← Equipped for Life Podcast
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- [00:01]
Josh Brahmi
And we're back. Welcome back. Monica Snyder's here from Secular Pro Life. Let's have another conversation.
- [00:08]
Monica Snyder
Yes. This one right up my alley.
- [00:10]
Josh Brahmi
This one's right up your alley. So set us up. What are we talking about?
- [00:14]
Monica Snyder
We're talking about whether or not you need religion to be pro life.
- [00:17]
Josh Brahmi
And the answer from secular pro Life
- [00:19]
Monica Snyder
is no, you don't. That's it. Episode over. I told you we'd do a short one. Yeah. Realistically, this could apply to a variety of faith traditions. In the context of the conversations we have, it's usually talking about Christianity specifically. But it's interesting, we get this from both pro life and pro choice people. From pro life people, you're gonna hear a more specific. Usually it's something like, you can't have objective morality without God. If you don't believe in God, it's not coherent for you to believe in objective morals. And therefore we're glad that you oppose abortion, but your position is not coherent and the foundations for it don't really hold up. And so I guess the more nuanced thing would be that they would argue that you need Christian faith or at least deism to coherently oppose abortion. So that's kind of coming from some pro lifers, obviously not all pro lifers, but. And then from the pro choice side, I think it's more of a knee jerk thing. I think it's less thought out. Some of them will make the exact same argument, which is without objective morality. But very rarely, very rarely is that what the pro choice side is saying. At least in my experience. They're more saying, don't push a religion on me. And then I'm saying, well, I am an atheist. And then they say, that makes no sense. And then I say, what do you mean? And there's a variety of answers. I'm gonna give you the more common case and then the Steel man case. I think the more common case is largely unthinking. Atheists are leftist and progressive and all these other checkboxes of every atheist we've ever experienced. If you go to an atheist convention, you see certain kinds of trends and you're not doing that.
- [01:57]
Josh Brahmi
And that's the no true Scotsman policy. Basically, just for atheists.
- [02:02]
Monica Snyder
That's the more common, I think, reaction. I think the Steel man and I have authentically tried to ask people this before because I really don't know what you mean, because I am in fact an atheist and I am in fact against abortion. And I don't know what about those you think is Incoherent. I know you don't like me, but like, what about it? You know? And the best I can understand it is what they mean is that there is no valid reason apart from some sort of faith tradition to place so much value on a zygote or embryo. Yeah, that's what they mean.
- [02:32]
Josh Brahmi
Well said.
- [02:33]
Monica Snyder
And so you would have to be religious to care that much. Okay, so those are kind of not.
- [02:37]
Josh Brahmi
So this is weird.
- [02:37]
Monica Snyder
I am not. Yes. So those are kind of two different conversations. They're related. But frankly, if I'm going to generalize, the pro life Christian is going for a more philosophical debate about the nature of morality. And the pro choice, whether they are Christian or not is going for. I don't know that they know what they're going for. I think that they're pulling out a thread they haven't really thought through yet. And so depending on who is telling me you can't be an atheist and pro life will really change my response because they're different conversations. So that's the table setting. What do you think?
- [03:17]
Josh Brahmi
So tell me a little bit about how you respond to the pro choice people because I suspect that we're gonna probably camp mostly on. On engaging with the pro life people that are making these comments. But since there are a couple of different kinds of pro choice people, there's like the no true Scotsman thing. It's like, this seems weird. I can like anything. Like, what do you do with those people? Where are you trying to take that conversation?
- [03:36]
Monica Snyder
I'll give you an array of responses that'll depend on the context and my mood. But one of the things we used to do, and this gets less helpful as time goes on, but we used to point out that Christopher Hitchens, one of the most famous atheists in the world, had some pretty big concerns about abortion. Pretty big concerns. Pretty explicitly sometimes. Now there's debate about whether before he died, he had gotten to a point where he actually thought there should be legal ramifications. But to me, that's not actually a very concerning point because the debate about how ethics and law should play together is separate from the debate about if you think there's ethical problems with abortion. And what isn't unclear is that he had serious reservations about abortion. And it's kind of an interesting counter argument because you don't have to agree with Hitchens on anything. That's not why I bring it up. I bring it up because nobody is questioning whether Hitchens was an atheist.
- [04:23]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [04:24]
Monica Snyder
And he said some pretty damning things about abortion. So if you're gonna do no true Scotsman, are you ready to let go of Hitchens? And then a lot of times they are. They're like, I don't like the way he had this position or that position, or he was the savage.
- [04:34]
Josh Brahmi
Whatever.
- [04:34]
Monica Snyder
Yeah, but not in the sense that, like, he wasn't really an atheist. Just in the sense that, like, I don't care. And I'm like, okay, you don't have to care. You asked me. You know, so sometimes we do the Hitchens thing. We do it less all the time, because the longer it's been since he passed away, the less relevant it is instead. Sometimes I'll point to, like, well, I'm right here, so how will you stop me? You know, we've done stuff where I did a speech at a meetup at the March for Life this last year where I was talking about how, you know, inclusivity and you can. We don't care what your religion is. We don't care what your politics are. You know, da, da, da, da. And in my speech, I had in mind non traditional pro lifers specifically. And at one point I said, like, you can believe in whatever you believe in and be against abortion because you can do whatever you want. Okay? And that's me being indignant at these people telling me that I can't. Well, I'm gonna. So now what? You know, so sometimes it's just that juvenile. I'm pro choice juvenile. Like I. Yeah, you know, sarcastic. Oh, I guess I have to shut down the group now, so. Good point.
- [05:29]
Josh Brahmi
You know, you don't realize that atheists weren't supposed to be pro life.
- [05:33]
Monica Snyder
Nobody told me. Call it all off. No, but if we're. If we're trying to have a real conversation first, I'll try to get them to tell me what it is about my position they think is religious. And sometimes they're not really clear, but usually it comes back to that embryonic life thing. And then I'll try a couple different things depending on what we're doing. One of the things I'll do that I have found to get some traction is I'll ask them if they recognize that people grieve miscarriage. Secular people grieve miscarriage, pro choice people grieve miscarriage. Not everybody grieves miscarriage, but all kinds of people grieve miscarriage.
- [06:01]
Josh Brahmi
Pro lifers.
- [06:02]
Monica Snyder
It's not some four. I'm trying to take them out of the political debate of abortion and think about what we think of our.
- [06:09]
Josh Brahmi
This is a Great idea.
- [06:10]
Monica Snyder
Embryonic life generally, you know, if you know someone who is not a conservative Christian person who has grieved a miscarriage, then you're starting to get a little glimmer of what I'm talking about. Now, you can't just jump from that to being against abortion. But I'm just trying to give you a little pause. The idea that it would be insane, that it would just be so crazy for someone who isn't specifically a devout Christian to place a lot of value on an embryo. It's not, it's actually, I think it's evolutionarily derived. Actually, I have some nuanced thoughts about that. But. But I think there's a good case to be made.
- [06:43]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [06:43]
Monica Snyder
You know, it's not weird at all to very much value your offspring.
- [06:47]
Josh Brahmi
Sure.
- [06:48]
Monica Snyder
And then it's not that big of a leap from there to be like,
- [06:50]
Josh Brahmi
well, then why doesn't everybody's offspring matter?
- [06:53]
Monica Snyder
Exactly.
- [06:53]
Josh Brahmi
To some level.
- [06:55]
Monica Snyder
That seems to me to be a very easy couple of leaps. You know, again, I will say not everybody does grieve their miscarriage. Not everybody does value other people's. Sure. I'm not saying this is why you have to agree with me. I'm saying this is why this is a plausible pathway.
- [07:07]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [07:08]
Monica Snyder
Okay, so I'll talk about miscarriage sometimes and then sometimes I'll point to. We have been doing one interview a month for years of pro life atheists and agnostics. And one of the things we ask them is, why are you against abortion? So some of the point of that, like you can just skim. It's not just me, it's a minority position within secularism. Right. But it's not literally just me you can read. You know, there's dozens and dozens here where they're telling you why and they don't seem to find that that is incongruous. And then the other thing I'll do is kind of, and this is a tricky thing to do, but in my opinion, what's usually happening here is pro choice people are treating their view as some sort of neutral default that they found in the wild somewhere, and the deviations from it must be explained. So if the default is making this up, that you have an irrelevant clump of cells until 20 weeks and then now obviously it's a baby and it's not. Okay. They're not thinking about why would that be the cutoff? They're not thinking about that at all. They're just thinking one is secular and maybe left leaning, maybe whatever. So one is pro choice. Explain why you're deviating from the orthodoxy. And they're not thinking about where they even got that.
- [08:14]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [08:14]
Monica Snyder
And so what I'll do, I'll start to have a fetal personhood conversation. I'll start to say, well, when do you think it's a valuable human being? Often when we bring up fetal personhood conversations, we're trying to provoke thought about why they should be against abortion. But in this case, it's a little bit different. I'm not necessarily saying why you should be against abortion at this time. I'm saying, when does it go from a religious belief. Me, apparently. To just a neutral, regular thing you apparently. Or I'll say, listen, I don't agree that it's a religious belief. I fully acknowledge it's a philosophical belief. It is a philosophical belief that zygotes and embryos are valuable, morally relevant human beings. It's a biological fact that they are human organisms. It's a philosophical belief that they're morally valuable. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
- [08:56]
Josh Brahmi
Right?
- [08:56]
Monica Snyder
That is true. How you got from that to religious is a different conversation. But it is a philosophical biology. Science doesn't say that embryos are babies. I'm like, yeah, you're right.
- [09:06]
Josh Brahmi
I just said that too.
- [09:07]
Monica Snyder
Yeah, okay, but. So I'll say, but you know what else? The belief that embryos and fetuses are so morally irrelevant that it's okay to kill them for any reason, That's a philosophical belief. The belief that bodily rights are so important that they supersede in all contexts, regardless of anything else. That's a philosophical belief.
- [09:27]
Josh Brahmi
Yes, it is.
- [09:28]
Monica Snyder
I don't know if you think it's a religious belief, because I do not. I don't know what your connection is between philosophical belief and religious belief, but I just want you to understand that if you're thinking thing here is you can't push your philosophical beliefs on others, then why are you arguing with me? Okay, what are you doing here, man? You care enough about abortion rights. You care about women's autonomy, you care about women's equality. You care about protecting people from medical emergencies. All these things are valid things. You care enough about all of these things that you're willing to come argue with me about it. Okay? And I just want to say I understand that because you are taking your philosophical views that you care deeply about and trying to make other people agree with you about them. And I just want to say that's fine. That's a normal thing to do, and that's what I'm doing. Okay, so we're at a tie right now, and I don't feel the need to justify why I want to enforce my philosophical views to you unless you want to justify the same thing to me. So where do you want to go from there? It's a very different conversation. So it's nothing like the conversation of like, where does objective morality come from? And that's why it's a little tricky because I will have pro life Christians come to me and say, how do you answer this? I'm like, how do I answer it? Or how do you answer it? Know, because those are different things. But because for me, I'm basically saying, no, you. If it's a pro choice secularist person, like, where do you get morality? Where do you get morality? I asked you first. I don't care. I don't care. How come you're not going to pro choice atheist activists and being like, where do you get the morality that says that bodily rights are important? If you're an atheist, how come you're not saying that? You know, why are pro life atheists the only group in this situation that has to recreate ethics from scratch to be in the conversation? Okay, I. I'm not gonna. I don't care. And the thing is, it's very easy for me to do that because the overwhelming majority of people we talk to don't take this approach. They don't start with, how are you grounding morality? They start with something to do with bodily rights, something to do with fetal personhood itself, or more often, something to do with the practical effects of laws.
- [11:25]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah, that's where they are, their experiences or something like that.
- [11:28]
Monica Snyder
So, yeah, yeah, so I don't feel very. In fact, we have said secular pro life overtly before. We've used the analogy that we start with the premise that human life is valuable, and then we ask people to be consistent enough to include before birth as well as after, and we talk about that. If you're not starting with the premise that human life is valuable, I don't really have anything to say about that except for, like, that sucks. I hope you get better, you know, But I don't feel like I need to convince you human life is valuable. I feel like there's plenty of other people for me to talk to. And also, I don't really believe you. If you're bothering to argue for abortion rights, you're valuing something. You know, we did have a commenter just this week. It was really sad. She said that she used to be pro life and she's gone from pro choice to her words, pro abortion. Because as she lost her faith, she used to be a Christian. As she lost her faith, she came to see that basically not just life is meaningless, cause that's like neutral, but that like life is suffering and nobody asks to be born. And that's why she thinks there should be more abortion.
- [12:29]
Josh Brahmi
So it's like an anti natalist position and very nihilistic.
- [12:32]
Monica Snyder
And I just, in situations like that, I just say, listen, I just want you to know I'm sorry that your loss of faith led to that kind of evolution of feelings. Cause we've seen that before. And I said for whatever it's worth, maybe nothing, I think you are valuable. I think humans are valuable, including you. I think it's good that you're here and I hope you feel better soon. And she probably thinks I'm just being patronizing. Cause it's the Internet. But what else can you say in that situation that's not about abortion? That's a different problem.
- [13:02]
Josh Brahmi
So anyway, so then moving to how you deal with the pro lifers.
- [13:08]
Monica Snyder
Yes.
- [13:08]
Josh Brahmi
So, and we've talked about this before, like there's a certain kind of pro lifer who is on your page a lot talking about objective morality and whether or not anything that you say makes sense lately. Has there. I didn't know that.
- [13:19]
Monica Snyder
I don't monitor our comments nearly as much as I used to because. And I'm very grateful for this. We hired a content manager earlier this year. But I do try to eyeball them. And I just saw recently one of our pro life followers was saying, why do religious people keep getting on here and wanting to argue about this? So I kind of skimmed around to see if that's the case. I don't know if it's more than usual, but yeah, there's some pretty persistent ones. Yeah.
- [13:41]
Josh Brahmi
So what do you do there?
- [13:42]
Monica Snyder
Usually if a pro life Christian is asking me about this kind of thing, it's because they want to know how to answer it. That's different. You know, I can try to teach them how I would do it if I were them.
- [13:56]
Josh Brahmi
Sure.
- [13:57]
Monica Snyder
Sometimes it's because they want to know. You know, and you and I have talked about this before. There's different flavors of this. The question, the words could be the same, which is what's your basis for caring about this? And some of them, they are genuinely just intellectually curious. Some of them, they're hoping to provoke thought in me that I'll find a contradiction in my worldview. That will be the beginning of me converting to Christianity. And some of them are just. They just seem mad. And that's not the same thing. You know, some of them, you could tell there's an authentic earnestness. And some of them, I don't know what's happening. But I get the impression sometimes that when some people find out I'm an atheist, they think I'm attacking them. And I think what's happening is they've had very bad experiences with other kinds of atheists and they're reacting to that.
- [14:46]
Josh Brahmi
They're worried that you're gonna be like
- [14:47]
Monica Snyder
this, like, like an evangelical atheist. Like, you must agree with me atheist.
- [14:50]
Josh Brahmi
Or like outspoken. Like I'm really gonna try to. Like a crusading atheist.
- [14:54]
Monica Snyder
A crusading atheist.
- [14:55]
Josh Brahmi
A Christopher Hitsons type.
- [14:57]
Monica Snyder
Yes, exactly. Without the cool.
- [15:00]
Josh Brahmi
Oh yeah. Very cool accent and hilarious. I mean, just what a great sense of humor.
- [15:04]
Monica Snyder
So all of that. Well, sure, but I didn't agree with
- [15:08]
Josh Brahmi
everything he said, But I appreciated him more than probably a lot of my colleagues.
- [15:12]
Monica Snyder
I appreciate him more than some of the other atheist advocates. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway, I'll read the context of what I think is happening there and that will vary my response. But in general, what I will say is one, it is an assumption that if you are an atheist, you can't believe in objective morality. And usually I've already lost them. Okay. And this is out of my wheelhouse. You and I have talked about this. I don't like philosophy very much. I'm not very good at it. I feel like it's a lot of hand wavy big words for things that we all kind like. I'm not the right girl for this, you know, But I have been trying really hard for a long time to be better about it. Actually in the last couple years, Secular power put together basically an advisory team of philosophers.
- [15:57]
Josh Brahmi
Nice.
- [15:57]
Monica Snyder
It's just a group chat, you know, because I'm not very good at it. To help me, like, how do you. How do you guys help?
- [16:03]
Josh Brahmi
Has it been helping?
- [16:04]
Monica Snyder
It does help, actually. I've got some star people.
- [16:07]
Josh Brahmi
I was gonna say, like, I can probably guess a few of the people.
- [16:08]
Monica Snyder
You probably could. Yeah. So we did put together a blog post quite a while ago that's been very helpful to me that basically is just links to either YouTube conversations or published articles or I think even books in some cases from philosophers that are arguing for moral realism from a non theistic standpoint.
- [16:28]
Josh Brahmi
Nice.
- [16:29]
Monica Snyder
Yes, I did list listened to some of those videos. I felt like I should at least look into some of this, I'm gonna show it to other people and I,
- [16:35]
Josh Brahmi
I probably sent you one, right?
- [16:36]
Monica Snyder
Probably. This has been a while ago. I will tell you. I did not enjoy it very much. But, but if you're into that kind
- [16:42]
Josh Brahmi
of thing, you didn't suddenly find yourself a big fan of philosophy after.
- [16:45]
Monica Snyder
No, I mean there was some thought provoking stuff. There's a lot of, there's a lot to it.
- [16:49]
Josh Brahmi
You got through it though.
- [16:50]
Monica Snyder
It was interesting. I did enjoy the collegial nature of it. And some of them were debates, some of them were just discussions and there's some papers and things like that. But I put it together for people to say, you know, if you' are some philosophers talking about moral realism without theism. And that does satisfy some of the more intellectually curious people because they really are asking, they really are curious how that would work. And my goal here isn't to convince them of non theistic moral realism. My goal is just to let them know that that is a school of thought, you know, and it's something that some people, not me, have thought about a lot and still think it's plausible. So that's the first thing is it's a mistake to assume that if you don't believe in a God, or the Christian God or whatever, that you can't believe in moral realism or objective morality. That's an assumption right there. The other thing is that even if someone is more of a proponent of subjective morality, it doesn't then follow that they don't care about anything. And at least for them internally, it doesn't follow that it's even incoherent for them to do so. They're basing their morality on other things that aren't transcendent to all human experience but are still beyond just their personal preference. And that's why I find it very off putting. And I know I'm not the only one. When we try to engage this conversation and someone compares like my deeply felt ethical views on abortion to ice cream flavors. Yeah, that is not convincing. That doesn't speak to the emotional reality of what's going on. I get what they're trying to do, but it's very not convincing. And again, I don't feel like I'm really the right spokesperson for this. But I try to explain there is moral realism theories for moral realism without theism. And also there are plenty of theories for why people will care about something beyond just a preference, but not quite at the level of sort of this transcendent objective morality you're talking About. So those are the first couple things I point out. But the bigger thing, this is just strategy. If I'm talking to a pro life Christian, this is just strategy. Don't worry about it. That's my bigger response. Okay, don't worry about it. If you've got a non Christian person, whether they're secular or something else, that they are interested in this, they feel strongly against it. On one level, it doesn't matter why. I understand on a spiritual level and a soul saving level and all this stuff, it's always going to matter why to you. But on a pro life activist level, it's not just that it doesn't matter why, it's that bugging them about why is actually sometimes very counterproductive. Yeah, okay, so it depends on why the pro life Christian is asking me. But I will say all of these things. First of all, there are coherent versions of this. Second of all, to be quite blunt, the overwhelming majority of people have not thought about the phrase moral realism and aren't worried about why day to day they have these strong intuitions about ethics. And I think that applies to Christians and secular people and everyone else. I don't really believe that the majority of atheists or Christians or whoever very carefully thought about the philosophy behind their faith tradition and see if it rationally applies to their knee jerk reactions to what they think is okay and not okay in society. I think that those all are in the mix together, but I don't think it's that rational. I think it's intuition mostly. And so that's what I talk about when they ask, you know, do you need religion to be pro life? No, you don't. However, in fairness to especially our Christian friends pointing this out, and really, I guess the pro choice people too, it is clear that religious people are more likely to be pro life. There's a strong correlation. There's no denying it. The statistics are there. Atheists are the most pro choice demographic in the United States.
- [20:14]
Josh Brahmi
You don't have a religious book telling you anything about being pro life.
- [20:17]
Monica Snyder
Yeah, but we don't have a religious book telling us to be pro choice either. And yet there's very high consensus. Atheists are more consistently pro choice than any Christian faith tradition is pro life. You know, that's high consensus.
- [20:28]
Josh Brahmi
You're gonna know better than me. But I would suspect that would have at least something to do with a big correlation between placing a high value on BAL autonomy, which I think atheists generally do.
- [20:37]
Monica Snyder
This is a great question because then the question is, okay, so why Then if you don't need religion to be pro life, why do we see these really, really strong correlations? Right. I don't have statistical evidence. I just, I'm just speaking from speculation and experience. First of all, I think most of it's tribalism straight up.
- [20:52]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [20:52]
Monica Snyder
Okay. I think Christians overestimate how many atheists are atheist activists or what I call evangelical atheists. And by that I mean trying to get other people to be atheists. You know, I know plenty of atheists who. You wouldn't even know they were atheists unless you explicitly ask them, because they are. They don't believe in God or any of that stuff and they don't really care. And it's not really.
- [21:14]
Josh Brahmi
There's a difference between thinking that it's fine for a bunch of people to believe in like harmless fairy tales versus like the anti theist who's like, religion is harmful for. Let me liberate you, or at least you, if not the rest of the country. So I'm gonna try to help the world by helping you.
- [21:29]
Monica Snyder
Yes, exactly. I speculate that you could survey secular people about specifically their beliefs. Pew Research has done this where instead of just asking people to self describe, they'll say things like, do you believe there's an afterlife? Do you believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God? Like, they'll ask you specific things where you say what you believe and then you can compare what people actually say they believe to what labels they use. And I suspect that there are going to be people who have very, very, very similar, if not identical beliefs that you would call atheistic. And yet some of them will call themselves atheists and some of them will call themselves not religious. And I would love to see a deep dive into the psychology of which they decide to say if their beliefs are the same. Because I think that calling yourself atheist in a lot of contexts, it's more than just, I don't believe in God or gods. And it's kind of a rallying cry.
- [22:19]
Josh Brahmi
I wonder if some of the people saying not religious would fall into the kind of category of people that would like to use phrases like, I'm spiritual but not religious.
- [22:27]
Monica Snyder
For sure, for sure. We know that. Because you can look at their beliefs like there are a subset of people in the Pew Research surveys that will say they're spiritual but not religious and that Christ is their savior. And you're like, okay, yeah, okay, I don't know. But I'm saying people who would say, I don't believe in God or gods or an afterlife. And they still don't say atheist and what's going on there? So anyway, I think a lot of it's tribalism. I think that maybe even more potently than other demographics, if pro life is considered to generally be a religious position, then it would be a threat to one of your core identities to say you're pro life. I mean, we see this constantly. People accuse us of being secretly Christian all the time. But it's not just that you're worried about social repercussions. It's that who you surround yourself with will give you a chance to think about different perspectives. And if the only perspectives you get are either all pro choice perspectives, obviously default, of course, or maybe you get some pro life perspectives that are about God and religion. You're not even weighing this conversation. You know, we've talked about this before. It's human nature. If you don't have encyclopedic knowledge of every single topic, you kind of eyeball what the people you are most similar to and tend to agree with the most what they think and you kind of go with that. And we know this anecdotally because secular pro life, like I said, we interview people. We publish one a month. We've been doing it for years. And several of them have talked about these are atheists, some agnostics, mostly atheists. Several of them have talked about how they just never really, they'd never really thought about it. They weren't very carefully examining this debate and deciding they were pro choice. They've been pro choice the whole time. They never really thought about it. That's why it's so frustrating to me, because I do think there is a small subset of low hanging fruit of atheists that I wouldn't even need to really try that hard. I would just need to say like, well, I'm pro life and I'm an atheist and that would be enough for them to think, wait, right, yes. And they already have kind of the ethical predisposition and the ideas in their lives. We see a lot of conversion stories where it starts off with their pro choice and then they're personally pro life, but still pro choice. And a lot of times it has to do with experiences of miscarriage or pregnancy or someone they love going through something difficult. But they still don't feel like they have access to calling themselves pro life because in their ears that means Republican and Christian, probably Catholic, and that they're not. And so they will still say they're pro choice. I have a friend right now in my Hometown. I moved there a couple years ago. We've been hanging out most of that time. When we started hanging out, she said she was pro choice. And I take a very indirect route with interpersonal friendships. Like, if you want to talk about it, we can talk about it, but it's fine, whatever. And over the years, she just told me a couple weeks ago that she thinks that actually her actual views on the issue are actually very, very, very similar to mine. And I was like, I know, sis. I can tell when we talk about it, you know, but it never. I wouldn't. I don't know if I'd call this a conversion. Her views on abortion haven't changed. Her views on abortion were the same the whole time. She's adjusting her views on the label.
- [25:21]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [25:22]
Monica Snyder
You see what I mean?
- [25:23]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [25:23]
Monica Snyder
So I think a lot of it's tribalism. A lot of our pro choice detractors will point to the stats of how many atheists are pro choice. And they think that that's an argument, that therefore, obviously it's a secular position. And I'm like, you're never gonna convince me with that. You know, I also think this is maybe more controversial, but I think that there is a subset of pro choicers, like the woman I had just mentioned earlier, who are pro choice because of a certain kind of nihilistic worldview. And I think atheism does not have to be nihilistic, but I think it tends more to nihilism than faith traditions.
- [25:55]
Josh Brahmi
Oh. I mean, almost.
- [25:56]
Monica Snyder
And so I think there is a correlation.
- [25:58]
Josh Brahmi
Yes.
- [25:58]
Monica Snyder
And it's about nihilism.
- [26:00]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [26:00]
Monica Snyder
So don't get me wrong. I think there are plenty of pro choices people who are not nihilistic at all. And they're. And they're championing positive attributes and women's autonomy and medical freedom and all these things which are a positive pro choice ism. But I just told you about an example of the people who. They're pro choice and honestly, their perspectives. I'm pro choice because, eff it, life sucks anyway. Why would we bring more people into this? Da, da, da, da, da, da. And that can correlate with, you know, we're all gonna die in the heat death of the universe, so who cares? You know, I have seen over the years we've been doing this, you think that religion causes people to be pro life. And I think that that's often a pathway. But I have witnessed people who went from pro choice secular to pro life secular to pro life religion. And I think the pathway there was moving away from nihilism. That's what I think was actually happening. Yes.
- [26:49]
Josh Brahmi
Interesting.
- [26:50]
Monica Snyder
And so it wasn't religion that made them pro life. In some cases, them starting to really, the kernel for them was, I really do think my babies mattered before they were born. I can't let that go. And then that that sort of starts changing their position on, well, maybe life is really valuable. And for some people that's perfectly compatible with a secular worldview. But for some people, I think they start to look for the tribes that are more likely to speak a positive human value and ethic. And to be frank, that is not usually atheists.
- [27:16]
Josh Brahmi
You said something really interesting about how there are some atheists, some perhaps narrow percentage, but there are some atheists that if they just knew that there was a pro life atheist, like that might be just about enough, that might be sufficient. Basically, we have an episode about this I'm gonna link to. This is why just a few minutes ago, before you started recording this, I introduced you to Avastria. I happened to be out there and I told him what I tell a lot of people that secular pro life is maybe the most important pro life organization that exists. And the reason for that is not just because I think you're awesome, that helps, but it's more important, has to do with this persuasion study that came out of Stanford that we did a podcast about years ago that I linked to. But basically it was just like, atheists will have an easier time imagining themselves being pro life if they hear that there are atheists who are pro life versus if they heard a Christian's pro life and they think, well, maybe if I became a Christian then I could become pro life. Like, that's a much bigger leap. It's easier for them to imagine themselves having the view of someone who is similar to them in all these values, but is just different how this works.
- [28:22]
Monica Snyder
You don't have to upend your entire life life you don't have. And this not just for atheists, this could be for anything. This is why I find, I find more resistance from what we call traditional pro lifers when we talk about Democrats than atheists. What do you mean? I mean, I feel like Christian pro lifers are pretty ready. They're pretty used to a society that's always telling them not to shove their religion if they mention it at all. And they're pretty used to that paradigm of like navigating a secular ish society. When they're a Christian ish person, they're used to that. But when I try to make the Same kind of points about being welcoming to Democrats. I get more resistance.
- [28:54]
Josh Brahmi
Okay, so I've got a theory about that. What's your theory?
- [28:56]
Monica Snyder
I think a lot of pro life activists care very, very much about literally how you vote. And atheists could mean anything about voting, but Democrat they assume, I think this is an assumption, will always vote a certain way and it will always mean a certain thing and it will always have a certain result and therefore you can't. So they say, I don't agree with this. You can't be pro life and Democrat, right.
- [29:21]
Josh Brahmi
And look at Democrats for life, just
- [29:23]
Monica Snyder
FYI or progressive anti abortion uprising, rehumanize. I have had pretty good success with this in private conversations with traditional pro lifers where I say, listen, first of all, what you exactly just said, if you go to someone who they are a Democrat, they are a Democrat. When you look at their positions on a bunch of different issues, they take very much Democratic positions. They have historically voted for Democratic candidates. There's a lot of things the Democratic Party embodies that they really value and that are important in their life. Okay. This is a major part of their life and they just fundamentally disagree with the Democratic Party on abortion. You need to respect that. You especially if you're arguing about how they must vote, you are asking them to sell out a lot of other things to do this now and maybe their own welfare. Yeah. And maybe that's a persuasive argument or not. We try to stay very agnostic. Secular politics tries to stay very agnostic on the voting thing. But what I point out is, look, it's not like the options are, are pro choice Democrat actively advocating for abortion or pro life Republican actively fighting it. The reality is that you're going to have a lot of people who first of all, not all pro life Democrats vote for Democrats. First of all, okay? It doesn't mean they're going to vote for Republicans, but a lot of them abstain. A lot of them vote third party. A lot of them will vote very intentionally and carefully depending on the specifics of the race. Like if it's just two Democrats running against each other, maybe that's one thing. So first of all, second of all, even if you're a pro life Democrat and you vote ticket down the ticket Democrats all the time, okay? Which is the thing that the conservative pro lifers are like so mad about, okay? We get into college about how much that actually plays into statistically what matters. But even leaving that aside, you could have a pro life Democrat that votes Democrat ticket the Whole time.
- [30:55]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [30:55]
Monica Snyder
And then does a ton of stuff in their community to try to decrease abortion. And very important to me, serves as an ambassador to left leaning pro choice circles that are never going to talk to you. And we want these ambassadors because of what you just said. If you go up to a pro choice Democrat and you're a pro life Democrat and you have all this common ground, it's a simpler conversation. I'm not asking you to register Republican or convert to Catholicism. I'm just asking you to recognize that like this, this one thing sucks, right? This one thing. And you are allowed to be against this one thing even as you embody everything else that is unexpected. Like I said before, you could do whatever you want. And what I want you to want is to oppose abortion and whatever else she's got going on. So it is true that philosophically, you know, on paper, technically, it would be great if human beings thought of everything rationally first and carefully analyzed all of their philosophical arguments and biological facts and potential. But give me a break, okay? People are tribal people, reactionary. And because people are tribal, it's very important to have members of their tribe that are like, well, I don't agree on that one thing. It's way more persuasive. The biggest success story for this is Teresa Bukovinak. So very, very briefly. Trisha Bukovinak is secular board vice president. She is the founder of Progressive Anti abortion Uprising. She's been in all kinds of activism all over the world. She's been arrested a bunch of times. She's a total anti abortion zealot, also an atheist. She used to think that she couldn't be pro life because she's an atheist. She and I met in San Francisco. I didn't even talk to her about it. She hired me to work for her at Starbucks. This is a long time ago.
- [32:28]
Josh Brahmi
Oh, I didn't know that.
- [32:29]
Monica Snyder
Yeah, she hired me to work for her at Starbucks in San Francisco. I'm not gonna talk to my boss about politics or religion. I don't know what. She's an atheist. I don't know what she thinks about abortion. I don't care. I'm making lattes, you know, she was a great boss, by the way. And then she moved on to another position. I friended her on social media after that. Cause I don't, I don't, you know, friend on social media. The people I work with where I didn't, I do now. And I didn't talk to her directly about abortion at all. But I was on on the SPL page all the time. And she saw it. And what I didn't know is that she was already. She's an atheist, but she was already strongly pro animal rights, and she's anti death penalty. And she's got these other worldviews that are very much like, we need to be protecting the value of life, human life, especially animal lives, too. And she was already starting to feel like, you know, I just. And she used to consider herself pro choice back in the day as a very tribal, like, that's what we are. But she's thinking about it more, and she's thinking about it in the context of the animal she's trying to protect. And she's like, this doesn't. I don't know if this makes a lot of sense, but like, who am I? What am I going to do about it? And she looks at the. What she considers the broader pro life movement. She sees nothing reflecting anything that she's like, I don't know any of this. Everything. I'm telling you, I didn't know any of this. Okay. I'm just very obnoxiously loud online. And so she finds me and she finds secular pro life. And the way she tells it is, that was her. She was like, oh, oh, yeah, I can. I can be this. And now she is one of the most passionate, dedicated, consistent, you know, outspoken, brave pro life activist I have ever met. I admire her tremendously. And all of that passion and dedication and all the work that she has done was jump started when I just said, I'm pro life and I am an atheist. And she is like a light went off in her brain. And she and I have both experienced, and so has our founder, Kelsey Hazzard. We've all experienced other people where we say that. And kind of the best reaction you can hope for sometimes is kind of like, huh?
- [34:17]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah, exactly.
- [34:18]
Monica Snyder
Yeah.
- [34:19]
Josh Brahmi
I didn't know that was a thing.
- [34:20]
Monica Snyder
Wait a second. Yeah.
- [34:21]
Josh Brahmi
Suddenly a whole new world has opened up.
- [34:23]
Monica Snyder
Yeah. And we're using atheists as an example.
- [34:26]
Josh Brahmi
Sure.
- [34:26]
Monica Snyder
But it can be lgbt, it can be Democrat. It can also be Catholics, conservatives, and Christians in certain contexts where they feel like they're, you know, it could be anybody. This is why there are so many people who are afraid to talk about being pro life, especially socially. And I get it. And that's more true than ever.
- [34:42]
Josh Brahmi
Especially post ops.
- [34:43]
Monica Snyder
Especially post ops. And especially the non tradition. Cause they're in very, very pro choice social circles. And I understand that. And usually when you're thinking about what will happen if people know that you're against abortion, you're anticipating all the negative reactions, and that's legit. That stuff's gonna happen. But also keep in mind while you're doing that, you could be the beacon for other people like you, who feel so alienated and feel like they can't talk about this thing that's very important to them and just feel kind of muted. And sometimes, a lot of times, all it takes is them knowing just one other person in their life who's with them, and then they feel braver. Even if they don't go and become an activist and grab a bullhorn, they just feel braver to, like, talk about it sometimes. So you're anticipating all the people who you know and love who are pro choice, who might be, at best, kind of weirded out and worse, mad at you. Fine. Some of the people you know are pro life most of the time, and some of them are also looking for that support.
- [35:38]
Josh Brahmi
All right, I've got a couple questions.
- [35:39]
Monica Snyder
Okay.
- [35:39]
Josh Brahmi
How do you talk to the nihilist when you end up figuring out that the main difference between you and person you're talking to at a deeper level is the difference? It's not like you might agree on atheism.
- [35:51]
Monica Snyder
Sure.
- [35:51]
Josh Brahmi
But this person is very nihilistic, and you are not. And therefore you are seeing these things completely differently. What do you do there?
- [35:57]
Monica Snyder
If I think they're being sincere.
- [35:59]
Josh Brahmi
Yes. Yes. It's just assuming. Yes. Honest.
- [36:02]
Monica Snyder
Cause I think a lot of them not. But yeah, if I think they're being sincere and there seems to be a lot of emotion behind it, like, it's a mental health issue. Yeah. Because some people are nihilists in this kind of neutral way, and they're just like, yeah, I. I mean, I love my life and I'm glad I'm here, but I don't think it means anything. And that's more of a neutral thing. But if they're doing what I told you before, it's like it's all pain in any way. And this person said that we should have fully paid for assisted suicide for anyone who wants their money back. And I was like, okay, their money back as a phrase to say, like, somebody forced you to be born. What if you don't like it? You know, with those people, I don't even bother to talk about abortion at all. I just say, like, are you okay? I'm concerned. I'm concerned that you feel this way. I don't think that. That it's natural. I don't think we are emotionally healthy when we are this way.
- [36:47]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [36:48]
Monica Snyder
And from my perspective, it's probably they won't care about this, but it's definitely not evolutionarily derived. This is really destructive. And I want to know what's going on with you that you feel this way. If they're being snarky and aggressive, I might say, like if you really think that, then you have no reason to do abortion advocacy or any advocacy about anything because it's all meaningless anyway. Way I think there's a contradiction here because you do find deep meaning in some advocacy and I'd be curious why.
- [37:18]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [37:19]
Monica Snyder
You know, and that's not me trying to convince you to my advocacy, but just like there is something incongruous about caring passionately enough about stuff to argue for it and then say everything is meaningless and it's all heat death of the universe. I think that's incongruous. Or at least it seems very ad hoc if you're fine with doing it for your stuff. But then tell me I shouldn't do it for.
- [37:37]
Josh Brahmi
I mean, unless for like, I guess like they're doing it not because they actually really care to deep level. But it feels more like an intellectual game or puzzle to them or they just. So they kind of like proving people wrong or proving to be wrong.
- [37:49]
Monica Snyder
But then that's not people I consider sincere. So if you're arguing with me about abortion not because you care at all, but because it's an intellectual puzzle, then that's not. It's not really a sincere conversation.
- [37:58]
Josh Brahmi
That might not be what I meant.
- [38:00]
Monica Snyder
Do you mean that the question of meaning of life is an intellectual puzzle?
- [38:04]
Josh Brahmi
Right. I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a nihilist. And I'm not a nihilist. Right. And I have spent very much time reading and talking to nihilists and figuring out what to say. Like I don't have anything terribly helpful. Like as a tip, I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of an. And I've spoken to some nihilists and I'm really depressed. So I can understand some of it.
- [38:23]
Monica Snyder
Right.
- [38:23]
Josh Brahmi
And so I'm trying to get it. So I'm imagining a certain kind of person. Maybe this isn't the more representative person, but I'm just imagining someone who's just like I look out around the world and the suffering that I have experienced and everyone else is experiencing. It seems like there's more suffering than pleasure. That seems bad on like a net negative for the universe. Since consciousness is a thing and so I'm kind of like, I'm not gonna kill myself and I can kill a bunch of other people, but, like, I'm not like, super excited about extending my life. But then here comes, like, basically, then that person's like, if that's the filter that they've got on, then anyone that they come across who thinks differently, it might be like they're gonna react with something kind of nihilistic.
- [39:04]
Monica Snyder
I suppose my reaction would be to get into a conversation about nihilism, hopefully a good F conversation about nihilism. But it's very hard for me to access because it just seems inconsistent what you're saying, especially in the context of abortion, because I suspect this is actually just another cover for a fetal personhood argument. Okay. Because sometimes if you're the nihilist and you're saying, you know, I look around me, suffering, et cetera, I'm not going to kill myself, I'm not going to kill other people. Okay, pause. You're not going to kill other people. Right. There's common ground. And for me, with abortion, you're killing other people. So now we're back at a fetal personhood discussion.
- [39:38]
Josh Brahmi
It's not common ground because they don't think it's a. So, you know, the common ground is
- [39:42]
Monica Snyder
don't kill other people. The common ground is you don't kill other people. The uncommon ground is, is a fetus a person? And now we're back in the field of personhood argument. Yeah. So it's not really. Then we're not even arguing about nihilism anymore. Because if your nihilism precludes you from killing other people, then what do I care, man? What you really mean is you don't think embryos and fetuses are people yet. And it's not necessarily a good thing to bring people into existence. So it's really a fetal personhood argument.
- [40:06]
Josh Brahmi
I don't know. It feels like a straw man. Foreseeable. Some people that I'm thinking of when I did the role playing person saying, like, I'm not gonna go out and kill someone. I don't mean necessarily they're doing that because of a moral belief. It might be more of a, like, look, I'm just distinguishing myself from, like, here's the thing, an extreme psychopath.
- [40:26]
Monica Snyder
Here's the. Maybe this is my unspoken belief that we need to examine. They are doing it because of some kind of moral belief or bare minimum, some sort of social construct. But I believe that even the vast majority of nihilists on some basal level, they would be horrified. The idea of killing a bunch of
- [40:42]
Josh Brahmi
people, that's my hope. Like, that's sort of like the direction like so like what I wrote down, because you got me to think of something that was like, here's maybe now this is what I would try. I think I would try talking about Oscar similar, I think pointing to beautiful examples of non theists. I think Oskar Simler was a non theist. I'm not positive.
- [41:01]
Monica Snyder
It doesn't really matter if he was or not. How did you feel about what he did?
- [41:03]
Josh Brahmi
He was mainly a German businessman, you know, and sympathizer with or like we had friends with Nazis or something. I don't think he was super religious. But regardless, like here is an example of this person who spent basically his entire fortune and he never recovers after that, like saving. And he was like 5,000 Jews or something like that. Right. So like I would want to ask a nihilist, like, is this completely like neutral? Would you be completely as okay with if he did nothing and all those people.
- [41:34]
Monica Snyder
See, this is my. I can't get around it because it is so hard as a human being to live truly as a nihilist. It's not our instinct at all. Okay. So this is the same argument that Christians make against subjective morality.
- [41:47]
Josh Brahmi
That's what I was about to say, but I didn't want to.
- [41:49]
Monica Snyder
It is and I recognize it. I recognize it. People don't live like that. People don't feel like that. People don't behave like the day to day. Some people do. It's very rare. And usually they have serious mental health problems that are like diagnosable that we can measure. And so it's hard for me to imagine a scenario where I'm having a good faith conversation with a true nihilist who also cares a lot about abortion rights. That's hard for me to imagine.
- [42:14]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah, I'm not. Yeah, that's not. I'm not describing. I agree. That would be pretty weird.
- [42:18]
Monica Snyder
Yeah.
- [42:18]
Josh Brahmi
So I'm not describing someone who cares a lot. I'm describing someone who like, you know, just as obnoxious people that want to debate everything.
- [42:26]
Monica Snyder
Sure.
- [42:26]
Josh Brahmi
Like every time they hear someone say something that they think is incorrect, they can't help. Like, I have some of this stuff.
- [42:31]
Monica Snyder
I don't think that's what they're doing. I don't feel obligated to any particular conversation.
- [42:35]
Josh Brahmi
So that might be the right response.
- [42:37]
Monica Snyder
All my responses.
- [42:40]
Josh Brahmi
That's interesting.
- [42:40]
Monica Snyder
There's two other things I do want to hit in this episode.
- [42:42]
Josh Brahmi
Okay, well, then let's hit that.
- [42:44]
Monica Snyder
The first one was, and I think this is an interesting question. I firmly believe, as I have established, that you do not need to be religious to be pro life and that there are pathways for. Even now, I think there's a lot of secular people out there that would be pro life if they realized that it was kind of an option. Not most of them, but there's a subset. But this is a different question in a country that is heading towards secularism. And I'm not like there's debate about whether that's happening in the United States. You know, secularism has been on the rise for decades, but in recent years, I've seen people talking about how it seems to have plateaued. Depends on the measures you're using. I don't know. But that's been a talking point I have seen. Let's just leave that aside for now. Assuming we are in a nation that is heading towards a more and more secular society, is there a future for a pro life movement in a largely secular first world country? And this is a very serious question because most first world countries are far more secular than the United States States and most first world countries are at least moderately pro choice countries. The United States is an outlier in first world countries for the level of religiosity and for our fights about abortion. I don't think those are a coincidence. And the question is, let's assume for the sake of argument, the United States is going to get more secular as time goes on. Can the pro life movement survive that? Because even though I do firmly believe that you don't have to be religious to be pro life. Right.
- [43:59]
Josh Brahmi
If the rest of the world doesn't,
- [44:00]
Monica Snyder
if the rest of the world doesn't, or if the vast majority of pro life resources are done towards other religious people in religious contexts, you know, where are we going from here?
- [44:10]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah, that would be a big problem. I agree with that.
- [44:12]
Monica Snyder
This is why my group is very important.
- [44:14]
Josh Brahmi
It is. It is. Yeah. I'll keep on banging that drum.
- [44:17]
Monica Snyder
I've had people ask me that privately, and I think it's an intimidating question. I think it could be. I think it could be the case that you could have a very strong pro life movement in a largely secular nation.
- [44:25]
Josh Brahmi
I do think that it'd be really hard though. I mean, like, ask Retton to live in Denmark. Ask Denmark, Right to Life what it's like to be a little pro life movement in a very, very secular pro choice culture.
- [44:40]
Monica Snyder
Counterpoint may be hopeful. They don't have the legacy of a strong anti abortion fight like we do.
- [44:47]
Josh Brahmi
Yes, true.
- [44:48]
Monica Snyder
So I think we have a certain kind of inertia that doesn't exist in other first world countries.
- [44:53]
Josh Brahmi
Yes. That was my message of hope to the Danes over there was like, look, I'm gonna try to come and help you and I'm gonna try to help you fast forward through like 40 years of mistakes that we've been making in America because you haven't been doing that and you guys don't have some of the cultural stuff that we're dealing with here. It's just different. But maybe there can be that advantage. I've told this story many times, but I'll never forget this wonderful, amazing pro life woman. She's a heroine to me. Her name's Anita. It's hard for me to pronounce because it's spelled Agnete, but it's Anita. Okay, so Anita is one of the Denmark right to life beau. She's the one who reached out and invited me up to come over. But I remember ending that conversation like with this kind of like very Josh Brahmi kind of like, you know, I hope that I can be helpful, but I just want you to know, like, my heart goes out to you. I know it's way harder for you than it is for us in the States, blah, blah. And her response was, oh, it's okay, they won't see us coming. We're underground. They're not going to know. It's like, you're going to come and make us awesome and then we're going to go out and be awesome. And that's what they did. They've been awesome ever since that's 2018. They've been awesome. They've been killing it ever since.
- [45:58]
Monica Snyder
And I imagine in those countries it's a similar phenomenon to what we were talking about with atheists here. There's gonna be a whole subset of people in any one of these countries that has not had this debate that are already kind of with you already could be.
- [46:10]
Josh Brahmi
So like the hard thing for them is like what they're dealing with is a lot of like, we already debated this issue and finished debating this issue 30 years ago.
- [46:19]
Monica Snyder
I didn't finish debating this issue.
- [46:21]
Josh Brahmi
And maybe that's the snarky way that they ought to respond to that.
- [46:23]
Monica Snyder
Oh, we have that all the time here. You know, I've talked to some pro life activists who are actively looking to have debates with pro pro choice people on college campuses and things and they struggle to find people who are willing to do it. And I think that's a mistake on the pro choicers part. I think that some of them haven't caught up to the post Dobbs reality that this isn't a settled issue. They were used to decades of we already debated this and we're not going to. Well, I'm going to. I've seen pro choice activists say I was invited to debate, but I'm not going to because this isn't up for debate. Who are you kidding, man? It is clearly up for debate. We are debating it now at a state to state level. If you don't want to debate it, I'm fine with with that, you know, but we are going to keep debating it. So yeah, that was one of the questions I was grappling with is what would the future look like if the country does continue to increase in secularism,
- [47:06]
Josh Brahmi
which I expect it to.
- [47:07]
Monica Snyder
I do too. But I think there's a significant number of Christians who are hopeful that that trend will reverse.
- [47:12]
Josh Brahmi
Sure.
- [47:13]
Monica Snyder
And so for them it's like that's not a concern because they think it's going to reverse for various reasons or whatever. But also when you get at a state by state level, you're still going to have the same issue because there are some states that are much less religious than others. And if we want to get everyone, eventually we have to be able to have that conversation.
- [47:27]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah, that's a good point.
- [47:28]
Monica Snyder
So it's a tricky thing. I think that there's a theoretical version of this where that could happen. But I think in practice we see there's very strong tribal correlations between these things. And to be clear, I'm glad that the Christians tend to be pro life. Sure, keep doing that. That tribalism is good. Just the ones that disagree with me are bad. The other thing I wanted to bring up that I feel like doesn't get talked about enough is people talk about do you need religion to be pro life? And I want them to raise more often the question do you need religion to be proud choice? Because what I mean by that, what I was saying before is we're stretching the boundaries of how you define religious belief a little bit.
- [48:01]
Josh Brahmi
Okay.
- [48:02]
Monica Snyder
But a lot of pro choice people, if you get them to talk about fetal personhood, they will pick some ad hoc line in the mid second trimester and some of them will go even further and say not until viability or not until birth. And I just want to say it is kind of in my view a mystical perspective to suggest that you don't have a person Or a valuable human being being until birth. And you're condescending to me about being religion.
- [48:28]
Josh Brahmi
Totally. Bodily autonomy thing or something like that.
- [48:30]
Monica Snyder
No, because the bodily autonomy thing would be yes, it's a person. And I don't care because bodily rights. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about there's no person there till birth. What are you talking about? You say that with a straight face and then accuse other people of pushing religion. Okay, that's crazy, right? And this other thing you and I have talked about on this podcast before, there's other. I'll call them mystical beliefs to lose the baggage of what counts as religion or not. But there's other spiritual mystical beliefs and we've seen this very commonly. Like the belief that a soul can just come back in a different fetal body. There are a lot of people who use that to comfort them about abortion.
- [49:06]
Josh Brahmi
It's like a targeted reincarnation, something like that or something.
- [49:09]
Monica Snyder
Or it's very vague. It's not, you know, it's not a doctrinal thing. It's a vague idea where they'll pray like, I hope God sends you back to me at some point. What that means, who knows? You know, I've seen ones shout your abortion account where like a woman tearfully and mournfully had an abortion and very, very shortly after her abortion, her friend announced that she was pregnant and she interpreted that as the baby went to her friend instead. Okay, I don't think she said that to her friend, but that's what she wrote in the Shot yout Abortion account. And I'm just saying there's these pseudo mystical comforting beliefs, you know, that make this work out better.
- [49:42]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah, that feels like people believing in the kind of things that they want to believe.
- [49:45]
Monica Snyder
Well, that's what they're accusing pro life Christians of doing, too.
- [49:48]
Josh Brahmi
That's a good example.
- [49:49]
Monica Snyder
The other one that I wanted to talk about, that this is for pro choice Christians specifically. So what I just said was like, well, I don't know if you're a Christian or not. You just have something going on, you know. But for pro choice Christians specifically, there's this approach to the questions of when life begins and stuff that almost makes it seem like as long as we call this a spiritual question, then the answer doesn't even matter at all.
- [50:11]
Josh Brahmi
Because spirituality feels kind of vague already.
- [50:14]
Monica Snyder
We had. It wasn't even a pastor or a priest. I think the person who made this there was a viral TikTok and we got tagged in it a Bunch of times by this guy. I think he calls himself a spiritual advisor. And I'm not really sure what he mean, but he has like a whole website and stuff. It's not just like a random TikTok. But anyway, he did this whole video very like, earnest to the camera, like, understand where you're coming from. And he was clearly talking to pro life Christians specifically.
- [50:39]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [50:40]
Monica Snyder
And he basically said, you know, I get that you care a lot about life and life is valuable. I forget how he phrased it, but he said he has a friend who ran an abortion class clinic. And he asked the friend, like, how can you reconcile what you're doing if you're taking lives or whatever? And they're like. He claims that the clinic director said, no, I do care a lot. And that would be very, very serious if you were taking a bunch of lives, you know, if that was the case. But you know, the thing is that's really a spiritual question. And I'm like, that. I feel like that didn't really answer my question. And so this guy goes on this whole thing where he says, like, it's a spiritual question and we can all have different beliefs and they act like they're being so accepting of you. And this is a brand of pro choice Christianity that we bump against it because. Because pro life Christians tag us in this stuff all the time. It's like they want us to go fight with the pro choice Christians. Which is funny because we're not actually very equipped because we're just like, no and no. Just no in general. You know, what are we going to do? Did I tell you Catholics for Choice blocked me on Twitter?
- [51:31]
Josh Brahmi
No.
- [51:31]
Monica Snyder
Which is kind of a bummer, man, because I. I consider them sort of my counterpart.
- [51:35]
Josh Brahmi
They are kind of, in some ways.
- [51:37]
Monica Snyder
Yeah, but same thing where they would post things like, you know, you can be a good Catholic and be pro choice and everybody tags us in it. Why are you tagging me?
- [51:43]
Josh Brahmi
Me?
- [51:44]
Monica Snyder
Fight amongst yourselves. You know, but. But yeah, there's this spirituality. I would call it kind of a woo thing, but like this spiritual, not religious, kind of mysticism that surrounds some pro choice advocates. Me assigning motive. Don't do that. I think there's a lot of people who are very ethically uncomfortable with abortion and they really want to still be able to be pro choice. And so they layer on this other crap. That's what I think is happening.
- [52:06]
Josh Brahmi
The other thing that I thought, like, this is less charitable even than that for some people. Like that move specifically that the person who ran the Abortion clinic, like, is a. It's sort of a conversation ending thing. It's kind of like a. In the end, it's all very personal. Everyone's got their personal, very important personal views. You're gonna have your personal view, mine gonna have my personal. It's very important. Yeah, but like, then what?
- [52:31]
Monica Snyder
It's important that we don't have to actually say what it is or do
- [52:33]
Josh Brahmi
anything about it or like, I'm gonna keep on doing my thing and you keep on believing your thing. And like, we're just like, move on.
- [52:38]
Monica Snyder
And so this is how they think. They convince themselves that they're neutral because they, they're like, we can all do our own thing.
- [52:42]
Josh Brahmi
And that's neutral and that's not neutral. Okay, so here's my question for you before we close.
- [52:47]
Monica Snyder
Sure.
- [52:48]
Josh Brahmi
And it's possible I've asked you this before, but because we've talked about the Christians on your secular pro life page a lot, I'm interested. So I just told the story at a different podcast yesterday. So Penn Jillette is one of my favorite atheists to listen to. When I'm spending time intentionally listening to atheists. I really enjoy just the human that Penn Jillette is in the way that he thinks. This is the Penn and Teller, you know, the but very outspoken atheist who has written books and speeches and stuff. And I think a lot about a story he told a long time ago on his podcast is like anti Christianity podcast.
- [53:21]
Monica Snyder
Is it. Is it an anti Christianity podcast?
- [53:23]
Josh Brahmi
Kind of. It's called Penn Sunday School. Like, it's meant to be like a. My, like a lot of a little bit satirical. I don't think it's meant to be satirical as much as maybe kind of mocking a little bit, maybe like that kind of thing. But like, you know, I don't know. I don't know how he would characterize it, but certainly a lot of times he's not mocking. It might be that like the Oregon theme music for the Sunday school. And the theme might be a little bit tongue in cheek. Whatever. Here's the point. Long time ago on his podcast, he told this story. So Penn and Teller unusually will actually spend more time after their shows than they do during the show. Just signing every single autograph and picture. Like, they will not let anyone not get to finish the line. They will go to the end of the line. So he's like, this is like a two and a half hour usually, and our show's about two hours or whatever is something. Something like that. But that matters to them. And because he's an outspoken atheist, he occasionally gets Christians who will come to him and, like, this is their chance to do something. And he told a story one time of a Christian who basically stood in the line for this whole time and handed him a Bible. And basically it was like, I wrote a little note. I think he wrote a little note in it, but it was kind of like, this is for you. I enjoy your stuff. I don't think. None of a deep thing right there, sure. But Penn was talking about the experience of getting that Bible and how he was not annoyed or upset or whatever. Not like, how dare you? He said, my attitude was, if you're a person who believes that because I have the wrong beliefs that I am going to hell for eternity, then how much would you have to hate me to not attempt to evangelize me? How much would you have to hate me to not to not try at all, ever to try to save me from that? He. He was like, I am so appreciative of this stranger who cares enough about my soul to buy me a Bible and write a note and give it to me.
- [55:14]
Monica Snyder
I wait in a long line and
- [55:16]
Josh Brahmi
write in a long line and all of that stuff. I mean, they're awesome anyway. I would've waited in a line anyway, sure. But like, that kind of. So I'm curious. Like, there are a lot of obnoxious pro life Christians that get on your page, but for some of them, this is where they're coming from, right? They're just like, they just. They want to be helpful. What would you say to, like, the Penn Jillettes who, like, our atheists are kind of like encouraging people to ev. Evangelizes him is saying, like, I appreciate it when people do that. How do you react to that story? What are your, like, I mean, I
- [55:45]
Monica Snyder
totally get what he's saying. I have. I joke with my husband that I don't literally think this is true, but I've joked with him that I might be one of the most prayed for atheists ever, because.
- [55:55]
Josh Brahmi
Oh, I'm sure you are.
- [55:56]
Monica Snyder
Because I'm in the pro life movement and I generally get along with people in the pro life movement.
- [56:01]
Josh Brahmi
And I know you and Kelsey and Tracy.
- [56:02]
Monica Snyder
Some of them tell me, and I know a lot of them don't tell me that they're just praying for me. I.
- [56:07]
Josh Brahmi
All the time, you know, and that's sweet.
- [56:09]
Monica Snyder
It is sweet. I get what he's saying and I agree with the idea that this is a very good motivation. And we appreciate what you are trying to Do I agree with all of that? First of all, I think there are a lot of Christians who don't actually believe that I am going to hell. There's universalists who actually doctrinally don't believe it. But more than that, analogies to the pro life movement, to the pro choice movement, whatever. You've got your top tier people who actually really pay attention to the philosophical political stuff we're doing. And you got people just living their lives. And I speaking from very personal experience, because I have family that are Christian, you know, and we're an interfaith family, I believe that there are a lot of Christians that either haven't thought about it very specifically or because they love me and they love God, they believe that they don't really know how it's all gonna work out, but they can't believe that the God that they love would send me to hell. And they're not sure how that works out, but they're not very worried about it. Cause that's not the God they believe in. And it's not because they're universalist, not because they specifically doctrinally became universalist or thought about it. They're just like, that doesn't make sense to me. I don't believe that. Yeah, okay. So first there's that. First there's that. I think there's a lot of Christians that aren't actually worried about me going to hell. Or maybe they even kind of like on paper, like they think if you press them, like, yeah, if you're an atheist, you're going to hell. But like, it just doesn't internalize that way for them. I also believe there are Christians who do think if I don't get it together, you know, eventually that probably I will go to hell. I would say, though, in those cases, and this doesn't just apply to Christianity, this applies to abortion. Another one that's big for me is the vaccine debate. Pick any debate where you believe that the side you're taking has life or death consequences. Okay. If it's that serious, then you need to care very, very much how persuasive you are. Yeah. Okay.
- [57:57]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [57:57]
Monica Snyder
Not just if you've tried anything at all. Okay. So if you're telling me, if you're telling me, let's step away from the abortion debate for a minute. This 100% applies to the abortion debate. Okay.
- [58:09]
Josh Brahmi
Yeah.
- [58:10]
Monica Snyder
If you're telling me that if we don't keep the vaccination rates up to a certain percentage, then children will die. Okay? Preventable, unforced, Errors, deaths. We've already figured this problem out. Yeah, whatever. If you're telling me that okay, then I expect you have every incentive to go find the people who are against vaccinating their children and persuade them. I'm saying this as a pro vax person. I'm on the provax side. Okay. What I actually see, at least on social media, if people are making provax arguments, most of the time they're being unbelievably condescending. They're accusing parents of not loving their kids, they're accusing them of killing grandmas. And all I see is a bunch of people who don't really care about persuading people. And if you don't really care about persuading people, how serious could it be? And I know that's not true. It's actually just a knee jerk reaction that you're doing. You do really care that you really do want them to vaccinate their kids and you're just bad at persuasion and not thinking about the connection. But I have little patience for it because especially pre Covid. I know this is. This is not an official second pro life position. We have people on all sides of the vaccine debate. Second pro life. I'm pretty pro vax me as well, and especially pre Covid, which I feel like Covid made the vaccine debate so much worse. But especially pre Covid. I was very frustrated about this and I was frustrated at people who weren't vaccinating, but I was even more frustrated at my side for being a bunch of jerks about it. Almost every post I saw was unbelievably vitriolic. And same thing with the abortion debate. When you got people who just want to go and say abortion is murder, you're a murderer. Murderer. Okay, then that's fine. You can do that if you want. But don't tell me that you believe that you're trying to save lives, because I feel like you don't really care about how. What if what you're doing works? You stopped at it's my job to say my truth. That's the easy thing to do. Okay. You know how easy it is to bluntly say your truth? I do that all the time. What's hard is figuring out where people are coming from, especially since they're all different, and then trying to build rapport and slowly, over time, truly get them to you.
- [60:04]
Josh Brahmi
You just described my life story. I know. It is really hard to get people to do that.
- [60:10]
Monica Snyder
Yeah, you will do it. You will go through the energy Consuming the frustration, the having to nuance everything all the time and figure out where everybody is coming from because you want them to hear you.
- [60:20]
Josh Brahmi
Right.
- [60:21]
Monica Snyder
You know, that's why you do it.
- [60:22]
Josh Brahmi
Also, I have different. You and I both have different views about the psychology of Persuasion, one of our other favorite episodes, than a lot of other people do. Like, a lot of those people actually think that the more the truth shall set you free, like something like the most ungarnished version of this truth will be more likely to set people free. Maybe they would think, and they're wrong.
- [60:42]
Monica Snyder
Nuancing this more, though there are some people where if you just plant your feet and say things very directly, that will help. I just don't think it's most people.
- [60:50]
Josh Brahmi
Right.
- [60:51]
Monica Snyder
And also, there's a difference between planting your feet and very clearly, like, bringing it back to the religion conversation. There are people that come on our page, and they will say, you know, I'm making this up. But they'll say something like, you really don't have any good reasons. Be pro life unless you believe in God. Okay? And I can't hear their tone. That's just like the phrase, right? That phrase is different than if they come on and say, you guys are idiots and you're incoherent and you da, da, da, da, da. One of them is just trying to very, very directly tell me the core thing they want me to know, and the other one is mad and throwing a fit. Okay. Those are different. And I find. I'm sure you've seen this too. I'm sure we have all seen this, where the people who are often the most asinine are the ones who are like, I'm just honest. No, you're a jerk.
- [61:36]
Josh Brahmi
Oh, my gosh.
- [61:37]
Monica Snyder
You're a jerk.
- [61:38]
Josh Brahmi
Get rid of that phrase.
- [61:39]
Monica Snyder
You can be dishonest to honest. Here's the X axis. Dishonest to honest. And the Y axis is obnoxiousness. Total jerk to really nice. Those are different axes. You could be the most persuasive, sweet liar. Yeah. But you could also be the most persuasive, sweet, honest person. That's actually the hardest, hardest one. So level up. Okay, look, I say that as someone who has a really hard time sometimes not making it clear when I disagree, I'm annoyed. This has come up in my marriage. This has come up in my job. This has come up everywhere I've ever worked.
- [62:11]
Josh Brahmi
This podcast.
- [62:12]
Monica Snyder
Yeah, this podcast. So, like, I get it, okay? But I don't go around when I. When I am too harsh. I don't go around being like, well, I'm just so honest.
- [62:19]
Josh Brahmi
Okay, you definitely wouldn't do that. I love this point. I think the pro life people who are well meaning and going on your page hoping that they're gonna save people, I think that is different than the person who waited in line to personally hand pen Gilletta bible with a note in it.
- [62:37]
Monica Snyder
Say more.
- [62:37]
Josh Brahmi
I think that person showed some level of care just in the fact that he wrote a note and handed it to a person and made eye contact with a person. That is just not there when you're typing at someone in social media.
- [62:48]
Monica Snyder
But I've had people do that kind of thing in person too.
- [62:51]
Josh Brahmi
And I bet that worked a lot better for you than if they just like wrote to you online on your public.
- [62:57]
Monica Snyder
The reality is, and maybe this is where Penn and I depart. Like, I appreciate the motivation, but I wouldn't mind if you stopped. I would not mind. I would not think, oh, you hate my guts and want me to go to hell if you stop. I would think you were just giving me my space. And I think most people feel more like I do than like Penn does. I appreciate Penn assigning good faith motivation. And I think he's right.
- [63:15]
Josh Brahmi
Yes.
- [63:16]
Monica Snyder
I think he is correct that if someone goes to that effort, that's their motivation. Where I disagree with him is when he tries to say, and therefore if you don't do these things, you must hate me and not care if my soul burns in hell.
- [63:25]
Josh Brahmi
I don't think he would be like, I want you to keep on coming. Like end.
- [63:29]
Monica Snyder
I'm saying I don't agree that if someone doesn't evangelize to me, it's because they hate me and want my soul to burn in hell.
- [63:33]
Josh Brahmi
Sure. That's probably kind of like a rhetorically, like pointed way to put it.
- [63:38]
Monica Snyder
And that mentality is super fraught because with it you could justify a lot of things. If I'm trying to save your soul from hell, and historically humans have sure
- [63:48]
Josh Brahmi
totally agree in that context. He's literally talking about handing the Bible
- [63:51]
Monica Snyder
with a note in it. I know, I know. And there's an analogy here, not even just with religion, we see this same same thing with abortion. If you really believe that abortion is killing babies, what wouldn't you do? And there's actually a lot I wouldn't do. So, you know, just be just, you know, so.
- [64:06]
Josh Brahmi
Well, thank you for sharing a bunch of perspectives. I'll just throw out like one interesting. I'm gonna put this link in the description. I know I'VE mentioned this link before, but I know there are a lot of Christians who believe that there is no possible way for there to be objective morality without an objective moral law giver. I still haven't landed on that one totally. But I will just offer if people are looking for a different view, a great YouTube debate to watch is William Lane Craig, who's considered like the top Christian debate guy, versus Shelly Kagan.
- [64:37]
Monica Snyder
That's one of the ones on our list, I think. You sent me that.
- [64:39]
Josh Brahmi
I sent it to you. Columbia University. It's a really interesting debate. It's, I think, the biggest time I've seen William Lane Craig lose a debate. But I think you really did lose that debate. Doesn't mean I necessarily agree with Kagan and everything. Kagan insane. But it's good for people to hear a thoughtful person give the alternative view if they've only heard a bunch of Christian apologists their entire life saying there's no way to do it, there's no way to do it.
- [65:03]
Monica Snyder
Yeah. Trying to falsify your view, right?
- [65:06]
Josh Brahmi
Yes.
- [65:06]
Monica Snyder
I have a fuller list, including that and others that we can give you.
- [65:10]
Josh Brahmi
Send it to me. I will link to it.
- [65:11]
Monica Snyder
I forgot to say, too, this year I was invited to publish in the Human Life Review, and I think the question was, is belief in God necessary for the pro life cause to succeed? And I wrote an essay there that summarized a lot of the things we just said here. Yeah, so we can link that too.
- [65:25]
Josh Brahmi
Love it. We'll link to all those things. There's more where people can go. Come back in two weeks. We have at least one more of these we're gonna do before we're out of time.
- [65:35]
Monica Snyder
All right.
- [65:35]
Josh Brahmi
Thank you for listening to the Equipped for Life podcast, a project of Equal Rights Institute. Equal Rights Institute uses speaking, writing, YouTube videos, podcasts, online course courses, and campus outreach to help pro life advocates in the areas of practical dialogue tips, relational apologetics, pro life philosophy, and sidewalk counseling. If you've been helped by this podcast, please consider supporting it by making a donation@equalrightsinstitute.com.