#107: How to Talk to Pro-lifers - Part 2

Summary

Podcast Summary: Equipped for Life Podcast

Episode #107: How to Talk to Pro-lifers - Part 2

Release Date: June 10, 2026
Hosts: Josh and Emily (Equal Rights Institute)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Josh and Emily continue their exploration of advice given by pro-choice advocates about how to talk to pro-lifers. Building on Part 1, they live-react to three more viral videos in which pro-choice creators coach their peers on persuading pro-lifers, dissecting the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments and strategies. The hosts offer their unique "relational apologetics" perspective, focusing on understanding and empathy, while scrutinizing the logical and practical effectiveness of each approach.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Episode Context and Approach

• The hosts clarify that they haven’t previewed the videos in depth, opting for genuine, real-time reactions and critiques.
• The goal is to evaluate not just the arguments, but also the tone, assumptions, and effectiveness of the advice given to pro-choice audiences for engaging pro-lifers.

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Video 1: Kate on “How to Win an Argument with a Pro-Lifer”

[02:28–22:44]

Main Arguments Presented by Kate

• Kate suggests avoiding maternal mortality and unsafe abortion arguments because (in her experience) pro-lifers are unmoved, believing saving fetuses outweighs maternal risks.
• She claims some pro-lifers respond with, "If the woman wants to get an abortion and dies in the process, then she kind of deserves it because she's a murderer anyway" ([04:18]).

Hosts’ Analysis

• Empathy and Compassion
  • Both hosts are deeply disturbed by the cited lack of compassion (even if only expressed by a vocal minority).
    • “Oh my God, stop calling yourself pro life. Just don't call yourself pro life. If that's because it's not, it's not pro life.” – Josh ([05:13])
  • They reiterate that a true pro-life stance must be fundamentally anti-violence and compassionate toward all involved.
• Utilitarian Reasoning & Law
  • Many pro-lifers accept that tragic maternal deaths could occur, but see this as outweighed by ending more fetal deaths.
  • The hosts encourage broader empathy and balancing compassion for both mother and fetus, emphasizing good policy and wise law.
• Kate’s Combative Framing
  • Kate advocates “backing them into a corner” rather than fostering dialogue, likely shaped by her negative encounters with unempathetic pro-lifers.
  • Emily notes, “That's just really sad” that Kate’s experience of pro-lifers is so unfeeling ([09:09]).

Religious Freedom & Personhood

• Kate pivots: claims that opposition to abortion is rooted in Christian belief, thus legislating against abortion violates religious freedom ([11:28]).
• She asserts U.S. laws should not rely on a specifically Christian view of when life begins.

Hosts’ Counterpoints

• The pro-life view, as ERI presents it, is not inherently religious; it’s based on secular philosophy and science.
  • “Equal Rights Institute is functionally a secular organization making purely secular arguments.” – Josh ([13:02])
• Laws are always “based on beliefs”—the dispute is which beliefs are appropriate to legislate, particularly regarding human rights.
  • “Every law is based on beliefs...so saying you don't get to legislate your beliefs through law would mean that we can't have any laws at all.” – Emily ([18:10])
• Religious freedom does not extend to permitting practices seen as human rights violations (e.g., killing one-year-olds).

Tone, Strategy, and Common Ground

• Kate admits, “You can't change somebody's opinion unless you get them to like you first” ([16:20])—an interpersonal truth the hosts endorse as essential for both sides.
  • “When people like you, the rules change.” – Josh quoting Jim Henderson ([22:44])

Discussion of Policy Outcomes

• Kate claims pro-life policies won’t reduce abortions; the hosts strongly dispute this, citing evidence from global studies ([22:11]).
• The hosts praise Kate’s attention to persuasion and likeability, but critique her merging of policy, religious, and values arguments without enough distinction.

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Video 2: Erin (Nurse Practitioner and Ex-Pro-lifer) on "Arguing with Pro-Lifers"

[23:04–33:47]

Main Arguments Presented by Erin

• Erin underscores that pro-lifers genuinely see abortion as murder, thus they won’t be moved by arguments regarding lack of social support for mothers post-birth, or rare tragic scenarios.
• She warns that stories of fetal anomalies and appeals to hard cases are unlikely to persuade due to the pro-life belief that “murder is murder.”
• Erin proposes focusing debate on the fetus' personhood.

Hosts’ Analysis

• Terminology – "Murder" vs. "Killing"
  • Strong pushback against the trope “abortion is murder” as legally inaccurate and morally loaded.
    • “[Murder] is used pejoratively...implying malice...most [women] didn't think it was a baby.” – Josh ([26:52])
    • Emily advises: “My favorite one is ‘abortion is unjustified killing’...it is not okay to do it, but it doesn’t have the kind of intent behind it that the word murder has.” ([27:34])
• Medical Complexity and Outreach
  • The hosts are open to learning from medical professionals about specific, rare complications.
  • They wish more pro-lifers would be proactive in understanding medical ramifications and ensuring laws are constructed with empathy and nuance.
• Understanding Drives Dialogue
  • Both hosts commend Erin (and several pro-choice creators) for stressing the need to understand what fundamentally motivates the other side.
    • Emily: “Pro choice people...are really, really driven by compassion for women...by the importance of bodily autonomy...and consent.” ([35:02])
  • Both encourage pro-lifers to return the favor and abandon caricatures in favor of deeper mutual understanding.

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Video 3: Feminist Lawyer on "Talking to Your Pro-Life Loved Ones About Abortion"

[36:24–55:03]

Main Arguments Presented by The Feminist Lawyer

• Opening advice: Protect your peace. Don’t waste energy trying to convert deeply entrenched relatives; focus on the “mushy middle.”
  • “You need to ask yourself if debating with your evangelical Aunt Christie is the best use of your energy and advocacy.” ([37:35])
• If you do engage:
  • Focus on policy, not the other’s “values.”
  • Use talking points: banning abortion doesn’t reduce abortions, instead increases maternal/infant mortality, domestic abuse, poverty.
  • Build common ground: advocate for expanded access to contraception.
  • Use bodily autonomy as the “American value”—government can’t force blood/organ donation, so should not force pregnancy.

Hosts’ Analysis

• Strategic Engagement
  • Both agree it’s important to choose which conversations are worth pursuing—don’t endlessly argue with someone unwilling to dialogue.
• Don't Write Off the "Extremes"
  • Josh counters the “ignore the extremes, focus on the middle” advice: some “strongly pro-choice” or “strongly pro-life” people do change their minds, and all are deserving of effort and dignity.
    • “That feels dehumanizing...It's worth giving [everyone] some tries.” ([41:17])
• Policy vs. Values
  • The hosts highlight the unavoidability of values in such policy debates; the “feminist lawyer” urges separating the two but then falls back on the core value of bodily autonomy.
    • “It needs to be a both-and, not either-or.” – Josh ([46:39])
• Bodily Autonomy Argument
  • The claim that bodily autonomy always trumps other concerns is challenged.
    • “Bodily autonomy is totally a value. I just don't think it's absolute...I would love to have the values conversation with her.” – Josh ([51:21], [51:35])
• Tone and Relationship-Building
  • The hosts praise the feminist lawyer’s tone (“I hear you. I totally get that...here's why I'm not finding what you're saying convincing, though...”), saying it was the best example of positive engagement in the episode ([47:17]).
    • “She's doing a lot of ERI style things.”
  • The lawyer’s closing—urging listeners to “go have some pie” if things get heated—echoes Erin and Josh’s advocacy of relational apologetics and keeping family relationships intact.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• On Empathy & Identity:
  • “Oh, my God, stop calling yourself pro life. Just don't call yourself pro life. If that's because it's not, it's not pro life.” – Josh ([05:13])
• On Relationship-First Engagement:
  • “When people like you, the rules change.” – Josh ([22:44])
  • “You should be really trying to talk to them. You should be really trying to understand them and you should try to be friends with them.” – Emily ([53:12])
• On Policy and Beliefs:
  • “Every law is based on beliefs...so saying you don't get to legislate your beliefs through law would mean that we can't have any laws at all.” – Emily ([18:10])
• On Balancing Law & Compassion:
  • “We can care about both. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.” – Josh ([08:49])
• On the Importance of Dialogue Skills:
  • “They are talking better about relationships apologetics than most pro life apologists.” – Josh ([53:21])
• On Opposing Absolutism:
  • “Bodily autonomy is totally a value. I just don't think it's absolute. I don't think it always comes first.” – Josh ([51:21])

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Emphasis on Relational Apologetics:
  Most of the pro-choice videos advised some form of empathy, relationship-building, or attending to the motivations of the pro-life side—something the hosts enthusiastically endorse and wish more pro-lifers (and pro-choicers) would embody.
• Dialogue Over Combative Debate:
  The episode highlights the fruitlessness of “backing into a corner” or launching only factual or abstract policy arguments without genuine dialogue.
• Values, Policy, and Law Intertwined:
  Separation of “policy” and “values” arguments is impossible—deep dialogue must address both personhood and practical consequences, as well as the frameworks of compassion and autonomy.
• Mutual Growth & Reflection:
  By engaging with and learning from the “other side,” both movements can improve, both in strategic outcomes and in building a healthier, more compassionate civic discourse.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:28] – Introduction and framing of first video (Kate)
• [04:18] – Kate describes harsh pro-life response; hosts discuss empathy
• [11:28] – Kate’s religious freedom argument; hosts’ counterpoints
• [16:20] – Persuasion and likeability, hosts discuss relational apologetics
• [23:04] – Erin’s medical/ethical perspective as an ex-pro-lifer
• [26:52] – Murder vs. Killing: importance of language
• [33:47] – Insights on compassion from both sides
• [36:24] – The Feminist Lawyer: holiday family conversations
• [41:17] – Whether to engage the “extremes” or only the persuadable middle
• [46:39] – Policy vs. values, and why both matter
• [51:21] – Bodily autonomy: core value and its limits

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Final Thoughts

This episode underscores that real dialogue across abortion’s divide requires not just factual accuracy but an understanding heart, strategic patience, and a commitment to seeing the humanity of all involved. The hosts stress that both pro-choice and pro-life advocates should prioritize relationship and empathy if they hope to change minds—or, at the very least, diminish polarization.

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If you’re passionate about robust, practical dialogue on abortion, or want to equip yourself to discuss the issue more persuasively and compassionately, this episode is rich food for thought (with a side of pie).

Transcript

[Emily]

Welcome back to the Equip for Life podcast. Josh and Emily here again. We're just continuing on rolling from the last recording. So I'm still in my pregnancy announcement shirt. If you missed that, you might want to go listen to the last one

[Josh]

because I'm pregnant and still feeling good enough to record.

[Emily]

And still feeling good enough to record. I've got a lemon thing in my mouth. And I told Josh, I was like, honestly, I can't promise you I'm going to be feeling good if we try to do this part two next week. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, but since I feel good right now, let's just keep her moving.

[Josh]

I was going to say maybe I'll be on another jury, but I think I've got like two years before that can happen again.

[Emily]

Yeah, maybe I will be.

[Josh]

That would have. You might be. That's true. What if all the ERA staff ended up on jury?

[Emily]

That would be insane. I was on a jury when I was 19. Like I called, I know you're allowed to be called to a jury duty when you're 18. I could not believe that they put me on that jury. I was like, I am a child.

[Josh]

You present like really logical.

[Emily]

I don't know. I have no idea. I can't explain it. That's a story we can get into another time. I had an amazing time. It was really cool. I was on an all female jury also, which was really cool.

[Josh]

That's amazing.

[Emily]

They didn't realize that was happening as they were announcing and having people leave and suddenly the judge at the end looks at the room and he went, I have never seen this before. That's we just accidentally have an all female jury. So I was on an all female jury as a 19 year old. It was a really cool case. It was not anything like depressing. It was just like cool and it was a really fun experience and I love talking about it. So side we won't get into that today, but I'm due so maybe I will get called up for jury duty.

[Josh]

Might happen.

[Emily]

Who knows?

[Josh]

It's funny to think about the lawyers focusing on such a detailed granular level on everyone that they forgot that there's no more guys in there.

[Emily]

That they got right over. I know. And that they also picked the 19 year old. Who knows?

[Josh]

Clearly. Unusual.

[Emily]

Very unusual. So you should go listen to part one if you haven't listened to part one. We are continuing on that vibe today. So we had pulled six videos from pro choice people trying to tell their fellow pro choicers how to be effectively persuasive to pro life people. And we got through three of those videos in part one. We're going to do the other three today. I have not seen these. We just pulled them enough to know that they are of substantive information in them. And we just get to kind of live, react, and see do we like their advice? Do we not? Do we think it's persuasive? So are we ready for video number one?

[Josh]

Yeah, I can't wait. Let's go.

[Emily]

Okay. Okay, so here is our first video today. This is Kate, and for those of you that are listening, what it says on the screen is how to win an argument with a pro lifer. So maybe I'm getting slightly more combative vibes out of this one than the ones more apologetic.

[Josh]

See, I mean, there's a lot of pro life talks that are like, how to win an argument with a pro choicer.

[Emily]

You're not wrong. You're very not wrong, Josh. Okay, here we go. Let's see what she's got.

[Kate]

Okay, so I went to Catholic school, and I'm going to tell you how to win an argument with a pro lifer. This works every single time because you're basically backing them into a corner and forcing them to acknowledge their own fallacies.

[Emily]

I'm so excited, first of all, to hear it.

[Josh]

I am 1000% in. Let's go.

[Emily]

It works every time.

[Josh]

Anything that works 100% of the time, I don't think it works 100% of the time, but if you found the thing that works 100% of the time, then you should be getting all the money.

[Emily]

I really also want to know how many times she's actually tried this. Like, I want to know what her sample size is.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Emily]

For it working 100%. Okay, well, we'll just. Let's see what it is.

[Kate]

So first, I'm going to tell you what you don't want to do in an argument, and that is talk about maternal mortality or how banning abortion is only going to increase unsafe abortions. That's not going to get through them, because in their mind, they're still seeing it as, like, it's okay if women die as long as the fetuses are living. And since they think the fetus is a person, overall, they think that this will be saving more people. So that argument just isn't gonna get through to them. And a lot of the time when I say that pro lifers. Pro lifers will say something like, oh, well, if the woman wants to get an abortion and dies in the process, then she kind of deserves it because she's a murderer anyway.

[Josh]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[Emily]

O this is not good. First of all, I love, ironically, that if you listen to last week's episode, we had a pro choice person who gave the exact advice she's saying is bad. We had a pro choice person that was like, focus on maternal mortality, focus on the real stories, focus on how banning abortion isn't going to eliminate abortions. And we obviously agree with this girl that those aren't good strategies. And we talked about last week why those aren't good strategies, but her reasoning for why those aren't good strategies.

[Josh]

Yeah. So obviously the last thing is really upsetting to me anytime pro life people. And I know this happens. I totally believe her. I think it might say something about the quality of the pro life recess he's talking to. But this happens. And I wonder if this is more often now than it even used to be. I wonder if the way things have been going politically, if there is a certain kind of pro life person that is just less empathetic about the ramifications at the street level, if you will, of laws passed that they feel like, well, this law is just. And so maybe I don't care. I wonder if there's more of that now than even maybe there would have been 10 or 15 years ago. But clearly it's the wrong reaction. It is tragic and horrible every single time a woman dies having an abortion, whether it's legal or illegal. That is horrific. That woman had a name, she had a story, she had a family, she had experiences, she had talents, she had things that she wanted in life. Clearly this was not it or what she was expecting. Her family will be living with that in the background of every Christmas for the rest of their freaking lives. And you want to respond with, well, maybe it serves her right because she was having an abortion. Oh, my God, stop calling yourself pro life. Just don't call yourself pro life. If that's because it's not, it's not pro life. It's like when the people would come to us at outreach and be like, what do you think about people who, like, shoot abortionists? And it's like, hey, we're pro life. So of course we're way against that a thousand percent. Like, oh, my gosh, we are pro

[Emily]

life because we are anti violence towards innocent people. I don't want violence. I don't want death happening toward any of these people.

[Josh]

I'm not like a karma person. I Am not looking for people to get their uppings or whatever the old fashioned phrase is. When they do something wrong, hopefully something will happen to like I just can't. At the more subtle level before that, this is like closer to the point that you and I were kind of making the last time. But I want to say I think it's totally true. I do think that this is how a lot of pro life people react if as story comes out, if a new story comes out about a woman who was pregnant, something bad happened in the pregnancy, perhaps she attempted to seek medical care, things didn't happen and then she died. A lot of pro lifers will be basically say like, okay, I will bite that bullet. I will accept that that is always going to happen. They probably think it won't happen much, but they think it's gonna happen really rarely. Which is like a questionable factual premise. But a part of it is sort of utilitarian logic of if we can save babies a year, give or take, then why should we really care that much? Or at least what we're doing in order to prevent a couple of women a year from dying from medical malpractice as they're trying to get their illegal abortion. So I absolutely agree that there are those pro lifers that think that way and it is still lacking the appropriate empathy that we should have for those poor women who are dead now. Whether it's like a great argument, whether it is going to win the day or be super persuasive, I think where it could be more persuasive is on what should we do about the laws. It's not going to convince pro life people that abortion is morally justified or neutral or something like that. It's not going to make them agnostic about abortion. I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about if abortion is unjustified, if pro lifers are right about either personhood or the idea that your bodily autonomy does not completely trump whatever is going on with this baby. If pro lifers are right about that, then what should the laws be? How should we try to protect everybody in this equation? Because there are people being hurt on both sides of the equation. Not equally. I'm not saying that, but I was saying we should care about both. We can care about both. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Like come on, it is the 21st century. Did you have anything you wanted to add?

[Emily]

Sorry, just like I just mostly so far feel really sad for this girl. Like who has she talked to that that was her experience With a pro

[Josh]

life person, like any combative energy I

[Emily]

totally get now, like, exactly like that tells me so much about what she believes about pro life people, what the rest of her advice may be like, she's very much coming from the perspective of, like, pro life people are not compassionate, at least not the ones that she's met. And pro life people are a very fetus tunnel vision. They're very. It doesn't matter because we're saving the baby. And so that's why she's saying at the beginning, like, the only way to do this is you have to back them into a corner and really like push them in their beliefs about this baby. Because none of these compassionate arguments are going to work. They don't work. You can't compassion somebody. Whereas like the first lady in the last podcast, she was talking all about how personal stories are so effective and people are driven by emotion. And I agree with her. But this girl is like the pro life people she's met. She doesn't think they have any emotions, she doesn't think they have any compassion. And that's just really sad.

[Josh]

We wanna say you can't have both. You don't have to let one completely take over. Like, I buy into Jonathan Haidt talks about this all the time. I don't think he came up with the analogy or the idea of the writer on the elephant.

[Emily]

I think he did come up with that analogy.

[Josh]

Did he?

[Emily]

Okay, I'm pretty sure he did because I read the book in which he presents it. I think he came up with it.

[Josh]

But yeah, assuming it's high. I think it is. I think it is the elephant rider idea that the elephant is like the emotions and the writer is more like the logical who probably thinks that he has a lot more control than he actually has. Like, I buy into that. For the average person, I think we should be trying to be more logical. We should be trying to be careful to not let our emotions completely overpower our logical faculties. But there are a lot of pro life people that would be listening to this that would be like, yes, I succeeded. I did it. I'm not emotional at all. I have completely removed all emotion and now I am this pure philosophy robot and you can't tweak me. You can't make feel any kind of toxic empathy or anything. It's not gonna work on me. And I'm like, we're supposed to be compassionate. We're supposed to be the examples of compassion too.

[Emily]

Like, yeah, not good, not good. Okay, so what else does he have

[Josh]

to Say, what else does Kate have

[Emily]

to tell us after her horrible experiences with pro life people? Here is what she thinks does work. I'm very curious.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Kate]

Which it's not very pro life of them, but that's literally what they think. So don't use that argument. And since pro lifers tend to be Republican, the way that you're going to trap them is to talk about religious freedom and bring up the fact that in Islam and Judaism and a bunch of other religions, life does not begin at conception. That's something that is exclusive to Christianity. And we literally left England to find religious freedom. So it's kind of terrifying that now our country is making laws based on a Christian idea of when life begins.

[Josh]

Okay, pause. It's interesting that C is pointing to religious freedom being the way to prove pro life people wrong, because on one hand, I agree. Generally speaking, if you quiz them, they're gonna be all about religious freedom. They don't want churches to pay taxes. There's gonna be certain things that they're wanting sort of to stay there yet. But I think the problem with the premise in this argument is that our view is inherently religious. That this argument that the pro life position is inherently religious, if it was, I would 1,000% agree. And I would be saying. I would be with you be saying this is not a theocracy. So if Christians think one way and Muslims think a different way, which many of them do, and agnostics think like, you know, we're not a theocracy, but our position is not rooted in religion at all. Equal Rights Institute is functionally a secular organization making purely secular arguments. Like, we will talk about religion occasionally if it comes up, if it's in the right context. But that is not where we're coming. We're making scientific and philosophical arguments instead of religious ones. Otherwise, I think it would be a slam dunk argument.

[Emily]

Right. I oftentimes when I hear this argument and I talk about it with prosperous people, I bring up the fact that I don't use religious arguments. And I don't think this is inherently religious position. And I think secondarily, religious freedom is super important, like so much common ground there. But religious freedom doesn't ever get to justify human rights violations. And you're totally right, Kate, that there are societies, there are like religions who don't believe that life begins at conception. There are also religions out there and have historically been that believe that your value comes much later in life. There have been religions throughout history that believe that you become a valuable person when you're given a name at 1 years old. Like that was a historical religion. Some people think that you become a valuable person at age 2. Like, this is a thing that people have believed. And, and I respect your right to believe that thing. But just because if there was one religion in America today that said you become a person when you're two years old, I would say, okay, you are welcome to believe that, but I am not going to allow you to pass a law that says you can kill one and a half year olds.

[Josh]

Right. Because of what we philosophically think.

[Emily]

Right. Yes, you are entitled to your philosophical belief about when human life begins. Okay, I guess. But that doesn't get to justify making a human rights violation legal. Like, we're basing this all on science and logic and your religious belief. Nobody's religious belief gets to justify a human rights violation, gets to justify killing an innocent human. You can think that human doesn't have value in your personal religion, but that doesn't mean that we can make it legal to kill them.

[Josh]

Now, here's some common ground I have with Kate is she is directing this argument at Republicans. That makes sense to me because while not all Republicans think this way, there is a absolutely growing subsection of Republicans who identify as Christian nationalists. And they will maybe use various definitions of what that means, but they are literally coming from a place of believing that we should be trying as much as possible to try to make America laws to sort of like equate to what Judeo Christian values, what we see in the Bible, even at a literal sense in the Old Testament for some people. So those people are getting louder. Doug Wilson is, I think, the most famous or outspoken person. He is going around and doing podcast interviews with various people, including Sam Harris, talking about why Christian nationalism is a good thing. So I'll say, like, there are those people that ironically, the religious freedom thing, they might just disagree with. They might just actually be coming from a place at this point of being, like, no, I'm not for religious freedom. I am for the right position, the quote unquote, right position, which in their mind is possible. And that's my position. And so, unfortunately for you, I'm going to do as much as I can to make my religious views happen in law. Like, those people exist. That is not generally where the pro life movement's coming from. I don't know a single pro life leader, like at the national level who thinks like that. I'm just saying there are other voices and they're gaining a bigger audience right now. And I am Very concerned about that.

[Emily]

Yeah. Let's see what Kate has to say going forward here.

[Kate]

It's also important to remember that you can't change somebody's opinion unless you get them to like you first. And a lot of pro lifers for some reason think that people will use abortion as like a form of birth control. Like, they're just like reckless and then are like, oh, I'll just get an abortion. And it's just like this flippant disregard for human life. And I think that's why they're angry about it. So you can also bring up the fact that nobody likes abortion. The pro life movement and the pro choice movement are all in agreement that we want to reduce abortions. But the way that the pro life movement is going about it is not going to reduce abortions. And if that's your goal, then you should be four things that will reduce abortions. You could say something like, listen, nobody likes abortions. Nobody wants to have an abortion. People just feel like they're backed into a corner and they have to get an abortion. And even if you don't like it, it's fine that you have an objection to it, but we cannot make laws based on your religion. Republicans think that America is like the freest country in the world. So you have to get them on the fact that this isn't what freedom. This is anti American. You're welcome to disagree with something, but you can't make laws based on your beliefs because that's not religious freedom.

[Emily]

I. I love the line. I get this a lot on Instagram, on TikTok. You can't make laws based on your beliefs. My usual longer and more practical dialogue tip than what I'm about to say e version of it is, but you are trying to make laws based on your beliefs. Like everybody is trying to make laws based on your beliefs. Like, like pro choice people. Every law. Pro choice people believe that this thing is not a valuable person who should not have equal rights under the law. And they would like to legislate that belief. They would like to legislate.

[Josh]

I think there's two people on this call right now.

[Emily]

Yes. Not three. Exactly. And we believe that this thing does have value and should have a right to. Both of those things are beliefs. I don't think either of those things are religious. And my religion has nothing to do with it. But those are beliefs. Every law is based on beliefs. And so saying you don't get to legislate your beliefs through law would mean that we can't have any laws. At all, because we can't base anything on beliefs. And that is what all the laws are based off. The whole reason it would be illegal for me to just kill Josh right now is because we believe that Josh is a valuable person and that me killing him would be wrong. So if we can't make any laws based on beliefs, then I would have to be able to just kill Josh right now. That can't be illegal because that is based on a belief. It doesn't make any sense.

[Josh]

Yeah. I thought it was really interesting how Cee said that talking about how people don't have have birth control abortions can be really helpful because she thinks a lot of pro life people are feeling the way that they're feeling because they feel like pro choice people are having them flippantly. And so if you can be like, that's not why people are having abortions. If you can focus more on, like, harder cases, I think basically to fill that in, I agree that will be effective. But for a lot of pro life people, they are probably gonna quote the same statistic back at you. And it's coming from the Guttmacher Institute from a survey they did a long time. They did this twice, but they spread it out by like, I forget, like, eight or more years or something, asking people why they were having abortions. What are all the reasons you were having this? And then what is the primary reason? Those are, like, different tables. So, like, the numbers change a little bit based on that, which I'm glad that they asked. Both seems like a pretty good study to me, as far as I can tell. Like, I don't know, maybe there's selection bias happening. I don't know. It was a lot of people. And the result is 90 plus percent of the abortions were. I don't think birth control abortion is a helpful phrase for anybody, I think, like, socioeconomic abortions. I don't think we should be saying this. Like, really pejorative, negative people are just using this for birth control. Like, there are not that many women that are using abortion as a backup method of birth control. They exist. I have heard some of their stories.

[Emily]

Totally.

[Josh]

That's just not.

[Emily]

They're doing it because they're in a really difficult financial situation of some sort. And they don't think that they can manage going through this pregnancy and having a child in the financial state that they are in. That is the vast majority of abortions that happen. And yes, that is more serious of a reason than is backup form of birth control. But. But it's not as serious as what she's trying to make it sound like most pro life people are not going to be persuaded by the idea that a very legitimately, financially difficult situation is enough to justify killing a person. And she even brought up at the beginning of this video, they think that this is a full fledged human with all of the rights.

[Josh]

And we do.

[Emily]

So I'm like, if we do really think that, and she acknowledged that fact, but she's not like transferring that to this part of her argument to be like, if you really do believe that as a pro life person, it's not going to be persuasive to say, well, they're having abortions for really good reasons. I'm going to be like, well, there's no good reasons to kill a human. Like, it could be a really hard legit situation, but it's still not going to justify killing a human.

[Josh]

I feel like it was on a subreddit where it's like, look, pro choice people, if you want to understand pro lifers, if you actually want to get into their shoes and understand why some of your arguments are not working, you need to remember they think it's like a baby.

[Emily]

Like, that's like we actually think, we really do think that.

[Josh]

It's like really integral. It's really easy. Since of course most pro choice people don't believe that for understandable reasons. Like, that's a big part of the debate. The discussion is why we disagree about abortion. There's a lot of it, but it's not weird to think that there are people who are thinking differently about that topic. And as we said in the last part, the idea that making abortion illegal is not going to end all the abortions. It's going to be like the same thing here. She said making abortion legal won't reduce abortions is what she said. It's like it will. It absolutely will. We can see that. Demonstrably, does it prove that it ought to be against the law?

[Emily]

Right.

[Josh]

It's certainly not going to eliminate. It won't abolish abortion. No, it won't.

[Emily]

But it will dramatically reduce them. And if you need studies on that, we did that in the last episode.

[Josh]

We've got the stuff I do like. Like that Kate added this thing about how you are more convincing to people who like you. I literally say that in my relational apologetics talk. I quote Jim Henderson, a pastor. He said, when people like you, the rules change. He's like, oh, I like the way you put that. That's really good. But Kate's saying The exact same thing she did.

[Emily]

She didn't spend much time. I was expecting her to, like, expand on that more, but it was a great little point for a second.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Emily]

All right, we ready for the next one? Yes, let's do it. All right, so our next one up is Erin. She says she's a nurse practitioner. Her actual thing is Erin Nurs practitioner. So we might be getting some science in here. I don't know. We'll see what it says on the screen. For this one is just arguing with pro lifers. Let's see what we got.

[Erin]

I'm going to help you argue with pro lifers. As a former pro lifer myself, there are some things that they're going to listen to that is going to fall on deaf ears. Point one, you need to focus on the fact that pro lifers legitimately think abortion is murder. If you tell them that, oh, you just support, you know, unborn babies until they're born, you're not going to help them with food and shelter. That doesn't matter because murder is murder. Like, it doesn't matter if they do that or not because they still think that murdering that child is worse than letting them struggle. And if you're going to talk about the life of the mother versus the life of the unborn child, you have to understand that statistics are really in their favor because most mothers, most pregnant people, most do well, they will give you statistics like, well, most people just aren't ready to be a mom or they just can't afford it. And even if some people die in the process of these laws rolling out, they think that overall you're saving more human lives because the unborn are now surviving by the millions.

[Emily]

Okay, let's just pause there for a hot second. In many ways, I agree with a lot of what she's saying. Like, I agree with the concept. She's trying to get across a similar thing to what Kate was trying to say that, like, you need to acknowledge pro life people really, genuinely, genuinely believe this is another human.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And so everything you say to them, you have to understand that I don't like the fact that she's using the term murder.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I talk about that with pro life people a lot. I don't think it's wise to say abortion is murder because murder is a legal term. I mean, Josh literally just sat through a murder trial and had to deal with different kinds of culpability and different levels of, like, talk about that.

[Josh]

Yeah. We literally had to choose not just between, like, guilty and not guilty of One charge, we had to decide whether a situation that happened here locally was either a first degree murder committed during a felony, a second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, or he's acquitted. We had to choose from those four things in the jury deliberation room, which meant we spent so much time reading this one document. It was like this helpful 20 or 30 page document from the judge that is just the instructions. Is this a template? But it includes like, okay, we're getting a voluntary manslaughter. Here's exactly what are the conditions for that and here's what the prosecutors have to prove for that. If you're not convinced by secondary murder, they're absolutely different things. And I've been trying to tell pro lifers to stop using the word murder for at least 10 years now, because not only is it a legal term, of course I was saying this pre Dobbs when abortion was legal in all 50 states. So I'm just like, it's not accurate at all. At least it's closer. Now in some states, murder is legally a human killing, another human illegally. It has to be an illegal killing. And so if an abortion happens in a state where abortion is legal, then it's technically not murder. My attempt at common ground for the pro life is like, it might be murder in God's eyes or something like that, but we're talking about what is helpful. How do we have conversations with people who are coming from a different place and probably are not coming from a place of believing in the Bible or caring what God would think about murder? This is not helpful. And more importantly, it's used pejoratively. When you say women who have abortions are murderers, you are implying without saying it, that all of these women having abortions had malice, were intentionally doing something wrong to their baby, and most of them didn't think it was a baby.

[Emily]

Murder implies me killing Josh, me fully recognizing that Josh is a person. He is right in front of me. I see that. I am fully conscious of that. I don't have anything going on in my own head. Some mental health issues, like, I know what I am doing and I am choosing to kill Josh because I hate Josh. Or something like that. Like that is what murder means. And that's not what's happening in an abortion.

[Josh]

It's so much more like that amazing quote from Frederica Matthews Green that I'm paraphrasing. A woman doesn't have an abortion. Like she does have an ice cream cone. She has it like an animal gnaws off its own foot. To get out of a trap. If you can just start by thinking about women who are abortion vulnerable, abortion minded like that as a baseline, that will help. Now the abolitionists are going to be like, nah, there are some women that they know exactly what they're doing. Yeah, sure, a few percent or something of them probably fully understand, but there are certainly a lot, especially based on again, what I've learned about what people seem to generally know and not know about pregnancy and fetal. They don't have that.

[Emily]

What should you say instead? What I often tell pro life people is if you need to say a phrase like abortion is murder, that is not abortion is murder. My favorite one is abortion is unjustified killing. Yes, that is true. Abortion is killing. You can do that as a shortened version. But I love abortion is unjustified killing. To make it really clear. I think this is very wrong because there are kinds of killing like self defense killing that can theoretically be okay, or killing in a just war situation or something like that. I'm trying to make it clear this is wrong. It is not okay to do it it right. But I don't think that it has the kind of intent behind it that the word murder has. And so if you need a phrase like that abortion is unjustified, killing is true is leading the way to conversation and not having the same kind of anger behind it, the same kind of accusation behind it that abortion's murder has.

[Josh]

Yeah, I'm all the way there. My only caveat would be I don't think I would put it on a sign or I'd open with that phrase because if I opened with it, then it's question begging. Because once you've had unjustified, you've made abortion wrong. Right. But if you're explaining I'm pro life because I think abortion is unjustified killing, that is super clear. And you're not begging the question. All you're saying, or I put it

[Emily]

at the end of my argument sometimes as a final, I've explained why I think all these things. If I'm right about all these things, that means abortion is unjustified killing. And that really matters. Yes, exactly. You can use it like that. That's really helpful.

[Josh]

Yes.

[Emily]

Okay, so let's see. She has now kind of walked through all these things not to do. I'm assuming she's gonna give us a what to do as a pro choice person.

[Erin]

Even if you tell stories like, you know, fetuses who like don't have a brain and they're not gonna, you know, make it, they see that as kind of a, you know, a sacrifice a mom can make and be like, it's in God's hands. Like, no physician should go in there and abort something if it's still alive. So that's also not going to work. But they, if they don't work in medicine, they don't understand the complications that carrying that fetus to term is going to create. So with all that said, you have to focus on the fetus's personhood and I will post more about how you do that to come.

[Emily]

Oh, okay. Well, now I'm sad that I don't have the follow up video to that because that did not come across my feed. And this is what happens when Emily doesn't watch the entirety of the video before. But honestly, we can probably guess a little bit about what she was gonna say there. If she's saying you gotta focus on the fetus personhood, which I agree with, that's the crux of the debate.

[Josh]

Yep, we're all there. How she was gonna go about that, whether she was gonna go about that in a. They're not sentient, they're not conscious, they're not viable. Like, you know, we've heard it before, more of the above. But there are some substantive things that she's saying in this video which I appreciate. I mean, again, she's like, what, sixth in a line of videos that we've watched where like several people have been kind of saying, like, look, you need to understand, pro life people think it's a baby. I'm agreeing with Eren, who's making that same point. I mean, she's bringing up life of the mother cases and kind of talking about how statistically this is not going to convince most pro lifers. I think that's true. But again, I would like to see pro lifers be more empathetic and more interested in figuring out are there ways that we could make the law such that it would minimize how often situations are happening where women are dying from sepsis or medical malpractice or something like that. The anencephaly thing is interesting. So she brings up anencephaly, which is one of multiple congenital defects, problems that can happen during fetal development, where the baby will not develop either part or all of its brain. And most, I think, don't survive pregnancy. I don't know what the statistics on that. Some surprisingly survive. This is not a 100% mortality rate kind of a thing, but it's obviously a very, very significant diagnosis. Like no parent ever would wish A diagnosis of anencephaly on their worst end. So it's interesting to me is that Aaron says that for pro lifers, a lot of them are gonna basically find common ground and say, like, yeah, maybe she can have the abortion, but that's like a sacrifice that a mom can make. Is that the way that you were interpreting that?

[Emily]

I interpreted it as the sacrifice the mom should be making is to, like, put it in God's hands. You should. The best thing to do to love your baby is to carry it all the way through, not it'd be wrong to intervene.

[Josh]

That makes more sense.

[Emily]

And so you should go through with what God intended. That's why what I took from what

[Josh]

she said, that makes more sense than the way that I took it. So I'm gonna bet that I accidentally got it confused. So that was helpful. That was good. She mentions complications and how a lot of pro lifers don't understand the way that complications can affect later in pregnancy. And I'll just say that could very well be true. If I were talking to Aaron, if I were talking to any doctor or any nurse practitioner, in this case, nprn, whatever, obgyn, I don't care.

[Emily]

Erin, who deals with more medical situations than you and I?

[Josh]

I'll talk to midwives. Teach me. You can teach me something, right? Okay, so if they were saying, like, look, if we don't intervene now because this baby has anencephaly. Let's say the baby's 20 weeks. We figured out that it has anencephaly and we need to terminate this pregnancy now one way or another, or else her body is going to shut down and she's gonna die. I am just, like, at that point, fully open minded. I am like, tell me. You're the expert. I'm not saying that everything experts say are always corre. Okay, like, don't come at me. I'm just saying, like, I am.

[Emily]

You want to learn and try to understand. Are they right about that? Maybe they are right. In this particular scenario, there's gonna be

[Josh]

factual information I can follow up on. Okay. It's gonna be okay. I can try to learn. I want us to learn about these things, and maybe they will teach me something true. That would make the actual ethical difference in how the mother should be asking doctors to do at that point. I'm totally open to this conversation, but I would need the facts first. I can't just have a doctor say, look, it's really complicated. It's really hard to make these pregnancies work. Like, I believe you But I also know women who didn't abort their babies, who had anencephaly or trisomy 13 or trisomy 18. Those people exist too. They're not the majority because the majority of doctors are heavily pushing a termination and start over kind of a thing when they see a diagnosis like that. I get it.

[Emily]

But some, I feel like it's really helpful to just take a second before we move on to the last video. And one thing I've really appreciated about several of these videos is how much they have Exactly. Like you said Josh tried to emphasize to pro choice people, you really need to understand what's driving the pro life person's view. That's how you're gonna be persuasive. And that is so true the other way around. Like we spend so much of our time at ERI trying to tell pro life people, you need to like really understand what's driving pro choice people's views. I just did a seminar a couple of weeks ago and blew a whole bunch of pro lifers mind who had never been exposed to it before when they finally realized what it is that's actually driving protest people's views. Because in their head, what was driving protest people's views was a ton of ignorance about biology, which as we've talked about, I think pro people have some ignorance about biology, but like that's not what's really going on for them and driving their view and the desire to just like be reckless and do whatever they wanted. And I'm like, that is not what's going on. Pro choice people, in case you needed to hear this today, are really, really driven by compassion for women in difficult circumstances. They are really, really driven by the importance of bodily autonomy and making sure that you are able to make choices for yourself, you and your doctor, you know best what is best for you. And they're really, really driven by the idea of consent and making sure that women can consent to what's going on. Consent is really important. Consent culture has been a really big thing for a lot of years now. And those things, there's other things driving their view too. But when I talk to pro choice people, those are the really big things that what's going on for them. And so everything that you say, you need to be keeping those things in mind. Just like these people are trying to encourage pro choice people to keep in mind that we believe it's a human. We really do believe that. Please, really do believe that pro choice people are driven by compassion, not by a desire to just do whatever they want and be reckless and have no consequences. That is not what's going on for any single protest person I think I've ever met in person. Sometimes they can act like that's what's driving them when they make a really like TikTok that's trying to get views and get a rise out of pro lifers. But when you act, talk to pro choice people, you find out just how driven by compassion and women's rights and wanting to make sure that things are really equal and that nobody's getting to force to do things that they don't want to do. And those are very reasonable things to believe.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And keeping that in mind is so important to being able to not only just be persuasive, but to just have a good conversation. You really need to understand what's driving them. I've appreciated that about so many of these pro choice women that they're like, guys, you need to know what they believe. And you're not. You're missing the point. I think pro lifers are often missing the point too. We're all missing the point.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Emily]

All right, so our last video, I particularly liked this one, just the look of it from the first two seconds because it reminded me of this article that we always post every Thanksgiving and Christmas about how to talk to your family about abortion. And this video, if you can't see it, the pro choice girl is in the foreground and she's got like a virtual background behind her of a family having dinner. It kind of looks like it's Thanksgiving. There's candles lit like it's fancy and it says talking to your pro life loved ones about abortion. So I was like, this feels like exactly what we publish every holiday. I think she's doing the same thing.

[Josh]

Yep. It's those two posts which have the exact same looking table, festive table with all kinds of food on it that we publish around every Thanksgiving. Yeah, I'm fascinated.

[Emily]

We do not know this person's name. She goes by the feminist lawyer. So we do know she's a lawyer and we can.

[Josh]

We can discuss and a feminist of some flavor.

[Emily]

Yes, the feminist lawyer. This is what she has has to say.

[Josh]

Nice.

[The Feminist Lawyer]

We really need to prep for the holidays. Is not more recipes. We need somebody to come through and give us a guide for talking to your pro life loved ones over the holidays about abortion. I'm your girl.

[Emily]

I got you.

[The Feminist Lawyer]

I'm a litigator and a reproductive justice advocate. Let's go first and most importantly, protect your peace. You need to Understand that we already have the numbers. About 64% of Americans support abortion access. So you need to ask yourself if debating with your evangelical Aunt Christie is the best use of your energy and advocacy.

[Emily]

Christy, that was amazing.

[Josh]

I know a lot of Christie's. I'm not making fun of the. I'm not making fun of any of you in my head. I just love this. You pick the name Christie. I'm sorry, go ahead.

[The Feminist Lawyer]

Consider conserving your energy and targeting much lower hanging fruit. Talk to unregistered voters. Talk to people who aren't sure. Talk to people who want to learn more about reproductive justice and engage in a healthy way with you. Contact your legislators. Learn more about the issue yourself. Protect your peace.

[Emily]

I mean, I agree with so much of that. Yeah, we tell that same thing to pro life people a lot. You need to be evaluating if this conversation is worth your time. We literally said this in part one, you shouldn't be talking to a brick wall. One of the other people brought this up. And so while I disagree that if you're starting a conversation, if evangelical Aunt Christy, if I in this case, like started talking about abortion, I would probably say something and I would probably give her the chance to demonstrate that we can have a really good dialogue. But if it turns out this is going to be a brick wall, or if your prior experience tells you this is going to be a brick wall and this isn't going to be a positive conversation, isn't going to be a respectful, like, we're able to have a good back and forth conversation. It isn't worth your time. And you do need to protect your activist energy as we talked about before. So I agree with so much of that.

[Josh]

Yeah, the one little piece of pushback I want to give. I hear this all the time from pro lifers. It's like, look, just focus on the mushy middle. Don't focus on like the extremes. I've literally heard people basically say, like, we don't care what they think. We're not focusing on them at all. It's not literally, they're not our target demographic. It's like they're not one of our demographics. We are focusing on people who are winnable, people who are towards the middle, who are the low hanging fruit. And so I just want to say, like, yes, I understand strategically and with limited capacities and limited time and limited activist energy that generally speaking, that's probably the right advice. The problem I have is it leaves the people who are strongly pro choice or strongly pro life out of the dialogues. Who's going to talk to them? I've seen people who are strongly pro choice. Ronnie, one of my great pro choices, she used to be pro choice. She was in this Facebook group, we were in it for a year. She was mocking pro life people at the beginning of that year long debate that we had in this little Facebook abortion debate group. She thought we were ridiculous. Now she is a pro life Eastern Orthodox woman who believes that she doesn't need abortion to be equal with men. Basically, like she is awesome. She was strongly pro choice. And if I had been going with the tact of I'm just going to ignore all the different people who seem like they're not ever going to change their mind, then there's a lot of people I know that aren't at least as strongly proof choice as they used to be who are in a different place. So I just want to say, like, give some tries. Maybe don't spend all your time on the extremes. But I just want to say it's worth giving. I have been really surprised by great conversations. At least that I have learned a lot from, from people who really strongly disagreed with me.

[Emily]

Yeah, I think that's a great point. My initial response was too quick to say you should stop things. Like if I'm thinking, thinking about how I operate in reality when I go on a college campus and I'm talking to a pro choice person. Yes, I will give any pro choice person 15 minutes.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Even if they come up screaming at me or whatever. Like, I firmly believe that our practical dialogue tips work really well. And I can get like I. Of the thousands of conversations I've had, I can think of exactly three pro choice people that I had to end the conversation with because they could not calm down. But in each case I could gave them a full 15 minutes of me just really listening to them and showing really good body language and asking questions and trying to show them I really truly do care what you think. And if at the end of that 15 minutes there's still a brick wall and this is going nowhere and this is no longer a good use of my time, I'm gonna end the conversation. But I think we should be more willing to give more people that 15 minutes to see if we can get somewhere, get some common ground, get some like productive things happening. Because you're very right, there are very pro choice people that have changed the their mind. And if we forget about them and we just say they're not worth our time, I think that's wrong.

[Josh]

That feels dehumanizing. At some point, kind of. What was that campus that we were at together when that. When that woman came up and she had like a Rolodex of hard questions for me.

[Emily]

Do you remember that? Oh, yes, I do. That was at St. Norbert.

[Josh]

St. Norbert, yeah. Okay. I gave her as much time as she wanted. She had clearly memorized, you know, 15 hard questions.

[Emily]

Oh, my aunt, when she came over.

[Josh]

This is literally, I think, the only person I've ever spoken to who I could not get to like me when I, by the end of the conversation than she did when she came up. She truly hated my guts equally when she left. But I found all kinds of common ground. I'm giving all these responses and stuff, if nothing else, filling the time because she's directing her attention at me. And you had a sandwich to eat. Finally, at the end of it, she just left. At some point, I would have graciously ended that conversation if she hadn't first. I think she was the one that ended that conversation. But at some point, yes. If it had just remained me really actually feeling like I'm being interrogated by a prosecutor. At some point I'm gonna be like, okay, can we change things up a bit? Or something like that. And a lot of people, after they have vented out this kind of like toxic energy at you, you can have a great conversation because they can tell that you care. You've kind of shown them, if nothing else, to your body language by that point, that you are just one of the exceptions, if nothing else, to what they think is true. And then they can decide, are they going to pivot and communicate to what they are getting from you, this human right in front of them, or are they going to continue painting with a broad breast and just be like, all the pro lifers are closed minded. All the pro choice people are closed mind, whatever, like that kind of thing.

[Emily]

You have the opportunity to change that stereotype they have in your head of what pro lifers are like, which is why they're behaving that way in the first place. The reason that they are so just like screaming at you or barraging you with all these facts or doing this is because they think that that's the only way to get through to you. They have been taught by society that pro lifers are not going to listen. And so the only way I can get someone to listen is if I yell at them or if I don't give them a chance to talk.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And so as soon as you prove you're not like that and you are actually going to listen to them. They don't have to behave that way in order to be listened to. Yeah. Then they start not behaving that way.

[Josh]

Yep.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Okay, back to the video. Because, like, it's almost staff meeting time.

[The Feminist Lawyer]

But if you do engage, here's what I need you to do. Focus on policy, not their values. So if Aunt Christie is saying it's not fair to the unborn or it's against my religion, stop right there. You don't have to address. Address that. Instead, say something like, I hear you. I totally get that. My concern is just that restricting abortion is really bad policy. It doesn't really reduce the abortion rate, and it increases maternal mortality. It increases infant mortality. It perpetuates a cycle of domestic abuse and poverty. And it's really scary for people to have to put their life at risk when they're not consenting to do this reproductive of labor. But I do agree with you that I feel like we need to explore more policy options to reduce unplanned pregnancies. Like we should expand contraception because that really does reduce abortions. So it sounds like we agree on that.

[Josh]

Yeah. Couple things about that. Do you want to go first?

[Emily]

No, you go first. It's okay. I can tell you want to.

[Josh]

I believe this is a pretty common approach. We strategy, if nothing else. Instinctively, I feel like I've had a lot of conversations with people who I am wanting to talk about one of the. These two pillars, fetal personhood or the bodily autonomy, these core disagreements. And some people don't want to play ball. Right. And they want to only be talking about the concerns that they have about the potential unintended consequences of making abortion illegal or something like that. And at a common ground level, I want to say, yeah, pro lifers need to spend more time actually thinking about the ramifications of the policies that they're trying to pass. That absolutely needs to happen. And that is a common ground conversation worth having. It's not the only conversation. I don't think that you should never get into the values thing. You can't put off values forever, Right. Because at the end of the day, I mean, we've already said this ad nauseam. Right? Pro lifers think it's a baby. Right. And so, like, there's just not gonna be that many pro lifers that you're going to convince that there should be still hundreds and hundreds of thousands of babies being legally killed so that it is safer for the women who would want to do that. Like, all of that. It's like you can't ignore the values thing forever. Yes. Let's have policy conversations. I you don't want to duck that. And I think a lot of pro lifers do. It's a both and it needs to be a both and not an either or.

[Emily]

Yeah. The one thing I really appreciated about what she did is I thought of all of the videos we've watched, she gave the best example of the tone to use when talking to a pro life person. As a pro choice person. It was so nice. It was started out with, yeah, I really hear you. I hear your concerns. Like here's a little bit of common groundy thing. Now I'm gonna make my argument about why I don't think what you said is gonna be persuasive. Really concerned about how this is going to affect women and maternal mortality. I don't think we should be forcing women to go through this. Like she used all these kind of I statements of I hear you. Here's why I'm not finding what you're saying convincing though.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Emily]

But we really agree about this other thing and I think we can find so much ground. Let's work together on that and that sandwich. Like she's a lawyer and she's doing a good job at that thing. And I think that it made what she had to to say to me as a pro life are so much more palatable than when I heard some of the other pro choice people say those exact things, those exact arguments. But like I would love to sit down and have coffee with her. I think we'd have a great time. I really feel like she is trying.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Even if I think her arguments aren't convincing. Which is what makes me as a pro lifer so much more inclined to listen to her and want to speak to her. And I think we can learn from that in the reverse. She's doing a lot of ERI style things when she's trying to to talk about this.

[Josh]

These are skills that good lawyers have. Right. Good lawyers are able to do the argument thing can go back and forth with the attorney on the other side, even the judge to some extent. They're thinking critically. But like when they turn to the jury, if they're good then they're going to be persuasive and walk us through slowly. All these things them the, you know. But I appreciate a lot of lawyers, I mean not just lawyers, but people who are good at debate. That doesn't always translate to being good at dialogue because you can bring those debate skills in too much Where I'm not getting any, any of that. I feel like from the feminist lawyer, C is able to sort of separate those skills and kind of just be like, hey, let's have some common ground. The gentle pushback, having said all of that that I want to give to the feminist lawyer is that C is saying we need to only be talking about the policies, not values arguments. And then she maybe accidentally snuck in a values argument when she talked about consent to pregnancy, which is a values philosophical argument of one of the more interesting philosophical argum, going Back to Eileen McDonough, you know, like, but like it's not just a purely policy. Like it's really hard. Like, maybe that shows you how hard shows anyone how hard it is if

[Emily]

you only try to talk about policy.

[Josh]

Yeah, they come together a lot, especially in a post Dobbs world. Maybe pre Dobbs when pro lifers were like, not really thinking we're going to be making abortion illegal anytime soon, maybe that was happening more. But like, I feel like Dobbs probably just changes the way that everyone is thinking about the stability of the laws or black lack thereof.

[Emily]

Let's see how she finishes this out. Her point number three.

[The Feminist Lawyer]

Similarly, you can focus on the rule of law instead of attacking their values. You can say something like, it's just in the United States, bodily autonomy comes before anything else, including saving another person. The government doesn't force you to give blood. It doesn't force you to give your organs to babies. You can't even take organs from a dead person. In the US Bodily autonomy always comes first. And so I don't really see how there can be an exception for this because pregnancy is really dangerous. So it just feels like forcing people to do reproductive labor is really anti American.

[Josh]

But I don't feel like very much of that was a policy point.

[Emily]

None of that was a policy point. That was all a values point that bodily autonomy is the most important value. And we talked a lot about how to respond to this and gave you exact resources because the third video, which was at the end of our last podcast, got into this exact same bodily autonomy kidney donation stuff. So we're not going to rehash that here. If you want those resources and how to respond to that, go link. Yes, but that was fascinating. She was like, focus on the rule of law. Focus on the policy, not the values. And then she went straight to talking about a value.

[Josh]

Yeah, there is definitely an assumption happening that bodily autonomy, like always, you know, like. And she gave some true examples. There are cases where the government doesn't force you to donate your body to someone, even temporarily. Most situations you don't have a duty to rescue someone who is in danger. Like, yes, there are examples. Because a feminist lawyer and me and you all agree that bodily autonomy is really, really important, right? I am not one of these. Like, it's not in the Constitution, man. Like, that's not where I'm coming from. Bodily autonomy is totally a value. I just don't think it's absolute. I don't think it always comes first. It always does.

[Emily]

And that is the direct claim that she's making is that it does always come first. And pregnancy would be the one and only place we'd be making this exception in saying that bodily autonomy doesn't come first. And I don't think that that that is true.

[Josh]

So I would love to have the values conversation with her.

[Emily]

We need to have the values conversation. Oh, gosh, here we go.

[The Feminist Lawyer]

If at any time this conversation becomes really draining, really emotional, they're not listening to you. It's contentious. They're not going to change your mind. Go back to protecting your peace, okay? Go have some pie. Go have fun with your loved ones and find neutral things that you can agree on, okay? This is not fully your burden and we have have the numbers. I hope you have a happy holidays. I'm the feminist lawyer. Follow and comment if you use any of these strategies this holiday season.

[Josh]

I basically agree with that. Yes. As we've said, like, I don't think protect your peace is probably the way that conservatives will ever want to hear me say it, but I think we're kind of saying the same thing and I love that. Sietta, something new here. She isn't just repeating her first argument. There's this great relational apologetics goodness in there where she's like, also, go have fun with your loved ones. Go do other things.

[Emily]

Go talk about other things you agree about that aren't related to abortion.

[Josh]

Yes. We are not just about our views about abortion. We are not just pro life and pro choice avatars. We are people. There should be a lot of different angles and things that we can discuss even if we agree to disagree for the time being on one issue or value or law or whatever. I appreciate that there are this many pro choice people that are telling other pro choice people that they should act be friends with pro lifers because frankly, there's a lot of not that out there and sometimes for understandable reasons, I think. And I appreciate, like, I don't know if this was the theme in all six of the videos. But the majority is like, you should be not just debating these people.

[Emily]

You should be really trying to talk to them. You should be really trying to understand them and you should try to be friends with them and keep them in your life. We agree with all of those things in reverse.

[Josh]

They're talking better about relationships apologetics than most pro life apologists.

[Emily]

That's sad.

[Josh]

We're not the only ones talking about relational apologetics. I'm not saying that we're not.

[Emily]

I'm just saying, yeah, they are talking better about this issue than the majority of, I think, pro life and majority of pro choice people out there.

[Josh]

And that should say something.

[Emily]

That should say a lot because there were a lot of not good things that we just talked about in the last two episodes.

[Josh]

Can everyone tell how much we can learn by listening to pro choice people, even not just lawyers or the feminist lawyers is probably going to less often be fallacious in her arguments and things like that. Cool. But like, we can learn things. We can just learn things from the everyday pro choice person. Even if not all of the arguments are persuasive to us, it doesn't mean that none of them will or that they don't have anything to teach us. We need to get out of our echo chambers. I'm so glad you brought these videos.

[The Feminist Lawyer]

Thank you.

[Josh]

I feel like we could do this forever. This could be all the podcast is. It's just Josh and Emily and Rebecca, when Rebecca is available, reacting to videos of pro choice people talking about the issue and just kind of.

[Emily]

There's a lot, a lot of them getting into it.

[Josh]

But I learned some things and I'm just feeling glad that these people exist. I'm just thinking about these people that are out there and they care a lot about this. This has to have been a horrible. Gosh, how many years now since Dobbs is that? What, five years now?

[The Feminist Lawyer]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Hard, stressful, anxiety inducing, terrifying. Five years. Just on that level alone. Not to mention all the other things going on politically. I just, I'm glad that they are putting some good messaging out there for their side. I don't want us to be the only ones doing this. I get the question, like, tell me about the pro choice versions of you guys. And sometimes I just kind of struggle to find exactly those people and it seems like there's more of them now. This is great.

[Emily]

Yeah, I think there are a lot of people recognizing that just the general state of dialogue in our society is pretty horrible and they're trying to do what they can to help improve that because they think think it's important for people to just be able to talk to each other. Well, that's the only way we're going to fix any of the controversials issues in our society. And I'm glad that we're out there trying to help people having those conversations. And I'm glad that there are people that we disagree with who are also trying to make those conversations go better. Because when we all have better conversations, we will all do this better.

[Josh]

Yep. 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 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 recording it by making a [e-mail].