Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your program
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designed to bring you up-to-date
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on religious liberty
events, thinking analysis,
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and so you can
become knowledgeable
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about these very real events
in the US and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty magazine,
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and my guest on the
program is Charles Steinberg,
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attorney and vice president
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of the Northwest
Religious Liberty Association.
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And...
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I'm gonna put you on the spot.
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What does life mean to you?
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What does life mean to me?
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You know, Lincoln,
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in my Jewish
tradition and Jewish heritage...
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L'chaim, isn't it?
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L'chaim, it's a life.
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And then looking through
all sorts of different analysis
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by different
rabbis over the years
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where during the Inquisition,
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it would be better
to convert from Judaism
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to different
faith rather than to die
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because life is
worth preserving...
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Yes, it's
interesting moral conundrum.
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Yeah, even though those
Jews that refused to convert
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would refer to them as marranos,
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sort of pigs and,
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and then, in my own
view, from my perspective,
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life happened when I was born.
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But then when I look
at the biblical view,
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even the child
inside Elizabeth's womb,
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reacted at being near Messiah.
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So these are great
questions, you know,
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as give birth and
there's a living soul.
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And...
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Well, even if you say
that, what is the soul?
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I think you're getting
it to the abortion issue
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in the United States.
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But what do other
countries do with abortion?
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I heard a presidential candidate
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recently say that we
need to have abortion more
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in third world
countries to help them
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with their climate
change problems and economy.
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A candidate?
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A candidate.
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Well, it's
interesting you say that
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because the
Liberty board recently
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I had an article that in the end
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they found unpalatable
that I couldn't run it.
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It was talking about
different injections,
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and inoculations, and serums
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that were given to people,
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and I can
remember and I stated it
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maybe 30 years ago in India.
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Pharmaceutical companies
were working with the government
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to inoculate people against
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some of the
diseases at the time.
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And it turned out,
came out very openly,
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but after the fact
that they were coordinating
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with a government plan
too for population control,
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and they were sterilizing.
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For
sterilization without knowing.
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Yes, which crosses
another moral line as well.
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We have to believe
as people of faith,
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and it's buried within
the religious liberty concept
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that human beings
have natural dignity
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that life is just precious,
you don't dispense with it.
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No.
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But I do think
the abortion debate
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in the public sphere
has gotten tangled up
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with all sorts of
religious understandings.
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Have to be valid but I
mean, what is the state,
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is the state getting
into discussions of what,
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where is the soul and so on.
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It has to have a more
utilitarian view of it.
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And I am not pro-abortion,
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but I don't
think it's profitable
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to run the idea of
when is it the life?
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When is it a human life?
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You know, in the
Jewish Old Testament,
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there was actually
something else going on
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but the story of Onan
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takes it back before conception.
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Yes. Yeah.
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In fact,
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the Monty Python film
once, you remember that?
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I do remember Monty Python.
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Every sperm is precious.
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Yeah.
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And I see it all as
God's spectrum of life.
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God is the life giver.
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Yes.
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And I think anybody
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that gratuitously cuts off life,
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whether it's
cutting down a tree,
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and I'm not a tree hugger,
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but we're
custodians of the earth.
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So if you cut down a
tree just for the thrill
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or because it's
there, will stamp on an ant,
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and I'm not a Hindu
or an ancient mystic,
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or terminate a life
even at the earliest stage.
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I think you've set yourself
against the God of heaven.
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Well, you know,
with regard to life
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when the sperm
fertilizes the egg,
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I think you have life there.
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Well, you have
life, but is it human?
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Is it protected life
under the US Constitution?
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Well...
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Obviously not currently.
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No, and I don't
think in totality,
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it's been a good
thing to bring in abortion
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into the modern era.
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Because, you know,
when Roe v Wade came along,
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it was not really that long
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after the
horrors of World War II,
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which was the total play
out of the eugenics debate.
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Dr. Josef Mengele,
the medical experiments,
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the horrors visited
on the Jews, gypsies,
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mentally retarded
folks, is just terrible,
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terrible things in the
name of medical science.
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Yeah, they were the
immediate recipients
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but it was broader than...
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I mean it, the animist
against Jews in that case
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as well as the gypsies
resulted in this new philosophy
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being used full blown on them,
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but the whole world
was enamored with eugenics,
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the US was too whether
they were lobotomizations,
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and sterilizations,
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and other gross
experiments carried out,
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suited the state they
could find out something
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for their more well off citizens
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that wouldn't hurt them,
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but they were
playing with lives,
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killing people on occasion.
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And so, yes,
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I don't think that
the gratuitous abortions
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then coming in a
few decades later
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it can be seen as in
itself a positive thing.
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I think on a certain level
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and I'm getting
myself into trouble here.
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On a certain level,
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it was part of a
good move in recognizing
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the autonomous rights of women
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which had been sort of
submerged to that point.
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But along the way,
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I think it sort of enabled
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a diminution of
the value of life.
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I agree with that,
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that it is a
diminution of the value of life.
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I know the autonomy of a
woman, for example in there,
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one of the political
slogans, my body my choice.
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What right do you as a man
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or legislature executive
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to tell me I can't
have this medical treatment
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from my doctor?
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What right do you have in that?
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And you
remember what the reverse
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was big families?
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Yeah.
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And that was a woman's
role to be a child bearer.
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Well, big families and then also
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you've got to admit
that there were a lot of
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gruesome
unhealthy medical clinics.
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I call it back
alley abortion as well.
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Oh, yeah, yeah.
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The other side
of this argument is,
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but you know,
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if it ends in
endangering the mother's life...
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You know, there
are different penalties
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in the Bible if you,
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if two men are
quarreling and you hit a woman
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and she ends up
having a pregnant...
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If you hit a pregnant woman
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and she ends up
having an abortion,
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the child doesn't survive,
that unintentional fight,
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there's a different penalty.
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Not the same as
murdering an adult.
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Yeah, it's a
different penalty but we saw...
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But you're a lawyer.
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I'm a lawyer.
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And I know the
law looks at that,
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if I'm civilly sued for
wrongful death, of course,
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someone's death in
some way or if a guy...
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Yeah, I guess the same thing.
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If a company is
through its poisonous product
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has caused someone's death.
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When you look at damages,
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you look at what
that person is earning,
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or son has the potential
but you're looking at the
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in essence at the
value, you quantify the value.
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Quantify by a number.
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Now, and what do you
do with a clump of cells
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that has not taken
a single breath yet,
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not had a single thought?
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There's a trial
going on in California
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regardless of what
side you're on the abortion.
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And what does it
lost if it never existed?
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It did exist.
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And according to
the Bible it is, yeah.
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You know what I
mean, as a sentient being.
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Yeah, as what we would
think a sentient being is.
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There's a battle
going on in California,
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or were some
undercover reporters
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that had taped operatives
of Planned Parenthood,
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they're auctioning
off and selling body parts
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and that's actually on tape.
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I mean, when you're looking
at levels of proof of evidence
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you have two people
that see a car accident.
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One says the light was red,
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the other says
the light was green.
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There's no video
evidence of that.
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Nowadays, we
probably do with Big Brother
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watching everything we do.
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But in this case,
there's videotaped
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evidence of them selling
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baby parts on video.
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They were once
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a living
organism within the mom.
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Well, you know,
our whole society
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is deep into
this sort of thinking
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on a level that very few people
have trouble with, you know,
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there's an accident,
someone's body is dismembered,
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the eye goes here and
the heart there and all...
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When there's an
accident, it's a death.
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And I'm going to
stand for a platform,
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death is unnatural.
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Yeah.
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After Eden, death
became a natural part.
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I don't have an issue with that,
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but I'm just saying
the lines have blurred
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because we've
adopted in the modern world
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because of scientific advance
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and that a more utilitarian view
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of what a human organism is.
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They're atheists
and forgive me viewers,
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if you're an
atheist watching this
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and you're offended
by what I'm about to say.
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There are scientific atheists
that have published in journals
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that said that
without the moral basis
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of a church or some
antiquated organization,
00:10:50.98\00:10:55.92
humans should
throw off those cells.
00:10:55.95\00:11:00.76
In the 70s there was
a science fiction movie
00:11:00.79\00:11:03.19
about Soylent Green.
00:11:03.22\00:11:04.66
Yeah, I remember it.
00:11:04.69\00:11:06.03
And now there's
an atheist saying
00:11:06.06\00:11:08.96
there are benefits to humans
and in my state Washington,
00:11:09.00\00:11:12.33
we just passed a law saying
00:11:12.37\00:11:13.84
it's lawful for you to
compost your human body.
00:11:13.87\00:11:16.77
By the way, I was
at a health food store
00:11:16.81\00:11:18.54
the other day and there's
a product called soylent.
00:11:18.57\00:11:21.04
No way!
00:11:21.08\00:11:23.08
Somebody has a
poor memory of it.
00:11:23.11\00:11:24.95
Yeah, they have
a very poor memory.
00:11:24.98\00:11:26.48
It wasn't green,
but it was soylent.
00:11:26.51\00:11:28.42
But I believe that
human body is sacred.
00:11:28.45\00:11:33.42
I believe that we
should never see it selling.
00:11:33.46\00:11:35.69
It's not sacred in itself,
00:11:35.72\00:11:37.06
but it's the
temple to the Creator God.
00:11:37.09\00:11:40.93
Yeah.
00:11:40.96\00:11:42.30
That we have a
sacred trust with it.
00:11:42.33\00:11:44.00
Yeah, we're made in His image.
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And when you want
to desecrate that,
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okay, so after
death after death,
00:11:48.70\00:11:50.54
and you know, using
body parts here and there
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for the benefit of science
or a person can see again
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or a person gets a
kidney or person gets a heart
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Those are great
breakthroughs in medical science
00:12:00.45\00:12:02.22
and family celebrate that
00:12:02.25\00:12:03.79
that even though
their loved one is gone,
00:12:03.82\00:12:05.55
they have the
memory of maybe helping
00:12:05.59\00:12:06.99
19 or 20 other people
through an organ donor program.
00:12:07.02\00:12:10.99
That's different
than taking a fetus
00:12:11.03\00:12:12.59
and selling the body part, okay.
00:12:12.63\00:12:14.30
Remember, in China,
00:12:14.33\00:12:17.30
there's a roaring trade
in prisoners' body parts.
00:12:17.33\00:12:20.84
And there's plenty of
evidence that to meet demand,
00:12:20.87\00:12:24.97
they will condemn
more, more prisoners
00:12:25.01\00:12:28.11
to fill the
pipeline at certain times.
00:12:28.14\00:12:30.95
And some of the horrors
to get the organs correctly,
00:12:30.98\00:12:34.68
like including skin.
00:12:34.72\00:12:37.05
They do it before they did.
00:12:37.09\00:12:39.25
So that's the outer fringe.
00:12:39.29\00:12:42.62
But it exists in the middle,
00:12:42.66\00:12:44.73
there's there in
some poor countries,
00:12:44.76\00:12:46.70
there are
clearly documented cases
00:12:46.73\00:12:49.26
of people selling obviously
not organs, like a kidney.
00:12:49.30\00:12:54.34
They can sell a kidney
00:12:54.37\00:12:57.47
and even in the US
there are transactions
00:12:57.51\00:13:02.71
like surrogate
parenting and all the rest.
00:13:02.74\00:13:06.15
They're basically
selling the use of your body
00:13:06.18\00:13:10.35
and all the rest so
it's been commercialized.
00:13:10.39\00:13:12.85
The morality is
being sucked out of it.
00:13:12.89\00:13:16.02
Yeah.
00:13:16.06\00:13:17.39
And so I don't
see that as separate
00:13:17.43\00:13:19.19
from how we
regard the fetus and yes,
00:13:19.23\00:13:23.37
we need to go back and I think
00:13:23.40\00:13:25.40
while there's a
certain logic of free will,
00:13:25.43\00:13:29.20
recognizing free will
behind the abortion thing,
00:13:29.24\00:13:31.57
the net effect has been
00:13:31.61\00:13:32.94
an incredible
diminishing of respect
00:13:32.97\00:13:37.35
for what a human being is.
00:13:37.38\00:13:38.88
Yeah, incredible
reduction of that.
00:13:38.91\00:13:42.18
We'll take a
break now and come back
00:13:42.22\00:13:43.62
and continue this discussion.
00:13:43.65\00:13:44.99
So stay with us.
00:13:45.02\00:13:46.35