chip in if they live in the culture or live outside. I'm in the UK and I'm commenting on what is effectively an American issue. Why should I be denied this opportunity? You got it. That's what I'm coming in from. Do appreciate your question. First name, last name says, stop pretending. Should that be based on sex? So I don't understand. Yeah, I don't understand either. I'm blaming it on Bretton. I'm blaming it on Bretton. Bretton, this is your fault. Yeah, I mean a little bit. Yeah. I don't know if they just, I really don't know. First name, last name, let me know if you want to clarify that. This one coming in from kingadv says, what gives him the right to tell people what to do with their body or life, especially if their choice doesn't directly affect his life? This is kind of, I hate to, sorry. I mean, if you want to respond, Ken, then you can. But I gotta tell you, folks, some of your super chats are remarkably similar too. Some of the other ones that have come in, but hey, if you want, Ken, if you want to reply, you can. But I don't know if it's kind of similar to some of the last ones. Well, again, but again, that's the, this is the only topic in which that argument's ever used. I mean, there are lots of things you cannot do. Society won't let you do to your body. Like if I saw someone trying to hack off their own ear with a knife, I would try to stop them. Body modification, you can do that, but only within certain limits and only under certain medical supervision. There's all sorts of laws and regulations stopping you from doing exactly what you want to do with your body. The idea that this is the only issue where everyone should stay back and there's only two people involved, the mother and the doctor. It doesn't hold water. You know, there are, as I say, there are restrictions on your body all the time. You know, what you can eat, what you can have sex with, all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff. So yeah, there's, of course, I'm gonna impose restrictions on people. We do it all the time in other scenarios. You got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Ryan W. says, how does abortion affect you given your answer, Kenan? It's kind of similar to a lot of these, like you said. Well, I mean, I'll try and answer it. Essentially, I'm tired of living in a civilization where there's a fundamental hypocrisy at least in British culture. And I dare say it's true in America, although the Americans will have to contribute on this one, where I'm told that everybody matters. Everyone has innate value. I should care about everybody. I should care about the homeless. I should care about orphans, junkies Syrian refugees, Ukrainian refugees. I should care about this, this, this, but we can't decide, but there is a disconnect here because life has no innate value because a mother can terminate a pregnancy for no discernible or no decent reason I'm happy with and just kill it outright. It kind of invalidates, you know, it makes everything relative. It makes everything callous and materialistic. It means that everything can be quantified and commodified and I resist this passionately. I believe that all life has innate value even if it's disabled, even if it's poor, even if I think it's particularly pleasant to look at, it has innate value. And so for the same reason I don't like the death penalty, I don't like abortion on demand. Can I just say something really quick? The pro-life, and this doesn't change my answer on it, but American self-id on abortion for 2022, I believe it's like women only make up 33% of pro-life people. So I wouldn't say that it's like, it seems like it's more men in the pro-life camp, but I would still say that just because you're not affected by it, doesn't mean you can't comment on it, you know? So I comment on things I'm not affected by all the time and I like to keep people out of conversations, but yeah. You got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Anarchy, last name. So socialist Kenden wants to deny we live under capitalism. It's not our choice to be units of economic output. So why should a woman be forced into a disadvantageous position compared to men? The anarchist thinks I'm a socialist. How did he come to that conclusion? I don't get it. I mean, don't get me wrong. I mean, you could challenge my points, he's fair to do that, but yeah, I'm not saying that, you know, of course we live under capitalism, which in my opinion is the best economic model with regulations, but most capitalist societies have socialist welfare states anyway, so I don't understand, you know, one feeds the other. I'm not a socialist, I have some left-wing ideas, but I'm a card-carrying member of the UK Conservative Party. So yeah, I don't know where you got the idea that I'm a socialist. You got it, next one. This may be our last one. Lord McDuff double zero one says, again, Kenden, what about crippling? How much damage to the mother's body can a fetus do before it's morally allowable to abort? I think they're saying, so if a woman is not necessarily killed, but if her body is crippled or in some way permanently damaged, maybe even being bad. Well, I would refer to my previous answer. When I'm not a medical man, so it would be unwise for me to sort of, you know, pontificate on the specificities of that kind of policy, but also if a medical man, if a proper medical knows that a woman is going to be crippled by a natural birth, then presumably a caesarean section would be requested. Or, because also bear in mind that if the birth is so traumatic it cripples the mother, it's definitely going to cripple the baby and the baby's probably gonna die anyway. So I would have thought, you know, again, you need someone with proper medical knowledge and training to ask that question. But yeah, it's not like the mother's the only one's gonna be affected and the baby's gonna be fine. Surely both mother and baby would be affected by that whole traumatic process. Can I respond as well? Sure, yeah. Okay, yeah, so I would say, what's his name again? Lord Death, Lord Doom, 001, whatever. Lord McDeth. Okay, the amount I would say is however crippled your mom was last night when I got done railing her, boom, owned. Thank you for that. Get a better username. This one is coming in from, we appreciate your gusto, your energy. You certainly have a lot of it. This last couple, and then we really have to wrap up. So folks are gonna say, forgive me, but we've gotta wrap up. These last two were the last two. Kenden, why is nothing analogous to pregnancy? Brenton Langel says, you were throwing logic away. No two things are perfectly analogous, but we still can make analogies that are reasonable. Well, no, you can make analogies provided you recognize that the analogies, A, perfect, B, hypothetical, and C, doesn't quite map onto the abortion debate or into the other scenario. What I don't like is when people use analogies that are reasonably sound despite their flaws, but assume that because they've established this analogy that they've won, they've solved the other issue. There are problems unique to pregnancy, childbirth, child raising, and of course, abortion on demand, that are not covered by the violinist's dilemma, that are not covered by any of the other scenarios. So while I'm happy to entertain an analogy, what I don't want is to sort of rely on that as the answer to the initial problem. So yes, okay, you could tease it, it's an intellect, it's a thought experiment, right? It's a thought experiment, that's all good, we all do it, and there's nothing wrong with that. But let us not rely on it or give up once we've come to a satisfying answer, which is what I get a long time when I'm talking about this issue. So if I was throwing away, no, no, no, I was gonna say, if it appears I was throwing away an analogy, well, no, because it's a rhetorical construct, it's quite useful, I just recognize the limitations of that for the bargain, that's all. I wanna say to, if it's okay to kill a child, if a child hurts the mother, is it okay if a three-year-old jumps onto, like, into a mother's arms and breaks one of her arms, is it okay to do the death penalty for the three-year-old? I think that should be fair, right? That's sad, that question's ridiculous. Why would breaking someone's capital of friends? Well, I mean, if we're, okay, we'll never, I was making a joke, nevermind, sorry. We appreciate our guests so much. It's one o'clock in the morning, it's one o'clock in the morning, you'll have to forgive me, I've had a long, long work, it's all good. I'm caffeinating myself just to keep myself awake, so if I see it being wired or dull-lit, it's because my body is rejecting everything, so carry on, yeah, carry on. We wanna say, folks, we appreciate our guests so much, seriously, they are linked in the description. If you'd like to learn more about their views, you certainly can, as I mentioned, Kenden has a based, gigantic, huge 750,000 following on TikTok, so you can check that out as well as, as I mentioned, Stardust is like my little twin sister, Starburst, Stardust, Fartdust, all of those nicknames apply, we really do appreciate you, Stardust, seriously, and I'm not just saying that she's my little sister just for the sake of saying it, I'm telling you, Stardust hosts epic debates, controversial stuff on her channel, she's linked below as well, so my dear friends, we really do appreciate our guests, you can check out their views below, but wanna say thank you, Stardust and Kenden, it's been a true pleasure to have you with us tonight. Yeah, thank you very much for having me, James, and Stardust, I know we don't agree on this issue, but if you ever wanna have a chat again on something else, I'd happily, you know, entertain the conversation. Yeah, I'd love to talk to you again, yeah, I think it was really, really good conversation, so thanks for having me. Thanks so much, Ann, I'll be back in just a moment, folks, to the super short post-credits scene, so stick around, and I'll be right back. Thank you both, it's been a true pleasure to have you guys, seriously. Farke does. It was great, seriously. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here, thanks so much for all of your support. We, at Modern Day Debate, are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion, and politics. We have a vision that we are passionate about, namely, to provide a neutral platform so that everybody can make their case on a level playing field while discussing the big questions of life. We hope you feel welcome, whether you be Christian, atheist, politically left, politically right, Biden backers, Bernie Bros, Trump supporters, you name it, we are glad you are with us. We hope you enjoyed this debate. We have many more coming up, so if you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button. I've gotta run, and I wish that I could stay longer, and seriously, I really do love hanging out in these post, you could say, post-credits scenes, but I do have to run and wanna say, we will be back tomorrow night, so we are gonna have a tag team tomorrow night. You don't wanna miss this one, it's gonna be a big one, it's gonna be an epic one, in particular, at the bottom right of your screen, JF and T-Jump team up, taking on Sal Cordova and prospective philosophy on whether or not science best fits within a theistic or atheistic worldview. 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